Chapter Twelve

I never made it to the guest room in Jerry’s house. We lounged on the daybed in his painting studio, talking of this and that until we had worn out our voices.

Even though I was dead tired, I didn’t feel sleepy or even groggy if that makes any sense. There was something about Jerry that just filled me with energy. We just barely touched one another as we lay with our feet at one another’s heads on the day bed. I could feel the warmth of his body all along my side.

It was so late, it became early. The song of the birds singing to the morning sun chirped and tweeted from the bushes nearest to the window in the room. I didn’t really have anywhere I needed to be; it was a good feeling.

I felt Jerry’s hand brush the side of my thigh. This sent my heart racing with palpitations. Did he do that on purpose? Maybe.

Don’t get excited, I told myself. He probably wants more space.

“Sorry,” I said.

I scooted closer to the edge of the bed so that he wouldn’t feel cramped.

“What?” Jerry asked.

“I thought you wanted more space,” I said.

“Oh!” said Jerry. “No. No, I actually didn’t want more space at all.”

All of the sudden, I got into a playful mood. I could feel a weird, warped grin wind its way across my face. I rolled over so I was squishing him. A sharp, surprised laugh came out of him in a sudden burst.

“How about now?” I asked.

“No, that’s fine,” he said through laughter.

I swear, we were like a couple of eleven year old boys at a slumber party after mom and dad demanded we go to bed, lying in the dark, but wide awake and prone to fits of giggles at the slightest provocation.

I faked gagging.

“Your feet are in my face!” I exclaimed.

This made Jerry laugh even harder.

“I bet you like it!” he said. “I bet you love the smell of old feet!”

It was pretty clear by that point that we were completely bushed when every stupid little thing made us fall to pieces into fits of conspiratorial giggles.

“Ew!” I exclaimed. “You wish!”

It was at that moment that Jerry grasped onto me and pinned my legs to the bed. In response, I grabbed onto his legs. The room was filled with the sort of juvenile glee I think adults should participate in more, especially if there’s a great deal of stress in their lives. It had been a while since I had felt so good. The question of going to sleep had gone straight out the window.

It was an exciting thing to be going through! Too exciting, as it turned out… Before I was even aware of what was happening, I had an embarrassing issue on my hands.

“Oh!” Jerry exclaimed.

I realized, just a moment too late, that this was in response to the massive erection I had developed throughout the course of the two of us wrestling.

“Sorry!” I said, quickly pulling off of him. “I don’t know why that happened!”

I got off the bed and started searching around for my shoes.

“Ron…” Jerry said to me as I frantically scrambled through all the detritus on the floor searching for my second shoe.

“Don’t worry about driving me home,” I said.

“Ron…” Jerry repeated himself.

“I’m sure you’re really tired and you don’t need to look after me so I’ll just go…”

“Ron!”

Jerry’s tone became so sharp, that I was forced to drop what I had been doing and face him. He sat there, calmly on the bed. To my relief, he did not appear to be angry or disgusted with me.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Don’t go,” said Jerry. “It’s fine.”

By now, my erection had completely disappeared with the frantic scramble and panic I had just put myself through.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Positive,” said Jerry. “It’s fine.”

He then patted the space on the bed next to him.

“Get back over here,” he said. “Lie down and rest next to me.”

Tentatively, I dropped the shoe I had been holding in my hand and crept back to the day bed. We sat quietly for a moment.

“This is a really nice set up,” I said to fill the silence.

“Yeah,” Jerry said. “This way, I can work until I absolutely have to pass out and then I can sleep here and start working again right away when I get up.”

“You really do that sometimes?” I asked.

“Yup,” said Jerry.

Looking around, this made sense. The sheer volume of work Jerry produced on top of having a full-time job was nothing short of extraordinary. He would have to be crafty with his time to pull it off, to be sure. It was also no wonder his house was so cluttered. He probably didn’t have much time to work in doing the dishes, either.

“You really are an artist’s artist,” I said.

I cringed at how lame that was. There was no getting around it, however, everything after what had just taken place would be awkward for a little while.

“Thanks,” said Jerry.

Another awkward silence followed. I was just about to get up and say I think I’d better leave after all when Jerry spoke.

“We should lie down,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

I was completely dumbfounded as Jerry laid down next to me, not head to foot as last time, but parallel. The birds continued to sing to the dawn as if nothing had happened.

Jerry turned on his side to face me. I could feel the hot breath on my face. His hand began to creep alongside my body.

“You ever play that game where you put your hand on someone’s knee and move it up the thigh until one of you chickens out?” he asked.

“What kind of a game is that?” I asked, knowing full well what that game was, but pretending I didn’t.

“I’ll show you,” said Jerry.

He then placed a hand on my knee. It rested there for a moment.

“Then I ask, ‘are you nervous?’ and if you say ‘yes’, I win,” he said. “But if I chicken out before you say yes, then you win.”

“Huh,” I said. “So, it’s like a homo erotic version of chicken, then?”

Jerry chuckled.

“When you put it that way…” he said.

“That’s the kind of game boys play when they’re still a bunch of kids,” I said.

“Yeah. It was real dumb.”

“Haha. Yeah.”

We continued to lie there like that. The tension was so heavy that it coursed through my spine. I felt as if I could barely breathe. Suddenly, Jerry put his hand back on my knee.

“Are you nervous?” he asked.

Was this seriously happening? After what had just happened? What was this guy getting at? Maybe he was just trying to help me feel at ease by being stupid or something, but I couldn’t help but wonder…

“No,” I said.

Jerry slid his hand a little further up, only an inch or two at the most.

“Are you nervous?” he asked again.

“No,” I said.

Lying there, in the partial dark from the rising sun, my breathing began to get heavy. I began to feel that familiar pressure building up in my crotch area. We were heading for another incident just like the one we had before. Question was: was this what Jerry was aiming for or would it result in another, far more embarrassing incident?

It was true that he could have been trying to put me more at ease and that I was betraying his good faith by allowing myself to get excited… down there all over again. Then again, how stupid would he have to be to start doing this again after what had just taken place?

“Um, Jerry, I…” I tried to warn him.

“Shhh…” Jerry shushed me. “Are you nervous?”

Then, what if he was trying to make this happen? I wouldn’t deny that I was tempted to let this carry on, just to see what would happen. There was nothing more to it than curiosity… or so I thought.

“No,” I whispered out staunchly, despite my apprehensions.

Deep down inside of me, the entrepreneurial spirit would not let me back down. This was an adventure that I had embarked upon with this man. Were I to fail, it wouldn’t be nearly as embarrassing as if I quit out of fear of failure and so I allowed him to continue slowly moving his hand up my thigh as I got harder and harder.

By the time he got just a twitch of the finger away from touching my erect penis, he must have known what was going on, based on the way the fabric of my suit pants strained against it like a circus tent.

It was the final move. There was no turning back after this one and what would follow would be entirely up to Jerry.

“Are you nervous?” he asked.

I did not hesitate.

“No,” I said.

Jerry then moved his hand over the engorged bulge in my pants. It was in that position that he awkwardly rested his hand for a minute. To prove to him that I was resolved not to lose the game, I laid stock still, doing everything in my power not to flinch. Our heavy breathing drowned out the sounds of the birds chirping away outside.

Finally, Jerry began to rub his hand over my erection. It felt brilliant through the thin fabric of my pants.

“Ah!” I exhaled in ecstasy.

I couldn’t help it. Never had I experienced such pleasure even by my own hand. I finally understood why people sought out sexual partners; having someone else perform such an act on you produces a feeling that you cannot emulate on your own!

I began to feel my body, completely divorced from the will of my mind, undulate with carnal pleasure in response to the sensuous caressing of which Jerry applied liberally.

“Oh!” I moaned. “I…”

“Shhhh…” Jerry hushed me.

He then proceeded to undo the fly and top button of my pants, which he performed deftly with the single hand that had been rubbing my increasingly intense erection.

When he reached down through the elastic of my boxer shorts and grasped onto it, the skin to skin contact sent shivers up my spine, while creating bursts of warmth blooming sporadically throughout my body. It wasn’t heaven and it wasn’t hell; this was the product of all things that were earthly pleasures. I couldn’t comprehend what was truly going on and, for the time being, I didn’t want to. If I had stopped to think about it for too long, I would be painfully pulled from the throes of ecstasy unlike any I had ever experienced in my life.

It was Jerry’s turn to speak.

“Oh,” he said in lightly pleased surprise. “You’re so… priapic!”

I didn’t know whether to be pleased with what could be construed as a compliment or put off by the sleaziness of it all, but, as I said, I was in a specific mode that I had never experienced before in my entire life, one completely devoted to the acquisition of sexual satisfaction. I was getting there. Oh, how I was getting there in one of the most explosive (literally) manners that I could ever accomplish.

While as before, Jerry had started off rubbing on my erect penis with playful, exploratory strokes of the fingertips, he had begun to grasp the whole thing, wrapping the entirety of his hand around it, by this time. It had successfully advanced me from what started out as initial pangs of a curious hunger into full blown ravenousness. Every ache, every humiliation, every pent up frustration that I had been accumulating over the course of the past few months had migrated down to my penis and was pushing to get out.

I shook and shivered with the oncoming anticipation of the event. It had been a while; this was going to be memorable for certain.

“I’m… I’m going to…” I stuttered more to myself than to Jerry. “I’m going to come.”

“Yeah,” said Jerry in a raspy voice. “Come for me! Show me what you can do.”

No more prompting was needed. All the pressure that had been building up with me was expelled in a geyser-like fashion, spewing out of me accompanied by exaggerated pelvic thrusts, pumping into the air and moans coming from deep within me in places that I didn’t even know I had inside.

“Aaaah!” I screamed as long strings of white ejaculate spewed out of me at heights that I’m certain would have broken world records if there were people interested in keeping track of such things.

Even after I had finished and fell into a particularly long session of post coital spasms and shivers, Jerry’s hand remained firmly affixed to my slowly softening penis. Normally, I’m pretty sensitive after such a thing has taken place, but in this instance, there was something warm and comforting about it. It was like being small and vulnerable and having someone you trust hold you.

That must have been a major part of it. Although we had only just met and everything working within my intellect was telling me that I had no reason to trust this relatively unfamiliar man, my intuition drew me to him. I felt no fear when I was with Jerry.

This could end very, very badly for me, I thought as my mind became groggy.

Nonetheless, I happily allowed Jerry to wrap his arms around me and apply a gentle kiss to my neck. For the first time since I had arrived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I did not wake up for the entirety of the night’s (day’s?) sleep.