rbaby
by Cobalt Jade 8/14/97
He walked slowly up the mountainside bowed under the heavy pack on
his back, sweat plastering his T-shirt tight against his straining flesh.
The red-brown clay of the mountain, always damp here in the Pacific
Northwest, stuck in clots to his hiking boots. He paused to wipe the sweat
off his forehead. It seemed like forever to get to the springs, but then he
was out of shape. Sitting at a desk all day in an advertising agency didn't
make for the hard, taut bodies of the magazine ads he sold. Neither was it,
he admitted, attractive to the hard, taut bodies he was attracted to.
Still, the weekly three nights at the gym were paying off; his wind and
stamina had improved since last summer, better to make this mountain
trip. Water began to appear at the side of the trail, cutting rivulets that
oozed down like blood from a cut capillary. It was slightly warm, a
warmth not accounted for by the summer air.
He was passed by at least five younger and more energetic people than
himself before he took the trail turnoff that led to the hot springs.
Twenty years ago the springs had been a collection of muddy patches on
the mountainside, but the cooperative had changed all that. Over the
years, those who knew of this place had dragged up timber and pipes,
and with the work of picks and shovels, hammers and saws--all hand-
operated, no electricity up here--they built a series of terraces in the
mountainside with wide, plastic-lined pools to catch the steaming water.
No changing rooms, however. It was customary to go nude here, though
not required.
He noted the regulars: the cute Japanese girl and her blonde boyfriend,
the quiet security guard who worked at the Bremerton shipyards, the air
freight pilot who flew out of Las Vegas. The hottest pool, affectionately
called "The Lobster Pot," was empty but for the Naked Gourmet frying
something over a portable propane stove set at the side of the pool. He
stood waist deep in the steaming water, his skinny Puerto Rican frame
like a wiry, gnarled root; thin, but in terrific shape from lugging his
utensils up and down all the time.
Crowbar was the unofficial bouncer, welcoming committee, and
administrator of the springs. He spelled the Naked Gourmet at the stove
as the latter took off to find a roll of paper towels. His paunch jiggled as
he maneuvered in the water, a jolly Santa Claus bounce. "Hey, Steve,
haven't seen you up here in a while."
"Been busy at the office." He took off his pack and then his clothes,
folding them neatly to stow inside. No one paid much attention to him. He
was slightly tan, slightly fit, but still clearly middle-aged; no one special.
The population of the springs was mostly male. Women came either with
a husband or boyfriend or with a group of mixed sexes. He didn't mind,
because women didn't interest him that much. "What are you cooking
today?"
"Potato chips," Crowbar chuckled. "Greasy as hell, too, real fat pills.
There'll be plenty to go around today. I think most of the regular folks
stayed in Seattle."
"Pissy weather," he said. It was clear this far up in the mountains,
though it had been raining down south when he'd left.
"Baby!" Crowbar spread his arms, looking like Poseidon rising from the
sea, as his daughter Prybar thumped onto the deck. She squatted by the
side of the pool to give him a hug, shrugging off her backpack. "She's
taking a year off from college, you know," he beamed. "Going down to
party in Guatemala."
"It's a volunteer rainforest conservation project, Dad."
"Whatever."
She made a face but stripped off her clothes as casually as the other
hikers. She was all wholesome enthusiasm despite the ring in her navel
and the Celtic tattoo around it...tall and slim, but still glisteningly ripe.
She had a tattoo around the thickest part of her shin, too, a banded
design like the top of a kneesock, and her bush was trimmed back to a
neat line.
He was glad she'd arrived, because it caused a stir among the younger
men in their teens and twenties. The rhythm of passing beers and
smoking cigarettes did not stop, but quietly, unobtrusively, their dicks
got hard, bobbing on top of the steaming water like buoys at harborside.
It wasn't considered bad etiquette to have a hard-on at the pool, but it was
not something that went without comment, either. The older men
remained supremely unaroused, their dicks, both cut and uncut, almost
regal beneath the overhanging shelves of their bellies, wreathed in
nests of thick, soggy hair. The shriveled cocks had an odd dignity, like
ancient warriors whose active duty was over, yet still possessed of years
of experience.
But it was the middle aged men, the family ones, who had the most
interesting reactions. They tried to act self-effacedly fraternal towards
the girl, yet there was an extra intensity there, a show of trying very
hard to be nonchalant that was revealed as a show by hard they were
trying. Their cocks, though unerect, seemed on the verge of inflating; a
tension existed there that was amusing to watch.
He rinsed off his feet and settled himself into the third-tier pool, the
water enveloping him like a womb. The innocent show was definitely
arousing, though he was not on the brink of erection just yet. If he did
become hard, he could blame on relaxation and the temperature of the
water like most of the other men did. He flipped over on his stomach just
in case, accepting a friendly Red Hook pale ale from the UPS pilot. He
couldn't help smiling at the gesture, in the cool way a former lover told
him was like "liquid ice on hot chrome." The young man would be very
surprised if he knew another man was imagining his lips wrapped
around a cock instead of the mouth of a beer bottle.
He lay there for a while, letting himself dream, soaking away the petty
tensions of a week in the business world. The pilot had a rough trade
charm about him, and there was an exquisite pale boy in the pool below,
half-Japanese he thought, with the warm dark eyes of a gazelle. Just the
barest fuzz on his shaved scalp, a dusting of velvet nap on ivory. He made
small talk about the weather, the stadium issue, Paul Allen's latest
business deal.
He glanced up as a slim woman in her twenties picked her way down the
slippery steps leading a four-year-old child by the hand. She wore loose
cotton clothing in muted earth-and-berry colors and carried a pack on
her back. Nothing unusual in that. But behind her...
He sat up in the pool, walking his ass up the side for a better view. Shit.
Doublefuck. The spitting image of Dart Bishop, the gay porn star of the
late eighties. A patrician face young enough to be vulnerable but old
enough to speak of experience, an aquiline nose, blonde hair in a
ponytail that reached to mid-back. He was wearing a loose t-shirt and a
pair of khaki shorts, with the clunky oversized hiking boots an R. Crumb
cartoon character might wear. Buff, fit, tanned, or as tan as one could be
in the soggy Northwest. He wore a heavy pack. He surveyed the pools
like Thor, the Norse god of war, then descended the wooden steps.
Fantasies exploded in his mind as Thor came nearer. Scandinavian for
sure...he had that up-and-down spareness, the clean lines of the finest
Swedish design. Would he talk to Thor, maybe offer him a beer? Would
they exchange numbers? He ran the possibilities over in his mind, then
saw what Thor carried in the pack on his back.
It was a baby. Solemn, accepting, with the peculiar blank dignity only
healthy babies could have. The woman holding the toddler's hand turned
back to ask Thor something, the gleam of a wedding ring visible through
the pudgy little fingers. God damn it!
Life was so unfair. Why did a man built like that have to be straight?
The couple staked a spot for themselves on the terrace, putting their
packs and children in order. Wifey took off her clothes while her
husband minded the children. She was about 28, but young looking for
her age; her breasts were small and drooped only slightly after two
children. As she undressed the baby Thor took off his shirt and shorts.
He was built all right, a perfect "V" shape from behind, broad shoulders
narrowing down to a trim but proportional waist. His muscles rippled as he
stepped out of his briefs. More delightful yet, he was three-toned...a
tanned bronze above his waist; an ass as creamy as grade A butter; and a
lighter bronze, almost gold, on his legs, which were fuzzed with fine,
pale hair. His buttocks were perfectly molded, with a dimpled indentation
above that mouth-watered crack, and another perfect scoop of indented
muscles at the sides below his hips. He turned around, his long blonde
hair swinging like a mane, and...*Hammer of the Gods.*
His cock was cut, nicely oversized, but as clean and architectural as the
other lines of his body. A healthy set of balls dangled beneath, the pale
lilac-mauve-pink color of well-toned blonde flesh. Nobs, they called
them in Denmark. The whole moved slightly as he walked, with
unselfconscious grace, toward the third-tier pool.
He held his breath as the Thor stepped in, blithely ignorant he was
being watched. "Excuse me," he murmured, and the others moved aside to
give him room. A whiff of sweat and maleness, the momentary heat of a
passing body. Thor settled himself in against the pool edge closest to the
deck, scooping palmfuls of water over his arms, his magnificent chest.
Soggy strands of hair escaped from the ponytail and plastered
themselves to his face.
Wifey came up, nude and inconsequential, baby on her hip, the toddler
following, beating out a tattoo on his plastic pail. She dipped her legs in
the pool and handed the baby to her husband.
Carefully, as if in a ritual, Thor took the baby in both hands, supporting
it by the neck and back as lowered it into the pool.
"Well look at that!" "I've never seen such a thing." The baby laughed,
jerking its arms and legs, its somber mien replaced by a grin.
"He's a water baby," Thor volunteered, a smile on his face. "He was
Lamaze all the way. They dipped him in tub of warm water before they
cut the cord."
Water baby. He knew who they were now: earth-firsters, modern
hippies. They lived on an organic farm near Snohomish and sold their
free-range chicken shit as fertilizer. Natural childbirth and wheat
berries and hand-weaving on a wooden loom, as if he hadn't seen
enough of that in the early seventies, thank you very much. But the
younger generation had discovered them anew, put their own twists on
them.
Thor placed the baby on his stomach, still supporting him. The baby
started to swim, a coordinated doggy paddle. "We take him swimming
whenever we can," he explained. "It's good exercise. It just comes natural
to them. It reminds them of when they're in the womb."
He started to squirm. He hadn't had any fulfilling sex since the spring.
Being at the hot springs today, seeing all this flesh..he hadn't felt this
exposed and horny since his college athletic days, when he'd often had
to run out of the locker room and whack off in the bushes. He'd always
had a healthy libido, but that carried with it an unhealthy level of
frustration. Even the baby seemed to taunt him, his baby-whiz half-erect
like a leering putti in a Renaissance painting...all those plump, pink
little asses floating up to heaven. God help him, what kind of pervert was
he, getting turn on by a young father playing with his baby in the pool!
He had to get out of here. He HAD to.
He murmured excuse-mes to the other soaking bodies and stumbled to
where he'd left his towel. Had anyone seen him, saw what made him
crouch? He wrapped the towel around his waist and trotted quickly up
the stairs. The forest was pretty thick above the pools; he'd have no
trouble finding a private spot. He felt an odd mix of pleasure and
censure. He couldn't help the censure. He wasn't as self-assured about
his sexuality as the younger faggots were. They'd grown up with a
measure of acceptance; he hadn't.
Distance didn't matter, as long as he was hidden. He was going to do
himself good this time: a long, hard, extremely satisfying hand job. He
felt light and daring, almost as if he was nineteen again, under the
forbidden yet delicious spell of his own sexuality. He kept Thor's body
spotlit in his mind, keeping himself hard with loving strokes beneath
the towel, until he found the place...behind a stump and hidden from the
trail by brush, but with a view of the valley below. He could masturbate
all he wanted with no one the wiser.
He parted the branches and parked his back against the tree. He parted
the folds of the towel and started to rub.
A lifetime of jerkoffs had perfected his technique, and he responded
more quickly than usual. It must have been the mixture of relaxation
and sexual tension. He rubbed his shaft up and down, his hand in a fist
loosely tight or tightly loose, his left hand circling the head of his cock,
stroking it delicately. He grew larger by the second. My god. He didn't
know it was going to be this good. Was it going to get any better? A few
more...and...ah! that was it. He felt the sensation of a fishing line reeled
tight into his testicles, building up to the release of tension. He felt his
veins throb all the way down his shaft, aching as they hadn't since he
was in his twenties. This one was going to be really good! He increased
his rate of stroking, hands pumping up and down. The sight of his cock
and fingers made him get even harder, though in his head he was still
seeing Thor, long blonde hair unbound as took his cock and balls
completely in his mouth, nose buried in his public hair, the muscles of
his back dancing in perfect time as he sucked like a Hoover on steroids.
Something made him open his eyes and turn around. A face peered at
him out of the brush about thirty inches off the ground. Stared briefly,
then the branches swished into the place where they were. "Daddy!"
Oh shit, what if the kid thought he was some pervert hiding in the
bushes? There'd been a lot of stories on the news about child molesters
lately. His ass could be in a sling. He readjusted his towel and burst out of
the brush to make an explanation.
Thor stood in the path, naked but for a pair of river rafting sandals and a
roll of toilet paper: magnificent in spite of the banality of the situation,
or perhaps because of it.
"There he is Daddy" the four-year-old said with squeaky solemnity. "That
man had his thingy in his hand."
He tried to grin sheepishly, feeling his hard-won erection deflate.
"He was just trying to find a place to go potty, Trevor. Just like you." Thor
took up the boy's hand. "Sorry," he murmured. "Kids."
"No Daddy. He was making noises...."
Oh god. Thor rolled his eyes, apparently as awkward as he was. Strange
considering he and Wifey probably shared all the household shores; he
must be used to kid shit by now. "Come on Trevor. Let's leave him alone."
He began to walk his son down the trail. "Sorry about this," he said in
passing.
"It's all right." His words sounded as limp as his cock.
The god and his offspring brushed past him on his way to the toilet, with
the lingering aroma of calm male rationality, not aroused, not violent,
not tired.
And most of all, not aware.
END
This work is copyrighted 1997 by Cobalt Jade (Cobaltjade@aol.com). This work may be freely distributed over electronic media provided no fee is charged for its use. Charging a fee for this story, or publishing without author credit or this notice violates my copyright.