"You're lagging behind," said Craig as he set down another Heineken next to the 2 bottles already sitting in front of me. He popped open his 4th, flopped down on the sofa next to me and grinned.
Since his memorable performance on stage, and especially since the even more memorable end of run party, he and I had started hanging out more. I was still a little in awe of him, and while there wasn't exactly a sexual vibe between us, I still found him magnetic. He was about my height, but physically much more impressive in my mind, with a natural musculature I could only dream of.
Part of his attraction was how obviously he was at ease in his own skin. Tonight for example, he'd opened the door to me with no shirt on. In the 5 or so months since the last show, there'd been a few times when he casually changed his clothes right in front of me. I'd been - not unpleasantly - surprised the first time he suddenly starting stripping down as we talked, getting down to his underwear and walking in and out of his bedroom to dress, all without a break in the conversation.
As he'd hugged me briefly to his bare chest I couldn't help but inhale his scent. I'd noticed he always wore Agua di Gio and this evening it was overlaid with the scent of the shampoo from his still damp hair, as well as his natural musk. The white waistband of what I knew from previous visits were black or grey CK briefs was clearly visible above loose black running shorts. The red ones from his stage performance had unfortunately never reappeared.
It was a warm evening and the shirt he'd tugged on just after I'd arrived was now lying next to him on the sofa. I wished I had the confidence to be so casually shirtless around my male friends, and I struggled to believe he'd actually seen me naked all those months ago. For a while that had somehow made me feel less pent up about seeing him strip every night during the show, but his casual physicality around me since had, if anything, made things worse.
He had some stupid show turned on low on the TV, and during the lulls in conversation, his eyes drifted to the screen. As much as I tried to stop them, mine drifted to the shape of his pecs, with their large dark brown nipples standing slightly hard from the breeze coming in the open windows, the neatly trimmed armpit hair and roundness of his bicep as he sat there with one arm propping up his head. And worst of all, the trail on his belly disappearing under the CK waistband and the looseness of his shorts. He'd stretched his other arm along the back of the sofa behind my head, and for a moment I had an overwhelming urge to lean back into the warmth of him.
Looking back now, it's pretty obvious I was totally smitten with Craig. Not the first time it had happened with someone I had no chance with, but this was the worst and most unrequited case to date. But then I always assumed no one was interested in me 'that way.' He had casually called me gay at some point and I'd never corrected him, since he was of course right, despite my lack of partners or experience. But he'd never shown any romantic or sexual interest in me, and our friendship was more brotherly in its comfort levels - except for the way I secretly hoarded every glimpse of him that he gave me like a dragon sitting on its gold. My wank fantasies were certainly gold thanks to him.
The programme went to commercials and he clicked off the TV, grabbing his shirt and to my disappointment, slipping it on.
"Come on," he said with no further explanation, standing waiting in the open the front door.
We walked quickly, and it soon became obvious we were heading into the centre of town.
He was looking at me more seriously than his usual relaxed expression. Despite the increasing amount of time we'd spent together since what I'd come to think of as 'the afterparty', we'd never actually discussed it.
"So..." he began hesitatingly. "Something's been bothering me since the last show. Well not the show, the party. You know..." he trailed off and I just nodded sheepishly and waited to see where he was going with this.
"I know it was a game, and we'd all been drinking, especially me to be honest. And now we're sort of hanging out more I started to wonder if maybe I hadn't crossed a line with you. But then I keep thinking back to your reaction.."
For half a second, his eyes dropped suggestively to my crotch and then back to my face.
"..and I'm a bit confused about what was actually going on. I mean I know John was pretty thrilled he got you to strip like that, but it was obvious it was more than a drinking game to you. You were shaking and - well sorry to put it like this - horny as fuck from what I could tell."
I was waiting for the question but he paused, glancing at me. Before I knew what was happening the words started tumbling out. About the incident at the pub. How an actor undressing in front of an audience triggered me so much. I left out the part about finding him so attractive I was stunned it was him I got to watch stripping naked under the spotlights a dozen times. But it was somehow easier making these confessions because I didn't have to meet his eyes as we walked side by side. We came to a stop and he let me finish, red-faced and flustered.
I looked at him and the sly smile on his face made me think he was enjoying my embarrassment. It was only then that it registered where we were - standing outside the door of a pub. The pub.
There were only a few patrons in there, but the smell of the place - wood, beer, and ancient smoke from before the ban - gave me flutters in my belly which had nothing to do with the dated decor. Craig pointed to an empty corner bench table in a dingy area off to one side of the bar, before wordlessly striding off and returning a minute later with 2 tall glasses of IPA and sitting down next to me on the bench seat.
"Ok, so I guess that explains your reaction to my role in the play. But what about the party game? What was going on in your mind?"
I realised that was almost impossible to explain without having to admit even more things I'd never said out loud. But his waiting gaze, though not unkind, was clearly waiting for me to try.
"It was the whole situation. The alcohol, you.. the way John just directed like he always does..."
"Yup, he's so used to people doing what he tells them, it feels almost wrong not to. Weird huh?" he asked of no one in particular. "So if you like stripping off so much, why are you always so prudish around me?"
"What do you mean?" The question was as surprising as it was puzzling.
"I mean its 30 degrees outside, and yet you turn up in a long sleeve shirt and jeans. Whereas..." he waved his hands at his half buttoned shirt and shorts to illustrate the contrast.
"Well I'm hardly going to come over to your place and just strip off Craig." He snorted into his beer at that.
"Why not? Half my friends end up running around in their underwear." I must have looked surprised - or disappointed - I'd never been invited to those little hangouts. Either way he laughed again.
"We just have a different vibe Paul. I'm super easy about my body and anyone else's really. To be honest I wasn't even wearing these-" he snapped the waistband of his shorts and with a brief flash of familiar heat in my chest, his underwear too - "until 2 seconds before I opened the door." That image was making my heart rate climb already and I could feel myself breaking into a sweat.
"Paul, you're melting. Why don't you at least open up that heavy shirt?"
I just stared at him like an idiot, and he gave me that serious look again for a moment.
"You know when John first asked me to add that little strip act to the play, I was pretty hesitant." I looked at him incredulously.
"You?"
"Well you don't have to sound so surprised!" he said, in such a way it made me wonder if he wasn't being serious after all. So much for being easy about his body.
"It's one thing to hang out in my undies with my friends -" he said, raising an eyebrow at me in a way that made my heart skip a beat again. "It's something else to take it all off in front of 200 people." I squirmed in my seat as he said those last words, earning myself another eyebrow.
"Yeah, we'll come back to that. Anyway, when I was researching other actors who've done stage nudity, I came across this blog. It popped up in the search because there was this whole section of videos with male actors going nude on stage. Pretty heady stuff and some of it a lot more naked than what John was asking me to do."
He paused to take a sip of his beer, which was just as well, because it meant he wasn't looking at me as I realised it was my blog he was talking about. I could feel the blood rising into my cheeks. How the hell?
"Anyway the cool thing for me was that this guy explained how it felt to strip off in front of a bunch of people in a non-sexual setting. How affirming it was, and how much power it added to a performance for an actor to literally bare it all. It was a real eye-opener for me, and even if I knew John probably had some ulterior motives, I decided I'd do it for myself and not him. And it was liberating as fuck," he said finally squaring me in the eye.
I don't know how he didn't see how my head was about to explode, but somehow he just kept talking.
"He'd also written some stories, and I actually got into a bit of a back and forth with him in the comments." Fuck.
"There was one about his football mates making him strip off in a bar, and I think he's actually local because I'm sure I know the place he was talking about."
Well that answered the question about how he'd found the blog. Another victory for geo-tracking search engines.
"I found it pretty interesting that for all his philosophising about the artistic integrity of on-stage nudity, he'd totally eroticised this experience - he even gave it a name. I had to google it but turns out Clothed Male Naked Male meant exactly what it sounds like." He was looking at me, and the eyebrow had now been joined by a smile.
"But you know exactly what blog, and what story I'm talking about, don't you Paul?" he asked. At the after-party, I'd had such a strong feeling he suspected, but later I'd managed to convince myself it was the alcohol making me misread.
"How the hell did you know?" It seemed like such a bizarre coincidence I could barely believe it, but there no longer seemed any point in denying it.
"There's no great mystery to it Paul. Boxer boy as you called him was one of my mates, and after a few drinks some of the guys think it's funny to get him to strip off. Not very hard to do by the way and he's not the only one on the team either. Anyway, one night I spotted this guy sneak into the front of the bar just as this was going down. The look on his face was priceless, like it was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen. None of the other guys noticed him, but for some reason it made an impression on me. And then 2 weeks later, he - you -walked into my office."
He stopped to smile at me again.
"So you knew it was me all along when you were asking those questions on the blog?"
"Yup. And that boxer boy wasn't you."
"Fuck Craig, I feel like such a fraud. And all that stuff we talked about walking over here..." He laughed at that.
"Yeah I already knew it, or figured it out - so I guess I'm the fraud. You seem like such a mild-mannered and - no pun intended - straight guy. And yet I knew you had all this stuff going on beneath the surface. It's one reason I wanted to get to know you better. So I apologise now for not telling you it was me when we chatted all those months ago. But I was afraid I'd sound like some kind of stalker if I did, and the longer I waited the harder it got to tell you."
