Caribbean Cruise Ch 01 Future Shopping

"Isn't that precious," the matron sitting to my left in the Minstrel dining room of the cruise ship was saying. "A young man has taken his father on a cruise. And he's so attentive to the older man's needs. I so wish my grandson... uh, my son... John could be like that."

That was Margaret. Sheila, sitting to my right and a little close for comfort, agreed with her. I was pretty sure they had bracketed me on purpose at the dining table. Both were in pretty good shape for their ages, but their ages were a good twenty years older than my forty-seven. I couldn't help shaking the feeling that they were shopping for new husbands, but ones they might survive or they'd be going straight for someone younger than I am. Both were dressed expensively and dripping in gems, despite what I'd been told, which was not to travel with expensive jewelry.

I knew it was good jewelry, though, because I was a jeweler by trade. I made the mistake of telling Margaret and Sheila that at our first dinner on board the ship going to the Grand Caymans and Cozumel out of Tampa. They were obviously hitting on me before knowing that, but knowing I dealt in gems made them all the more interested. I bet the jewelry was their second favorite possession after younger men. I did know that their jewelry was top-drawer stuff.

I agreed with both of them about a young man's attentiveness to his aging father, but I didn't believe it for a minute. Above the table that could have been true, but below the table, where the younger man—not a man that young, he must have been at least thirty—once or twice had taken his bare foot out of his loafer and rubbed his toes on top of the older man's foot. Their thighs and calves also were plastered together.

This was no father and son arrangement—at least not unless it was an illegal family matter, an idea I didn't want to entertain. And I was glad it wasn't. The younger man looked like a future shopping candidate to me. That's why Sol, my neighbor in Atlanta, said I went on these cruises by myself. He said I was shopping for my future, looking for a younger man to replace my last younger man and to take care of me in my old age.

I would have balked at him for saying that except for two things. The first was that history agreed with him. If I came home with a younger man from this cruise, it would be my fourth cruise with this result. And none of the three prior arrangements had lasted more than a year. I couldn't do that too many more times before I was certifiably too old to attract a younger man, let alone one who would take care of me like that younger man was doing for the other one at the table two tables over from ours in the Minstrel dining room.

The other thing was that he had said it right after I'd done a drunken "oh woe is me" confessional. And that was right before he fucked me. That had been a shock, I'll tell you. We'd had apartments in the same Atlanta high-rise building for nearly three years and had been in and out of each other's places for nearly that long, doing odd jobs and favors for each other—almost like brothers or best friends, although Sol was nearly twenty years younger than I was. In all that time, although he knew I was gay, I never considered that he might be too. He had a high-profile job, working as an on-air reporter for the CNN TV service that was headquartered in Atlanta.

He'd said he had business in Florida that melded well with my five-day cruise from Tampa and had volunteered to take me both ways all the way to Tampa and back for the cruise. We were so free and easy with each other that I accepted the offer just as if this was the most natural thing two friends could do. He must have planned it in advance, though, as there was only one hotel room booked when we got to Atlanta the day before the cruise, and he knew just what wines to order at dinner to keep me drinking.

I barely was aware of any preliminary buildup before I found myself flat on my back on the bed and my pelvis elevated because Sol's knees were wedged under my buttocks, and Sol was working his hard cock inside me.

It was a really nice fuck. A really, really nice one, especially since it had been two months since Rod had moved out and I was needing attention. But it ended with Sol holding me in his arms and me crying and confessing how scared I was to be growing old alone and him pointing out this whole gestalt thing of why I went on cruises—to cruise for younger men who could be caretakers as much as sex partners. He had to add, though, that he didn't think that young men going on cruises were shopping for that.

There I knew he was wrong. I think some went on cruises shopping for that, but that, in the main they didn't really understand what they wanted and that what they said they wanted turned out to be more of a commitment than they were willing to make.

Sol just fucked me that once. I would have liked another taste the next morning, when I was sober. But Sol was a bit sheepish about what we'd done the night before, leaving me even more confused than before. It made me think that maybe he hadn't planned the encounter after all. And there was nothing but awkwardness during breakfast the next morning and the drive to Channelside in downtown Tampa to the cruise ship pier.

The parting at the pier was also more than a bit awkward, with a handshake that both of us seemed to expect to be a bit more. And then there was what he said right before he drove off. He leaned over to the passenger window and said, "Think on it, Paul. You might be going too far afield in this future shopping of yours. In any event, when you return from the cruise, I'll be here for you." That's what he'd called it the night before—future shopping.

What in the hell did he mean by he would be here, I wondered. Of course we already understood he'd be here to meet me at the end of the cruise. Otherwise I'd be left high and dry for a way to get back to Atlanta.

Those two men sitting at a table for six, the only two sitting there, both facing me, could be me and a younger man in twenty years, I thought—if I was lucky. Except that I certainly hoped I didn't look like a toad in twenty years. The younger man, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, looked quite presentable. Lithe, handsome in the face, a good hair cut—although was that a slight graying in the temples? Maybe just turning gray prematurely and not yet in his thirties, I thought, adjusting my assessment. A nice smile and fluid motions. I could have believed he was an actor or dancer. Nothing exotic or flashy, though. The older man, however, looked pretty much like a toad. He was seventy if he was a day, lumpy and fat, completely bald, with a head shaped like a fireplug. No neck and a florid face. There was a walker next to him where a chair had been before the two had sat at that table. He looked like a heart attack or stroke waiting impatiently to happen.

We had assigned tables and it was formal night, which many cruise vacationers avoid like the plague. So, the tables were sparsely occupied. I doubt that the two had purposely sat at the table directly facing me, but I couldn't help but seeing them.

Although it was formal night, the two men, like many of the other diners, had ignored that. They had ignored it much more than some of the others had, though. I was wearing a tuxedo. I looked good in one, and I was, after all, shopping for male companionship. A tuxedo made me look like I could support a companion with expensive tastes. Most other men there at least made the effort to wear a suit. The two men facing me had on jackets, but any formality stopped there. The older man was a rumpled pile of mismatch. He was wearing a gray jacket and trousers, but of different, clashing shades of gray, and he had a brown, orange, and white Hawaiian-style shirt, with an open color, on under the wrinkled jacket. The young man was wearing a gray jacket too, but it was over blue jeans. His shirt was a relaxed-fit white dress shirt, but he had no tie. He was wearing loafers without socks.

Despite this, his clothes were well ironed and he wore his clothes like a model. And whereas the older man was decidedly out of place at formal night in the dining room, the younger man was able to pull his "look" off.

The younger man was doing all of the ordering, both food and wine, for his companion and himself, and the cruise pass card he used to register for the wine came out of his pocket. When the food came, I would not have been surprised if he had cut up the older man's meat for him—in fact, in some perverse way, I was looking forward to that, placing myself in my imagination in the place of the older man, having some infirmity that didn't permit me to take care of myself fully and having a younger man do whatever was needed for me. I also imagined that it wouldn't be much longer for the old man to be out of the picture. But the older man was able to feed himself, and he also was able to engage in conversation with the younger man.

They were talking comfortably with each other, not needing any other dining companions, and I found myself resenting what they had with each other.

I wondered what they would do when they got back to their cabin. Whether they had sex. Which one of them was the top; which one dominant? There too I was finding myself in the position of the older man, and I imagined myself stretched out on the bed on my belly, and the younger man saddled on my pelvis and giving me a slow, deep fuck—just the way I liked it. I'd certainly be easier on his eyes naked that the toad could be.

Meanwhile, Margaret and Sheila were bringing me back into the conversation at our table. It was clear that they were having a polite sparring session on whether they were going to the theater show or a bar or to hear the big-band-sound concert in the central atrium after dinner. And the bringing me into the conversation involved the expectation that I'd be pairing off with one of them for one of these options—and possibly continuing with one of them into the night.

As politely as I could, I disabused them both of that possibility, at least for tonight, and begged off any activities after dinner. I wasn't fully free of work, I told them, and I had some paperwork and e-mailing to do after dinner. I told them I was looking forward to dining with them the next night—unless something came up that had me dining elsewhere. I didn't tell them that I was hoping that the something else would be a younger man I'd met by then and was cultivating. Maybe when they saw me shepherding a younger man around they'd get the message without anything needing to be said.

While I was engaged with the women in an effort to disengage, I missed the exit of the two men I had been watching. It surprised me that I had a twinge of a feeling of loss that they were gone. I couldn't remember if they had been at the table the previous night, the first night of the cruise. I hoped that they—or the younger man, at least—would be there the next night. It's the only thing that would prompt me to have dinner in the dining room the next night. Of course, I wouldn't know whether he was there until after we were seated. And then it would be too late for me to politely abandon Margaret and Sheila.

On earlier cruises I occasionally had gone with one of these wealthy older women for a night in their cabin. But I never left satisfied. I was beyond the belief that a woman could possibly satisfy me sexually, and, though, when I was younger I would appreciate having a wealthy woman take care of me, I was wealthy myself now. I didn't need some older woman's money. What I wanted was a younger man to take care of me as I grew older.

* * * *

I was trying to decide if he was Brazilian or an Argentine, although after my second vodka Collins it didn't really seem to matter which he was. It was South American something. Whichever, he had the most compelling light-gray eyes, which went really well with his silver-gray hair and the black suit with black silky shirt and black tie with a hash pattern of silver strands.

I went up to the lounge at the top of the ship after dinner, the one where drinks were double priced, so that the riff raff who had saved all of their money in life to go on this one five-day cruise were kept away, assuming they could find the bar to start with. I was hiding out from Margaret and Sheila who thought I'd gone to my cabin. Not that the two of them weren't well heeled enough to come up here, but they'd agreed, with a sigh, to go to the late floor show in the theater with each other since they'd reached a stalemate with me.

"Are you drinking alone?" the Brazilian-Argentine, who said his name was Julio, asked when he came over to where I was sitting, nearly twenty minutes after we'd begun eyeing each other across the room. He wasn't what I was looking for. He was several years older than I was. But he was handsome and well-built and was a real smooth talker. He seemed to be a man of the world, and I imagined the he would be good in bed.

When I told him that, yes, I was alone, he said, "A man shouldn't have to drink alone. Especially a man as good looking as you. May I join you?"

"For saying I was good looking, you can do anything you want," I answered.

"I was hoping that would be the case," he answered with a smile

There weren't any young men in the lounge who seemed to be flying solo, let alone ones who might be interested in what I was looking for. I had half hoped that the young man I'd seen at dinner would be up here, but of course he wasn't. There was no reason why he should be. The older man he'd been with didn't look like his walker would carry him this high in the ship.

While I was drinking my third vodka Collins, I admitted to Julio that I indeed was looking for a man to hook up with, but that I was interested in much younger men than I was.

I vaguely remember him answering that young men were good to fuck but that older men were much more experienced in doing the fucking—and he asked me what role I was interested in taking. He had looked quite pointedly at me in noting that young men were good to fuck. I wasn't a young man, but I was younger than he was. I also remember telling him what I was looking for from a young man. I somehow felt safe with Julio, because he wasn't younger than I was—he was several years older. It didn't escape me that he was sexy as hell too and that chills went up my spine when he touched my forearm with long, sensuous fingers.

I remember ordering a fourth vodka Collins, or, rather, Julio ordering one for me, but I don't remember drinking it all. I don't remember anything that transpired between the fourth drink arriving and when I was bent over my bed, supporting my weight off the surface of the bed on my elbows and forearms, and looking down the line of my torso to where my cock was hanging and being stroked by those long, slender fingers, with a heavy gold signet ring on the middle finger. I was naked, and in my cabin.

Julio was naked too. He was bent over my back, his silky chest hair rubbing against my shoulder blades. The hand on my cock was exchanged for his other one, and I felt the smoothness of the gold signet ring revolve around my rim. I moaned and spread my legs farther, as he buried the finger inside me to where the ring was rubbing around my rim at a different angle. Moments later, as I opened to his finger, the tip of which had found and worked my prostate as I shuddered under him, the finger was extracted and his dick was slowly filling my channel. He was milking my cock with one hand and had his other arm wrapped around my belly, holding me still, while he almost immediately transitioned into pistoning my channel hard.

Coming a bit out of my drunken stupor, I began to writhe under his assault and could hear myself moaning and groaning and begging him both to not fuck so hard and to fuck me good. He slid his arms up under my arm pits, crossing his wrists behind my neck, and buried his fingers in the hair on the back of my head, while arching my torso up off the bed. If anything his pistoning was become harder, more rapid. As he eased his arm hold on me, I managed to reach down and grasp my own cock and give it the attention it was aching for. I shot off onto the bed sheets. He came with a grunt and a couple of jerks shortly thereafter.

He didn't draw out of me, though. He was still hard. He lowered his torso on my back and slow pumped me until he slowly lost his hard. While this was happening, he alternated between teething my earlobe and running his tongue into my ear cavity and worked my nipples with his fingers.

With a jerk, I gave him an after ejaculation. He laughed a deep, low laugh, knowing no doubt that he had brought more out of me than was my usual experience with a younger man.

He whispered the question to my ear. "Do your young men give you this attention?"

"No, they don't," I had to admit. But he didn't understand. I was looking for more than a good fuck. I was shopping for a future in which I'd be an old man. Mathematics ruled out looking for a man even older than I was.

I woke sometime later reclined on the bed, with Julio stretched out behind me, an arm embracing me, and moving me over onto my belly. I felt his knees pressing in on either side of my thighs and the palms of his hands pressing into my shoulder blades. And I heard the long sigh he gave, and the soft whisper, "And again now."

I was groaning myself, as his cock slid back into me and, mounted on my buttocks, he began to stroke. An arm laced down around my belly, and he was coaxing me up onto my knees, while he crouched over me and fucked me like a dog. Again he was assaulting me with hard, quick strokes. I cried out for him to go slower, not to dig so deep so soon, but I heard nothing but grunts—from him and me—so it's possible I didn't actually vocalize any objection. He pushed me flat, and once again I felt his arms going under my armpits on either side, his wrists lock behind my neck, and his fingers dig into the scalp at the back of my head. He arched my torso up again, and he was making a rocking horse out of us both, rocking my body to the rhythm of his thrusts inside me.

It was only after we'd both come that he reversed himself on me and we sucked and cleaned each other's cocks. Once again he wasn't satisfied until after I'd given him a little spurt of after ejaculate.

"You are still a virile man," he murmured. "I like that. You come well. Perhaps you will fuck me next."

Funny. I was just thinking the same of him—the virile part; I had never performed the role of a top. He was still able to get hard and stay hard and give a profusion of cum multiple times. Not bad for a man of his age. Not bad at all.

Panting, I lay there on my belly, spread-eagled on the bed, and watching him redress after having taken a quick shower. I didn't want to reveal just how exhausted he had made me.

"That was good. Very good. I will want to fuck you again—and perhaps you me," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, as he worked on a silver cuff link. Who wore fancy cuff links anymore, I thought, as I watched him. I purposely was saying little, trying to settle down and stop the panting and trying to keep the quiver out of my voice from being totally fucked. It wasn't the fuck I had been looking for, but he was right, he was quite good at it. It was quite a fuck that I got.

"What time is it?" I asked. I don't know why I asked that. Later I was afraid that maybe I was angling for a third fuck, although I don't know how I would have survived it. But what a glorious way to die.

I didn't know why we were in my cabin. I suddenly recalled having asked him about his cabin while I was sipping my fourth vodka Collins.

"It's nearly midnight. My wife's bridge game should be breaking up soon, so I best be back. But I want to fuck you again. Tomorrow evening? Meet in the same bar?"