Climbing Machu Picchu

"Some beautiful young men out there, aren't there?"

Alex looked up, startled. The man standing by his table at the edge of the verandah of the Southbeach Café, overlooking a stretch of Key West beach at the southernmost point in the United States, was somewhat of a cipher. He was clearly old—quite old—but he was equally clearly well preserved. His deep tan, tending toward the leathery, accentuated the silvery gray of his full head of hair and of the patch of hair on his chest as well. He had been a strikingly handsome man once and was still handsome in an arresting way—for his age. He also had been very well muscled and there was evidence of that still. The immediate impression he gave to Alex was of some sort of mummy of a man who had died in his prime and, although decaying, was doing it at glacial speed. He was just wearing baggy shorts and flip-flops. He was smiling, showing a set of gleaming-white teeth—impressive whether or not they all were still his.

"Beg pardon?"

"I said that there were some beautiful men out there playing volleyball. Many of them really sexy, all types represented, making selection easy."

"Yes, yes, I suppose. I was absorbed in the game."

"A big volleyball fan, are you?"

"No, not really, but—"

"I didn't think so. A professional observer are you?"

"Ah . . ."

"Do you mind if I sit, to take a load off. I've come to observe myself, for the moment, and this table has the best view of the beautiful young volleyballers."

"Yes, of course. Do join me." The man was being quite forward and candid, but this was Key West. Alex had read enough about Key West to know that little was hidden or kept in reserve here. And it didn't mean anything to him, of course, if the man wanted to come across as "out there" gay. It didn't have to affect how Alex projected himself.

The man sat down and ordered a whiskey, followed by a coffee, from a waiter, who clearly was familiar with—and indulgent toward—the old gentleman. The waiter was obviously gay too, in a limp wristed way that put Alex off a bit. Alex didn't want to seem that open about anything.

The old man pulled a packet of vibrant-colored cigarettes out of his pocket and was lighting up even as he asked, "Care if I smoke?" He didn't wait for an answer before going on. "My name is Bob. I trust that you're a tourist, coming for the first time to our little tropical paradise down here to . . . observe?"

"Yes, down from Delaware—Wilmington—to escape the winter. Stopped here on my way farther south. My name's Alex, by the way."

"Nice solid name, Alex. It suits you. You're a nice solid-looking man. Well put together. Staying at . . .?"

"The Blue Marlin, just down the street on Simonton. Rather interesting. An old fifties-style motel, but they keep it up and emphasize the retro."

"Yes, I know it well. So, just retired from DuPont and decided suddenly to see the world? You look a bit young to have retired. More than a bit, actually."

Was the man leering at him suggestively? Alex chose to ignore any possibility that he was. Still, he felt a tightness inside himself—as if the old man was pulling at him to extract all of his deep, dark secrets. Then why, Alex wondered, was he proceeding to give up nuggets about himself? At the back of his mind, he kept wondering just why it was that he'd wanted to take a side trip to Key West on his way farther south.

"Not retired yet, but you hit it on the head with DuPont. Not DuPont itself, but one of the major banks in town. We do a lot of work with DuPont. I'm fifty—just turned. Looked around and decided I hadn't done much of what I wanted to do in life. So, I'm on an extended vacation."

"Ah, yes. Fifty is a dangerous age. I'm seventy myself."

"Seventy? I wouldn't have guessed." And, in fact, Alex wouldn't have guessed that. Sixty maybe. Certainly older than he was himself.

"I've done what I can to keep that from being a first guess. And you got bored up there in Wilmington did you? Made a list of places to see, and Key West was on the list?"

"Yes, Key West has always intrigued me."

"Yes, yes, it does, for a certain type of man."

Alex didn't quite know how to respond to that, but Bob saved him the trouble, continuing on with his probing. "Is Key West the only sightseeing destination on your vacation agenda?"

"This is just a stopover. I'm on my way down to Peru. Wanted to see Machu Picchu. It seems to be on everyone's bucket list."

"Ah. Rather unique, a stopover in Key West on the way down to Peru. When you get there, you're going to do what, take a flyover of the area? You're not going to climb to the ruins?"

"Yes, yes, a flyover, but how did you guess that?"

"I sense a pattern here. And, so, why did you stop over in Key West? To observe beautiful young men playing volleyball on the beach or to fuck or be fucked?"

"Excuse me?"

"We're an open and honest lot down here in Key West, Alex, and the key is famous for one thing, really. I just wondered where you were in life. It seems you've moved to observer from experiencing. I can understand that. I was in my fifties once, facing retirement, and suddenly realized I hadn't been much of anywhere. In my rather older age, though, I've discovered that it's all going to abruptly stop at some point—and I will either have collected photographs of others doing something—young men playing volleyball on the beach, for instance—or I'm going to have experienced life myself. That's why I went back to smoking and drinking . . . and fucking. And Key West is a great place to do all that and devil may care."

"Fucking at your age?" Alex asked, stung by what Bob had said and wanting to sting a bit back.

"You better believe it. And I'm quite good at it, if I say so myself. You're only fifty. You're not past it. And you're a good-looking man who has kept yourself in shape. There are a lot of fifty-year-old men fucking other men on Key West. It's what we're good at here. If you're brave enough to go past observing, you'll maybe admit to yourself that men don't come down to Key West by themselves just to observe beautiful young men playing volleyball on the beach."

Alex's ears reddened up. "Is this some sort of propositioning? If so, I must say it's creative."

"Yes, it is an invitation to fuck, Alex. You're a good-looking man alone on a beach in Key West, ogling young studs just in Speedos. Why wouldn't I be propositioning you? Life is too short to beat around the bush—although I'm not propositioning you for right this minute. I already have a fuck planned for this afternoon. I find you very attractive. You also don't fool me. Yes, I would like to fuck you. That's what I came down to Key West to do, why I live here now. I fuck younger men. And they enjoy me enough to ask for it again—sweet music to the ears of a seventy-year-old man."

"I don't really . . ." Alex tried to make his voice sound indignant, but he was more flustered and embarrassed than indignant. He had indeed come to Key West to recapture—in a voyeur way, he thought, when he thought about it—what he had enjoyed as a young man in his twenties. Not for the past two decades, though. He'd given all of that up to fit in and get ahead. He'd just come to watch, and no one had challenged him before on that being a mode of letting the experiences of life pass you by. He hadn't even looked into tours to climb to Machu Picchu. Why hadn't he even looked into that if he was going to make the effort to go there? And, no, of course Key West wasn't on a natural line from Wilmington to Peru. He had clearly fooled himself about that—and about how much he wanted to come to Key West and why. Why had he done that? Was he giving up? At fifty?

Bob had stood up from the table. "Not this afternoon. I can't fit you in this afternoon. But maybe we'll meet later, while you're still here in Key West, trying to live the lifestyle vicariously. Maybe we'll fuck then. I'm taking you for a bottom. Sorry, I only top. For now, see that nice blond young man out there across the volleyball net, the one who looks more basketball than football? That's Trent. He's nineteen. He came to Key West to experience his dreams. The volleyball game is breaking up. I came here to watch him play. I'm taking him to my nice little bungalow on Amelia Street to fuck his lights out. That will be enough for me for the afternoon."

Alex sat there, stunned, as Bob moved toward the steps down to the sand. Bob's tone had been cheerful and casual. So why had Alex felt threatened by it? And he had come down here because of the men, and he was flattered at the compliments on how in-shape he'd kept himself so that, at fifty, he still could be desirable. So why was he upset at receiving a proposition, as strangely and baldly as it had been couched, from another man? The man was seventy; it should just be all talk. So, why did Alex find him—and what he'd said—arousing?

Bob stopped at the top of the steps down to the sand, turned, and said to Alex, "In case you wondered, I have eight inches, it still can get—and stay—hard, and I know what to do with it."

* * * *

"So, Alan, is it? You've come out to do some more observing? Is that all you're interested in yet, or would you like to come back to one of the back rooms with me and Trent here for a three-way?"

Alex turned from where he was standing at the bar at the Bourbon Street Pub on Duval, to see that the strange old man who had propositioned him on South Beach that afternoon was standing there, his arm around the shoulder of that young blond man he'd said was Trent, and giving him a bright-toothed smile. Trent was smiling a bit dreamily too, and by the way Bob had his arm around him, it was obvious that Bob controlled him—and probably had satisfied him earlier in the afternoon. That was a bit of a surprise. Although the two had walked away from the beach restaurant together earlier that afternoon, Alex had half convinced himself that the old man had been putting him on—that he was the young man's grandfather.

"It's Alex," he said, finding that he wasn't being as cold and put-offish in his response as he intended to be. "I'm fine here at the bar," he added, not wanting to let himself reveal that Bob and his proposition—and his lecture about experiencing rather than just observing—had been all Alex had been able to think of throughout the afternoon as he hibernated in his room, arguing with himself whether he really was going to be brave enough to come check out the bars he'd been reading about—the gay bars. Alex didn't frequent gay bars, certainly not in up-tight Wilmington, Delaware. He didn't even know if there were any such bars in Wilmington—no, that was a lie, occasionally he checked out on line where they were and even sometimes drove by them. He could only fantasize about what went on inside them, though. Rooms in the back. Bob had mentioned rooms in the back. Alex felt himself, involuntarily, going hard.

"You go on back and find us a room, Trent, honey," Bob said to Trent, releasing the young man from his firm embrace. "I'll be along in a few—or maybe we'll be along. I want another drink—and to talk a bit with hot-looking Alex here."

Alex didn't think himself as hot looking. Certainly not at the moment. He'd come out in a sports shirt, linen trousers, and loafers, with socks. He could see now that that was decidedly overdressed for the gay stretch of Duval Street at night. Bob was still in his baggy shorts and flip-flops, but he'd pulled on an athletic T. In the dim light of the bar, he looked even younger and fitter than Alex had remembered him from earlier in the afternoon, in the unforgiving sunlight of South Beach. Trent, willowy, but firm-muscled and girlish-face handsome, was just in shorts—and barefoot.

Bob won't have much to strip off him to fuck him, Alex found himself thinking. And then he turned red and took on a sheepish look.

"Thinking of me fucking that sweet blond?" Bob asked, as the bartender delivered him a double-slug whiskey.

Alex blushed even more, as that was exactly what he was thinking. "No, I was thinking that maybe this wasn't really the place for me to be."

"The view isn't fine enough?" Bob asked, with a laugh. "They're practically fucking on the dance floor. And that little Latino on the dance pole looks mighty sexy. Don't tell me that you're backing away even from voyeur."

"It just isn't . . ."

"Isn't something you're brave enough to do? You're only fifty, Alex, and you're in good shape—fine-looking shape. You're not dead. And your momma ain't here—at least I don't see her here. Look at me. Look at my smile. You can still get it up, can't you? I'm seventy and I can. I'm about to go back to a room behind the bar and make that sweet blond cry. You decided to get off sittin' on the fence and just take the splash of getting off? You can go back there with me. I'll show you a good time. I can make you cry too, I'll bet. A good kind of cry."

"Uh. No thanks. It's kind of late, and this was my last stop. I think I'll go back to the—"

"Going on to Peru in the morning?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact—tomorrow afternoon. And I should be getting some sleep."

"Gonna fly over Machu Picchu or climb to it?"

Alex didn't know what he said to that. He disengaged as soon after that as he could, but, with a "Suit yourself, then" and a laugh, Bob was moving toward the beaded curtain-covered doorway at the back of the room before Alex turned in the other direction and escaped the bar.

* * * *

Alex went straight back to his room at the Blue Marlin Motel. Trying to wipe the thought of any encounter with the aggressive and forthright Bob out of his mind—not fully successfully, though, as images of Bob with Trent and then Bob with himself were floating through his mind—he busied himself in packing up for the flight back up to Miami and then on to Lima the next afternoon.

His hands were trembling as he packed, and he was muttering to himself, castigating himself. Damn that Bob, he thought, and then he adjusted that to damning himself. Why had he come down here? Was it just to observe and to dream as a voyeur? Hadn't hitting fifty given him a jolt about why he'd repressed himself the last two decades? He'd studiously kept in shape and he hadn't married or shown much interest in a relationship with a female all that time. What had he been holding back for, not fully giving up his dreams, his remembrances of how good it was when he was enjoying another man's body, another man's cock inside him?

The travel guides for Peru—for Machu Picchu—fell out of his carryon as he was pulling dirty briefs out of that to stuff somewhere in his suitcase and to replace with clean ones in case his luggage got lost in Peru and he had to live with the clothes he had in his carryon.

He took the guides over to the chair by a table in front of the window to the parking lot, the draperies now drawn, and sat down. He started looking through the ads in the guide again and the explanations of the tours offered. He couldn't stop his hands from trembling, though, and he threw the brochures down on the table in disgust and padded into the bathroom. He stripped and showered and pulled on a pair of sleeping shorts—all the time trying to keep images of Bob with Trent and Bob with him out of his mind. Unsuccessfully.

He heard a knock on the door when he came back into the room.

Of course it was Bob at the door.

"How did you find me?" he asked, both upset and pleased, and confused that he felt both sensations simultaneously.

"You told me where you were staying. I know the people managing the place. Don't you want to know why I came? Or do you think you already know?"

"I . . . I . . ." Alex was flustered. Did the man always have to be so blunt, so challenging, so suggestive—so knowing?

Bob held out his hand, revealing that he was holding a wallet. "Yours, I think. It was left at the bar. I recognized who it was from the driver's license inside. You really are fifty and you really are from Delaware. I'm impressed. I assumed you had made it up. Most do when they come down here to . . . observe. And I really did think you were younger than fifty. No matter there, of course. I'm really seventy, and fucking a man of fifty or a barely man of nineteen are both fucking a younger man. They both have holes to fill."

"I . . . I . . ."

"Are you going to invite me in? If you invite me in, I'm going to fuck you, you know."

Alex meekly stood aside, pulling the door wider open, and Bob strode into the room.

* * * *

The painful pleasure of it was excruciating. Alex had stuffed a folded sock from his nearby suitcase in his mouth to keep himself from raising the dead three rooms in any direction and, belly down on the bed and arms stretched up and out, fists gripping gobs of chenille bedspread, feet leveraging up and down off the carpet beside the bed, he endured the remembered ecstasy of a hard cock driving deep inside his ass. More than enduring it, he moved with it himself, leveraging off his feet, as he met cock thrust with pelvis thrust. This wasn't just Bob taking; this was the two of them fucking.

Bob wasn't just good, he was great. If Alex had remembered his life as a bottom in his twenties and early thirties as being this good and arousing, he never would have stopped. The rest of his life would have had to adjust to it.

Upon entering the room and after dropping the wallet on the table next to the travel guides, Bob had placed a hand in the center of Alex's chest and just pushed him back to the bed and into a sitting position. Alex had done nothing to resist, although he could hear the heavy breathing and the low-in-the-throat rattling sound, which he only vaguely connected to himself.

Bob had sunk on the floor between Alex's thighs, as, hands on Alex's knees, he pushed the thighs apart. Alex was already, suddenly, hard. His dick had pushed out of the slit of his sleeping pants. Not content with this, Bob pulled the shorts off Alex's legs and moved his mouth over the shaft. Alex moaned and his hands went to the back of Bob's head as the older man pushed the foreskin back with his lips, squeezed them tight on the rim of the bulb, and sucked hard on the bulb.

Alex convulsed wildly at the pressure on his cockhead, and Bob reached up with his hands and gripped the younger man's chest at the sides, under the armpits, and held him steady. Alex leaned back, his arms going behind him to support his weight on his whitened knuckles, threw his head back, and moaned deeply to the pock-marked ceiling. Bob's mouth went all the way down the shaft in a quick motion and then up slowly to return to sucking the bulb hard. Then down slowly and up fast, sucking the bulb hard. The pattern was repeated, again and again, as Alex groaned and shuddered.

The younger man hadn't had a blowjob in decades, and he'd never had one this good. He came quickly, down Bob's throat. Afterward he lay there on the bed, looking at Bob hovering over him, playing with a condom packet. Alex was effusively whispering his apologies for coming so quickly—and without warning and inside Bob's mouth. The older man said nothing. He just stood there, standing over Alex's body, unstrapping his belt, unzipping himself, pushing his shorts down, rolling the condom on his hard cock.

"Christ almighty," Alex whimpered with a shudder. "You weren't lying. God, I'm not sure I can . . ."

"I know you will. And you'll love taking every inch of it. Roll over on your belly."

With a groan, Alex did as commanded. The light next to the nightstand went off. They were in near darkness and would have been in total darkness if the curtains on the window at the front of the room met all the way.

For some silly reason, Alex felt more comfortable, somehow protected, in the darkness. It wasn't because he had been sucked off and was going to be fucked by a seventy-year-old man. Bob's body was fine. And that dick! Alex shuddered at the thought of it inside him. But, somehow, in the dark . . .