Afternoon β four-nineteen pm, and it's tar-melting sultry-hot. Hitch-hiking down through France, the Loire valley, medieval hill-top towns, and beyond. My nineteenth summer, in distressed jeans, faded T-shirt and backpack, dark shoulder-length hair and shades, as much for cool as the bullying solar glare. After a chain of short-term and unsatisfactory thumb-trip lifts, when the truck-driver drops me off, I start sloping south along the slow black ribbon curve of road, more or less on impulse, thumb stuck out, until I get too bone-weary to walk. Squatting down on the verge beneath a shading overhang of trees, sun slow-spilling through to warm aching legs, where gaudy butterflies hug the shade beside a field that ticks with grasshoppers and flashes with red poppies, I wait for destiny to intercede. Normally, I love the road. It picks me up and takes me anyplace I please.
After what seems like three-hundred cars go by I get picked up by a French guy in a moss-green motor-home, dropping my pack behind the contour-seat. He speaks good English, but lubricated by an attractive Gallic inflection. He must be around forty, and swarthily attractive. A big man, with a perpetual beard-shadow. Dark hair shot with a few strands of grey. He speaks to me in a charming and flirtatious way, perhaps sensing my orientation. That kind of telepathy we all understand. After a while he β Emile, suggests he's due for a rest-stop and pulls in at a Routier. His hand rests lightly on my shoulder, as we turn and walk across the car-park, not quite guiding, more steering me. He buys cafΓ©-au-lait and croissants, acting impeccably in every way. I feel strongly drawn to him. To his sophistication, the aroma of expensive aftershave.
I tell him about backpacking so far, the sporadic jaunts and long delays between pick-ups, how last night I'd been stranded and slept over in a derelict outhouse that smells of fungus and piss. Watching dawn come up through the space between the roof-beams. Back in the vehicle the conversation becomes more sexually charged, more explicit, as we accelerate back into traffic, and β sure, I'm getting teasingly aroused by his presence. His hand falls, as if by accident, onto my thigh, and I let him run his fingers down my leg. Smiling shyly up at him.
Later he asks if I have a boyfriend, I tell him β truthfully, 'oui Monsieur'. I'm 'autostop-peuses' down to Barcelona to see Django.
He asks 'are you saving yourself for him?', and I laugh noncommittally. He asks if I'm short of cash.
'Sure I am, why else would I be thumb-tripping?' That's when he invites me to go into the back of the motor-home where I can earn some train-fare. This time his hand falls into my groin more deliberately, to outline the shape of my genitals. I'm intrigued, of course I am. He's attractive. I'd probably have gone with him for the hell of it. The euro inducement just makes it more of a seductive proposition. So I nod, acting coy.
'Do you think this kind of stuff ever happened to Jack Kerouac when he was hitchhiking 'On The Road'?' I suggest.
'I'm sure 'Ti Jean' had his moments', as he pulls off the autoroute. Signs blur D923, Parc des Parelles, Crevant, then up through a small village. Cobbled streets with shuttered windows and inviting patisserie. Then further up through the tree-line to open countryside. Slowing into a dirt-track leading through a copse of cypresses, glimpsing the glittering arm of a wide slow river branching through tall reeds, where he pulls over and slows to a stop. My cool comes all undone. I'm a little scared now. But a little excited too as we climb over into the cramped back beneath the curved roof. I shrug my T-shirt up and off as Emile watches.
He smiles thinly, 'and the rest'.
I obey, dropping my pants and standing nervously naked for his inspection. He's sat on the bed and β me still standing, he draws me near, one hand on the curve of my bare bottom, the other toying roughly with my cock. Soon I'm erect, and whatever reticence I had dissolves. I'll not tell Django about
this
β or perhaps I will, to make him jealous? He undresses, lies back on the bed and indicates his mouth. He's hugely erect, intimidatingly so. I sit down beside him so I can encircle it with my fingers, its touch is warm, making slow jerky masturbatory movements up and down its full energy-charged length from base to tip.
'No, no, suck,' with obvious impatience. So I tense myself, go down on him. And soon I'm sucking tentatively on him as he murmurs something in French. At one point he runs his hands into my hair, firmly easing my head down, forcing more in until I gag, coming up retching and laughing. He watches my discomfort with an expression of amused impatience, then urges 'more'. I'm really scared now. But at the same time, the situation is oddly arousing. I smile, like I'm seeking his approval, and go back to sucking him, settling to the rhythm. After a while he pulls my head up and rolls me onto the bed beside him. I'm laughing, enjoying his attention. Then he flips me over and I realise what he wants.
I begin to half-protest, 'wait', but already he's got me on my gut, forcing my legs apart brutally. His body-warmth covering me, I feel the hard pressure of his cock on the crease of my arse, dry-humping me not unpleasantly, lingering around the orifice at its lowest pass, then returning to slide up smoothly between my bottom-cheeks, relaxing my tension a little, then teasing around my hole, nudging a little β will he, won't he? Instead, he spears my ass with a moist finger. I grunt as I feel the finger replaced by a more hot insistent pressure.
Before I have chance to protest 'I'm not that kind of a boy,' I am that kind of a boy. Ceasing to struggle as it's obvious I have no choice, relaxing as much as I can. He slides into me, and I squawk against my will, groaning, unprompted. It's like I'm being split apart as he forces its length inexorably in until I can feel his balls crushed up against me. I rear up, my own genitals bouncing and jiggling, painfully erect, almost at once I begin ejaculating. He laughs and begins fucking me hard. It seems to go on forever, until at last he cries out just once, there's an earthquake shaking and shivering inside me, and I feel him flooding me in one long shocking gasp of motion. My heart beating, pausing, beating, pausing. Now I'm trembling and quivering with after-shock reaction as he extracts.
For a long while we lie together in a cooling sweat. As though hyper-sensitised by it I become aware of birds singing outside, the swishing whisper of foliage and the dozy drone of insects, I can hear the gurgling swirl of water around stones in the river, and even occasional traffic rasping by on the road we've left. And when he runs his fingers down my back to caress the smooth curves of my bottom, his touch is electric. I glance away sulkily, determined not to make it easy for him. Make him pay for his lack of consideration. I act petulant. He gets up and dresses without another word. I turn over and wipe myself, refusing to meet his eyes, reaching for my pants. Then he stands over me to cup my face in both hands. Draws my face up to meet his, and I grin stupidly. Nowhere to hide, no pretence.
He says 'tres bon, good, bonne bouche', and then we're both laughing. Back in the front we're driving back through the village where he first brought us, and I feel warm all over again, if a little sore. He was rough, a little aggressive, but it had been great sex. We drive some more, but soon it becomes apparent that no, this is a different village, we aren't heading back towards the autoroute, we're travelling deeper into the countryside. He says 'relax'. We eat in a Bistro, he pays, I eat, then we reach a remote converted-farmhouse hidden in trees and he draws to a halt in its courtyard. I'm well-wary now. Miles from anywhere. But there's no choice. We go inside. A barely furnished suite, but there's obviously wealth here. What now? He expects I'm going to sleep with him. I feel trapped. A squirmy kind of unease. What can I do? Where could I go? Then β hey, what's one night? Can't afford a night's stop-over at a chamber d'hote, and the soles of my feet
are
sore from all that walking.
He leads me through, shows me the shower cubicle. 'You're hot?' Sure I'm hot, grimed with dust, dryness and sweat. So he leaves me. I strip, my 'T'-shirt so sweat-moist it clings to me, and resists removal. I get into the shower. It feels good, standing in stilled time, just letting steamy-hot shower-spray soothe my face and shoulders, cleansing all the crud the musk and perspiration from my body, sluicing away all the badness from my life, and leaving me purified. Over the sound of running water it's as though I hear voices... no, must be mistaken. Radio perhaps? There's no-one else here. No-one within miles. Then the shower door opens and Emile's standing there, appraising me. Suddenly, stupidly embarrassed I'm instinctively covering my groin. Then smile, shrug, and force my hands away, let him watch. After what we've already done, it's too late for shyness now.
He sits back on an ottoman, still dressed. At length I step out and he begins towelling me in a large fluffy bath-towel. My clothes are gone. My backpack's still in the motor-home. He shifts his attention more specifically, lower, towards my centre of gravity, in teasing circles across my stomach, down to where we both know he's going to end up. I'm erecting in anticipation, until his long fingers breathlessly encircle it possessively. He holds it firmly, and begins to wank me slowly, leisurely, in long moist strokes all the way from tip to root. I stand perfectly still, hands by my sides, almost fearful of his censure, and let him do what he wants to do. His experienced thumb teases around the underside rim of my glans, intensifying the sensation, pausing to squeeze the shaft gently, then his fist becomes a blur, until my balls are bouncing. My head goes back. It's like I have to give him a good show, so I begin breathing heavily. I'm scared of him. His other hand creeps around my waist, his index finger seeking out my anus and spearing it, sliding deep. My hips move uncontrollably under the double assault.