Edge Teetering

Brian knew he'd been impetuous. Unfortunately, it was a little late for realizing that. He turned his head from the window of the Cyprus Air plane as it cleared the French coast above Marseilles and sailed out over the Mediterranean. He looked over at the two young men sitting across the aisle from him in first class, aching for them—either one of them. It was obvious they were a couple. They unabashedly were holding hands now. They'd come on with tennis rackets—a couple a piece. They were both in great shape—and young. That was the kicker. They had to be no older than their mid twenties. And they were traveling first class and were well groomed. Brian made them out to be pro tennis players. They certainly didn't seem to mind anyone knowing they were a couple.

Brian wondered which one of them topped—and what he did with the other. Was he a rough lover, Brian wondered. One of them was taller and more muscular than the other. He was Mediterranean in appearance to the sandy-hued hair of the other—deeply tanned, black hair, a curl of hair sprouting above the neckline of his T-shirt, molded to firm pectorals. He looked a little rugged and he leaned over the other guy like he dominated the sandy-haired one.

He must be the dominant one, the top. Was he hung? In the daydream Brian went into, yes he was hung, and rough and a bit cruel.

He embraced Brian from behind as Brian leaned over the bed, his fists buried in the mattress if the Larnaka hotel Brian was headed to. Somehow they had lost Sandy and it was just him, Brian, and Constandinos now. Brian thought of him as Constandinos—Cypriot Greek. Constandinos was palming his belly with one hand and cupping his chin with the other, pulling the back of Brian's head back to the black, curly matting between his pectorals. Brian grunted as Constandinos penetrated him with the thick cock, and, although he had the sensation of being filled and stretched, in his daydream there was no pain. He moaned as the young man began to pump him hard.

The young man. Brian snapped out of the daydream and turned his face back to the window, staring down at the blue Mediterranean, dotted with sea craft. A young man—a man like Travis. Like Travis, who had walked out on him saying he'd gotten too old. The timing couldn't have been worse. It was a week before Brian turned fifty and just a day after Josh had called to cancel the modeling job, saying they needed a younger, trimmer guy. Brian wasn't fat. He spent two thirds of his life, it felt like, staying in trim for the cameras. The cameras always put extra weight on a man—especially when it was underwear he was modeling.

"But they'd said—"

"Yes, they said they wanted a mature model," Josh had said. "But it turns out that to them early forties was mature."

It had been bad enough that the gig had been marked for a mature man, Brian thought, resisting the urge to bang his head against the airplane window. But then to learn that he was going to be ten years older the next week than what the client considered mature. He'd lost it and sunk into a funk. He'd turned his phone off, not taking calls from Josh, his agent, and certainly not returning Travis' calls to set a time when he and his thirtysomething new sugar daddy could come for the rest of his things.

Brian had turned on the TV set. He never watched TV. He was looking at a travelogue, and by the end of the week he'd bought a restored stone village house somewhere on the island of Cyprus—one that came with a vineyard. Yay him. It took hooking up with a travel agency—the one he used for international travel, the gay-friendly one that set him up with everything gay friendly—to even find out where his new home was. It was in the southern part of the island, which Brian found out was divided into a Turkish zone in the north and a Greek zone in the south. The village was called Phini, it apparently was an old mountain village being gentrified by British ex-patriots mainly, and it was on the southern slope of Mount Olympus in the Troodos mountain range.

"I thought Mount Olympus was in Greece," Brian had said.

"The tallest mountain in any Greek area is named Mount Olympus," the travel agency had said.

"So, this Phini is on the Greek side of the island," Brian had responded.

"Yes, of course."

That's the first time in this midlife crisis foolishness of his that Brian had realized that he was going off the rails in his response to being on the edge of what he thought of as over-the-hill old age. He'd thought he'd bought on the Turkish side of the island. He'd been fucked by two young, hung, fun-loving Turkish brothers on a deserted Turkish beach once and was looking forward to something like that again. It had been the first time he'd accepted double penetration, and it had certainly been memorable.

Brian stared at the sea through the window of the plane, drifting off, remembering.

Both of them had been stocky, muscular, and hirsute, covered with black, curly hair, more than willing, and all smiles. And they'd both fit inside him at once. They had played him like an amusement park ride, one plunging as the other pulled back, sandwiching him between them, on a beach on the Turkish coast when he was doing a photo shoot in whatever ancient ruined city that was. One brother under him, on his back, Brian on his back on top of him, the Turk palming his pecs and snuffling in his ear, talking dirty in broken English and in what was probably Turkish. His Turkish words sexier than the English ones—rougher, dirtier, more moving.

His cock held steady inside Brian's channel at first, while the other brother covered him from above, hovering over him, fists buried in the sand beside Brian's shoulders, doing pushups on him, pumping him, sliding his cock against the other Turk's inside Brian's channel. The brother below him starting to move his hips as well then, Brian moaning, barely able to take them, but taking them, one diving, the other withdrawing, the other diving and the first one withdrawing. Barebacking him, but he didn't care, him coming in his excitement before they came, almost simultaneously, inside him. Pulling out together then, only to plunge again, into the slickness of their deposited cum, making Brian shudder and come again in the squeezing hand of one of the brothers.

He had no idea if they really were brothers. They had said they were brothers. But they'd said it in broken English, with smiles wrapped around their faces, as they touched him here and there, brushing his hand away from his cock and taking over the stroking, each providing a hand, sharing in the hand job as they later would share in the fuck. Maybe they weren't brothers; maybe they were just teasing him. He, of course, spoke no Turkish. Maybe they'd said they were brothers to heighten the arousal of the encounter. It certainly had done that for him. It may have been the difference in letting them take him together.

He'd just been lying on his towel after coming out of the sea to the then-deserted beach, his bathing suit off and laying beside him, languidly stroking his cock. He had watched them stride down the beach, arm in arm, grins on their faces when they'd seen him, walking like they owned the ocean. He couldn't have claimed they didn't. They both were in skimpy bathing suits, both muscular and hirsute, both visibly going hard as they approached him. They'd gone down on their haunches on either side of him, asked him what he wanted, touched him here and there. They'd asked him straightforward if he wanted them to fuck him—had acted delighted when he said yes, heated up by their smiles and their bodies and their touches. They asked him what he'd take and then he took and took and took. He had had no idea they would both fuck him at the same time. But they did. For all he knew, they'd asked him if he'd take double and he's said yes.

They rose and continued their sauntering journey down the beach, arm in arm, merrily jabbering of their victory in Turkish, leaving him vanquished, moaning, legs bent and spread, spent, sore, stretched, throbbing—wantonly satisfied.

Of course, he'd been younger then—in his early thirties. They had been in their twenties, though. They probably hadn't known he was ten years older than they were. He'd always taken good care of himself, starting to lose the battle only of late. Brian had only gone with younger men—and power tops. He'd never felt too old to attract younger men before. And he never paid for it.

Turkish. Muscular and hirsute. Black curly hair. The release brought him out of his daydream. He realized he had been rubbing his basket and had come in his trousers, a wet spot showing at his crotch. He wondered if the hunk in the other seat would fuck him if he showed the young man that he had come in his seat just thinking of young hunks like him, working Brian's body—if Brian could rise from his seat and wedge himself over the dark hunk across the aisle, unzipping the young man and handling his cock, making it thicken, and then riding it, facing him, while the other young man touched him here and there, egging him on.

He looked over at the couple across the aisle again. The dark hunk was smiling. Brian thought it was for him. But then the stewardess leaned over in the aisle between the seats, and Brian realized that the smile had been for her and the bottles of beer the young men had ordered—probably more for the beer bottles than the stewardess. The young men. Brian turned his face toward the window again. There was an island down there. It wasn't Cyprus, but he could hardly wait until it was. He moved his hand to his basket again and rubbed.

* * * *

The agent that would take him to his house and see that he was settled in didn't meet him at the airport. Brian now almost wished he had. He'd been the one to opt out of being met today. He was arriving in the early afternoon. He wanted time to rest and gather himself before driving up to the village house he'd bought off the Internet nearly sight unseen and no longer wanted. Now he just felt foolish and trapped.

He also felt invisible. The couple across the aisle from him bounded out into the aisle before he could get there and they had eyes only for each other. Not even a grunt from the Constandinos who had fucked Brian in his daydream. Constandinos. He laughed. That was the name of the travel agency guy who would be picking him up the next day and driving him up to Phini. Brian had rented a car through the agency and it already was up at the mountain house. Brian had somehow matched up the names. He'd used this agency before and he'd always been met by a young escort who serviced him too. He wondered how young this Constandinos was.

The airport was a dump, hardly worthy of being called an international airport. But he'd been told that it was just temporary and had been temporary for over forty years, the former international airport being locked in no-man's-land between the Greeks and Turks outside of Nicosia, the capital city in the center of the island. Even after all this time the Greek Cypriots refused to upgrade the international airport on the southern coast of the island because they didn't want to accept the division of the island as permanent.

The taxi driver who took him to the nearby Larnaka seafront was young and handsome and had dark, curly hair. He barely looked at his fare, though. The hotel wasn't just gay friendly, it seemed to Brian in surveying the lobby that it was gay insistent—couples were hanging off each other. All good-looking, young men. None paying any attention to Brian, however. The bellhop who took him to his room was also young and was quite open about being available for a fuck. But he wanted a hefty price and obviously was a bottom. Even if there was something Brian could do with him—and he now was a little frantic for some sort of attention—he had never paid for a fuck before and didn't intend to start doing that now.

They compromised. For a cut fee, Brian lay on the bed, fully clothed, feet on the floor, thighs spread, and the bellhop knelt between his legs, unzipped him, fished his cock out, and gave him a blow job. Feeling distant from it at first, Brian warmed to the suck as he hardened and his juices started to build. He reached down and took the young man's head in his hands and, starting to move his own pelvis, helped guide the mouth rubbing his bulb against an inner cheek here, pushing deeper into the throat there. Pulling off the shaft, the bellhop queried whether Brian now wanted him to sit on his cock as Brian lay there on his back and ride him for a lesser fee than originally cited. But still Brian demurred. He was a bottom too—and for power tops. And he didn't pay for fucks.

Apparently, now, he did pay for getting his cock sucked off.

The young man took the cock in his mouth again, taking it deep this time, applying pressure to the side of the shaft, and Brian moaned in pleasure. The stroking took on a rhythm, with a deep penetration on each third beat. Brian demanded in a strangled voice, and the bellhop worked his fingers through the folds of material of Brian's trousers and briefs and found and penetrated Brian's ass, reaching for and rubbing his prostate. Brian threw an arm over his face, dreamed he was being done by the Constandinos in the airplane, and managed to come more prodigiously than he had thought he could under these circumstances. It did relieve the tension a bit.

After a quick, unsatisfying nap as he fought jet lag, Brian pulled on a Speedo, turning this way and that in front of the mirror on the back of the door and telling himself he didn't look a day over thirty-nine and he was handsome and as trim and well-formed as ever, and went out onto the beach that stretched between Larnaka's seafront hotels and restaurants and the harbor.

The Larnaka seafront was constructed in the old south-of-France style, the hill and city rising behind a solid bank of gaily painted restaurants, with hotels above, a wide terrace accommodating outdoor cafés, bordered by the palm tree-lined road. Across that ran a broad promenade, bordering the sand at the top of the beach, the line of tall palm trees marking the boundary. Then a shale beach running down to the harbor and the fringe of swimming beach. Two arms of rock embraced the harbor to the west and east, an ancient stone light house at the west and a Byzantine fortress to the east.

There was more promenading and displaying going on on the sand than swimming in the sea. It was a beach for ogling and being ogled, not for swimming. Brian lay on the beach, just to the sea side of the shadows cast by the palm trees, and posed to be ogled, but he didn't attract the attention of any young men. Well, he did, but they all mentioned money. The only man who didn't was almost as old as Brian was, by his looks. OK, he was muscular, Greek, and good-looking, but he was nearly bald and the thatch of hair on his chest was salt and pepper and Brian had always gone with much younger men. The man had smacked his lips, popped his tongue in his cheek, and given Brian's body the up and down "eye," as he crouched and grasped Brian's ankle in a strong grip.

"You an American? I like Americans. You want suck and fuck?" he'd asked in a surprisingly refined British accent, yet using somewhat broken English. "I big-cock fuck you good. I know a deserted beach. I do you good on the beach. I got best cock in Larnaka. No pay. I fuck you; we both like."

Strangely, considering the man wasn't young, Brian warmed and felt himself going hard, but still he demurred. Later in the evening he thought back on this and tried to remember the man as being younger and him having said yes.

It wasn't any better that evening. The agency had given him a list of restaurants and bars where he'd be comfortable. He picked out what was a half village-décor indoor tavern and half outdoor café two blocks up from the seafront. The name of the place was Adonis, and several of the young men there fit that description, but they already were paired off. Brian settled at a table by himself in the outside area. There was a beautiful, dark-haired young man sitting on a stool in the corner and playing Spanish guitar tunes. His voice was as easy to listen to as he was to watch. He kept looking over in Brian's direction, and Brian spent far more time at the tavern—alone—picking his way through a meze dinner and nursing brandy sours than he intended to because he was tired from the jet lag and imagining a sulky Spanish guitarist between his thighs was better than having nothing to imagine at all.

It took him more than an hour to realize that the guitar player was smiling past him at an older Greek man at a table behind Brian. The man was older than the guitar player, but he was more what that cancelling client had referred to as mature than Brian's mature. He also was a hunk and a half.

A waiter kept buzzing around Brian, though. He said his name was Nicos. He was tall and thin, with a mop of curly blond hair and pale blue eyes. He made quite clear that he was available—for a price—and would go each way. It wasn't what Brian wanted and he never paid for sex—or at least for a fuck, he now had to say, as he'd paid the bellhop for a blow job earlier in the day. Nicos was young—not much over twenty—and, although thin, he had big feet and big hands.

Money laying on the dresser in Brian's hotel room, Brian lay on his back in the center of the bed, legs spread, buttocks elevated on pillows, as big-cocked Nicos, having given Brian a feel at the restaurant and said the right words to close the deal, hovered above him, fists buried in the mattress on either side of Brian's shoulders, knees bent between Brian's thighs, and shaft mining Brian's channel deep. There was no passion or inventiveness in the fuck, which was just as well, as Brian was tired from the flight to Cyprus from London, which had closely followed the flight from New York to London.

But Brian had a big cock inside him—a young man's cock. He shut his eyes and dreamed of Constandinos from the plane and of the Turks on the beach while he stroked himself to an ejaculation. No affection was involved; no moans and groans or dirty words from Nicos, and few from Brian either. It was just business for Nicos and animal need of release for Brian. Nicos wasn't touching him anywhere except inside his channel. Both were concentrating on getting off. But Brian felt filled and stretched, and Nicos knew to give his prostate attention. Brian set his pelvis in motion, going with the fuck, matching the rhythm, taking the cock deeper. Nicos was young, vigorous; his cock was long and hard. Taking him deeper yet. Emptying his mind out, thinking not that he'd had to pay and that other young men had looked past him during the day, but concentrating on having a young, hard, long cock, deep inside him, stroking, rubbing across his prostate.

Nicos was still filling and pumping his channel when Brian drifted off to sleep after having come. When he woke, it was in the middle of the night—it would take him days to adjust to the change in time. He checked, but although the money on the dresser—which he'd pretend he hadn't put there because he'd never had to pay for a fuck and by god he wouldn't do it when he settled in Phini—was gone, nothing else was missing, including a big wad of bills in his wallet.

He'd been told that Cypriot Greeks were honest. Thank god that had borne out as true. Before he went back to sleep, Brian nursed a bit of regret that he'd paid for the fuck. There wasn't even anything romantic about it. In addition to Constandinos from the plane, he'd had to think about the Spanish guitarist at the restaurant—and had to think of both of them as intense, rough lovers—to get himself off properly. The biggest regret had been to have been forced to pay for it to get it from a young guy. If he'd been willing to compromise, there was the forty-something Greek on the beach who seemed interested in doing him. But then he thought about the times he'd paid a travel agency and a young escort had been included. And it was always a guy who had banged him good. He'd paid for that in his travel package now that he thought about it. The escort had always been careful to give the impression that he found Brian arousing and wanted to bang him. But this rationalization only depressed him. He felt he had to either hold the line or jump over that edge to "not getting any" old age. It was sort of pathetic, he thought, to be teetering on the edge of aging out.