by Zack
The long disco mix of Funkytown pounded out from giant speakers arranged high up on the receding, black-painted walls, while overhead a complex of gantries was virtually invisible through the flashing lights. Zigzags of neon lightning sizzled overhead, and in the distant dance area Gil could see the rotoscoped animations of dancing figures frozen by strobes. Funkytown segued effortlessly into the ever-popular No More Tears (Enough Is Enough).
A mix of odors fragranced the steamy hot atmosphere—sweating bodies, cigarette smoke, the lingering greasy chemical smell of a fog machine, splashed British beer, and the not-unpleasant stale puke scent that Gil recognized from his brief stint in the Roman hustler bar as poppers.
“Get a drink first,” Mike shouted in Gil’s ear as he dragged him through the throng at the lengthy downlit bar. Gil began to regret wearing his velvet jacket. It was too hot and clingy and, as he could see, most of the hundreds of guys were attired in scant running shorts and sports singlets. Short-cropped hair and a silly dangly tail down the neck seemed to be the London fashion, oddly combined with neatly trimmed mustaches. “Clones,” Mike informed him. “Screaming queens the most of ’em, too.”
As they waited to be served a young guy pushed up and accosted Mike familiarly by bumping his shoulder. His hands were fully occupied with a round tray perilously stacked with empty glasses of different shapes. The two greeted each other and Mike leaned over the glass mountain to peck a kiss on the boy’s cheek. He turned around. “Gil, meet Duncan, otherwise known as the Little Angel of Paradise. Duncan, my friend Gil—he’s American.”
“Another Angel,” Gil muttered as he took in Duncan’s compact willowy build. He wore only a skimpy pair of sport shorts, and his lean torso glistened under the flashing lights. He looked like a baby, Gil thought, other than the dark hint of a mustache above his pursed lips.
“I’d shek ye’re hand, if I’d one free,” the busboy shouted, giving a look that Gil couldn’t decipher—somewhere around amused contempt, he decided. Duncan swayed sideways so he could address Gil over his tray. “Another Angel?”
“Uh—there was one in Rome gave me a lot of trouble.” Gil’s lame explanation went almost lost in the club’s cacophony.
Duncan gave a lopsided wink, nodded his head at Mike, and swept off, expertly weaving between groups of clubbers.
“What was the accent?” Gil shouted.
“Gorbals,” Mike yelled. “Glasgow, up in Scawtt-land,” he added, drawing out the O.
Mike opted for short Scotches over ice and, after tossing his off, dragged Gil toward the dance area. Gil wasn’t able to see its end, lost beyond packed, gyrating figures. The haze of pumped fog jerked and jumped to the hammering beat. Inside of a few moments the music got to him. He forgot his damned jacket and began to move for himself, but always kept a sly eye on Mike and enjoyed the fluid sexy ebb and flow of his lover’s leg and arm muscles.
Then, suddenly, Mike wasn’t there.
The shock of panic was in part a sense of loss, but also because he felt vulnerable being left alone as a stranger in a strange world.
Calm down—dance, dance.
And then an arm snaked around his neck and a familiar chuckle breathed into his ear.
“Fuck, Mike, where’d you get to?”
“To get this. Have some, but go careful, it’s strong.”
Mike pressed the moist neck of a little bottle against Gil’s nostrils and he immediately remembered the chemical tang. He took hold of the bottle and closed one nostril to take a snort of the poppers.
“Go easy, it’s butyl nitrate.”
He had never confessed to Mike that he’d already had the stuff or something similar in Rome at that hustler bar, so he pretended a light sniff, but inhaled deeply. Almost instantly the rush went to his head. He felt light, disembodied, and empowered all at the same time. “Whew!”
He handed the bottle back to Mike who took a second snort, capped and pocketed it, and then grabbed Gil’s waist, swaying back from his own to grind them crotch to crotch. Gil felt himself stiffening, pushing onto Mike’s burgeoning erection. For long minutes they oscillated together until another hand, thrust between them, swung Mike around.
Gil felt a quick surge of jealousy when he saw the expression of pleased surprise light up Mike’s shimmering face and, above the deafening disco, caught: “Jack!”
The one called Jack hugged Mike, glancing over his shoulder at Gil, who had stopped dancing. Mike reached out to grasp Gil’s arm and dragged him off the dance floor. All three made their way back toward the bar, which sounded loud when they came in but now seemed by comparison relatively quiet. Nevertheless, it was difficult to overhear what passed between Mike and Jack, but he felt it was quite intense. At one point Mike glanced back and gave him a reassuring quirk of the mouth, although Gil felt there was something apologetic about it. He hoped this Jack would go and leave them alone. But his wish took a flattening when the guy leaned over in a proprietorial manner and laid a hand on Gil’s shoulder.
“You won’t mind terribly if I borrow him for half an hour, will you.”
It wasn’t a question.
Mike gave Gil a silent pleading look.
“Uh, well, I guess not…”
“Stay near here. Won’t be long,” Mike said in his ear.
And with that Jack led Mike away through the crowd toward the side of the vast area, to disappear behind bobbing heads lining the edge of the disco floor. Gil found a space at the bar and reclined back on one elbow, huffing to himself, as he watched the comings and goings of the gay parade.
“Hi there. Mind if I slip in?”
Gil started at the sudden interjection, but moved slightly to the side to allow the speaker to the bar.
“Haven’t seen you in Paradise before, I don’t think?”
An obvious cruising line, Gil thought, but he answered. “No, I just got in today.”
“American or Canadian?”
“Los Angeles, but I’ve been in Rome the past few months.”
He knew he was being appraised and took the trouble to examine his interlocutor a bit more closely. A guy about his own age, perhaps a bit older, dressed in pale blue 501s and a denim shirt with the arms torn off. Clean, shaven, fair haired—at least Gil thought so, since it was glowing alternately red, green, and blue in the lighting—with a ready smile on his square-jawed face. He turned his back on the bar, apparently losing interest in getting a drink, leaned against it and frankly inspected Gil up and down.
“At a loose end?”
Gil looked down and shuffled his feet. “My friend’s around somewhere.”
“They all say that, y’know.” He smiled pleasantly, and his eyes drifted slowly back up to Gil’s face, whose blush was at least lost in the particolor light. He slipped a hand into his jeans’ pocket nearest Gil, the thumb resting outside, lightly rubbing against the bump beside the button fly. “Tried out the backroom yet?”
“The what?”
The guy nodded vaguely in the direction Gil had last seen Mike and Jack heading. “Paradise has one of the busiest in town… the only one really.” He pulled his hand out, bringing a familiar small bottle with it. “Want to try it out?”
“Well, I’m waiting for my—”
“Pass the time…”
Gil knew he should have been firm, but there was something about the guy that… well, he was pretty hot when you got down to it, and he had to admit that he was getting to be a bit of a sucker for anyone who seemed to want him. Their eyes locked and the man smiled knowingly. All he did was nod his head very slowly in that direction. Then he pushed away from the bar and strolled off without a backward glance.
Gil sighed in uncertainty, but his legs acted for him. After all, what was Mike up to? Before he knew it he had caught up. He eased through the
jam of exhausted dancers standing at the side of the dance floor, the thumping music dulling restraint, vibrating in his chest, the tremors visiting thrills lower down. His mouth felt dry and his breath came in short gasps, sucking in the club’s humid air.
The guy was only a foot in front of him when they rounded a corner into a short passage and then a sharp left into a room that for its murkiness reminded him of the one in the Roman hustler bar. The first impression was one of utter dark, but the opening through which they had passed, and another some yards away, let in a whisper of disco lighting, enough to reveal banks of low couches placed along the wall, all occupied by writhing figures, and—oddly— several round tables whose function became obvious later.
The guy who had picked him up stopped and turned abruptly on him, clutched Gil firmly around the waist, and pulled them close together. Wasting no time, he thrust a hand down to grope at Gil’s cock and balls, while pressing uncapped poppers to Gil’s nose. Gil inhaled and melted into the instantaneous waterfall of heightened sensation. He fumbled at the guy’s Levi’s and unbuttoned them. It felt like the fly buttons were used to coming undone quickly.
“No underwear,” the guy murmured. “Always ready for some hot action…”
He was too. A satisfyingly sized and super-hard dick sprang into Gil’s hand. He slipped in deeper to fondle the balls, while his own jeans were suddenly gaping and his cock released from the briefs. In this preliminary clinch they waltzed their way farther into the backroom, until Gil ended pressed up against a wall between two of the busy couches. He sensed rather than saw his companion kneel and a second later came the wonderfully warm feeling of an eager mouth falling down around his hard shaft. Gil gave into the suck, head lolling back against the sweat-damp wall, one hand trailing on the painted bricks, fingers pawing at the cement gaps, while his other grabbed the back of the sucker’s head to urge him on.
Through blurred vision he watched as an utterly cute and very self-contained looking boy came through the crepuscular room toward them. He pushed beside Gil to reach a spare corner of the second couch, which curved into an alcove behind one of the circular tables. Here, he calmly stripped himself naked and neatly folded his clothes on the end of the divan as he did so.
He paused a moment to stroke his long cock, and then clambered awkwardly up to kneel on the table. From Gil’s position against the wall, he had a ringside three-quarter view as the boy shuffled over the table top until he was kneeling on its forward edge, gently stroking his semi-hard dick. After only a few seconds there were two guys fighting each other for the privilege and the winner was soon bent over the boy. Gil saw very little of that lengthy weapon—most of it was well down in the gobbling mouth.
Watching the kid getting blown turned Gil on hugely and he sensed he would shoot pretty soon. He let go the head of the guy who was bringing him close to orgasm and moved his hand to stroke the kneeling boy’s butt. He made no appreciable sign of feeling Gil’s hand on him, but just worked his cock more urgently in and out of the busy mouth doing him. For Gil the contact was electric. He felt the boy’s ass cheek hollowing with the imminent gusher, and his own balls were fit to bust as well.
The guy who had picked him up at the bar knew he was about to shoot and renewed his ministrations in a mouth running with saliva and Gil’s pre-cum.
All in a rush, the lad sucking the boy on the table gave a happy gagging sound and began gulping—it was too much, and Gil gasped out loud as his orgasm flowered. He swayed his pelvis away from the wall, the better to thrust down his guy’s throat, and found himself slipping sideways to lean against the perspiring flesh of the boy on the table. Their heads swayed together and the boy turned to kiss Gil as they both spewed their cum into their respective cocksuckers’ mouths.
“Phew!” the kid gasped, as their lips broke apart. “Thanks. That made it really nice.”
It seemed an inadequate reaction to Gil, but he smiled lopsidedly as he returned to fondling his guy’s head and ears as he finished him off properly. There came a flurry next door as the kid scrambled back off the table, retrieved his discarded clothes, and calmly dressed. With a happy sigh, Gil’s guy got back to his feet and cupped Gil’s head gratefully. “That was good. Now. My turn.”
A bit of space on the other couch had become free and he made Gil kneel on the end, butt sticking out. He pulled Gil’s jeans and briefs down enough to run a hand up and down between the taut thighs and fondle Gil’s ass. Gil wasn’t sure about this, but his parents had brought him up to be polite and it seemed rude to turn the guy down. Besides, another helping of poppers got him ready for what he knew was coming. And it did. Seconds later the guy grabbed Gil’s waist firmly and shoved up his asshole.
Eyes closed, Gil’s head lolled forward and his face bumped into sweaty warm flesh. He reached a hand forward for support but found himself caressing a naked body. Whoever it was lay sprawled on his back, half off the seat of the couch. Gil felt around. A firm thigh, large hot balls, a ready dick. Someone doing something to someone else even farther off along the couch.
It seemed perfectly natural… a hard, unattended cock. He gripped it and began rubbing it and fondling the unusually big balls beneath. Almost immediately a hand reached up and imperiously tapped the top of his head. Gil leaned forward more, licked his lips and swallowed the plum-shaped head, swirling his tongue around the oozing cum slot, the taste driving his butyl-slammed mind into overdrive. Somewhere behind him, almost disconnected, a hot friction built in his ass as his guy fucked him harder and harder.
In that frenzied, sex-scented atmosphere nothing could last long. Hanging onto the base of the mysterious cock below him, jerking it furiously into his consuming mouth, he reached down to grasp his own renewed hard-on, knowing he was about to cum again.
The trigger was a sudden hot gush of jizz against his tongue as whoever he was sucking let fly and his guy, slapping his ass cheeks, shooting his load deep inside Gil. He gurgled on the cum-fountain in his mouth and immediately blew his own load straight down onto the plastic-covered couch beneath him and over the mystery boy’s thigh.
He came to in a daze, jeans still pulled down around his ankles. He lay on his back, head dangling over the end of the couch. He shook it to rouse himself. Sex action pulsed all around. He sat up and gazed around.
The kid was back already, calmly disrobing and getting up on the round table, dick extended, waiting for another blowjob. Gil even thought about it for a second. The boy was cute, the cock hot and ready, but Gil felt bushed. He sat upright and swiveled to face into the room. Tugging his jeans up, he glanced to his right and found himself shoulder to shoulder with Mike.
The two friends stared at each other in the gloom with considerable embarrassment.
Gil pointed down at the couch, “Was that—”
“Was it you…?”
“Lying down here?”
Inevitably, Mike was the first to give a laugh. “Oh, Gil, my ballin buddy. We just had each other and didn’t even know it.”
“S’fuckin dark in here.”
“You’re annoyed with me.”
“Shouldn’t I be? Where’s that guy Jack you went off with.”
Mike rested a hand on Gil’s still bare knee. “You musn’t be angry. Jack’s an… well, an ‘old flame,’ as they say. Pull your jeans up properly. Anyway, he wanted to drag me in here, although I really didn’t want to, and then, bugger me if he doesn’t cop off with someone else. Well, I was frustrated, so I lay back here for a wank and before I knew it, there was this guy kneeling up over me and… well, you know how it is. I was only going for a quickie when suddenly there’s this other guy giving me great head.”
Gil huffed, some of his good humor returning, but unwilling to let his friend off too lightly. “You should have left when Jack did.”
“Sez you! What are you doing in here then?”
/> “Guy approached me at the bar—”
“And you couldn’t resist.” Mike grinned broadly, leaned over and kissed Gil longingly. “Welcome to London, lover. It’s getting late and I’d better get up early to see the journalist and then check with the Union office in Wardour Street. See if there’s any work going. By the way…”
“What?”
Mike kissed him. “Thanks for the mystery blowjob.”
CHAPTER THREE
A Transfer Job
“That’s good,” Mike said happily. He and Gil had just left the house about five down from Mike’s parents’ on Aberdare Gardens, where the journalist lived. He had been happy to talk to the apartment’s landlord, who lived on the floor above and knew Mike’s parents, to get the lease transferred to Mike and make the hand-over in a week’s time.
“I’ve bought myself a little place in Devon, and I’ll be glad to get out of London finally,” he had informed the boys.
“Good luck to him,” Mike said. “I’d be dead living in the country.”
In recognition of London’s cool early-fall temperature, Gil wore full-length jeans and a faded denim jacket. Mike had opted for his bum-freezer again.
Half an hour later they were down in Soho, Mike to visit the Film Union offices, Gil to have a wander around what he had learned was called the West End, and then head for the Nellie Dean to wait for his friend. First, he went into a bank and changed the huge wad of Italian lire he had brought from Rome for some British pounds and coins—all very strange.
Wherever he looked, everything looked strange, at once neater and tidier than his native Los Angeles—certainly more compact— and at the same time shabbier… well, older, he reflected. So many ancient looking buildings, begrimed by years of soot and traffic fumes. He was particularly taken by the neo-Renaissance expanse of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, so magnificent, but so draped in dark-gray stains. After staring up at Nelson’s Column for several minutes while avoiding the horde of voracious pigeons, he glanced at his watch and decided to find his way back to the Nellie Dean through the bewildering array of narrow roads. The lack of a grid confused him. Nothing seemed to line up and some streets ran off an funny angles from others. But eventually, he found Dean Street.
