Pacific Rimming

by Dale Cameron Lowry

  Ken pointed at one of them. “White dress. Do you think that’s our wedding?”

  “Jason’s wedding?”

  Ken nodded.

  We hadn’t run into Jason again, and I didn’t expect we would. Ucluelet, where we were staying, had way more pines than people, and even though it was still technically tourist season, we’d run into more of the former than the latter. Jason was likely at a different lodge, or maybe a campground. Perhaps the wedding he was attending was on the Broken Islands and accessible only by kayak. He looked fit enough to make a trip like that.

  I peered again and spotted the person Ken had described as wearing a white dress, but I wasn’t convinced it actually was white, or a dress. They stood apart from the rest of the group with two other pinheads, one in blue and the other in black. “Three-way wedding?” We had a few friends who’d done those.

  Ken shook his head. “Two people, one officiant.”

  “Maybe.”

  The group was gone by the time we finished our breakfast, and we didn’t think much more about it as we headed out on the Wild Pacific Trail. We’d hiked the same trail after our previous day’s sexfest, but the tide had been high and we’d had to stay on top of the bluffs. Now the waters were starting to recede, which meant we’d be able to descend to the beaches to check out the tidal pools. I hadn’t seen a wild anemone or starfish in years and wanted to before our vacation was through. After all, it was my birthday. If I wasn’t going to get a three-way, I could at least hope for that.

  Two hours later, I was alone in the intertidal zone, standing amid piles of kelp and gazing into a shallow pool of seawater that had gathered on the concave surface of a kitchen-table-sized rock. Ken had gone back to the lodge to get another memory card for his camera, but I was content to stay here and watch the anemones feed. They looked more like flowers than animals, with circular centers surrounded by an array of pinkish tentacles that looked like delicate petals. The only hint of their animal nature was when a near-microscopic shrimp would swim by and one of the anemones would close its petals around the prey, like a sunflower blooming in reverse. Its aperture shrunk into near-nothingness, tight and fleshy and pink.

  I snorted. It looked remarkably like a human asshole.

  A whistle from the bluff above caught my attention. I looked up to a cluster of bodies overly dressed for a hike—women in dresses, men in collared shirts and ties. Leaning into the railing was a man in a dove-gray morning suit and blue ascot, his black hair whipping in the breeze like a heron’s crest.

  Jason.

  His lips moved. “Mike, is that you?”

  He remembered my name. I’m not sure why that surprised me so much. I smiled. “Fancy outfit for a hike.”

  He disappeared behind the lip of the bluff and reemerged a few seconds later on the rocky steps that led down to the beach. On his feet he wore a pair of hiking sandals with black soles and turquoise straps. I chuckled at the contrast. He stopped at the bottom rock to roll up his trouser cuffs before stepping over several giant kelp stalks to reach me. “What are you laughing at?”

  “That really is quite the get-up you have there. Stunning and…” I looked down at his toes. “Not what I would have expected.”

  “Hippie wedding. We hiked from Big Beach up to the Ancient Cedar Loop. I wasn’t going to do that in dress shoes. The brides—” he pointed to a wispy blonde in a gauzy white sundress and a buxom black woman in blue batik who were sharing a pair of binoculars to look at something on the horizon “—are free spirits. Honestly, I overdressed. But they would have been disappointed if I hadn’t. What’s a gay best man for if not his astute fashion sense?”

  My eyes flickered over his body. Couldn’t help it. He looked wonderful in a suit coat, sleek and trim-waisted. I imagined pressing my hands to the lapels and feeling the heat of his chest radiating into my palms. “Even if you outshine the brides?”

  He smirked. “They’re not into men. They didn’t notice.”

  I nodded back toward the bluff. “So is the wedding still in progress, or…?”

  “No. We’re hiking back for the reception. Lunch, pan flutes, Scottish country dancing, and absolutely no intoxicants. Those girls know how to have a good time.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  He stepped closer and peered into the tide pool. “What brings a nice man like you all alone to a beach like this, anyway?”

  “You mean, ‘Where’s Ken?’”

  “Maybe.” Jason ducked his head sheepishly. “He seemed as much the nature-lover as you.”

  “Back at the lodge getting some camera stuff. You should stick around till he gets back. He’d be thrilled to see you.”

  Jason toed a piece of kelp, then looked me in the eye. I noticed their color for the first time: steel blue. “And you? Are you thrilled to see me?”

  “Anything that makes Ken happy makes me happy.” I remeasured my words. “But it’s not only that. I’m not as flirtatious as he is, but that doesn’t mean I’m any less interested.” I allowed my eyes to wander over Jason’s body again to make my meaning clear.

  “I think what you’re doing right now might qualify as flirting, actually.”

  “Well, good. It’s nice to know some of my husband’s strengths are finally starting to rub off on me.”

  “You’re a good pair.”

  “Oh? How can you tell?”

  “I mostly meant aesthetically.” Jason returned my eye-undressing with his own. “But it’s also a sense I get. Cora—” He waved toward the bluff, where the brides were now gone and only a few stragglers from the wedding party remained “—says I have a relationship-dar that’s better than my gaydar. But I think she’s biased since I introduced her to her wife. If I do, I’m better at sizing up matches for others than for myself.”

  “Oh?” I said. “No partner?”

  He shook his head. “Not in a long time.”

  “How long could it be? You don’t look that old.”

  “You don’t, either.”

  “Don’t flatter me. Really, how old are you?”

  “Seriously, you’re not old. But whatever. I’m twenty-seven.”

  “I didn’t meet Ken until I was thirty-two. You have time. Live it up.”

  Jason put a hand on my bare forearm and cocked an eyebrow. “If I take your advice, can I cry on your shoulder when I’m thirty-three and still single?”

  “Living it up and relationships aren’t mutually exclusive. Ken and I met as a one-night stand. Well, it was supposed to be. And—” I looked out at the ocean without really seeing it. Ken really was a better flirt than me. He was straightforward about everything, and never avoided making eye contact when he was about to come on strong. My nerves tended to get the better of me, diluting my words. I forced myself to look back at Jason’s face, focusing on his mouth instead of his eyes. “The one-night stands haven’t stopped just because we’re together.”

  Jason smiled coyly. “That’s good to hear. Maybe you’ll have another one before you leave the island.” He lifted a finger to tuck a stray hair behind my ear. I shivered despite the warmth. We were face to face, and close enough to kiss. “Do you ever do your one-night stands together?”

  “That’s our favorite way.”

  “Good, I’ll keep that in mind.” He glanced down at the tidal pool, and his eyes fixed on something there. “Man, I haven’t gotten laid in forever.”

  I snorted. “What inspired you to say that?” It wasn’t the average pick-up line.

  He pointed at a pink anemone in the process of engulfing a slender mussel. “Penis,” he said, indicating the mussel. And then, squatting down to trace the anemone’s outline on the water’s surface, “Asshole. I mean, I must be desperate for sex if a little wildlife viewing makes me think of that.”

  I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to speak.

  “Are you laughing with me, or at me?”

  “With you,” I sputtered. “I was thinking the exact same thing earlier. And I got laid yesterday.”<
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  “Show off.”

  “It’s not showing off if I’m willing to share.”

  “Oh? And how would you share?”

  “It depends what you like.”

  “You mean, am I the anemone or the mussel?” His cheeks took on the slightest tinge of pink, not unlike the anemone’s fleshy bud.

  “Something like that.”

  He looked back down at the tidal pool. “Definitely the anemone. A starving, twitching asterisk waiting to be filled.”

  I rubbed my hand over his waist. “We could take care of that.”

  “Could you?”

  One of Jason’s friends chose that very moment to shout at him from the top of the hill. “Hey, Jason, we need you! Grace can’t find the bouquets!”

  “I’ll be right there!” Jason called back cheerily before turning back to me with a frown. “A best man’s duties are never done. Are you staying here too?” Jason pointed up the path toward the lodge.

  “Through the end of the week.”

  “I’m only here until tomorrow. But I have tonight free. Room 33. Call me if you’re serious. Or if you’re not. It’s fun flirting with you both, even if I don’t end up getting laid.” He kissed my cheek before turning back toward the steps.

  “I will. And give Ken a kiss for me if you see him on your way back.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “On the lips?”

  My cock twitched. “If he’s game, I am.”

  Ken had quite the story for me when he returned with his camera: the two of them running into each other in a secluded corner of the trail and Jason, after a short, flirtatious exchange in sloppy sign, asking “May I?” before touching his fingers to his own lips, then to Ken’s.

  “He tastes different than you,” Ken signed. “But still…sweet. He must use a different brand of toothpaste or something.”

  “No two men are the same.”

  “True. Here, have a taste.” Ken pulled me to him. His cock was already hard, and mine grew in response. I couldn’t taste Jason on his lips, but I imagined I could.

  My balls started to ache. I stepped back. “Stop. I’m getting too horny.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “I don’t want to spend everything I have before tonight.”

  “You’re forty, not eighty. You can still orgasm more than once a day. Plus, we’re on vacation. And it’s your birthday. Besides, if you come now, you might last longer in his ass.”

  I found my husband’s arguments persuasive. I took his hand and pulled him past piles of kelp to a recess in the bottom of the bluff that was impossible to see from the trail above. He kissed me in earnest then, with tongue and teeth, grinding his cock against mine. His camera bag bounced against my hip, but there was nothing to do about it. I wasn’t about to ask him to leave it on a slimy patch of seaweed.

  I unzipped his shorts and reached past the elastic waist of his underpants. He was hot and hard, his crown already damp with precome. My breath stuttered. “I love your dick.”

  He pressed me into the rock wall. “It loves you too.”

  I left a message for Jason with our room number. Upon returning from dinner in town, we found a note under our door in neat, angular print: Best man duties finally done for the day. Getting a massage. Should be done at 8. Join me for a post-massage dip in the men’s hot tub? No bathing suit required. —Jason

  It was already 7:30. We showered and put on our bathing suits anyway, in case the three of us wouldn’t be the only ones using the hot tub. Turned out we shouldn’t have concerned ourselves. Apparently most people prefer to have their postprandial dips in the co-ed facilities. Lord knows why.

  Jason appreciatively assessed us as we stepped out of our suits. “You’re both nicely equipped,” and then, for Ken’s benefit, pointed to our dicks and gave two thumbs up. “Which one is going in me tonight? Or is that too forward?”

  Ken pointed proudly at me as I lowered myself into the pool. “He’s too big for my ass. Do you think you can take him?”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s not really true. Ken’s not into bottoming no matter what size the dick is.” I repeated my words in sign for good measure since Ken didn’t have his hearing aids in.

  Ken refused to be contradicted. “His cock really is huge, though.” He brushed it under the water to transform it into demonstration size. I slapped his hand away.

  Jason laughed. “That’s fine with me. I like a good stretch.” As if to illustrate, he raised his arms above his head and let out a huge yawn, then let his head fall back on the lip of the hot tub.

  “You look like you’d rather sleep than fuck.”

  Jason shook his head. “Definitely not. It’s been a long day. Just need a little rest and…foreplay to get my energy back up.” He rubbed his toes along Ken’s calf, then mine, while trying to sign what he’d just said. He got as far as “day” before we had to teach him the rest.

  “What got you interested in ASL, anyway? Deaf boyfriend?” Ken asked. I thought calling Jason’s pidgin “ASL” was generous but didn’t say so. It was a pleasant enough surprise when hearing people turned out to know any sign language at all. I often had to remind myself I probably wouldn’t have been able to speak it myself if my parents hadn’t been Deaf.

  The sherbet-orange light of the sunset made Jason look like he was blushing more than he probably was. “No boyfriend.” Jason signed the words for “no” and “boyfriend” as he spoke, which was the wrong way to say it in ASL, but Ken understood.

  “I’m surprised. You’re a hottie.”

  Jason shrugged. The steam was condensing on his lashes, making them look darker and thicker than their already-heavy black. He batted them with fuck-me slowness. “Mike says I still have time to find one.”

  I told Ken about our earlier conversation, filling in with English enough for Jason to follow along.

  “Maybe he can be our boyfriend,” Ken signed back.

  I didn’t translate that. “He can’t be. He lives in… I don’t know where he lives. But probably not anywhere near us.”

  “Long distance?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Too bad. There’s something different about him. A spark. I like him.”

  I knew what Ken meant, but didn’t say so. We’d talked in vague terms before about dating other men more seriously and were both hypothetically okay with it, but the opportunity had never really presented itself. And now was not the time to pursue it, far from home with a stranger in a hot tub.

  I steered the conversation back to safer things. Jason said he’d learned a few signs from a hearing friend so they could communicate over booming music when they went clubbing, and then a spring bout of laryngitis had inspired him to go to the internet to learn more. “It’s more useful than playing Angry Birds.”

  Ken told Jason about my big four-o.

  We kept talking and signing long past sunset, our hands and lips illuminated by the hot tub lights. We could barely see the waves out past the shore, but I could hear their steady music, and Ken swore he could feel them in the breeze that rose up onto the spa balcony. Jason and I plugged our ears and tried to feel them too, but the sound of the blood rushing through my head distracted me. It’s not the same as being deaf.

  The sky above us was black. No moon, but a vast dusting of constellations. Jason knew their names and their stories. He tried signing some of them, and even though his accent was thick and his syntax all wrong, I found his movements sexier by the moment. I guess it was his eagerness to make this connection with Ken—with both of us—despite the barrier of language.

  It might have been that feeling that transformed the storytelling into kissing, then stroking each other’s cocks. Ken and I fought a friendly battle over Jason’s until it grew long enough for both our hands.

  “We should probably stop,” I said, signing the same to Ken. “The management probably frowns on people coming in the public hot tubs. Besides…”

  “You’re right,” Jason signed, us
ing the word we’d taught him earlier that evening. “You can’t come now. We need to fuck. Mike inside me, and Ken inside Mike.”

  Ken snickered. “Where did you learn to sign like that?”

  “I looked it up on the internet before my massage. I wanted to get something right.”

  Ken pulled Jason onto his lap and kissed him again. “You already have.”

  Usually with a third, we would have hinted a preference to go to his room. There’s something to be said about keeping the bed you share as a couple private. But it didn’t occur to us to ask. In fact, Ken had lined the shelf above the headboard with all our sexual accessories before we’d left for the spa. For whatever reason, we’d both made the assumption that Jason was an exception to the rule.

  We’d had a few exceptions before, but not many.

  It was no time before the three of us were naked again and tangled on our bed. “You two are so hot.” Jason signed it the way Ken had taught him in the hot tub. It was ten times better than his signing from the day before.

  Jason was long and angular, his hip bones jutting out in sharp peaks, the ridges of his spine sometimes visible when he moved. He wasn’t scrawny, though, or skeletal. His chest had definition and his ass was both plump and firm, like two halves of a peach. I parted them, running my finger down the shadowy crevice until I came to the clenching asterisk. “It really does look like an anemone.” I signed what I’d just said to Ken with my other hand, and he came over to look.

  “You’re right. But it’s not wet. You should make it wet like an anemone.” Ken’s expression was devilish.

  There are few things that get my blood flowing like being egged on by Ken. And truly, that pink anemone looked delicious. I spread Jason’s cheeks farther apart and flicked my tongue in. He tasted like the chlorine from the hot tub and like skin, warm and alive.

  “Oh God,” Jason gasped.

  “Do you like that?” Ken said.

  I drew the flat of my tongue across Jason’s taut pucker.