On The Way To Manhattan

Courtesy of www.99Gay-Men.US

On The Way To Manhattan
by Greg Scott

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All the usual stuff about you must be old enough in your jurisdiction, etc.  In other words, if you are underage, don't read this unless you have a really cool teacher who assigned it.  Otherwise, come back in a few years, when nobody will yell at you.

Yes.  That's your answer to whether this stuff actually happened the way I describe it.

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High school graduation had finally come.  My high school experiences had been good, but I was ready to move to the next phase of my life.  Before heading off to college, I had a long summer to enjoy, because classes at my university didn't begin until late September.  College anxiety could wait.

My parents had asked me what I wanted for a graduation present.  I always hated to be asked what gift I wanted for any occasion.  If I asked for something expensive, I felt greedy.  If I asked for something little, I usually wouldn't get it.  I just despised the awkwardness of it all.

This time was different though.  I did actually know what I wanted, and I didn't have to worry about whether it was too expensive or too cheap or too anything.  I didn't want the traditional dictionary (I ended up receiving three from various people); I didn't want a thesaurus (I got two); I didn't want a briefcase, because I never saw any college kid carrying one.  I received two briefcases, anyway.

I simply wanted money, whether it was two dollars or two hundred.  I wanted it for a very specific reason; I wanted to spend a celebratory week in Manhattan, and that took lots of cash.  

I had some savings from my job the previous summer and from the little odd jobs I had done during the school year.  I had enough to get me to Manhattan and back and to have a fairly good time while there, but I also wanted some cash left over to start my first term at college.  My upcoming summer job would give a little cushion, but I wanted more.

I had invited a friend to go along with me, telling him I would pay for his transportation if he could just pick up his share of everything else.  Now Rick was a tight-wad, reluctant to spend money on anything, but this sounded like too much fun for even him to pass up.

I wouldn't turn eighteen for another month, but I considered myself a man now that high school was behind me.  It never occurred to me that I should ask permission to make the journey before I asked for money to help with the expenses.  I didn't ask; they didn't tell me that I should ask.  My parents accepted it for what it was; a statement of fact.  I was going to New York.  

Life was good.  And my parents gave me enough money for graduation to cover most of our New York excursion.  I could even be generous sometimes in helping Rick make decisions about whether he wanted to spend money on some New York idea that I had, something that he might have decided not to do if it came out of his own budget.

Rick was a year younger than I.  He had just finished his junior year, although his parents had no qualms about him going with me.  They were trusting of us both.  It probably helped that they had an older son, so they were not new to the experience of teenagers spreading their wings, although Rick was not as much of a "wing spreader" as his older brother had been a few years before.

Rick and I were in our second year of a very good friendship.  I know you're wondering, so I'll tell you up front:  We were not sexually active with each other.  We were both perceived by everyone to be straight.  Well, maybe everyone except my boyfriend, who by this time had become my former boyfriend.

Rick never gave me any reason to suspect that he had any interest in experimenting sexually with other guys--not before these events, not after.  

I, on the other hand, was considered straight simply because I didn't really know that there was another alternative.  I had been attracted to guys since I was five.  A neighborhood girl of my own age and I would play "doctor," a role playing game that mostly involved taking out pants down and pretending to use my plastic stethoscope.  I enjoyed that, but what I really enjoyed were the times her seven year old brother would join in our game.  Those times, neither the brother or I seemed to care that much about the imaginary health of the girl; we were too focused upon examining each other in every way that a five year old and a seven year old could think of.  Of course, we couldn't think of too many ways, but we enjoyed our role playing anyway.

To me, this all seemed perfectly reasonable...that I would prefer to play doctor with a boy.  After all, a boy had more parts to interest me than a girl did.  I carried that nonchalant acceptance of my preferred interest in boys with me through the years.

It all seemed natural to me because it was natural for me.  It always was, but that was different from being queer or a homo or whatever slang was used to describe "those men."  I was lucky to never experience feelings of guilt or shame, although I did have a desire to not have my actions be discovered.  And those actions seemed to occur with more and more of my age cohorts as I grew older.

So, yeah, I dated girls.  Just like the straight boy that I wasn't, I had the same biases for the girls who were considered pretty and popular.  Cheerleaders were both pretty and popular, and I dated several, eventually narrowing it down to just one during my senior year.  

All of the boys that I had played with went to other schools, so there was no danger in my secret getting out.  Well, there were two big exceptions to that different school thing.  One was my boyfriend, now former.  The other was the school's star athlete, number one in football and baseball; number two in basketball.  Both those guys were far more afraid of being exposed to the ridicule of the public than I was.  In other words, my closet door was quite secure, although I'm not too sure that I cared all that much about it.

I guess I got sidetracked just a bit, distracted from talking about the close friendship that Rick and I had by my reminiscences.  Rick was actually the reason that my boyfriend and I broke up.  More accurately, my boyfriend broke up with me because he was jealous of Rick.  Tom simply wouldn't believe that Rick and I didn't have a sexual relationship.  I don't blame Tom for thinking that.  Rick did spend a lot of time with me.  We spent lots of nights at each other's houses, had been on a camping trip together, double dated and just generally goofed around together a great deal.  The clincher, of course, is that Tom knew my almost insatiable sexual appetite.  He couldn't imagine that Rick and I didn't have some sort of sex during at least some of those times together.

Besides, Rick was highly desirable.  He was at the top of the list for all the girls in his class.  Remember when I wrote that my other playmate was number two in basketball?  That's because Rick, although younger by a year, had matured quickly enough to seize the leading star status on the basketball team.

We met through school activities.  We were both in chorus, had roles in the school's production of "Guys and Dolls" and we were both on the cross country and golf teams.  Indeed, Rick seemed to be following in my footsteps except when it came to basketball talent.  My winter sport was wrestling.

We were both presidents of the same school clubs, his tenure following immediately on the heals of mine.  We were both presidents of our classes our senior year, although, again of course, during different years.

It was during cross country training that I first noticed Rick's other attribute.  He looked great in the locker room shower, thanks in no small part (pun definitely intended) to his very well proportioned, appetizing cock (or "dick" or "peter" as was the more common slang around my friends).

I've heard a lot of gay guys express disgust at the thought of having sex with a friend.  They believe that sex is too meaningless and passing to endanger a friendship by introducing sex into it.  I never had such qualms.  I took an opposite view in fact.  Both friendships and sex are too important for the two not to mix, assuming that there is a mutual attraction, of course.  I'm not attracted to all my male friends, of course, but I still am willing to have sex with a friend if an opportunity arises.

It's that whole mutual attraction thing that had kept me from trying to get Rick interested in playing around.  I knew that he had a much more serious attitude toward girls than I did.  Not that he was a Don Juan.  Indeed, he was still a virgin at that point in his life, something that didn't change for him until he went to college a year after I did.  There were certainly some girls who would gladly have changed that part of his resume', but Rick would not initiate it.  He was the kind of guy that all dads would love for their daughters to date.  If he cared enough about a girl to go out with her, he respected her too much to try to initiate sex.

I'm absolutely sure that the thought of having sex with me didn't even occur to him.  Of course, it occurred to me.  It crossed my mind every time I glimpsed him in the locker room shower, every time he spent the night in a bed next to mine, each time we went to a movie or golfing or anyplace.  It also occurred to me almost every night right before I went to sleep in my room, with my hand vigorously stroking my rigid member.

Rick wasn't my only jack off fantasy in those days, but he was the most frequent.  Indeed I may have been so focused on him that it's quite possible that I may have actually passed up a couple other friends who, in retrospect, I think would have been possible conquests.  These guys also populated my fantasies, but Rick provided the better climaxes.  I guess that's the way I establish my priorities, although I never thought about it in quite that way, before.  Whoever helps me produce the biggest explosion gets the lion's share of my attention.

I'll be honest with you.  As we planned our New York trip, I was mentally testing various hypothetical scenarios to see if I would cum as energetically in reality as I always did with my Rick fantasies.  I thought that I had developed one that was foolproof.

I mentioned before that Rick didn't like to spend money.  As I was booking the hotel room, I noticed that we had two options.  We could get two beds, or we could save twenty dollars a night if we selected a room with only one.  Had I not had evil schemes in mind, I would have gladly paid the difference for my buddy.  My parents had been quite generous with their graduation gift.  But of course, I did have an evil scheme.

I told Rick the price difference, certain that he wouldn't want to cough up his half of the difference.  In that case, it was just a matter of waiting until he fell asleep before I would sneak my hand over to his side of the bed, slide it into his underwear and gently massage without waking him.  Once he was hard and excited, I would awaken him.  Since he would already be arroused, he would certainly welcome a little playful--boys will be boys--relief.

Rick said the price difference was no problem!  Now he decides to not worry about money, after hoarding it his whole nearly seventeen years of life...now the miser decides an extra sixty bucks for six nights in a separate bed isn't a bad price!

"Well, we could use that money for other things," I pleaded.

"No," he insisted.  "I'll have enough money along."

Maybe I should just focus on someone else for my jack-off fantasies.  Maybe I should have invited someone else to Manhattan with me.  Maybe...

But I didn't give up.  Well, I gave up the part about getting a room with just one bed.  (In later years, I "accidentally" arranged for a one bed hotel room when another friend and I were going to share a room at a conference.  I learned then that the plan, hatched so many years before with a different target in mind, actually works.)  I still had time to develop an alternate plan.  I just needed to be more creative.

Of course, desperation does bring out my creativity.  I hatched another, much simpler, although far from fool proof plan.  I would tell you about it, but that's where my story is going, so just be patient.  Don't scroll down to see what it is and how it turns out, dear reader.  I will get to it.  I promise.  And it will be on this page.  I'll not make you wait for a "Part 2" or anything.

Bright and early one fine morning in June, two teenagers set off for their first adult trip to the big city.  By human standards, it was actually not that early, but we were typical teens, accustomed to sleeping considerably later on weekend mornings.  For Rick, it would be his first of many excursions to Manhattan.  I had been there only a few times before, but I pretended to know nearly everything there was to know.  I would be his guide, his mentor once again.

The journey from our part of the country was about eleven hours.  We planned to spend our first night in Pennsylvania, fairly close to the city, so that we would actually get into New York by around noon.  Technically, we weren't supposed to check into our Manhattan hotel until later, but the reservation woman promised me that our room would actually be ready well before the scheduled check-in time.

During the drive, we found no problem finding enough topics of conversation to keep us occupied, and, if there were occasional quiet moments, they didn't bother us.  Good friendships are like that.  

I have always been a "best friend" kind of person.  By that I mean that, while I have a lot of friends, at any given time I give most of my energy to cultivating one special bond.  I guess, when it comes to friendships, I can be described as adhering to serial monogamy, if monogamy can be used in a non-sexual context.  At this stage of my life, Rick was my very special friend.  He got priority above all others.  It's a position we held in each other's lives for a long time.

When we had made it about as far as we had planned for the day, we got off the highway to find a place for the night.  We quickly found a little motel, run by a husband and wife team.  They lived in a house set off to the side of the row of tourist rooms in the only other building on the premises.

I inquired about the availability of a room for two; we did not have reservations.  I don't know if it was true, but the woman told us that all the rooms were taken except for a room they had up the stairs in the building they used as their house.

I've wondered since, if she was afraid that we were planning to use the room for a drunken party or to bring hookers into or both.  I suspect she thought that keeping us in that building, essentially a separate part of their house, she would be able to hear any hanky panky.

She showed us our room.  It looked rather nice, with quite a large bathroom, plenty of space.  There was only one small problem.  The room had just one bed.  Imagine my disappointment!  Yeah, right.

Before Rick could object, I said, "This will be fine.  We're just using it for one night."

I asked directions to a nice restaurant, which we found easily.  We had a very leisurely dinner, probably a more leisurely pace than Rick found familiar.  I'm sure the prices were more than he had ever seen, so I picked up the tab for both of us, something I would do every once in a while on this trip so that we could agree on a place to dine.  I had no intentions of passing up the restaurants in a city that offers such fine cuisine.

We were tired by the time we returned to our room after dinner.  Tired and sated.  At least we were sated in terms of nutritional needs.  Staring at that one bed, I certainly felt in need of another sort of nourishment.

Rick said, "What do you want to do?"

Obviously, I couldn't just come right out with it; I couldn't answer his question honestly.  I thought about it, but only as one of those little jokes that I tell myself sometimes.

"I don't know," I said.  "Want to play some cards?"

"Sure," Rick replied.  "Did you bring cards?"

Now here's where I start to tell you what I promised to tell you.  Remember that I told you that I had come up with a new evil scheme, when Rick wrecked my hope to spend six New York nights in the same bed with him.  That new scheme just happened to involve cards.  Any guesses why?  Of course, you know.  You better believe that I had cards along.

My introduction to strip poker had come when I was in sixth grade, in other words a bit more than six years before the night in question.  My buddy introduced me to the game, which I found bore a striking similarity to the "doctor" games from my early childhood.  Well, at least the outcome was similar.  That was the buddy, by the way, who later became the star football and baseball player.

Rick and I had never played cards together before that night.  How can I be sure?  It's easy.  I don't like to play cards; I only play cards for two reasons.  The first is to give in to the demands of some family member if there happens to be a need for another player to make the game possible.  In those cases, I've been an unenthusiastic fourth for bridge and Euchre and probably some other games that I don't even remember.

The other reason that I will sometimes play cards...?  Well, you know already.  Strip poker.  The only card game worth playing.  Even that is only worth playing with any given person just one time.  It's an ice breaker.  After that first time, it should not be necessary to bring out the cards with that person again.  Not usually, anyway.

Of course, variations of strip poker can be played to "coerce" an otherwise willing participant to cross an imaginary line that he has established as his limit.  You know, like this:  "I don't want to do that, but you won fair and square, so go ahead and stick it in."  Even in those circumstances, though, once that line has been crossed, it never again requires a silly game of cards to break down the barriers.

Guys are great this way.  The one thing that is ingrained more firmly than an aversion to homosexual sex (whether that aversion is real or faked) is a fierce dedication to sportsmanship.  Just get them to lose a game, and they'll do anything to pay the debt.  A masculine guy just can't be a welcher or a sore loser.  I've had guys who I am fairly sure lost some silly bet on purpose, just to have an honorable excuse to do something that he really wanted to do anyway.

Sometimes in playing strip poker with guys, I've had to start with a real poker game, betting pennies or something.  Then I suggest after half an hour or so, when the boredom sets in, that we make it a little more interesting.  That has rarely failed.

With Rick, I didn't have to track down any pennies or anything else.  He immediately accepted my first proposal to play for clothes instead of money.  Maybe it was because money was so dear to him.  Maybe I persuaded him when I said that we had to get undressed for bed anyway.  Maybe it was because we had already seen each other naked lots of time after training sessions.  Maybe he just felt like playing strip poker.  I never asked him.  I just accepted my good fortune. 

I was already anticipating a night together in one bed, naked, incredibly horny all night long.  Yeah, we hadn't even dealt the first hand yet, and I was already hard.

Do you want me to take you through each hand, what each of us drew, how many we each discarded and what our replacement cards were?  Do you want me to describe who took off what piece of clothing in what order?  I don't really want to tell you all of that.  If I don't even like to play poker, did you really think I would want to go to the effort of describing the whole game to you?

Let me bring you to the decision point.  We'll rejoin the scene there.  As the curtain opens for the final act of our little drama, you can see me laying on the bed, propped up on an elbow.  Rick is positioned facing me in a similar position.  We're several feet apart on the bed.

We are both in our underwear.  Briefs.  I don't know what brand.  I've never been very brand conscious except for a short period in college right after I joined a fraternity.  If you have a favorite brand, you can put those on us.  Make the logos prominent, so that you'll know how much we paid for them.  They are white, though.  Don't go changing the colors on Rick or me.  Indeed, they are very, very white, because our mothers were still doing our respective laundry, and whiteness was a measure of the quality of their motherhood.  And don't go bad-mouthing our mothers.

I lost the crucial hand, probably from lack of concentration, but maybe it was just the luck of the draw.  In my mind, I had gone back and forth the whole game trying to figure out if it was better for me to lose my clothes first or for him to lose his.  That was distracting.

It was also distracting when I noticed that his cock, quite visible through his underwear, at least the shape was quite visible...that his cock was just as stiff as mine.  And I know that he had noticed mine as well, because his glances in that direction were not all that surreptitious.

So the time had come.  My briefs were about to be removed, by me.  

Before I pulled them off, though, I said, "Now we have to keep playing, though, until you're naked, too."

"Yeah, I know."

Okay, that was settled.  We had agreed to that earlier, but I wanted to remind him of the rules, so that he wouldn't chicken out.  With his confirmation, though, I knew that his spirit of fairness had kicked in.  Alternatively, perhaps he was now viewing the game as I had all along; a prelude to ecstacy beyond his wildest dreams.  Of course, it would not be beyond my dreams, for I had indeed fantasized something very similar to this, at least in costume, just before I had cum on numerous nights and quite a few early mornings, as well.

I pulled off my underwear.  He stared openly.  My cock, dick, peter, penis, member throbbed in response.  I thought for a moment that I detected lust in his eyes.  He continued to stare.

His bare foot moved toward me.  He brought it up higher along my body and pushed it tenderly against my cock, which bounced around with great joy.

"Deal," he said.

I shuffled.

"Deal," he demanded, again.

I dealt without further shuffling of the deck.  

He lost the hand.  Being a typical guy, he was a good sport and pulled down his briefs and tossed them onto the floor with the rest of our clothes.  Of course, the actual outcome of the game had been known from the start.  We would both end up naked.  The rest was just ritual, a necessary part of being a man, even a lustful man, even a lustful man whose lust is directed toward another man.

Of course, really, we were not men, yet.  Not truly men, but for this week we were pretending to be men.   Real men...real...virile...and for the moment...nude men, sporting amazing erections.

His cock was even more impressive hard than soft as I had seen it so many times in the school showers.  It was just as perfect as it had always been in the shower and in my fantasies, only this time it was hard and it was just a few short feet away from me.

He poked me again with his foot.  I returned the playful assault.  We exchanged foot to cock contact a few more times, neither taking his eyes off the others dick.

I could tell he was impressed by mine in the same way that I was with his.  I don't know if this was the first time he had ever seen some other guy's hard cock, but mine seemed to impress him regardless.  And, in fact, it was as large as his and just a perfectly proportioned, I say with my usual lack of modesty, although I didn't actually do anything to achieve my masterpiece any more than he did.  We were born with starter cocklets that grew with us into the objects that they had become.

Finally, I could take the foot foreplay no longer.  I move closer to him and wrapped my right hand around that which had captivated me, my goal, my prize.

He moved quickly, and I was afraid that I had moved our game forward too rapidly.  He was just adjusting himself to be more comfortable.  He was now lying on his back with his cock pointed toward the ceiling.

It was truly magnificent--the cock, not the ceiling.  It looked, and I know this sounds trite, but it looked majestic.

He was no longer staring at my cock, but he was admiring his own.  His hands were propped behind his head to give him a better view.  I approached again with my hand, eager to reconnect with my prize.

I grabbed it, feeling its heft, so much more than my former boyfriend's was, and attached to a better person.  I had months before realized that my boyfriend was not the best person I had ever known, but perhaps that was sour grapes on my part.  

"What would Judy say if she saw this?" he asked, referring to my girlfriend.   

I found that question to be offensive, but I wasn't sure why.  Perhaps I was offended because I had no good answer, but I also didn't believe that the question either demanded or deserved an answer.  I ignored it.

It did throw off my timing a little, though.  I was considering going down to devour that beautiful piece of masculine expression, but instead I chose to make him wait a while for that.  I stroked.  He raised his head more to improve his angle of view.

I stroked once again.  He raised himself a little more.

I began to stroke up and down and up and down and up.  Suddenly, there was a white explosion from his dick, a volley that landed on the wall high, I mean very high above the bed.

I was astounded by how suddenly it happened, but I increased my concentrated pace of stroking.  That initial shot was followed by four more, each landing just a little below the previous on the green, painted wall.  The sixth reached just to the left of his eye and the seventh hit his chin.  After that, there were just the usual finishing dribbles, filling his navel.

I wanted to lick out his navel, a spectacular sexual fantasy in its own right.  I decided that might be a little too much for him for our first experience together.

"Man, you came fast," I said in amazement at his hair trigger as well as the force of the projectiles.

"You sound disappointed."

Of course I was disappointed, but I decided not to share that piece of information with him.

I wondered how soon he would recover enough to take care of my growing needs.  

I got up off the bed to fetch him some tissues from the bathroom.  He used them to wipe himself dry, but he ignored the globs working their way slowly down the wall. 

He glanced once at my throbbing, insistent cock.  He looked into my eyes and said, without any tinge of romance in his words or his eyes, "I'm tired.  Would you turn out the light?"

He slid under the covers in our bridal bed.  By the time I had flipped the light switch at the door, I heard his rhythmic breathing, the clear sound of sleep, the clear sound of "I'm not returning the favor."  At least those are the words that I heard with each inhale and exhale, over and over.  

I went into the bathroom and jacked off.  My disappointment took the energy from my climax.  It was unspectacular.  It was blah.  It was nothing more than clearing the path to me being able to go to sleep.

I tried each night during our trip to get him to pay his debt, but he didn't seem to think it was necessary.  Each night ended the same way.

"I'm tired."

I would trudge the few feet back to my bed and jack off, hoping he would hear and feel guilty.  I'm sure he heard, but he never felt guilty.  Maybe he did feel guilty but figured he'd feel even guiltier if he evened the score.

We remained good friends, but I was never able to touch him in that way again.  I used to fantasize that he would show up to even the score, but it never happened and the fantasy got old.

I did learn one valuable lesson from the experience, though.  If I have a chance to take a fantastic cock in my mouth, I don't postpone the pleasure until next time.  I don't want to waste another set of forceful volleys on a green wall ever again.  

I've learned that there are guys with whom "next time" doesn't happen.

Rick still owes me one for what happened on the way to Manhattan, but I don't jack off anymore thinking about him paying his debt.  Although if he ever did, he would be very surprised how much compounded interest turns out to be.

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