POOLSIDE
At the pool, George and I lay beside each other exchanging lazy sentences on chaises longues, in the strong sunlight. From time to time I would glance over at him, stretched out with his eyes shut, his lashes glinting, his body almost bare. I have never before given a mans body the regard I now gave his - but furtively, and through the flutter of a squint. I felt, I feel, almost as if I did not have the vocabulary to describe it, as if such words as thigh, breast, navel, nipple, were erotically feminine and could not apply here. For one thing, each of the above-named parts was covered with thick blond hair, running to light brown along the waistline of his swimming trunks and on his chest.
I realised that in looking at him I was trying to subtract the hair, the pads of muscles, the outline of the cock between his legs, the glittering stubble on his cheek. I stopped doing this. I looked at him. He was in a sweat. His stomach was flat; there was hair on the back of his long, damp hand. And I looked also at his crotch, at that strange - that shaven - fist wrapped in slick blue Lycra. But his skin was the most strange, and the most difficult to keep my eyes from; it was dappled all over with tiny shadows, which gave it a look both soft and rough, as of suede or fine sand; and it seemed so hard, stretched so tightly across his bones and muscle, as though it would never give, like a womans, to the pressure of my hand.
He sat up suddenly, leaning on his elbows, face red, eyes like the water in the brilliant pool, and caught me looking at his skin. I was startled into thinking the sentence that I had all summer forbidden myself to think: I was in love with George Ward. I longed for him.
Yes? he said, with a half a smile.
Um, nothing - nothing.
George twisted onto his side and propped himself up with one arm, looking eager. I rolled over onto my stomach, as much to conceal the swelling in my trunks - I noticed hed already glanced that way - as to avoid the current discussion. I soon drifted to sleep in the heat of the mid afternoon sun, sure that I could feel his eyes on me...
At the pool, George and I lay beside each other exchanging lazy sentences on chaises longues, in the strong sunlight. From time to time I would glance over at him, stretched out with his eyes shut, his lashes glinting, his body almost bare. I have never before given a mans body the regard I now gave his - but furtively, and through the flutter of a squint. I felt, I feel, almost as if I did not have the vocabulary to describe it, as if such words as thigh, breast, navel, nipple, were erotically feminine and could not apply here. For one thing, each of the above-named parts was covered with thick blond hair, running to light brown along the waistline of his swimming trunks and on his chest.
I realised that in looking at him I was trying to subtract the hair, the pads of muscles, the outline of the cock between his legs, the glittering stubble on his cheek. I stopped doing this. I looked at him. He was in a sweat. His stomach was flat; there was hair on the back of his long, damp hand. And I looked also at his crotch, at that strange - that shaven - fist wrapped in slick blue Lycra. But his skin was the most strange, and the most difficult to keep my eyes from; it was dappled all over with tiny shadows, which gave it a look both soft and rough, as of suede or fine sand; and it seemed so hard, stretched so tightly across his bones and muscle, as though it would never give, like a womans, to the pressure of my hand.
He sat up suddenly, leaning on his elbows, face red, eyes like the water in the brilliant pool, and caught me looking at his skin. I was startled into thinking the sentence that I had all summer forbidden myself to think: I was in love with George Ward. I longed for him.
Yes? he said, with a half a smile.
Um, nothing - nothing.
George twisted onto his side and propped himself up with one arm, looking eager. I rolled over onto my stomach, as much to conceal the swelling in my trunks - I noticed hed already glanced that way - as to avoid the current discussion. I soon drifted to sleep in the heat of the mid afternoon sun, sure that I could feel his eyes on me...
