Tangled Sheets

  The man looked up, a smear of Lorenzo’s cum on his cheek, and Lorenzo motioned for him to rise. Standing between Lorenzo’s legs, he fisted his cock while Lorenzo rubbed his balls and the tender spot just below his asshole. When he came, it was in a series of short spurts that rained down on Lorenzo’s chest and stomach. Picking up an orange slice, Lorenzo wiped it along his stomach, coating it with the man’s cum before lifting it to his mouth. A string of pearly white hung from his lips as he swallowed the fruit. He did the same with a second segment and fed it to the man, who eagerly accepted it.

  Having finished, the man walked away, disappearing into a doorway at the rear of the garden. Lorenzo turned and looked at me, his cum-stained hand shading his eyes from the sun. “Hello,” he said. “You’ve come a little early. I would shake hands, but as you can see, that might not be a good idea at the moment.”

  “I see that,” I said. “I hope I didn’t interrupt.”

  Lorenzo laughed. “No,” he said. “As a matter of fact, Antonio seems to perform better when there is an audience. Why didn’t you join us?”

  “It seemed more appropriate to watch,” I answered. “Not that I didn’t enjoy it.”

  “Ever the artist,” Lorenzo said, standing up and leading me into the house. Showing me to my room, on the top floor looking out over the garden, he said, “Why don’t we both wash up, and then we can have a drink.”

  Leaving me alone, Lorenzo retreated to his room at the other end of the hall. I washed in the small bathroom off my room and put on another shirt. By the time I was done, Lorenzo was waiting for me. Leaving the house, we walked into town and settled into chairs in the piazza. Before long, a waiter arrived bearing two glasses of iced tea, which I decided must be Lorenzo’s regular drink.

  Almost immediately, Lorenzo turned to me and said, “You would like to know the secret of my men, correct?”

  I looked at him and saw that he was smiling, not angry. “Well,” I began, “it is something that fascinates me. I have never seen drawings with such life in them before. Your subjects are ordinary men, yet they hit me here,” I said, indicating my stomach, “as though they were the most beautiful young men. I don’t fully understand why.”

  Lorenzo laughed lightly. “I will tell you the secret,” he said. “But it will take something more than my saying it for you to understand.” He leaned forward, and I waited breathlessly for his words.

  When all he said was, “It is because I am in love with them,” I felt disappointment flood my insides.

  “That is easy when the men are beautiful,” I said. “But your men are not so beautiful. How do you fall in love with them?”

  Lorenzo laughed. “Every man has something about him that invites desire, one trait which, when brought forward, causes the person looking on him to want to look forever. The puzzle is in finding what that thing is. It could be the way his hands hold an apple as he eats it, the way his mouth turns up to show his teeth when he smiles at a private joke of his own, the way the hair on his forearms lies against his skin as he sits reading with his shirt sleeves rolled up.”

  Lorenzo took a drink from his glass and returned it to the table. He looked around the piazza and pointed to a portly waiter busily removing dishes from the table of a young couple. “Take that man, for example. When you look at that scene, your first inclination is to notice the young man sitting down. He is very handsome, and it is easy to become aroused by thinking about making love to him, about what his body would look like without clothes. The waiter you would not think twice about. He is overweight. His face is not beautiful. But look again at him carefully, and what do you see? Observe the way his apron is tied around his waist. Look at the way he moves so confidently about the table, knowing where everything is without looking. Notice how he is in command of what he does.”

  I watched the waiter picking up dishes and putting new ones in their place. There was something about the way he performed these ordinary tasks that was mesmerizing. As he sliced a cheesecake and put it before the diners, he knew just how to hold the knife to get a perfect edge, just how to place the slices on the plates. Although I wasn’t fully convinced, I began to see what Lorenzo meant about finding the beauty in him.

  “He is very confident,” I said.

  Lorenzo nodded. “Now, imagine making love with him. Think of him taking the same time with lovemaking that he is taking with his service. Imagine his hands stroking you as deliberately.”

  I thought about this, and was surprised at how easily the image came to me of the waiter in my arms, and even more surprised at how the thought of it excited me. I imagined his prick, short and pink and thick, in my hand, the heat of it beating against my palm. I pictured myself fucking him, the round curves of his ass beneath my fingers as I pumped, the sound he would make when he came and the way his mouth would soften as he shot his load over his belly.

  “You are thinking about it,” Lorenzo said, knocking me out of my trance. When I looked at him, he was grinning. “You see,” he said, “it is, as the saying goes, all in the eye of the beholder.”

  We remained in the piazza for several hours, until the sky began to fade in upon itself and dusk came creeping over the stones of the square. Lorenzo paid and we returned to the house, which was lit with the warm cinnamon light of outdoor lanterns and scented with the sweetness of oranges from the trees in the garden. I was fully prepared to sit and continue our conversation, but Lorenzo led me instead through the garden and up a flight of steps to his studio.

  The small space was cluttered with pencils and paints, discarded cloths stained with multicolored bruises and papers with half-completed drawings scattered over the large wooden table that was the centerpiece of the room. The roughly plastered white walls were covered with rough sketches, some of which I recognized as the earliest incarnations of finished works I’d seen in books. Smells of turpentine and pipe smoke lingered like the perfume of a woman who had just walked through moments before.

  “I thought that you might enjoy seeing the process firsthand,” Lorenzo said, clearing a space on the table and setting out a handful of pencils and a clean pad.

  “I would very much like that,” I said. “But who will be the model?”

  “I have asked a man from town to come over tonight,” he answered. “A blacksmith by the name of Marcello Antovicci. He is due here in a few moments.”

  The idea of watching Lorenzo work was more than I’d hoped for from my visit, and I couldn’t wait to begin. A few moments after Lorenzo finished, there was a knock at the studio door. Lorenzo opened it, and Marcello Antovicci came in. In his mid-forties, he was of average height. He was dressed in his work clothes, heavy pants and shirt and thick leather boots. His dark hair was cut short, and his wide, open face was clean shaven. In one hand, he carried a heavy leather bag that I supposed held his tools.

  Lorenzo greeted the man warmly, as though they knew each other well, kissing him on both cheeks. He introduced Marcello to me and then clapped his hands together. “Shall we begin?” he asked. “Marcello, you may undress and then stand over there,” he said, pointing to a spot in front of the table.

  Marcello put his bag down and began to unbutton his shirt, his big fingers fumbling with the buttons. As he took it off, he revealed a broad chest, heavily muscled and covered in thick dark hair. His arms were likewise developed, his shoulders rounded from hours upon hours of lifting his blacksmith’s hammer. After removing his boots, he lowered his pants and stepped out of them, folding them neatly before laying them with the shirt on a chair. Like the rest of him, his legs were thick and strong, the thighs heavy and the calves rounded.

  Turning toward Lorenzo, he asked how he should stand. Lorenzo positioned him beside a small table and, opening the bag Marcello had brought, removed a hammer. He handed it to him and asked him to raise it as though he were striking an iron freshly drawn from the fire. Marcello did so, holding his arm halfway between his shoulder and the imaginary piece of iron. When Lorenzo was pleased wi
th his position, he told him to hold it.

  Coming back to the table, Lorenzo took up a pencil and began to make a hurried outline of Marcello on the paper. I was amazed at how quickly the lines came together and the shape of the man emerged. After only a few moments, a rough image of Marcello had begun to form beneath Lorenzo’s skilled fingers.

  “His body is exquisite,” Lorenzo whispered to me. “Look at how smoothly the lines flow together in his arms, at how the muscles at his waist stand out. It’s as if he is at his forge right now, a piece of iron before him waiting to be struck.”

  I looked at Marcello, standing silently in the warm amber light of the studio lights, and pictured him in his shop, surrounded by the smoke from the fires, translucent lines of heat rising in swirls around his sunburned face. I imagined a thin bead of sweat running down his cheek and slipping along the muscles of his neck until it reached the hollow of his throat. I saw the muscles of his legs tensing and releasing as his hammer rang out on the glowing iron, sending showers of sparks into the air.

  “Go to him,” Lorenzo said quietly. “Discover what it is that draws you to him.”

  Lorenzo gave me a push in Marcello’s direction, and I moved toward him. As I came closer, he never moved, holding his position as I moved forward and placed my hands on his back. The muscles lay in thick layers across his shoulders, and my hands moved over them lightly, feeling their power, picturing them moving rhythmically like waves as Marcello worked. I slid down to his waist and ran my hands over the full curve of his meaty ass, letting my fingers slip between them to feel the rough hair, then moving on to cup his large balls. His cock was thick and warm, and I wrapped my hand around it from behind, pulling it downward in a slow stroke.

  Only then did he release himself from his pose, putting down the hammer and turning to face me. His dark eyes looked into mine, and his callused hands cupped my face. Then he reached for my shirt and undid the buttons, pulling it off quickly and dropping it to the floor. I placed my hands on his chest and felt the rough hair on it as I slid to my knees and took his swelling prick between my lips. The head was smooth and round, and my tongue moved around it in lazy circles, tasting the sweat of Marcello’s skin, drinking in the rich smell of him.

  His cock hardened quickly to its full length, the thick shaft straight and covered with dark hair several inches up the underside. I soon had the entire length buried in my throat, my lips pressed against the musky hair of Marcello’s crotch. As I sucked him, letting his delicious prick slide along my tongue, I once more thought of him at work, his cock covered by his heavy pants, his hands twisting and bending the steel. I wanted him to hold me the same way, to take me with the same force.

  Standing up, I dropped my pants. My cock swung up from between my legs, the head stained with beads of precum. I saw Marcello look down at it, saw his eyes cloud over. He came forward and pressed against me so that I was forced to lean against the edge of the table, which pressed uncomfortably into the small of my back. Positioning himself between my welcoming legs, he began to rub his body against mine, his cock sliding against my stomach, our balls slapping together.

  Putting his rough hands under my ass, he lifted me so that I was sitting on the table, then pushed me back so that I was lying on my back looking up at him, my legs around his waist. His face was not that of a beautiful man, but I was enchanted by his power, wanted to feel him in me desperately, wanted him to fuck me. I raised my feet and put them on his shoulders, exposing my hole to him.

  Marcello positioned his cockhead at the opening of my chute and pressed forward, pushing into me in one quick motion that brought with it a rush of pain that took my breath away. His big prick was stretching me wide open, and the feeling was amazing. I closed my eyes and lost myself in it as he started pumping my ass in short thrusts, the thick head rubbing over my sensitive opening every time he pulled out to the edge.

  Marcello fucked me for a long time, adjusting his movements as he sensed that I was close to coming. He knew exactly what he was doing, and I felt as though I were made of glass and that if he touched me for one moment more I would shatter in his hands. My entire body was trembling as he made love to me, his hands as skilled at working me as they were at working a piece of raw metal.

  When I finally came, Marcello stroking my chute with his prick in short thrusts that coaxed the swelling load from my balls, ropes of wetness flew from my swollen head and covered me in sticky smears from my throat to my waist. Marcello continued to pump me after I came, then pulled out and jerked himself off, his thick fingers holding his piece tightly as they moved up and down, his balls slapping against them fiercely. His first burst slammed into my face, a spray of hot jism that coated my lips and dripped from my chin. His next few landed on my balls and still-hard cock, fat drops that drenched me in Marcello’s heat.

  Marcello came several more times, each new spasm washing another load over my skin. Finally he stopped, letting his cock fall from his fingers and looking down at my cum-splashed body with a satisfied smile on his lips.

  “It seems you’ve learned something from what we talked about, Mr. Caffrey,” I heard Lorenzo say, his voice breaking the silence like a stone dropped onto the surface of still water from a great height.

  The next morning, as I was leaving, Lorenzo handed me a package wrapped in brown paper. “This is for you to open on the train,” he said. “It is something for you to remember your visit by.” He kissed me good-bye, and then I was walking to the station.

  Later, as the train moved slowly through the mountains taking me back to Switzerland, I carefully opened the package. Inside was the drawing of Marcello, his arm raised and holding the hammer. A spray of hair was visible beneath his arm, and Lorenzo had drawn the lines of his cock and balls perfectly. He must have stayed up all night finishing it. As I looked at it, I smelled once more the sweat of Marcello’s skin and felt his hands on my body, and my prick began to swell within my pants.

  Pass Completed

  Playing touch football in the fall brings out something in a man. . . .

  “You throw like a little old lady,” Paul yelled from down the field as he trotted after the ball I’d just tossed to him. Falling short of reaching him by a good fifteen feet, it had bounced off into the trees. It was the fourth incomplete pass I’d thrown that morning, and this time it was really off the mark. As I watched him run after it, I thought once more that for a man who’d just had his thirty-seventh birthday, he had one fine ass.

  Paul and I had played together on a weekend football league for about a year. Every Sunday when the weather was decent a bunch of us would get together at the park and toss a ball around for an hour or two. Strictly weekend athletes, most of us were well past the age for showing off our passing and receiving skills, happy just to get a break from the everyday routine of our jobs as teachers, doctors, or policemen. More often than not, we’d play for a while and then head off for breakfast at the diner, where we could brag about our minor triumphs while we loaded up on pancakes and coffee.

  While I’d been attracted to Paul almost immediately, I’d been disappointed to discover that he played on the wrong team. For a long time after he’d first joined the group, he’d talked about little else but his divorce, which had recently become final. He and his ex-wife had met in college, where Paul had been studying to be an architect and she was the daughter of one of his professors. After graduation, they’d gotten married and Paul took a job in a small firm. Things had gone along as planned for a number of years until the day he came home to find her with her legs in the air and the FedEx man banging away.

  Paul had moved to our small New England town shortly after, thinking that a change of scenery would do him good. He’d joined the football league a few weeks after he arrived, when he’d seen us playing while he was taking a run through the park. It turned out he’d played some ball in high school, and we welcomed him as someone who could add some skill to our amateur game. Watching his enthusiasm as he played, I’d quickly
developed a big crush on him that made me feel embarrassingly like a schoolboy at the age of thirty-three. I hadn’t had a relationship since breaking up with my lover and moving to the coast to work on my writing, and now the one guy I was really hot for turned out to be off limits.

  On this particular day, the park was largely deserted. The first killing frost had arrived the week before, and all of the grass had rapidly turned brown under its icy touch. The trees had burst into color almost immediately at the first stirrings of winter, and now the ground was scattered with their leaves, as though someone had papered the field with patches of red and yellow. The air had taken on a palpable crispness, and the evening came earlier each day, driving people inside to sit in front of their fireplaces to wait for the first snow. A couple of the other guys had been playing when I first showed up, but the late October chill had sent them home after half an hour, and only Paul and I had stayed. Now, as I waited for Paul to come back with the ball, I rubbed my hands together to keep warm.

  “Getting pretty cold,” he said as he ran up holding the ball. “Feel like coming over for some coffee?”

  Although he’d stopped talking about his wife so much lately, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend a whole afternoon alone with Paul knowing I could never have him. Especially with the way he looked. He was wearing dark gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt covered by an unbuttoned blue-checked flannel shirt. Tufts of dark hair were visible along the neckline of his T-shirt, and despite the baggy clothes I could see the curves of his body, especially the heavy bulge at his crotch. His brown hair was still uncombed, as though he’d just woken up, and the way he looked at me with his big brown eyes made him look like a little boy asking if his best friend could come out and play. Except this little boy was six feet tall and built like a logger.