Brandywine Estates Scrabble Club

THE BRANDYWINE ESTATES SCRABBLE CLUB

By Katharine Sexkitten

The chair made me invisible.

They couldn't see me, and I couldn't see them.

It only took me a few seconds to realize it, which was long enough to also understand that whatever was going on, it was surely meant to be in private.

There were sounds.

Familiar sounds.

Furtive breathing, and sounds.

Lip smacking sounds.

Hands rubbing over clothing sounds.

Murmuring sounds.

Four days earlier, I'd moved into the Brandywine Estates, a seniors community for adults fifty-five or older, newly-separated and soon-to-be divorced, hoping to enjoy my remaining years quietly. After decades of being part of a couple, and assuming it was to be forever, my soon-to-be ex announced one day that she would always love me but she wasn't 'in love' with me anymore, and was moving to Italy, to live in the countryside somewhere and immerse herself in the wine and the food and the culture, and that while I was free to join her, she had assumed I wouldn't, because those weren't things on my bucket list, and she'd only booked one plane ticket.

The saddest part of the whole thing was that I couldn't find any reason to object to her decision, or fight her about it.

Thirty-three years of marriage, over three decades of commitment to her, standing by her through all her dramas, was gone in an instant, and my reaction was, sadly, a very calm "oh well". For close to the last twenty years, we'd been roommates, and little else. When people were around, she'd make a point of making it look like we were still lovers, touching my arm or giving me half-hugs if we were near to each other, assuming others would interpret it as affection, but away from their eyes, there was none of that in our lives. None of that interested her.

We hadn't been intimate for almost two decades, and while I wanted that kind of a life, I didn't miss it with her, because with her it was always the most boring sex I'd ever had anyway. She'd just lay there, like a dead fish. Who'd want to have sex with someone who so obviously had no interest in it? Like I'd done since I was eleven or twelve, I found release, on a daily basis, with masturbation.

With no kids, and the mortgage paid off years ago, we were able to sell the house and both profit greatly, her with more than enough money to live comfortably in the Italian hillside, and me with more than enough to settle into an age-appropriate facility with no financial worries ever. I was at the point in my career where I was only working part-time, consulting mostly, and I had enough money in the bank to keep that to a very casual thing, or even give it up altogether if I wanted.

She'd always wanted adventure, and travel.

I'd always been a homebody, with quiet pursuits, and longed for my golden years to be peaceful and serene.

She had a bucket list. I didn't. That in itself made us different.

I just longed for sunshine and fresh air and respectful neighbors, happy to never have to pack a suitcase again as long as I lived. I hoped for a steady home, my days filled with long walks, perhaps an occasional game of tennis, and quiet evenings of painting, which was my great joy, and reading.

The moving truck drove away from my front door, and I again chuckled to myself about the number. Fifty-seven. Unit fifty-seven, a corner townhouse, for a fifty-seven year old man, once again single.

A woman from unit fifty-eight, across the road, came waddling over. She was short and dumpy with white hair and thick glasses, with a middle-aged spread that had spread even more into old age.

"Welcome," she said, flashing a smile that was warm and genuine, and we shook hands and introduced ourselves.

"Bill," I said.

"Wendy," she said, before asking, "and is there a Mrs. Bill?"

It made me chortle.

"There's a soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Bill."

She nodded, as if that kind of situation was as common as sunshine.

"Is there a Mr. Wendy?" I asked.

Her eyes sparkled.

"There's been three of them, actually," and before I could ask for specifics, she answered all my possible questions. "Mr. Wendy number one couldn't keep his schwang in his pants, so I divorced him tout de suite. Mr. Wendy number two gave me almost thirty years of love, including two wonderful children, before the cancer took him," and she frowned, but continued before I could express my condolences, "and Mr. Wendy number three is playing golf right now. His name, by the way, is Kent, and I doubt very much he'd like being called Mr. Wendy."

I nodded.

"He's wonderful company," she said, honestly, "which is all you can ask for when you get to be our age."

I guessed she, and therefore he, were mid-to-late-sixties. And the idea of simple companionship seemed great, if I was being honest, but at the same time, I still held out hope that at least once, sometime before I die, I'd be able to find someone to be real lovers with.

I'd never had a bucket list, per se, but throughout my entire life, all I'd ever secretly hoped for was a life of passion. Passion. Simple passion.

There had always been an amorphous image in my head, a vague watery impression of pure unadulterated no-holds-barred romance, and sexuality. A life, even for a short stint, of free and open eroticism, time completely consumed with the pleasures of the flesh, wild and uninhibited love-making between people who burned inside for it, who saw that life is short, and what better way to spend it than making whoopee?

My soon-to-be-ex had none of those desires. Her energies, which could burn hotter than the sun, never once touched on sensuality, or sexuality. Or even affection. It just wasn't in her wheelhouse.

Wendy pointed out some of my new neighbors for me, giving me the run-down. So-and-so lived there, next door to so-and-so, and down the line, including the rather titillating news that Janice and Carolyn lived in number fifty-one, that they were very nice people, respectful and quiet and friendly, but who were probably lesbians, although there'd been "no formal confirmation" of it yet. I had to stop myself from asking what exactly would denote confirmation that was formal, as in, would she have had to see the ladies kissing, or would she have required espying actual lesbian sexual acts?

With unpacking on my schedule, I thanked her for the updates and the welcome, and just before I disappeared into my new home, Wendy let me know that two days hence, on a Sunday, was the weekly community 'Social', at the community 'hall', which I'd seen on my first tour of the facility, before I purchased, and I knew it to be a fairly impressive building surrounded by gardens with a small banquet room and kitchen which doubled as a meeting room for the monthly tenants gathering, an expansive library with a sitting area and dark wood panelling, a bright games room with tables for poker and bridge, a full-size regulation pool table, and a good-sized in-ground pool in the back, by the large patio. The event was a potluck, she explained, where everybody brings something for others to munch on, but since I was just moving in I could probably get away with showing up empty-handed.

She promised me that Kent, husband number three, would be there, and it would be a wonderful chance for me to meet many of my new neighbors, and she was right.

I'd spent almost four hours sipping wine and saying hello to people, admitting that I'd never remember their names, and explaining my story over and over again, and most everybody seemed excited to hear it, making me realize that any new info, or dirt, was a welcome thing for them, as if a community of over ninety units of supposed adults was actually more like the teenagers I remembered from high school. Gossip, it seemed, was a commodity for a lot of folks, of all ages, especially the ladies.

Naturally, I got to hear all of their stories too. Most were variations on the same theme. Worked hard for decades, kids grew up and left, time to retire, look for a place with like-minded people. Just over half, by my estimation, were couples, with the rest being a mix of singles, many of those whose significant other had passed away, most within recent years, and a far greater percentage of them succumbing to cancer than I expected, reminding me that that particular disease was a growing scourge across the land.

Needing a break, I wandered. There were several old gals in the pool, treading water or just bobbing up and down on their feet, neck-deep in the clearest environment I'd ever seen, the chemical smell strongly evident, and several eye-balled me and gave me the look, as if I was new meat in a prison. A couple of them wore bikinis, although only one of them really had the body for it, and she was so made-up and coiffed and pressed and ironed and trying to look twenty years younger than she actually was that I got the instant belief she'd be higher maintenance than even my soon-to-be-ex was, which turned me off, so I smiled politely and casually moved on.

Which led me to the library.

On a shelf I spotted a book by Len Deighton, an English writer of spy stories, a title that I'd surprisingly never read before, and settled into one of the very tall and wide wing-back chairs they had, by the window that faced the community gardens, where all sorts of flowers and plants were blooming, colors everywhere, and began reading.

I was just over three chapters in when I heard the door open up and close again, quickly.

There were sounds.

Kissing sounds, and rubbing sounds, and breathing sounds.

My head filled with images of a man and woman, sneaking in a quick session of slap and tickle, or make out, away from the crowd. Then I wondered, are they an actual couple, or are they both part of other couples and therefore sneaking around?

My curiosity got the better of me, and as slowly as I've ever moved before, not wanting any chance that I would create noise, even by shifting my weight on the fabric of the chair, I carefully and cautiously craned my neck and peered out from around the large winged back of the chair, fully prepared to be elated and thrilled at being an unknown voyeur.

I couldn't have anticipated what I saw, not in a million years, and it took all my self-control to not gasp or make any noises of shock, giving my presence away.

Wendy's husband number three, Kent, a tall robust man with a full head of thick white hair and a bit of a belly, had his arms wrapped tightly around someone who most definitely was not Wendy, eyes closed, nostrils flaring, and mouths joined, lips wide open, and tongues obviously playing.

If memory served, the other guy's name was Henry. Or Henrik. I couldn't quite remember, since I'd heard so many names already today. Shorter than Kent, by a bunch, he had his arms around Kent's big head, fingers inching through the white hair, while Kent had his big meaty hands firmly attached to Henrik's ass cheeks, pulling at him, so they could grind their crotches together as they kissed.

Kent appeared to have a seriously large bulge in his pants.

Henrik had a smaller bulge in his rather tight khaki shorts.

He had slim legs, tanned and hairless. He had hairless arms too, and if I had to bet money I'd have put it all down on him having a hairless torso as well, which was just a feeling I had, and which was a rarity amongst all the mature men I'd met and seen today. Most of them were hairy, it struck me, decades of growth behind them, like the older male gorillas in a tribe, other than Henrik, and one other guy whose name was totally lost to me.

Well, and me too. I'd always been the opposite of hirsute. I liked it that way, to be honest, and had always shaved the wispy little hairs that did occasionally grow on my legs and chest and back, for my whole life, since puberty.

Shaving made clothes feel nicer on my skin. My ex thought it strange, a man shaving his legs, but she dealt with it moderately noiselessly.

I was awash in amazement. It was such an extraordinary feeling. I was watching two grown men kiss, and grope, and fondle, the both of them as committed to what they were doing as they could be, totally and passionately giving their all. I got the immediate impression that this wasn't their first time, doing this, with each other. The feeling washed over me that they were comfortable, that this was just today's extension of something that had been going on for a while.

They looked like lovers.

They looked like lovers who were sneaking in a quick bit of fun, naughty people doing the dangerous act secretly, mere yards from others, daring the fates, dancing on that thin edge of the razor between getting away with something and getting caught.

They looked like lovers, caught up in a sea of passion, an ocean of lust, the rest of the universe be damned.

They personified the depths of raw unfiltered ecstasy.

When they broke their kiss, and came up for air, they both opened their eyes slowly, each focussing on the other, each of them beginning to smirk, and then outright grin, both of them boyishly.

Kent kissed Henrik, or Henry, or whatever, again, one quick one, and they both made an "mmmm" sound.

"Did you meet the new guy?" Kent asked, his voice quiet but deep, and breathy.

Henrik nodded, still catching his breath from their kiss.

"He seems nice," he slowly replied, with a wispier softer voice.

Kent nodded. "Single. Divorced, or about to be, according to Wendy."

Laying his head on the taller man's chest, on his left cheek, Henrik, and I was more and more convinced that that was indeed his name, based on his rather Nordic looks, fine soft blondish hair, blue eyes, with a smooth tanned face, he breathed out a huge sigh, and then slid his left hand all the way from behind Kent's head, down the big chest, massaging his pectoral and pinching at his nipple, before sliding down his belly and then slipping between their bodies, firmly grasping at the large lump I'd already noticed.

Kent suppressed a groan, something throaty and real.

Henrik chuckled.

"Is this because of me, or because you're horny for the new guy?"

For the second time, it took all my energies to not make a noise, shocked as I was, the shocks coming in waves now, shock upon shock.

Me?

"He does have a nice, round ass," Kent murmured, squeezing hard at Henrik's ass, pulling them together again, ratcheting up the grinding of their crotches.

Henrik laughed, albeit trying to stay quiet.

"Nicer than mine?", and he must have really squeezed Kent's lump, because the bigger man groaned out loud, clipping it when he realized it might be audible from outside the room, and prompting him to bend his head down, nuzzle Henrik's head into moving, before planting his lips in a kiss, the both of them instantly taking to it, jaws moving and tongues going back and forth, total and instant lust and ardor on display.

Their passion staggered me. I couldn't remember a single time in my life when I kissed anybody with the same intensity and zeal.

When they broke again, they were gasping again.

"Nobody's got a nicer ass than you," Kent bragged, "but you have to admit, the new guy, Bill is his name, he does have some nice junk in his trunk."

Henrik chuckled again.

"And about to be divorced. From a woman, if I heard him right. So a betting man would be putting his money down on Bill being as straight as an arrow."

They kissed again, softly, and sensuously.

I couldn't get over how much that hit me, the both of them launching into it, with fervor, making it appear to be their everything, their reason for living, the totally-in-the-moment baring of the honesty of their souls.

They seemed to be totally oblivious to the wonders that surrounded them, that surround all of us, every second of every day. To them, there was no earth, no people, no wives nearby, no beauty of nature or thrill of event.

Kent and Henrik were burning bright, I realized, on the flames of passion, which struck me in the moment as perhaps the highest plane of consciousness any person could achieve.

One I'd hoped to achieve, at least once in my life, but to date had failed at.

'Good for them,' I thought.

They came up for air again, and Kent grinned.

"I don't know," he whispered, "maybe I'm just prejudiced, or biased, but," and he paused, searching for words, "I just kinda got a vibe from the guy."

Henrik chuckled.

"A vibe? Really? It isn't wishful thinking?"

Kent shrugged.

"I don't know," he answered, "maybe. Don't get me wrong, I love," and he leaned back down and kissed Henrik again, a little one, "repeat, love, being with you, when we can, with or without the club. But don't you think it would be great to have some new blood to play with too?"

Henrik didn't say anything, for a few seconds, looking stern, until finally he nodded, and then smiled.

"I know," he whispered, "I've said it too. More guys in the club would be fun. It would certainly up the odds for good times!"

They both laughed, keeping their voices as quiet as they could.

"And you think he'd be into playing?"

For the third time, I had to suppress any reaction.

Me???

Kent smiled, and then stared at his friend longingly, which began to fade, into something akin to disappointment, before they both nodded and came to some sort of mutual decision and stopped their hug.

"We still on for tomorrow night?" Kent asked.

Henrik gave a look, like he'd just heard the dumbest question ever.

"Puh-lease," he whispered, "like I'm ever going to say no?"

They kissed again, a quick furtive peck.

As slyly as they'd entered the library, they left.

I turned my head and sat back into the chair, and realized I was shaking, little tremors running through me, right down to my toes. I took three deep breaths, slowly and quietly, and let them out, even slower, a trick I'd learned as a kid, to calm myself down, and let my heart go back to a normal rate, whenever I was scared or freaked out.

I'd never been so freaked out in my life, at the ripe old age of fifty-seven.

Was it the gayness of the whole thing?

I asked myself, as honestly as I could, and came up with the answer 'no'. I'm a big boy, an adult, I've known about homosexuality my whole life, and on occasion seen it, both in media and in real life. I've seen men kiss before. It wasn't anything new, nor anything I objected to. At all. Call it liberal, call it whatever you like, I'd always believed that people should be free to fall in love, or have relationships with whoever they please. Isn't that the basis for equality? And isn't it just plain respect?

Lucky enough to have enlightened parents, even with the heavier religious upbringing of their generation, they'd always told me that love is love, and if some people fall in love with others of their own genders then that's their business. End of story.

Wispy tendrils of images began to fly through my awareness, from all the experiences of my life, including real-life moments, and scenes from movies, and then, surprisingly, the realization that many of them were scenes from pornography, which I totally admit I've watched and enjoyed, since the onset of the web. For years, in a sexless marriage, I'd enjoyed thousands of hours of reading stories, and viewing pictures, and watching movie clips. Of course.

I watched everything, except anything with pain or suffering or torture or anyone or thing that even remotely resembled children. Straight sex, by the hundreds of hours. Threesomes too, with bisexual ladies, and then the rarer ones that would show bi men, the two guys playing with each other, which at first startled me but soon became something erotic and beautiful in its own way. Group scenes were always fun. Lesbian clips would always get me going, the soft eroticism, especially when adorned with lingerie, stirring my loins.

And sure, I'd clicked on gay sex clips too.

Most of them were okay, but didn't necessarily make me quiver or anything. At times I was stunned, or daunted, by the ferocity of some of the sex I masturbated to, what seemed so arduous and/or painful an enterprise making me wonder why they participated at all, then quickly understanding that there had to be something about it that inspired them to endure it.

The guys doing the fucking seemed to enjoy it, of course.

But, the guys getting fucked, no matter the hardship, had to have a pretty good reason to take it. Right? And, no word of a lie, I returned to those kinds of videos often, a strange curiosity deep in my soul, wondering what kinds of pleasures I'd never enjoyed that they were getting.

However, the first time I clicked on a clip of a transvestite, a guy dressed and made up as a woman, who was sucking and then getting fucked by a large-bellied black man who was hung like a horse, I lost a load immediately, and that gave way to hours by the thousands of jerking off to that particular fetish.

For the longest time, and I mean years, I wondered what it would be like to be with a feminine dressed man, and penetrate him, if I was to ever fool around on my wife, and even more unlikely, ever fool around with a man.

Then I flashed on the day nearly three years ago, while watching a gorgeous transvestite, Asian, lay under a white man with a neatly trimmed beard, her stocking-clad legs spread, while he slipped his good-sized erection into her behind, and then they began.

They began making love.

They began kissing, as he entered her, and their moans and gasps increased as he slowly increased his speed and his energy, her own organ rigid and laying on her belly, partially squished by him, their kisses long and deep and soft and lovely, and I exploded, sitting on my couch with my wife upstairs, asleep, covering my whole groin with spunk.

The video kept going, and I got instantly hard again, a completely foreign reaction in my experience, and five minutes later, as they began ramming together harder than I've ever seen two bodies collide, their kisses open-mouthed and gasping, I came again, as they both came.

And the most shocking thing of all, when I'd calmed down, several minutes later, was a realization. The starkest realization in my life.

All I could wonder about was what it must have felt like for her.

And what it would feel like to be her.

Under a man. Dressed like her.

People were friendly as I made my escape from the Social. I shook a few hands and swore I was looking forward to years of getting to know everybody, which was true. My parents always said that 'good neighbors make good neighbors'.

As I left, I saw Henrik looking at me, a tiny inquisitive smile on his face.

He was wondering, is the impression I had.

The next couple of days were busy with putting stuff away, and hanging art on the walls, all of them my own creations, after setting up my studio, enjoying my solitude and my freedom to do what I pleased. I took long breaks on my patio, a glass of wine in hand, enjoying the fresh air and the sunshine, and the lack of city sounds. The entire community was built with a park around it, with trails for walking and biking, forested areas and fields, so I couldn't hear cars or buses or people or kids screaming. It was exactly what I'd hoped to find.

On morning three, there was a knock on the door.

The tall man standing there was a neighbor, that much I knew, but for the life of me I couldn't remember his name, so there was an awkward silence, until he stuck out his hand.

"Hi," he said, his voice strong and deep and rumbly, "I'm Sterling, over in forty-three," and he pointed with his free hand to his left, "we met at the Social."

I nodded.

"Yes, of course, I remember," and I shook his hand, "I'm Bill."

Maybe three or four inches taller than my five-eight, his face was a bit craggy, so he definitely looked old enough to live in the park, and yet his hair was only barely touched by grey, just at the temples, the rest of it a full dark chestnut brown, belying his age. Even his eyebrows were dark, which set him apart from most of the other residents. A tanned face, with lines everywhere, he reminded me of a cowboy, or a male model cowboy. He looked like he'd had a few experiences in his lifetime.

"Mind if I come in?" he asked, and I stood aside and waved him through the door. He took a look around, and saw the tumult of unpacking, and nodded, like he'd seen this movie before.

"How're you enjoying the place, so far?" he asked, plopping himself down on my couch.

"It's great," I said, before asking, "would you like something to drink? I don't have any beer, but I do have wine."

He waved his hand back and forth.

"Never before six o'clock," he said, like it was a rule.

Then he smiled, wickedly.

"But I guess it's gotta be six o'clock somewhere, right?"

I poured him a glass.

"So," he said, matter-of-factly, as if some threshold had been met, "you know how it is, the locals are all gossips, and the questions about the new guy are flying around. You know the ones, what's he like, what's he do, that kind of stuff."

It made sense, so I nodded.

"Best way to stop people making shit up, in my opinion, is being up front about things, that's my philosophy, so how 'bout I ask a few questions, and then subtly spread the word around for you? It'd save you a lot of trouble."

I laughed out loud.

"Sure."

"Divorced, right?"

"Soon to be."

"Check," he said, "children?"

I shook my head.

"So no grandchildren, presumably?"

I nodded there were none.

"Which political party you follow?"

"None."

He smiled.

"Good answer," and then he thought for a few seconds.

"Illnesses or conditions?"

I beamed with pride. "None except the usual creaks and groans of getting old."

Sterling grinned darkly as he looked at me, and chuckled.

"Old? You're barely old enough to live here, but," and then he paused, his stern mouth slowly spreading into a folksy grin, "I know what you mean. And," he added, almost appreciatively, "you look to be in pretty good shape," he said, "thin, no middle-aged spread. You must work out."

His gaze seemed penetrative.

I was, for a second, daunted by it, but then it just felt good inside, for some reason I couldn't fathom.

"Thanks."

He nodded.

"Any weird relatives or friends gonna be visiting?"

I laughed and sipped some more wine.

"None."

He kept staring at me.

"You play golf?"

I shrugged.

"A few times, company tournaments and such, but nothing to write home about. I'm more of a tennis guy."

His eyebrows went up, in curiosity.

"That so? Well, we got a few people here, men and women both, who play, some of them pretty seriously, I've heard, so you should expect some invites."

"Cool."

He kept looking at me, like he was the human equivalent of an x-ray machine, gazing at my insides.

"Do you lawn bowl?" he asked.

I smiled. "You mean like bocce ball?"

He nodded.

"Actually, yeah, I've played that lots of times, in the backyard, barbeques, that sort of thing. I quite enjoy it."

"Good," he said, "good. It's taken pretty seriously around here. And there's some fierce players too."

Then he paused.

"Outside Christmas decorations. Are you one of those 'couple of strings' kind of guy, or do you go for the whole 'Santa exploded' motif?"

We both laughed.

"I'm a 'couple of strings' guy."

He nodded, like he agreed with my answer, and then he got a look on his face like he wanted to ask something that might be delicate.

"There's lots of ladies here, wonderful women, long since removed from any kind of romantic life, just lovely people to know. I wouldn't trade them for neighbors with anyone. Salt of the earth. What's important to know is that amongst them are a select few, some widowed and some single, maybe even some of them married, who haven't lost those urges, who're looking for occasional companionship, if you know what I mean, ladies not too old to remember what it's like to have romance, some of them'll be figuring out ways to knock on your door soon enough."

I shook my head.

"I'm paying lawyers right now, to get through the divorce. A new relationship is the last thing I'm looking for."

Sterling nodded and the briefest of smiles came on his face.

"Just letting you know."

"And I appreciate it," I answered.

Then his stare got serious.

"But a man has needs, right?" and before I could respond he continued, "so all I'm saying is that when the ladies come banging on your door, you might very well decide to, you know, indulge in the opportunity. Perfectly natural. Nobody would blame you for it, of course. But..." and then he paused, and drained his wine glass, almost as if to steel some resolve or something, "... know this. What you need to understand is, around here, there's a price to be paid, that when those kinds of moments occur, it doesn't stay a secret very long."

I smiled.

"No? Lots of gossips at Brandywine?"

He nodded.

"This place is the worst."

"Good to know."

He shook his head.

"Let me amend that," and he paused, "the women in this place are the worst, and my wife is one of them. Brandywine Estates is like soap opera central. They're all in each other's business, all the time. Yakking and complaining, criticising. Spreading dirt. And new info, new titillating details, that's like a kind of currency in the Estates. Juicy tidbits spread faster than wildfire. Though, to be fair, a couple of the men are like that too, but not many. And the thing is," and he waved his glass a little bit, hinting he'd like some more wine, "you might think that being a retirement community full of old folks that there'd be nothing to talk about, because nothing would be going on, right?", and as I filled his glass again, he nodded his thanks, "but you'd be wrong, dead wrong. There's always stuff happening, which keeps all the gossips busy."

My impressions from the Social was much the same.

"Well," I said, "I doubt very much I'll be fooling around with any of the ladies," and sipped the last from my glass, "at least not in the foreseeable future. Thirty-some-odd years of an ultimately-failing marriage can kind of turn a man off of that sort of thing, you know? And I've always hated gossip anyway, so I'll probably avoid listening to any, let alone spreading it."

Sterling nodded, slowly, as if I'd confirmed something important.

"Good," he said, "that's good to hear."

He made a bit of a deal out of nodding, to let me know it was a positive thing.

"There's a small group of the menfolk here just like that, with that same attitude, me included, and we're always glad to add more to the club. Guys who understand, guys who don't frivolously gossip, guys who can keep a secret, if need be."

I had no idea what he might be referring to.

"That's me."

We chatted for a few more minutes, and after finishing his second glass, Sterling thanked me for my time, and as I bid him goodbye, after a very prolonged and warm handshake at the door, he turned and looked at me.

"Do you play Scrabble?" he asked.

I'm sure my face lit up. I'd enjoyed the game hundreds of times, maybe even thousands, during my teen years, and into my college years, but my soon-to-be-ex wasn't a games person so it'd been decades since I'd played, and his mention of it reminded me of how much I had always enjoyed it.

"There's a group of us that like to play, at least once a week," he said, a strange emphasis on the word 'play', "away from the ladies. A good group of guys who enjoy the fun, the laughter, the..." and he paused, "the thrills."

The way he said 'thrills' seemed unusual as well.

"Respectful guys. Discrete guys. Guys who understand that what happens at Scrabble, and what's said at Scrabble, stays at Scrabble."

I nodded, like I knew what he was talking about and liked the idea.

"Like a social club," he added, "for the men only. Away from the women, the wives and such."

"Sounds great," I offered.

He looked at me softly.

"I'll let you know when the next game is, if you're interested."

I told him I was.

That seemed to make him very happy.

Over the next two days, I met a few more of my new neighbors, while out for walks, and got a first-hand example of what Sterling had been talking about.

The ladies gabbed and gabbed about all sorts of people, while the men for the most part stayed quiet, or talked in generalities about safe subjects, nothing personal about anybody.

One of my walks brought me face-to-face with Kent and Wendy.

They looked like an odd couple, him tall and thick and her short and thicker.

I couldn't visualize him kissing her.

All I could see, in my mind's eye, was him kissing Henrik.

Those wispy tendrils of male-with-male sexuality came whooshing through my veins again.

For some reason, while the three of us were doing the 'how you doing?' thing, I couldn't stop myself, and at one point my gaze went from Wendy's face over to Kent's crotch, where I knew instinctively that I spent much more time than a cursory glance, seeing the feint swell in his khakis, remembering how much bigger it could get, until a voice in my brain yelled, 'LOOK AWAY!', and when I jumped up to his eyes, he was watching me.

He knew what I'd been staring at.

And he knew that I knew that he knew.

His handshake when they veered towards their townhouse was long and accompanied with a shoulder rub.

His touch was warm.

After I'd turned to go up my walkway, I heard his voice.

"Oh, hey, Bill?"

I looked back, and saw the considerable rear end of Wendy disappear inside their front door.

"Yeah?"

He smiled, as big as could be.

"Sterling says you're up for some Scrabble. True?"

I nodded, and smiled back.

"That's great," he said, and then casually put his hands on his hips, "really great. New members are always welcome."

I thought it weird, how he emphasized the word 'members'.

"Though, I should warn you," he continued, "sometimes the games can get a little, um, you know, wild."

A half-confident, half-embarrassed laugh escaped my lips.

"Is that right?" I asked.

"Yes sir."

I don't know why I responded the way I did.

"Well, I like wild."

Kent grinned, as bright as a sunbeam, even from across the narrow street.

And then, oh what a surprise!

As he nodded his goodbye and turned to follow his wife in through the door, his big left hand came off of his hip, and slowly ran diagonally down and across the front of his pelvis, and just before his body fully twisted away from me, showing me his large muscular rear end, that hand slid across his crotch, specifically squeezing what had to have been his penis.

I stood, open-mouthed, watching their door close.

For the next several hours, I tried to intellectually make excuses for how his actions had to have been innocent, or innocuous, but none of them worked. No reason could I find that sounded sane.

He'd done it on purpose.

Then I started worrying, whether maybe he and/or Henrik had seen me, or somehow knew that I was there, at the Social, and they just pretended not to, playing out their obvious lust regardless of being watched.

But who would do that? If they were trying to keep it a secret by clandestinely meeting in the library, what in the world would possess them to continue on with a practical stranger ten feet away?

Then again, I mused, maybe they both got off on being watched?

Then I remembered that Kent had told Henrik that he'd gotten a 'vibe' from me.

Then I spent hours wondering what kinds of vibes I give off, and how someone could be so wrong about this one. I'm not gay. I'm not even bisexual. With nary an experience, a complete virgin, how could I give off such vibes?

Two days later, Sterling knocked on my door and invited me to the Scrabble game that evening, at Hugh's place, number twenty. At the moment, I couldn't remember who Hugh was, but apparently I'd met him at the Social. He also let me know that Kent would be there, as well as Henrik, and possibly someone named Ian.

My mind's eye immediately conjured up naughty images of Kent and Henrik slipping away between games to meet up in the bathroom, or a closet, to get in a little kissing and groping again. I imagined them finding any reason at all, even silly, to get some passion in, like we all used to do when we were teenagers.

I realized quickly that I envied them.

Maybe that's what Kent meant when he said it could get wild.

When I asked Sterling what I could bring, thinking alcohol or maybe food, he shook his head.

"Just bring yourself, ready for a good, men-only time."

At eight p. m., I knocked on the front door of unit number twenty.

Hugh, as it turned out, was the other gentleman I saw at the Social who was shorter than most and thinner than most and had no hair at all, on his arms or legs. On his head he had cropped, mostly salt hair, with a little pepper showing, a warm smile, and the clearest blue eyes I'd seen in years. A widower, I guessed him to be in his late fifties-to-early sixties.

For some reason, I noticed that he had the tiny marks that denoted holes in both of his earlobes, which for a second startled me, until I remembered that it had become quite acceptable for men to have studs or rings, even older guys like us.

He welcomed me in, took the bottle of wine I'd brought and thanked me, and ushered me down a hallway to his den, where a table was set up with the Scrabble board on it and four chairs around it.

Three of them were occupied.

Kent, Henrik, and Sterling.

Everybody stood and handshakes were exchanged and pats on the back ensued and banter was thrown about, while Hugh went to the kitchen to pour me some of my own wine and bring out a tray of nibblies.

Ian, whoever he was, had bailed on the game tonight, so it was just the five of us, and since the board is only set up for four players, Hugh volunteered to sit the first game out.

I held my own, surprisingly. Both Henrik and Sterling were very good, both putting up words I never would have thought of, while Kent plodded along with small words, never really in it. Maybe he just got lousy tiles, which does happen. The conversation was lively and animated and jocular, in a manly way, but I did get a sense, a strain perhaps, that Kent and Sterling, both bigger guys than the rest of us, were a little more demonstrative of their size. They behaved, in just little ways, movement and word, as if they were perhaps more understatedly aggressive, or arrogant, or maybe even tougher.

More visibly masculine, I suppose.

Henrik didn't seem to notice, or mind. He was charming and thoughtful and pleasant and seemed to have a steady flicker of delight in his eyes and his words and his actions. Even in the way he moved. ­­

He exuded a gentleness and gracefulness that was delightful, and attractive.

Hugh was much like him, maybe more so, fluttering around between his kitchen and the den, light on his feet, offering up food or drinks, acting almost like a hostess, while the laughs ensued.

Sterling suggested that we make the second game interesting, with some sort of bet or challenge or dare, and I wondered if this was where the whole 'wild' thing might begin, but no one was able to offer up anything, looking furtively at each other, so we went ahead anyway. I won, as it happens, by nine points, which gave me bragging rights, and the mood in the room had been nothing but jovial so I kept it up, playfully digging at those who lost, until I was dead last in the third game, as the drinks were flowing and the celebratory mood was reverberating around the room.

What made the third game interesting, though, was that Kent opted out, claiming he wanted to stretch his legs and use the bathroom, and I half-expected Henrik to make some excuse why he had to leave the table as well, assuming they'd search for any reason to get together again for some snogging and rubbing and such, but it didn't happen. Halfway through the game, though, Kent came back into the room and casually walked up behind Henrik, pretending to gaze over his shoulders at the man's tiles, making a show of looking like he was formulating words he would make, if they were his letters, and he put his big hands on Henrik's shoulders as he leaned over.

Henrik sat up straighter.

There was a flicker of a smile on his face, at being touched.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I stared at the two of them, as Kent massaged Henrik's shoulders, lightly. It wasn't an all-out assault, but it was obvious to me that there was motion there, subtle movements, fingers were flexing, that there was a transference of affection going on, albeit done to look perfectly acceptable in polite society.

Kent then moved to stand behind Hugh, and did the same thing. Hugh sat up straighter as well, and based on his breathing alone I'd say he was really enjoying being touched and casually massaged. Plus, almost instantly, I could see two little points forming on the fabric of his button-up silky shirt, and my breath startled a bit, realizing his nipples were getting big, that he was excited, that Kent's touch was stimulating him.

When Kent moved to stand behind Sterling, gazing at his letters, he didn't touch him, and didn't massage him, almost shocking me, until I began to rationalize that maybe the bigger men aren't as touchy-feely with each other as they are with the smaller men. Maybe, I quickly presumed, there was a code of some sort, that I was yet to discern. The two bigger men seemed to operate on a different level than the others, a slightly different playing field, or maybe with just different rules of the road. I noted it to myself, and thought it somehow significant.

Lastly, Kent shuffled and stood behind me.

I wondered if I fell in the same no-touch grouping as Sterling, or the definitely-touch smaller guys.

Or maybe I was in a different class, being the new guy that nobody really knew, or knew how I'd react.

I didn't have to wait long for my answer.

Kent's big warm hands came down on my shoulders, and instantly began tiny little ministrations, and my back went completely straight, not out of discomfort, but trying to get more of the attention, and maybe I made a small noise or my breathing changed or something, but Henrik made a big show out of not watching us, not looking at us, and yet he smiled at my physical reaction, obviously espying out of the corner of his eyes.

Something about my reaction pleased him.

My nipples got harder too, in an instant.

Kent wasted no time and began adding strength to his movements, and I hummed out my approval, because it felt wonderful, and I confess it'd been a very very long time since anybody had touched me at all, so I was loving it.

At one point, he made an audible 'TSK' sound, when I was reaching for a letter to make my next word, as if he was trying to tell me that I was barking up the wrong tree, but I couldn't see any other options, so I laid my six point word down, assuming he'd seen something far more valuable.

Needing a pee break, I deferred to the others and bowed out of the fourth game.

Kent and Henrik were involved in a whispered, furtive conversation when I returned to the room, while Sterling and Hugh just gazed at each other quietly, all the hush-hush aspect stopping dead when they saw me reappear, all four of them returning to their boisterous selves again. I must admit, it gave me a strange feeling, until I remembered that these men had known each other for years, probably, and their comfort levels with each other would be so much more different than how they acted and reacted around me. It's natural, I surmised, that there would be levels of intimacy, for lack of a better word, between them than with me, the new guy.

Before the next game began, Kent decided again there should be some stakes, something to play for. I asked, out of curiosity, "like what?", and he smiled, and in a bragging kind of way said he couldn't think of anything off the top of his head, but that it should be something "dangerous".

I instantly wondered what that meant.

The whole time I'd been there I was quietly and secretly trying to watch him and Henrik, discretely observing the way they talked to each other, and acted, knowing about their shocking relationship, thinking I had a secret to tell Hugh and Sterling about them, if I was a gossip.

Which I wasn't.

What happens at Scrabble stays at Scrabble, as Sterling had told me, and I wholeheartedly agreed, but at the same time, I was thinking, and had always thought, to be honest, that what happens in life stays quiet too, and I had no intentions of outing their fun. Why would I do such a thing to anybody else?

And I wondered. Was that a mostly-male thing, the whole 'not blabbing' philosophy? If the women were all gossips, albeit with even a small percentage of the men, then this group that I'd been invited to join was something elite, something unusual and rare, and there was no way I was going to spoil it.

Besides, I reasoned, those two men were pursuing, in reality, things I only had the guts to dream about, or fantasize about, and I knew that I'd never actually go through with anything in real life like that, tawdry and envelope-pushing and wickedly erotic, so mores the power to them.

And, my logical mind reasoned, it's not that the opportunity would ever present itself anyway, because it never had, and why would it?

It was all simply the stuff of masturbatory good times for me, surely.

Sterling sat back and took a sip of his drink, some sort of bourbon.

"What'd you have in mind?" he asked Kent.

Shaking his head, Kent shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know," he said, "but let's make it something interesting."

I had to ask.

"You mean, like, money?"

Both of them shook their heads.

"Nah," Kent answered, "the wives know all about the bank accounts, and those of us that are married would never get away with money bets."

Sterling nodded his agreement.

"It'd have to be something that the wives wouldn't know."

For some reason, perhaps because I was almost divorced from my wife, or perhaps because I had two full glasses of wine in me and was working on my third, I responded with a dare in my attitude.

"Are you saying you won't do anything to risk a little anger from your wives? Because, guys," and I paused and smiled, "that's getting close to the whole 'pussy-whipped' kind of thing, isn't it?"

Sterling's mood changed, and he almost sneered at me.

"Ha!" he snorted out, "like any of us is getting any pussy from these old broads!"

The others all nodded, a little.

"But besides that," he continued, ease coming back into his voice, "happy wife means happy life," he said, pointedly, and all of them nodded, except Hugh, who was, as far as I knew, the only widower in the room. Even Henrik nodded, and so far I'd not heard him mention anything about a wife

"Life at the old homestead is always better when the wives are happy," Sterling uttered.

Looking around the table, they all agreed, seriously.

"Amen, brother," Kent said quietly.

Surprisingly, it was Hugh who broke the following silence.

"What the wives don't know won't hurt them, right?" and all the heads nodded, mine as well, which was just my natural reaction, "so the best of all worlds is that we men do what we want, and we just keep the juicy parts private from them, away from prying eyes."

Ah, I thought, like Kent and Henrik the other day!

Henrik looked at me.

"I love my wife, of course," he spoke, his voice suddenly softer, "and I'd never do anything to harm her, or upset her."

He let that hang in the air for a few moments.

"But," he added, his words slowly drawn out, "as they mature, women tend to become more, I don't know, what's the word, conservative, you know? In so many ways, but particularly in affection, and romance."

Before I could respond, Sterling piped up.

"Especially after 'the change'," and he used two fingers from both hands for the quote of those two words, "when all their hormones go crazy, or stop working altogether."

Kent nodded.

"Menopause is like a big fat fork in their road, and they all seem to be forced to take the one that leads to nag-ville."

Sterling guffawed.

"Nag-ville and no-sex-ville, is more like it."

Both Henrik and Hugh nodded, vigorously, agreeing completely.

Sterling looked at me.

"Be honest, Bill," he prompted, "you're among friends here, who totally understand, and who can keep secrets," and he let that hang in the air, "how was your ex, er, your soon to be ex-wife, before and after menopause?"

I looked at their faces, their attention rapt on my upcoming response.

"The truth?" I asked, and they all nodded, and I was left with the feeling that these were good men, who I could count on to be my friends, and that in itself denoted a certain amount of shared trust and collaboration, "the truth is that mine had become a nag and sexless long before menopause, and it only got worse after that."

All four of them stared at me, taking in my words, and I looked from one to the next, seeing nothing in their eyes but agreement and support. Understanding.

They'd all been there.

"Damned straight," Sterling muttered, seemingly to himself.

Kent piped up.

"I love Wendy, don't get me wrong," he said, with an almost apologetic tone, "but there's no 'there' there, you know?"

I understood, and nodded.

"It seems to me," Hugh took over, "that men, as we get older, we want more of the affection, not less. We want more of the physical stuff, the hugging, the kissing, the cuddling, all that stuff, whereas the women seem to shun it."

"True that," Henrik said, softly.

"Not to mention," Kent added, his voice strong and determined, "men want more sex as we get older, which is saying a lot, because most of us always wanted sex twenty-four seven our whole lives, am I right?"

All five of us nodded our heads.

Sterling looked directly at me.

"In my opinion, most women become less romantic as they age. Men, like us, well, we see the end of life coming, and all we can think about is getting as many more thrills in as we can get, before the Grim Reaper shows up at the front door."

There followed a long silence, when nobody said anything, and I looked from man to man to man, all of them gazing back at me, intently.

"The solution," Sterling added, his eyes blazing at me, almost daring me to look away, "is that men, men of our age, we need to work together, and help each other out. Away from the wives, so they don't make any fusses. That makes everybody happy."

As eerily quiet as I've ever heard a room, I stewed inside, trying to find the most respectful way to ask the question I wanted to ask, at the same time thinking how audacious it was to even ask such a question, until, just as I was about to speak, Sterling snapped his head and looked at Hugh.

"What's the code of the Brandywine Estates Scrabble Club?"

It was like an order, like he was barking out an instruction.

Hugh turned to look straight at me.

"What happens at Scrabble stays at Scrabble."

Kent leaned forward in his chair, towards me, suggesting something conspiratorial.

"We respect you, Bill, and we're going to trust you with our secret," and then his voice got quieter, "can we count on you to show us the same respect, and never share it with anyone?"

I looked again, from man to man, and they all had serious looks on their faces.

"Yes, of course," I answered.

Kent began a smile.

"Thank you, Bill."

I tried to put a little levity into my voice.

"So what's this secret? How bad could it be?"

Sterling's voice became less strident.

"Nothing bad at all," he said, the beginnings of a grin showing, "it's actually all very good."

Kent took over again.

"It's like Hugh said earlier, we men want more affection than the women, more of the hugging and kissing and such. We want more of those physical acts, not less. Even if it's just a nice pat on the back."

"When's the last time you had a really good hug?" Henrik suddenly blurted out, straight at me.

I had to think about it.

"Years ago," I said, dejectedly.

Sterling leaned towards me.

"Years ago?" he asked, his voice rich with concern, "that's terrible."

For some reason I looked at Henrik, and the sadly-tinged sympathy he felt for me was written all over his face.

"You poor man," he whispered out.

Sterling almost jumped to his feet.

"Let's fix that right now," his voice boomed out, "let me give you a real hug, and remind you what it feels like to be alive."

Hugh jumped to his feet.

"I want a hug too!" he said, eagerly.

Kent smiled at me.

"Hugs is contagious!"

For some reason, I couldn't find any reason not to be hugged, even from another man, and I rose from my chair and turned to Sterling, who stepped towards me and opened up his arms, and with him being four inches taller than me I realized the only way I could keep from getting my arms squished against my body was to put them up and over his shoulders.

I didn't mean to, but my palms landed on his pecs, just above his nipple line, and I slid them slowly up and around his neck. I hoped he didn't think I was being too forward.

I was impressed with his physique. For a man in his sixties, he was in pretty solid shape.

His big arms wrapped around me as if he'd done it a million times, pulling me in close, with no reservations, a full front-touching hug, our bodies squishing together, my face turning sideways so I could rest my cheek right where his shoulder met his neck.

I couldn't believe the size of the sigh that escaped my lips, after the first three or four seconds of holding my breath in nervousness. Once I realized how warm he was, and how seriously lovely it felt to be held by another person, perhaps even more so that it was a bigger person, whose size enveloped me, like the most comfortable blanket in the world, I lost any hesitancy I'd started with and melted into the hug.

Sterling's deeper voice rumbled through his chest, the vibrations running right through me.

"This," he intoned, "is what men need."

Then we just hugged.

I closed my eyes, and let my spirit be taken by whirling swirls of joyful feelings. I was elated, I knew, for the first time since, well, since I couldn't remember when. And what was even more amazing was how it carried on. All the little microscopic tics and movements that people make, every second of every day, unnoticed almost all the time, became as vivid as sunlight, crushed as I was into the front of Sterling, both his body­­­ movements and mine. I could almost feel his breaths.

I for sure could feel his hands, softly kneading and rubbing at the small of my back.

His fingers were so close to my bum, to my buttocks, and each downward movement sent little titters of jolts through my nervous system, part of me secretly hoping that he'd actually touch my ass, or even grab it, because I couldn't remember a single time when my wife ever had.

Revelling in the rapture of actual human touch again, after so long, I felt like nothing could break that high, until I wriggled my body, just a throb, a natural little motion, and I suddenly felt a change in him.

On my right lower belly, just above my hip bone, I felt Sterling become erect.

I was about to gasp out a reaction, which would probably have forced him to back away, when it hit me.

I was already there, completely erect.

I opened my eyes, in shock and amazement.

Neither of us was trying to move in any way to stop the other from feeling it. Apparently neither of us felt the need to try to diminish the contact, or end it.

Under Sterling's chin, I could see across his chest, and a bit of the room, and the unmistakable sight of Henrik hugging Hugh, with Kent lurking right behind. The two men were mashed together, their arms moving, their hands caressing each other, their heads ear to ear, chins on shoulders, eyes closed tight, but not clenched, not strained from fear or uncertainty.

They were two men who wanted to hold each other as close as possible, both of them seemingly needing the contact, desperately.

Kent's face had a look of serenity to it.

It was pleasing him to see his friends together.

It made me realize these men do really care for each other.

I closed my eyes again, and went back to the whirling swirls of joy.

Sterling's hands got seriously close to my cheeks, without going over the line.

A short time later, I don't know how long, I heard a sound that I couldn't decipher, and, barely opening the lid of my left eye, just a titch, I spied through my own lashes at where the noise had come from.

Henrik and Hugh were kissing.

Their lips were just barely touching, and closed, and yet it was probably the most romantic kiss I'd ever seen.

Strike that.

It was without question the most romantic kiss I'd ever seen.

The earnestness on their faces, that absolute glowing rapture they were feeling as plain as day, it took my breath away. Opening both eyes, I cast off any worry about them not wanting me to see them, or of just not staring, which I'd always been told was impolite, and I marvelled at them.

It was a kiss of friendship.

It was a kiss of romance.

It was a kiss of honest, open, human passion and romantic lust.

I felt Sterling's voice, through his chest, before I heard his whispered words, and it made me realize he knew I'd seen them, that he was fully aware of what was going on.

"Hugs feel good, Bill, and so do kisses."

I looked up at him, as he bent his head to look at me.

"And hugs with kisses is even better still."

Then he just gazed at me, not moving at all, letting me make a decision, one way or the other.

And yes, it's like the old cliché.

The devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other.

The pros, and the cons.

The angel was yelling loudly.

"But... it's G-A-A-A-A-Y, Bill!"

The devil was sweetly singing.

"It's love, Bill, something you haven't felt or had in a long time, and love is the greatest gift of all."

I'm pretty sure the angel said something else, but I was already gone, deciding not to listen.

Lightning strikes of those male-with-male sexuality images raced around my brain, and my soul, in a nanosecond, baring my truth, like a door opening up somewhere, acknowledging the desires I'd felt, the inexplicable yearnings I'd wallowed in, let alone the countless hours I'd spent masturbating over.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd ever felt so agog, so antsy with anticipation, so jiggly with excitement. I felt like a kid, again, at my first dance, except this time instead of holding the girl I was being held. Like a girl.

But SO FUCKING WHAT?

The rivers of pleasure I was rafting down were as wild and untamed as I had ever felt, or had ever acted.

What I would have thought would be the hardest decision I'd ever make in a lifetime suddenly blossomed into the easiest one.

I nodded up at Sterling, and batted my eyelids.

He grinned as if he'd just found the biggest pile of treasure any pirate ever buried, before his eyes closed and his lips came down at mine.

We both moaned at first contact.

His lips were warm, and quivering, and mine felt like they'd been magically glued to his, the barest of scintillas of moisture available between the two of us acting like a glue, skin miraculously sticking to skin, as if destined.

What a surprise!

I suddenly became drunk, but not inebriated. I felt light-headed. I felt giddy. I felt completely in control of myself and totally out of control.

I felt like I could fly.

I felt like if I just started flapping my arms, I'd literally fly.

Then a strange seductive voice inside me snapped that reverie.

'If you fly, he won't be holding you anymore! Or kissing you!"

The flying idea went right out the window.

His breath was coming out of his nostrils, onto my skin, and it felt cool, fast-paced and urgent, and if it was even possible, his erection seemed to feel bigger, against my belly.

The very same second his hands slid and literally grabbed my lower cheeks, his tongue pushed its way into my mouth.

I couldn't even fathom the idea of stopping him.

I was delirious, languorously drowning in exquisite joy.

All those years, those cold unaffectionate years, were wasted, it came to me.

Time lost, when it could have been spent doing exactly what we were doing.

People, loving other people.

Sterling's lips let go of mine long enough for us to switch head angles, and then we were kissing again, and I opened my mouth for him right away, and he chuckled into my mouth as his tongue ran up to my upper palette, tickling the roof of my mouth, which made me giggle, and wriggle, and he wriggled right back, pressing his manhood into me even harder, which seemed bigger yet again, thicker for sure, and we both moaned again. We kissed and kissed and switched sides two more times, until by some mutual decision we broke.

It took me a full ten seconds to find the strength to open my eyes, as the heaving of my chest up against his ebbed. When I did, he was staring at me, glaring at me, burning at me, overwhelming me with a fire I'd never seen from anyone, let alone the woman who was to have been my life-long lover.

Sterling was enflamed.

"Welcome to the club," said a voice, and I turned, to see Kent holding Hugh in his arms, bending him over like a man does to a woman, like they were dipping on the dance floor, the both of them in a full-blown open-mouthed tongue-duelling kiss.

Henrik's face came into my view.

"And now I get my kiss?"

Sterling let me go, and I turned into Henrik's arms.

He and I were the same height, so we each had one arm over and one arm under, and as we mushed our bodies together, neither of us even contemplating the whole 'keep-your-groin-away' idea, I realized that he was as erect as Sterling, but not nearly as big, as if that was a normal thing to think about in life.

Racing through me like a bullet, that seductive voice spoke again.

'You kiss one guy and now you're a connoisseur of erections?'

Henrik didn't give me time to giggle, his lips meeting mine softly, and we both sighed and squeezed and closed our eyes and I sailed off down the rapids again, the white-waters of man-on-man kissing.

Henrik's kiss was so much different than Sterling's.

Softer. Gentler. More tender, which amazed me because Sterling's kiss had screamed out the word 'tender!'

It struck me as romantic a kiss as I'd ever known.

For how long we kissed, I could not say, but it was good long time.

Then I got to kiss Hugh, who, like Henrik, kissed with a sublime passion and tenderness, almost, I dared to think, like a woman would kiss.

The voice inside soared.

'You too.'

He and I barely touched tongue-tips, time and again, as if neither one of us wanted to go full-blown crazy on the make-out, making my erection swell even more, pressed up against Hugh's erection, which was thick, but not very long, the both of us wriggling our groins back and forth, massaging each other's lump with abandon while we softly kissed, and I almost regretted it when we stopped and stared into each other's eyes, his crystal-clear ice-blue eyes mesmerizing me.

Kent was not-so-patiently waiting his turn for a kiss, bouncing from foot to foot, standing behind Hugh, who got a nice pat on his rear end in thanks as he let me go, and I stepped into Kent's hug with a huge smile on my face, his body so thick and tall, and before I could figure out how we were going to do the kiss, who was going to bend and how, his big hands came down and grabbed both of my butt cheeks, taking all my weight in his hands and lifting me with ease, him being very strong, making me taller, and so our heads were far closer, making a kiss easier, and as I wrapped my arms around his thick neck and my legs around his mid-section, just to hang on to him, his lips slammed into mine, our teeth banging a tiny bit, and the next thing I knew I was sucking on the thickest meatiest tongue that had ever visited my mouth.

If the other kisses had made me giddy, Kent's kiss made me swoon.

The man could kiss.

We kissed for a long time.

I'd never felt more alive, and more at peace with the world.

Once again, I was saddened momentarily when we stopped, and it took a few seconds to open my eyes and stare into his, which were ablaze with energy and shining right at me, and we leaned our foreheads against each other and the both of us huffed and puffed and tried to get back to a normal breathing rate.

Finally turning to look around the room, I couldn't see Henrik, instead noticing Hugh sitting in Sterling's lap, their mouths joined, arms and legs akimbo, two humans trying to be as physically close as they could, chest to chest.

Hugh had taken his shirt off, or maybe somebody had slipped it off of him in a pique of romantic fervor.

His skin showed his age, much like mine did and would continue to do. Where once was smoothness were now tiny lines, little roadmaps of a life spent living and skin getting slightly slacker and older.

Sterling's hands were slowly caressing that skin.

And, what a surprise!

Hugh had tan lines.

I felt a locomotive run straight over my soul at the sight of it.

Hugh had tan lines, just like a woman would.

He had the unmistakable lines of a bra on his back, or the top of a bikini if nothing else. I'd seen it before, of course, and while my mind immediately searched for a logical purely-heterosexual reason for it, there was none to be found.

Henrik came back into the room, from the kitchen presumably, and smiled like a game-show winner at the sights before him. Kent and I, ensconced in a hug, each of us mindlessly caressing the other's body, and Hugh and Sterling making out, with Hugh half naked.

I could feel his emotional reactions, by the look on his face. He was unqualified in his joy, unrepentant in his happiness, and based upon the bulge in his trousers, unparalleled in his excitement.

Which changed, all of a sudden, as a different look came upon him. A look of realization.

He looked at his watch.

"Guys," he said, "it's almost midnight, and I have to call it a night."

Kent looked over at him with concern.

"What? We're just getting started!"

Henrik nodded, and they shared a look, something two people who'd known each other for years would do, and then Kent sighed, which I could feel in his body, and then he begrudgingly nodded as well.

"I guess we started later than normal, didn't we?" he asked, perhaps rhetorically, because Henrik briefly looked at my face and back again, and then nodded his reply.

Was I the cause of the late start? I asked myself. The new guy, having to be led slowly and gently into the fun stuff?

"We're up really early tomorrow," Henrik said, "Debbie's got an ophthalmologists appointment at eight and then we're running a bunch of errands."

Sterling and Hugh stopped kissing, with Sterling bending his neck to look back and up at Henrik.

"Isn't her cataract surgery soon?" he asked.

Henrik nodded. "Next week, and she's completely nervous about it. The closer we get to it, the more crazy she becomes."

"I've had both my eyes done," I offered, and everyone looked at me, "so I'd be happy to talk to her, if you want, and tell her how easy it is."

The smile that came upon his face warmed my heart. He was genuinely grateful and pleased.

"That would be wonderful," he whispered, and I felt awash in positive feelings, most of which he was sending towards me with his smile.

I couldn't stop a yawn, which made Hugh yawn as well, which got the others yawning, like a chain reaction, and even though most of me didn't want to slip out of his hug, I managed to extricate myself from Kent, finding just enough energy to plop myself down on a chair again, reaching out to hold onto the game table with both hands, feeling so light-headed and whimsical that it made me worry I might fall over.

My heart was beating like a racehorse.

My lungs hadn't had a workout like this in donkey's years.

Practicing my breathing routine, it couldn't have been more than a minute or two, and I looked up to the room, and they were all looking at me, every one of them smiling.

"Perhaps," Sterling said, "now's a good time to call her a night. It's late, and besides," and he paused, "maybe we should give Bill some time and space to process everything."

As excited as I was, as erect as I was, it struck me that he was right on both counts. It was late, and I probably did need a break.

At the door, everybody hugged and kissed everybody, although Kent and Sterling's kiss seemed reserved in a way. If they worried about how I was taking all these new things, they needn't have. Each hug and each kiss was as wanted and desired from me as it was from them, all five of us sporting strong hard-ons.

I came close to exploding, rubbing up against a man, several times.

Kent and I walked in silence back to our respective houses. The whole time, under the occasional street light, or in the bask of particularly bright houses, we would look at each other, and grin like Cheshire cats.

The second I closed my front door, I couldn't strip off my clothes fast enough, landing on my back on the bed, and with only a few strokes my whole body clenched and spasmed and I shot out, a huge arcing stream of white-hot semen, landing on my neck, and then chest, and then another spurt, frosting my left nipple and downwards, and then two more little spurts, pooling at the base of my erection.

And on my fingers.

I'd never done it.

I'd contemplated it, more than once.

More than a thousand times.

But I'd never done it.

I'd never tasted my own ejaculate.

I was fifty-seven years old, for all intents and purposes divorced, with far fewer sexual experiences in my life than a person my age should have had, owing to a mostly-nonsexual marriage, and I'd never actually eaten any of my own cum.

Inside the master bedroom of unit number fifty-seven, I ate my own cum.

My first lick was tentative, delicately trying to touch just the tiniest nib of skin at the front of my tongue, in case that one little iota of taste disgusted me, or made me want to barf, instead finding to my glorious shock an instant delight.

It was salty, and tangy, and exotic.

It had the most intriguing taste in the world, and yet I couldn't compare it to anything I'd ever tasted before.

It was as if I'd just discovered something important, like a scientist with a new medicine.

I couldn't slurp it down fast enough. It had a consistency that varied, some of it was thicker than other parts, some of it was less vibrant in taste than others.

All of it felt magical, in a way.

Maybe all those man-on-man porn movies I'd watched weren't just fantasies, maybe some of the stuff they did, well, maybe I could do them too?

I slept the sleep of the dead.

I woke up after ten in the morning, as energized as I could remember, staggered by the feeling that I'd had a multitude of dreams, none of which I could remember, but knowing they'd all been exciting and delicious and as sexy as hell.

I woke up with a raging hard-on, and, feeling like a kid again, I slowly and rhythmically masturbated, replaying moments from last night like a highlight reel, the first time I kissed each of them, how it beat every other thrill in my life, hands down, the hugging, heart-felt and sincere, the crotch rubbing, penned-up erections seeking the sensual highs of contact.

When I finally allowed myself to explode, I almost fainted, such was the enormity, but having enough presence of mind to make sure none of my cum ran off my body to the sheets below, so I'd have all of it to enjoy in my mouth once I repowered.

It was the most exquisite breakfast I'd ever had.

Then I spent hours debating in my mind whether I'd accidentally stumbled into the sweetest situation in the world, or whether I'd gone completely and totally bat-shit insane. Kissing other men? And dreaming of other things with men? What the hell is with that?!?!?

For a while, I tried to rationalize that last night I'd simply gotten carried away, maybe even a little tipsy, in a frenzy of new-found friends and new-found delights.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Except none of that kind of thinking would erase the hard-on that I had that now seemed perpetual, as if it would never go away, or the intensity those exploratory actions with the men of the club had created in me, possibly burning themselves directly onto the double-helix of my genes.

Was it a one-time thing? Or will I go again, if invited again, knowing what I know will surely happen?

I bounced back and forth, in my mind, a battle of struggling emotions.

Yes, I enjoyed it, the kissing and hugging, with other men, in a totally-never-been-done-before way. No, it's not 'normal', as I knew the word and concept. Yes, I can't remember a time in fifty-seven years when my soul filled with rapture like that, inspired by these new male friends. No, I've no idea if that's the extent of their 'play', or whether they dare to go further.

Yes, I'm pretty sure they'll invite me again.

And no, I don't know whether to say yes or no.

It was just after one in the afternoon when my doorbell rang.

Hugh was stopping by, to say hello.

His eyes were as clear blue as a mountain lake, and the smile he wore was as genuine and affectionate as I'd seen in all my days.

I welcomed him in.

Closing the door, I turned, and he was standing right there.

A respectful man, he was waiting for me to react, but the flirty grin and the shining eyes told me everything, plainly. Behind closed doors, members of the Brandywine Estates Scrabble Club showed each other love and affection as often as they could, that much was obvious, and he was hoping like hell that they hadn't scared me off last night.

He was giving me my space. He was letting me make whatever move I wanted to make.

I chose not to overthink it, because one of my two options was to deny myself the warmth of a human body next to mine, and the indescribable rapture of a passionate kiss, things I'd been without for almost my entire adult life.

One step was all it took for me to explain to him that I was all in, because I wanted to be hugged again. I wanted to be kissed again. I wanted to feel those emotions again, as brightly and vividly as I'd felt them last night.

My kiss alone made him mewl out a moan, long and languid, and the second our bodies came together we both started grinding our erections into each other.

Kissing Hugh was as welcome as a soft feather on the skin, or a gentle light rain on a scorching hot day.

When we came up for air, lots of minutes later, I slipped my hand into his, and we slinked our fingers together, and I led him to the patio, offering him coffee or wine, the both of us choosing the vino, before settling done onto my patio lounger chairs, leaning back, side by side.

"So I guess this means you'll be attending our future games?" he asked, a knowing tone to his voice, and we turned our heads to look at each other, the both of us waiting a few seconds before bursting into giggles.

"Lordy lordy," I breathed out, "I honestly can't remember a better evening, or more fun. I mean," and I paused, "after the shock of what was happening wore off. There hasn't been a single other thought in my head since last night, except, well, except last night. It was so unexpected, and so eye-opening."

Hugh grinned.

"How many times have you jerked off today?"

And I thought, he knows! He knows exactly what I'm going through.

"Three times."

He nodded, because he'd gotten the t-shirt, as they say.

"And, well, but, but then I think, but, hell..." and then I struggled for the words I wanted to say.

"But, hell, it's all so gay?" he asked, almost daring me in a way, before taking another sip of his wine, his eyes never leaving mine.

I gazed at him, and turned a little red, embarrassed that he was right.

"Yes," I admitted.

Closing his eyes briefly, he opened them again, wordlessly telling me he understood.

"Been there, done that," he bragged, and took another sip. "I remember my first time," and his voice got quieter, his words slower, "I was beyond shocked, it was beyond insanity. I kept thinking, no, it's not right, it's not normal, it's not the way we're supposed to live, according to a large amount of so-called loving people on this planet," and he paused, to smile, a long time, before continuing with the biggest grin I'd seen yet, "but it was sooooooo good," and he grinned, "like, sooooo good, soooooo bloody good. So inspiring, so exciting, so positively mind-blowing, learning about what real passion is, and real romance."

Then he said nothing, for at least thirty seconds.

"And real sex."

Which, to be honest, was a whole new level of wow for me.

I started to think, to justify, that what I'd done last night wasn't sex, couldn't possibly be construed as sex, wouldn't meet anybody's definition of sex, and in an accusatory world, I was probably safe.

Then I thought: safe from what?

Safe from ridicule? To hell with them that might try! The obvious reality was that I'd enjoyed it, all of it, tremendously.

Safe from harassment, and vitriol? To hell with them even more.

Hugh had said the magic word, which was 'sex', and made me realize that there was more to the Scrabble club than just affection. Then I remembered Kent telling Henrik that he had the best ass, and instant zips of images from porn assaulted me again, oral sex between men, and rigid hard cocks going into anuses, anal sex, the forbidden taboo.

It all scared the daylights out of me.

At the same time, though, it all engendered a yearning I'd never known I had, or perhaps one I'd successfully repressed my whole life, for that existence of pure passion that seemed throughout my marriage as wishful thinking, an unattainable paradise.

"How'd you start?" I asked, and Hugh reminisced, when he and Sterling had first met, just after Hugh and his wife moved in, about eight, nine years ago. He talked about his life, and his marriage at the time, and told a story that was in many ways similar to mine, decades of trying to be satisfied with the blessings he had, but always knowing there was something more out there, something more affirming, more substantial, more exotic and erotic and just plain old sexual, the decades-long feelings of shame that it was the gay kind of sexual reminding me of my own.

He talked about the months and months he went through trying to send Sterling signals, because he'd felt an instant attraction, but not knowing how to, working against years of societal repression, and yet, as it turns out, the both of them knowing there was something 'there' there, between the two of them, until the one fateful day Hugh was, in his words, being his 'naughty self', and how Sterling had innocently discovered it.

"What do you mean by your 'naughty self'?" I asked.

Hugh smiled, and his face went a little red.

"I hope you won't think of me as weird," he whispered, and when I shook my head no, that I wouldn't, ever, he sighed and confessed, "but my 'naughty self' is named Barbara."

I couldn't help my reaction.

"Barbara?"

He nodded, with a mixture of pride and possible embarrassment on his face.

"For my entire life I've enjoyed cross-dressing. Transvestism. Since I was a kid. I fell in love with fashion, with feminine fashion, as early as I could remember, always wondering why the girls got to wear such beautiful things and us boys didn't," and he paused, to take a long breath, "but," and he paused again, "it's equally true that for me, it's never been just about the clothes, although that's a huge part of it, of course. No, the truth is, for me, well, dressing, it always released this part of me, this inner part of me, a secret part of me, that's there, even if I can it turn off when real life is around. It's hard to explain. I knew, even if I didn't understand why, but I knew that real life meant that I couldn't enjoy the clothes, the softness, the whole shebang, so it became the deep dark secret of my existence. I played the straight and narrow, like the world expected of me, all the way. Girls, dating, marriage, kids, mortgages, grandkids, the works. And don't get me wrong, those things were all wonderful, they are all wonderful, I wouldn't change them for the world. The truth, though, is that none of that so-called normal life, as good as it was, ever fully satisfied the burning in my soul. So I spent a lifetime dressing up in those rare private moments when I could get away with it. I snuck around, behind everybody's back. I'd make a big show of it when my wife or my kids were doing stuff, outside the house, playing up the whole, okay, gee, I'll be the responsible one and make the sacrifice and stay home and feed the cat and water the plants. So I'd let them go out and do their things, whether it was just for a couple of hours of for days, and then I'd secretly wallow in the greatest joy of the world when they weren't around."

I could see the mixture of pleasure and disappointment on his face. Those times were obviously important to him, and yet there was a guilt that he couldn't have shared it with his closest loved ones.

"In many ways, when I'm Barbara I feel more complete. More at peace with the world. I feel softer, and sweeter, and, well, I feel sexier."

I was struck by a wave of envy for him.

"I feel sexy. I never felt sexy with my wife, or with women before her, but dressed as Barbara, being Barbara, I feel sexy."

Then his voice got softer, and quieter.

"It took me almost twenty years to admit to myself that my dressing, my love of feminine clothes and such, wasn't just about the clothes."

Hugh stopped to take a sip of his wine.

"How do you mean?" I asked.

He smiled.

"After twenty years of secretly exploring those female fantasies, revelling in the rare moments when I could wear the sexiest clothes known to mankind, the other feelings I'd had my whole life, the ones that accompanied dressing up," and he looked at me with the most sublime happiness, "the ones that included romance and sexuality," and his look changed to a very intense one, "the feelings about men, and how I wanted, no, needed to be involved romantically and sexually with men, well they couldn't be contained anymore. I was consumed by my desires. They became like an addiction."

Those were feelings that I was beginning to understand, based on last night alone, never mind my years of fantasies.

Hugh's eyes seemed to travel far away, like he was thinking of something in the past.

"I went through decades convinced that I was a freak, or that there was something wrong with me, upstairs," and he pointed to his head, "and then Cindy, my wife, got her diagnosis."

I watched his eyes fill with tears.

"I know this sounds funny to some people," he said, some emotion in his voice, "but she got lucky, in ways. The cancer took her quickly, so she didn't suffer for too long. You see some folks, they hang on for years, slowly wilting away, enduring untold amounts of pain."

I knew what he meant. We'd all seen it, in this world of ours.

"The day before she passed," he breathed out, a single tear running down his cheek, "the kids and grandkids were outside of the room in the hospice, and she suddenly opened her eyes, and looked at me, which she hadn't done for days, so it shocked me, and then she smiled, like, quite possibly the biggest smile I may have ever seen on her, ever, and it took all the strength she had in her weak body to reach over and hold my hand," and two more tears ran down his face, one from each eye, "and she found the strength to speak, which she hadn't done in a long time, and I tried to shush her as she started, you know, to save her strength, but she had to say the words, so I leaned closer to her, because her voice was so weak, and she looked at me, with nothing but love on her face, and she confessed that she knew about my dressing up, for all those years, and that when she was gone, she expected me, she demanded of me, that I follow my dreams."

"She said that?" I asked, massively impressed by a woman I'd never met.

"Her exact words were, "find your love."

We sat in silence for a few moments.

"Months after she'd passed, I forgot to close the drapes all the way in the living room, and Sterling was walking by, totally coincidental, and he happened to look over and boom, through the front window, he sees me. Well, he sees Barbara. The next thing I know, he's knocking on my door, whispering that he knows what I'm doing and he wants me to let him in. It turns out, he'd been getting what he called 'vibes' from me, for months, years maybe, always making him want to act on it, but he could never find the courage, and before either of us knew what was happening we were kissing, in each other's arms."

He paused for a few seconds.

"And then we did a whole bunch of other things too."

I gave him the look, that I wanted him to continue talking, because a part of me needed to know what those other things were.

"And we discovered, in one crazy afternoon, that we were of like minds, when it came to the subject. We both had lived normal lives full of quiet desperation, the both of us never ungrateful for the straight stuff, the hetero thing, our marriages, our kids, and so on, but the both of us needing an outlet for our true desires."

He stopped, and stared at me, intently.

"Our gay desires. Our desires for other men. Do you know what I mean?"

Every second of last night rolled through my brain, like a tank going through a city's streets, crushing any small resistance it might find.

"I do now, yes."

Hugh reached over and we held hands again.

"Look," he said, turning his body slightly towards me, "not everybody is the same. Not everybody wants or needs each and every thing off the menu, you know? The Scrabble Club is all about men discretely following their urges, to as small or great a measure as they see fit, on any given night. No one is under any obligation to do anything they don't want to."

He gave me the look, like he was hoping desperately that I understood what he was getting at.

"There's no minimum levels of participation?" I asked, trying to be diplomatic.

Hugh laughed.

"Hell no. Of course not. It's all about the pleasures. On any given night, any of us can opt out of anything, depending on how we feel."

I had to ask.

"And by anything, you mean...?"

He gazed at me, suddenly invigorated.

"I mean if you don't feel like kissing someone, you don't. If you don't feel like going further, let's say, like, well, sucking someone's cock, as an example, you don't."

And like the clouds parting and the sun suddenly shining through, the whole 'sex' thing became the subject.

"And," he continued, "if you don't feel like making love, having sex, doing the nasty, whatever your favorite expression is, whether you're a top or a bottom or a switch, then you don't. Simple as that."

Then he looked at me, with a curious, questioning look on his face.

"I'm sorry," he breathed out, "I forget that you're new at this," and he paused, grinning, "do you even know what those words mean?"

I squeezed at his fingers, still intertwined with mine.

"I'm pretty sure I know what 'top' and 'bottom' means, and by simple deduction I think I can figure out what 'switch' means."

Hugh grinned, from ear to ear.

"Truth is, Ian is our only switch, and even at that he's almost exclusively a top. He only bottoms once in a blue moon. I've only seen it maybe twice. It's just a rare and occasional itch he gets. Otherwise, he's all top. Believe me."

And then his grin went away, and he got the most serious look on his face.

"So the burning question those of us in the club are asking is which of those options might Bill be?"

I had to laugh, just to release the nuclear-reactor-size ball of energy coursing through my veins.

"Believe me," I blurted out, "Bill is asking the same question."

Hugh studied my face for a few moments.

"And which way is the jury leaning?"

For some reason, I immediately looked down to my own lap, my obvious erection tenting my slacks.

"To the left," I said, a little surprise in my voice at my own audacity, for dropping such an overtly sexual innuendo.

Hugh laughed.

"I can see that. I've been seeing that since I walked in the door."

Now I laughed.

"It's been that way non-stop since I woke up. I can't remember ever being like this, even back in high school."

Hugh laughed again, a rollicking laugh.

"Have we unleashed the lion?" he asked, proud of himself.

I wriggled in my lounger.

"I can't get over it," I almost giggled out, "I've never been hornier in my life! Every thought, every movement, regardless of what I'm doing, everything is permeated with, well, sex. Sex! And of course that means all the things associated with sex, like the romance and the passion and the intimacy and the affection. All of it. Which is stunning me."

Hugh smiled, as if he knew what I was talking about.

"From time to time in my life, I'd imagined a world where people lived on that kind of a level, you know? A place where everyone was openly and proudly physical, when the muse struck them, taking advantage of every opportunity for fun, consenting adults living that, I don't know if this is the right word, but living that hedonistic philosophy."

"Live for the moment," he suggested, and I nodded, and said the first thing that entered my mind.

"Love the one you're with."

Hugh's smile lessened somewhat, until it was what I would describe as wry.

"Even if it's another man?"

"Yes," I said, immediately, my truth out there.

He squeezed my hand hard.

"Can I ask you a question?" I said.

He smiled and said yes.

"If you were home right now, would you, you know, would you be Barbara?"

His eyes flashed, like he was thrilled to have been asked.

"Why do you ask?"

I blushed a little bit.

"Last night, just at the end, you were sitting in Sterling's lap, and you had your shirt off, and, well, I saw tan lines."

Hugh couldn't contain his giggle.

"There's hardly anything sexier, to me, than laying out in my back yard, enjoying a mojito while wearing a bikini."

I sat there imagining him with a bikini on, and when his face burst out into a huge grin, I knew that he knew exactly what I was thinking.

"Would you like to meet Barbara?" he asked, quietly, but with huge throaty whispery undertones.

In my fifty-seven years, I could never have imagined that I would be asked such a question, ever. EVER. I would never have thought it possible, or conceivable. I would have laughed, to myself at least, thinking it was merely the stuff of sexual fantasies, and never happened in real life.

Now I had it, right in front of me.

"I would love to," I answered, echoing his subdued volume.

He smiled, from ear to ear, and slinked back the last of his wine.

"Eight o'clock? My place?"

When we hugged and kissed goodbye, inside my front door, I was overcome with giddiness, practically swooning in his arms, taken away with euphoria, the both of us slowly grinding our pelvises together, the push of his erection against mine sending me on a slow rocket launch countdown of explosion, but never getting to the final ten seconds, on purpose, delighting in the body-wracking shivers of excitement that rose and kept rising, the both of us consumed with the softness of our kisses.

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking on air.

At eight o'clock, I rang the doorbell.

What I saw, upon closing the door behind me, took my breath away.

Barbara.

Wavy brunette hair fell onto her shoulders, tendrils almost wrapping themselves up and under her jaw, barely exposing shiny gold heart-shaped earrings, while the clearest blue eyes shone at me under pencil-thin eyebrows, looking almost drawn-on, with thick lashes, a subtle reddish hue to her lids, the rosiest of cheekbones and the sluttiest-red of lipstick on a smile that was delicate and wicked at the same time.

Her cocktail dress was a dark blue, and clingy, the material silky and looking almost wet, with a plunging neckline that highlighted two very voluptuous breasts, the valley of cleavage, something I'd always considered the sexiest part of a woman's body, bare and deep.

She had breasts!!!!!

Dipping just past her crotch, her dress barely covered the top of her stockings, one of the clasps visible, which meant a garter belt, which made me shiver inside. That part of my brain that deals with logic immediately reasoned that it would no doubt match her panties, and her bra, which somehow I knew would be lacy and frilly and whisper-thin.

Long legs led to dark high-heels, with long thin heels.

The air around her wafted in a gentle fragrance, flowery and light.

In just the briefest of glimpses, she struck me as the epitome of female sensuality, of womanly beauty, perhaps even the textbook definition of the word 'feminine'.

Did she have an hourglass figure? No, she didn't. No one would ever confuse her with a high-fashion runway model, someone lithe and lean, fitting into a size-two dress. She was, after all, a man, without the natural curves from the bust to the hips.

She was a man who stood before me, and yet she looked more feminine and womanly than most of the natural-born women in the complex, at least the ones I'd met so far.

She was a man, and yet she had breasts!

She saw my stares, and told me it was a body sleeve she put on, like a vest, and pointed out the neckline of it, and even though she'd put a little makeup on, to try to hide the ridge, it was there, plain as day, if you knew what you were looking for.

I asked her questions about it. It's weight, how it feels to wear it, and do they jiggle like real breasts? Her answers were quick and precise and yes, in the case of jiggling, and I decided that no matter the price, it was worth it, just to complete the female look.

And I couldn't fathom how any creature could exude all the attraction of a lady more. It struck me, like a slap, that it's not just the clothes and the makeup and the vest that therefore makes the woman. There was a fire in her eyes, and a glowing energy emanating from her that just screamed out 'FEMININE'. It filled the room, like a lighthouse lantern, all the thousands of watts glowing in every direction.

She opened her arms to me, and as she did I noticed the gaudy rings on some of her fingers and the bracelets and bangles on her wrists, and that her nails were painted a dark red, and finally the gold necklace she wore, which shimmered in the light of the foyer.

Everything about her captivated me.

Everything about her appearance, her demeanour, her unspoken furnace-like temperature, all of it burning in the name of passion and lust, it drowned me.

I stood in awe, in abject reverence of her.

Her beauty, yes, but perhaps more importantly, her freedom.

She'd cast away the chains of our forced-moral society. She'd blasted a hole through the walls of conformity, big enough to drive a bus through. She was living her truth, no holds-barred, abject in her pursuit of the pleasure of her life.

She was everything I'd imagined, all those years, that free-spirited, hedonistic journey through time I'd always sighed about and thought not possible.

She enthralled me.

In that moment, it struck me like a lightning bolt while holding a four-iron.

More than anything else in the world, I wanted to be like that.

More than anything else in the known universe, I wanted that.

I wanted to be as free.

I wanted to be as open and proud of my desires.

I wanted to be her.

Our kiss was, in a word, exquisite.

It was as if all the masculine aspects of Hugh had somehow been switched off, or ignored, except for the playful parts, allowing his feminine aspects to take over and shine through. There was a softness to him, in his touch and his kiss, as if the delicacy of femininity had taken over him.

I wondered if perhaps everyone has both a male and female spirit inside them, the vast majority of people never knowing it or allowing one of them to be seen. Perhaps all of us have the chance to live both, but few are ever knowledgeable enough or brave enough.

The lightning bolt hit my four-iron again.

I broke our kiss, and looked her in the eyes.

"Can I dress up too?"

For the next hour, my entirety floated on a magic carpet ride, one surreal moment after another, as Barbara led me to her master bedroom suite, and threw open four different closet doors, each space filled with feminine clothes on hangars and drawer after drawer of accessories, including four large drawers that held nothing but lingerie.

I must have had the biggest look of awe on my face, because she giggled, and said, apologetically, "they're not all mine," and then pointed at the closet nearest me, "those are Henrik's clothes, which, for obvious reasons he can't store at his place," and the biggest light bulb in the world came on over my head and it made sense to me. Everything, from the clandestine meeting in the library to the way he moved and acted at Scrabble, I could almost see him as the feminine him.

"Let's get you ready," Barbara grinned.

Freshly showered and already hairless, she waived off the customary wash and depilatory cream, and sat me down at a vanity, the counter literally covered in tubes and jars and brushes. Talking me through everything, and with the most experienced of touches, she applied a very light foundation all over and then began working on specific areas, eyebrows, eyelids, lashes, blush on cheeks, lipstick and gloss. Rummaging through a small box, she pulled out a handful of earrings, clip-ons, and found a matching pair of silver diamonds, clamping them on to my ears.

I didn't have holes in my lobes.

The idea that I should change that washed through me.

When I looked in the mirror, I had to stop myself from hyperventilating. It was as if I'd posed for a portrait artist, and they'd painted me as a woman. My eyes sparkled, my smile was like a quasar, and my lips were so big and red that I wanted to kiss myself, forever.

And I loved it. I loved it more than any other picture of me I'd ever seen.

Was I passable? Of course not! I wasn't fooling anybody, least of all myself, that I was somehow magically transformed into a beauty, or into someone no one else would think was a man.

But my god, I was the most feminine me, the most womanly me that I could imagine. It was stunning.

"Nails?" she asked, and when I nodded yes automatically, she grabbed a bright pinkish-red color and did both of my hands in a matter of moments, showing off her experience.

"Toes?" she asked, grinning, and I nodded again, and after stuffing those little foam thingies between my lower digits, she breezed through that as well.

While I waited for everything to dry, she busied herself pulling out lingerie from drawers, showing them to me, asking me which ones I liked, bra and panty combinations, a select few with matching garter belts, which I knew she was wearing and which made my heart sing just thinking about, so I chose the charcoal grey set, with the sexiest lace trim, including the cups of the bra, and after rifling through a different drawer she came up with the matching stockings.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, can prepare you for the reaction the millions of nerve endings just under the surface of your skin give you as you slide silk from your pointed painted toes and around your foot and then all the way up your legs, each cloud-like fiber of the material sending the purest, most exquisite pulses of tantalization through your core.

I fell in love with myself, for perhaps the first time in my life, when I finally stood and looked at my reflection in her tall mirror, rapt with my visage, so sexy, so daring, so feminine, wearing intimate clothes that touched my skin in the silkiest of ways, so different from men's clothes, elating me, and I couldn't take my eyes away.

Barbara came up from behind me at one point and had to whisper out a loud, "PSST!" to get my attention, and I turned and saw she had a wig in each of her hands. One was blonde, short at the back with ringlets in the front, the other a flaming red mane, thick and swept back, falling down to what I surmised would be mid-back level.

I went with the fiery red.

Just before I put it on, she stopped me, and walked me to the biggest of the closets, sweeping hangars here and there with her arm to separate a group of about twenty, all dresses, for cocktail parties or date nights, or formal events.

In some ways, I felt like a junkie, being offered multiple different drugs, all of which were guaranteed to get me as high as I've ever been, but having to decide on just one.

In the end, there was really no choice.

Like a beacon, the snow-white sleeveless LBD with the plunging neckline and the asymmetric belt that helped with the impression of hips stole my attention, the contrast with the lingerie pleasing me, so I wriggled into it, and slid it up my body, and after I wriggled the straps over my shoulders, Barbara stepped in behind me and zipped me up.

When I looked in the mirror again, with her over my shoulder, we both stood silently and gaped in awe.

She seemed to be transfixed, her lips slightly open, as if she was saying the quietest of "oooooh's", and I had the same look.

While I snugged the wig onto my head, making tiny adjustments of the cap to get it level, she eased out a shoe rack, on little extension arms from the closet, full of pairs of high heels, and after confirming that my feet were more or less the same size as hers, she hemmed and hawed and pretended to be torn and then reached for the pair I'd immediately chosen in my mind, the shiniest, blackest, pointiest stilettos ever made, although with only three inches or so of heel.

They fit like a glove, albeit a really tight one.

I could have easily broken an ankle trying to walk, without her support, by my side.

By the time we got to her living room, I was getting the hang of the shoes. From the first step, I just automatically strutted, swinging my hips, emulating the exaggerated walk of women, because that's exactly what my soul wanted to walk like. Even if I was overdoing it, even if it was grossly cliché, it didn't matter how it looked to anyone else.

All I knew is I wanted to strut like the proudest dame there is.

We sipped wine, standing shoulder to shoulder by the mantle over her fireplace hearth, some very pleasant but general conversation, until she'd waited what she thought was the appropriate amount of time, letting me absorb all the shocks, before asking me, in a sultry quiet voice, how I felt.

"I feel like I've been reborn," I answered, truthfully.

"No regrets?"

"OH MY GOD, NO!" I answered, more euphoric than at any time in my fifty-seven years, "I just wish I'd known about this side of myself years ago. Think of all the pleasure I've missed out on!"

Barbara stepped closer to me, so our fronts were barely touching.

"I'd rather think about all the pleasure you're not going to miss out on, going forward."

And so began the lesbian loving that only two cross-dressers can do. There was the gentleness and tenderness usually associated more with women, to be sure, but there was a huge underlying fierceness about our movements too, like hard steel wrapped in the softest velvet, some of our masculine qualities not dormant.

All so new to me, these sensual and sexual acts with another man, I surprised the both of us with how I took to it like a duck to water. Every movement, every touch, every kiss, every lick, every caress, everything felt the exact opposite of 'queer'.

To me, it was life at its most natural.

I was finally home.

Barbara took the lead, being the veteran, and when she pulled my dress and bra cup away from my nipples and suckled me, I moaned out so loudly I worried her neighbors would hear, which made her giggle, and when she bit my left nipple I yelped out a mini-scream.

For fifty-seven years I'd never had the chance to learn just how erotic it felt to have my nipples sucked and licked, and bitten. None, and I mean none of the women I'd been with, even the one I married, had ever spent even a second providing me with that knowledge, or that pleasure, and for a second or two I rued them all, and rued all those years not knowing and not experiencing, until a very soft feminine voice in my soul told me to ignore the past, and deal with the present and the future instead.

My future, just like my present, would have lots of nipple play. That much I swore to the universe.

When she fished my erection out of my panties, staring me in the eyes, and took me into her mouth, the moan that oozed out of my lungs was low in register and needy in tone and spurred her on.

My ex had never made oral love to me. She was horrified by the very thought of it. She called it the most disgusting thing in the world.

Of the several women I'd slept with before her, a couple had sucked me off, and at the time I'd thought them both very good at it.

Barbara was a consummate professional, an artist unparalleled, as skilled a craftsperson as could be found on the planet. She put those genetic women to shame.

She built me up and built me up and built me up, I was writhing and mewling and begging her to let me cum, until with a grin on her lips, wrapped tightly around my six-inch thin penis, her tongue grazed the underside of my helmet in a rapid-fire fusillade, and I lost all control.

I came harder than I thought conceivable.

She swallowed my entire output, save for one big glob of my own semen, which I felt when her lips touched mine afterward, opening my mouth automatically, and letting her deposit a drip of my own spunk with her tongue.

After she touched up her lipstick, we kissed again, in long slow clutches, until I wriggled out of her arms and onto my knees on the floor, sliding my hands up her stockinged legs, soft and silky, until I felt the heat of her groin and my fingers touched panty, a short thick lump inside them.

She whispered that I didn't have to, that this was all so new to me and there was no shame in taking things slowly.

I breathed out that she'd have to use the entire police force to stop me.

I'd never seen anything as beautiful.

I marvelled at her uncircumcised cock, staring at it from all angles while I slowly gripped and rubbed her, a gentle hand job, until my mouth watered so much it was either swallow or create a small puddle on her living room carpet, so I gently peeled back her foreskin, her shiny purple head glimmering in the available light, already wet with her own juices, opened my painted lips, and swallowed the head whole.

If I could have, I would have moaned twice as loud as she did, which was considerable, with my lips sealed around her, kissing her rolled-back foreskin while my cheeks steadily pulled at her, my tongue bathing her helmet, around and around, because this newly-discovered liberated passion just flat-out screamed at me that this was the way to orally love a cock, that this was how to perform fellatio. A little voice in my soul informed me and guided me, allowing me to show myself, and her, what pleasure was, for the both of us. Perhaps it was because I was a man, and had a penis of my own, I'm not sure. All I knew was that everything I did felt normal, unplanned, and entirely perfect.

I didn't have to think about anything. Every movement, every ministration with my lips and tongue and palette, every suckle, every swallow from the steady stream of pre-cum, was as natural as breathing.

All those years of watching porn, wondering, but never pursuing, always negatively presuming it wouldn't happen, they all came at me, image after image of oral love, all of them playing out in real time, because I loved it, deep down, and wanted it. I needed it. Not just now, but every second of every day for the rest of eternity.

I was, I knew, without shame or embarrassment, right there in her living room, dressed as a woman, now a cocksucker for life.

How could any act of love be more joyful?

Soon enough I'd slurped and glugged all of her five-or-so thick inches inside me, to the back of my throat but not forcing anything open, no gag reflex threatening, and between her seeps of salty goodness and my salivary glands working overtime she was wet and I was wet and she started bucking her hips and I rode along with the movements and before either of us knew it she was groaning and gasping and filling my mouth with her seed.

It was warm! It was slippery! It had substance, and tang, my mouth filling with such strong hints of a salty nuttiness, and my first swallow almost made me orgasm again, hard once anew so soon after cumming myself, because the syrupy thickness of her cream coated me all the way down to my tummy, almost like a cough medicine, but slimier.

It was as delicious a nectar as I'd ever had.

Barbara and I cuddled, on her sofa, for almost an hour, with neither of us speaking. We simply existed for each other, and with each other, bodies squeezed tightly together, affectionate caresses and soft tender pecks from yearning lips our sole activities.

Out of the blue, she made us both giggle.

"Well, I can't very well call you Bill anymore."

We were both hard again, and had been the whole time, each of us slowly stroking the other, unhurried, with no goal in mind except delivering sensuous pleasure, and I thought I could stay like this for hours.

"Olivia," I said. "I've always loved the name Olivia."

She smiled at me, warmly, and nodded.

"Olivia, it's so wonderful to make your acquaintance."

We kissed the kiss of dreams, for about two more hours.

Then she looked at me, a question on her mind.

"Would you like to fuck me?" she asked, her ardor definitely coloring her matter-of-fact tone, "is that something you might be into? Or," and she paused, "are you, like me, a total bottom? We never did pin that down this afternoon."

Before I could answer, she continued.

"Not that you have to decide right now, or ever. It's up to you, at any time, any given day or night. Whatever your heart desires."

Then her smile waned, and her eyes got a more serious look.

"Whatever Olivia wants."

I confessed to two things, right off the top. The first was that, as a top with women, I'd always been a disappointment, even when they pretended I wasn't. I'd never had the ability to last very long, and while I wasn't a four-humps-you're-done kind of lover, I wasn't a whole lot more than that, truth be told.

She nodded intently, like she knew what I was talking about, and told me she'd been the same.

My second confession was that I'd always wondered what it would be like, to have anal sex, to stick my erection in someone's bum.

She smiled, and tilted her head slightly.

"Well, there's no time like the present."

I tried, in that moment, to be excited by that idea.

"But," I whispered, "if I'm being honest, really honest with myself, after a lifetime of fantasies and after all that's happened to me in the last couple of days, the images I'm seeing in my head, the desires they're highlighting," and I shrugged, "they're all entirely about being, you know, on the bottom. The one getting made love to, and not the other way around. It just seems to me like I haven't given the whole 'being the top' thing a moment's consideration, which is telling me that it's not something I'm naturally yearning to do. Does that make sense?"

Barbara hugged me better than anybody has ever hugged me. Her elation, at my confessions, was as proud as proud can be.

"Welcome to the sisterhood," she said, just before kissing me, softer than a breeze.

I looked at her, earnestly.

"But, aren't you disappointed? Weren't you hoping to get laid by me tonight?" I asked, and she shook her head gently.

"Two things," she said, and then smiled, "first is that I'm ALWAYS hoping to get laid, because Barbara is, more or less, an insatiable slut," and we both laughed, "and second, is that I never take anything for granted, or presume anything specific is going to happen. So don't worry your pretty head about it. You're a bottom, I'm a bottom. That just means that we're kindred spirits, that's all. You can't ask someone to be what they're not."

We kissed some more.

"Besides," she said, pulling her sticky lips off of mine, "I've got plenty of toys to play with, and fill myself with."

"Do they hurt?"

She saw the hesitancy on my face, and kissed me.

"You're nervous about it, aren't you?"

I nodded, without fear of being mocked.

"The truth," she admitted, "is yes, they can hurt. It can hurt. Anal can hurt a whole lot, especially if you're not properly prepared, and by prepared I mean lubed and spread, physically and, most importantly, mentally ready."

Before I could ask, she told me.

"Any man who just rams himself inside you is an asshole. A complete jerk. It's rape, more or less, in my mind. We have to be warmed up. Your anus is a ring, basically, that stretches, well, which can be convinced to stretch out, to accommodate big cocks, if your lover knows what he's doing, which is what we want, but it takes patience and time and consideration. Anal sex can be the most pleasurable act, and by the most, I mean THE most. You've no idea, yet," and she paused and smiled at the word 'yet', "how laying under a man, being penetrated by his cock, scraping against your prostate, being the object of his virile desires, how all of that can literally give you the biggest and best cums of your life. The best, of all time."

Again, I flashed on images from porn that I'd seen over the years. Men and women both, having anal, the looks of intensity and strenuous vigor seemingly in a class by themselves, as if the activity was harrowing, and daunting, and challenging, always making me question their decisions.

And again, I reasoned, for not the thousandth time, that there must be something good about it that inspired them to go through with it.

"We have to clean ourselves out too," she added, "have you ever had an enema?", and when I shook my head 'no', she guided me to her master bathroom and showed me the gear, explaining everything.

It sounded, on the face of it, a little disgusting, and yet even though she confirmed it was, it was a necessary step, for 'special' women like us.

"If," she smiled, and sighed, "if you choose to go all the way. You don't have to. There's no law, or rule. Maybe you decide you're never getting fucked, never taking a cock in your pussy. That's cool, of course. Maybe you like the dressing up, and the whole 'female' thing, but the farthest you go is sucking cock, which you've done now, and obviously you're both good at it and you enjoyed it, right?"

The smile that came upon me was vast.

"More than anything," I whispered, "Now that I've finally done it, I can't imagine a life without sucking cocks. I don't want a life without sucking cocks. It was more than I'd ever dreamed possible, more joy, more elation, and there's no way I'm not going to suck cock in the future."

Barbara nodded her agreement, her acknowledgement that the love of sucking cock was something we shared.

"So maybe you're that kind of a girl, and nothing else."

I considered her words, my cranium flooding with images of me sucking cocks, and swallowing cum. But, mixed in with them, were images of me taking cock in my ass as well, on my back, legs spread, or on my hands and knees, doggy style.

"No," I said, smiling, my voice taking on a surprised and yet revelatory tone, "I want to be fucked too. I need to make love, to take a man, to take his cock. As strong as the urge to suck cock is there," and I grinned, "and oh lordy, it's there," and we both smiled, "everything in my spirit and my soul is crying out for me to go all the way. I can't explain it, but I also can't imagine not being the complete woman for my lover, I just can't imagine it."

Barbara smiled.

"Or lovers."

Now I smiled, from ear to ear.

"Lovers. Multiple. Mmm, I like the sound of that."

Reaching over to stroke my ever-present erection, she laughed, a throaty seductive sound.

"How about some lesbo sixty-nine with your new best friend Barbara?"

I couldn't believe how exciting it was to walk towards a bed, knowing I was going to have sex.

And gay sex, at that!

What a surprise!

My whole world had turned over and upside down in just over twenty-four hours.

I waited for her, laying on my side, on her bed, while she went to her spacious bathroom, returning with a huge grin on her face, a unique wiggle in her walk, as if she was clenching something between her thighs, a short, mushroom-shaped wobbly plastic device in one hand and a small bottle of clear gel in the other.

The grin was from seeing me, her new feminine lover, my dress pulled off, out of the way, in lingerie only, my hard-on sticking out the side of the gusset of my panties.

The walk was because she'd lubed herself and slid in her favorite butt plug, and that's just the way having your ass filled makes you walk.

The rubber mushroom was for me.

As much as everything I'd done so far, the hugging and the kissing with other men, and now having gladly given oral sex to another man's cock, as much as it was all so shocking to me, so normalcy-shattering, so completely unlike anything I'd ever fantasized would actually really come true, here, the second-to-last paradigm shift began, and it was not without a serious reckoning in my mind.

The final frontier.

Anal.

After lubing me, her long fingers spiraling into my ass in a slow, thoughtful pace, opening me, making me groan into her duvet cover, the wet tip of the mushroom finally touched me, and I felt my ring open, voluntarily, wanting the contact, wanting the forced expansion, the pressure, trying to lure the plug inside, psychically willing it to penetrate me. In my whole life, the only thing that had ever happened with that tube was outbound traffic, the only exception being a yearly visit with my doctor for a prostate check.

Dressed as I was, suddenly open to the world as a lover of everything sensual and sexual between men, I couldn't wait for the intrusion. I was begging for it, in my brain. Itching for it.

Fill me, my soul screamed.

Take my virginity!

MAKE ME A WOMAN!

Those words rattled around my consciousness, echoing like in a box canyon.

I was dressed like a woman. I was awash with feelings and emotions I would have normally associated with women. So being the object of penetration, the hole in which phallic items enter, was the perfect and natural extension of all I was going through.

A noise unlike any other groaned out of me as Barbara slid the mushroom-shaped plug in, quickly at first, until the thickness of the bottom half of it began pushing at my ring in every direction, slowing down its progress, my voice reverberating in the room, a long low plaintive soul-enriching quaver, part yearning and part discomfort, the kind of sound some people might interpret as painful, or tinged with it, and that would cause them to genuinely question my well-being. The kind of sound that just screamed out, 'this is a human in considerable pain', body parts being forced into shapes they'd never felt before, all the retes of nerves in my frame reacting in shock and intense trepidation. Most people would have stopped, or retreated altogether, out of simple human consideration, out of fear of hurting someone.

But Barbara had heard those kinds of noises before. She'd moaned them too, in her lifetime, so she knew exactly what I needed, and with the deft touch of an expert, she didn't back off. She kept going, using some energy, some force, to slide the rounded bottom further, keeping up the gentle pressure, until my anal ring expanded just far enough to absorb the shape, swallowing the thickness in one go, my ring closing around the tiny disc-shaped base, clenching on it, silently sealing the plug inside me.

I WAS FULL OF COCK!

As overwhelming as every emotion I'd ever had in my life, combined, the enormity of the reality of what we were doing washed through my soul like the ocean, wave after wave after wave of surprise and an existential reckoning.

I was full of cock, albeit not a human one.

I was as full as I'd ever experienced, as I'd ever felt, the pressure radiating in all directions through my flesh, my innards pushed in ways they'd never felt before, never imagined before, groaning in one long syllable, barely aware of the mattress moving, affected by her weight as she crawled fully on, sliding her body onto her own side, wriggling and jiggling to get close to me.

When her lips wrapped around the head of my cock, sticking out of my panties, she pushed at the plug in my ass, firmly, decisively, and it rubbed something inside me that went berserk with vibrations, with tremors, and buzzes, and my whole body shook, my mouth opening in a mini-scream of elation.

She used that opportunity to flex her hips and groin, making my verbal noises change from moans and mini-screams to muffled groans, my mouth suddenly filled with her hard wet upside-down cock.

I suppose it's possible that somewhere on this blue orb in space we call Earth that some other human was having a better time than me, but it was difficult to imagine, at that moment.

Sucking cock in the most exquisite cross-dressing lesbo sixty-nine while having my ass filled could never possibly be made any better, any more satisfying, or any more thrilling.

The both of us caressed the other. The both of us pushed and pulled at the plug the other was wearing.

The both of us sucked cock, like the feminine sluts that we were, and combined with the prostate work-out the plugs were giving us, it didn't take more than a few minutes before we were both twitching, and heavy-breathing, in and out of wide-open nostrils, our mouths full, the both of us ramping up for a major explosion, mine coming first, a volley of cum erupting from within me, moments before Barbara did the same, two hungry and thirsty 'gurls', as I'd seen them described on-line, enjoying the cum cocktail of the ages.

Later, after cleaning up, which is far more laborious than I'd imagined, what with makeup removers and fingernail polish remover and all the steps needed to go from womanly back to boring old men, she sent me home with some gifts.

A half-dozen different pairs of panties, that I promised I'd replace as soon as I got some sleep, and as soon as a retail store opened in the morning in town, as well as two different shades of lipstick, for the private moments when I was safely alone at home, and the mushroom-shaped butt plug, cleaned of course, along with a ten inch monster dildo that looked about as thick as a telephone pole, which she advised me to begin working with, promising me that it would take a lot of practice before I could ever get that much cock in me, if ever.

Halfway home, in the dark of night, I was so overcome with joy and giddiness and elation, I slipped off my shoes and socks, wanting to walk the rest of the way in my bare feet.

With the painted toenails.

Daring the gods to provoke one of the residents of the community to strangely be awake this late, and outside, maybe walking their little dog or something, imagining the looks on their faces when they saw their new neighbor, a fifty-seven year old man, walking with no shoes, and pink toenails, his asshole pulsing with reaction to the assault it had had earlier, affecting my gait, which was most definitely affected.

The public daring was enough to give me a raging hard-on again.

The lump in my slacks was obvious, and combined with walking like someone who'd just been fucked, which I had, in a way, I must have surely looked a sight.

My masturbation, when I got home, was immediate, and frenzied, and when I quickly exploded I felt like somebody had punched me in the stomach.

I slept the sleep of the dead.

Awake in the morning, I was as ravenous for food as I'd ever been. My breakfast, larger than normal, barely satisfied the hunger in my stomach, but fueled the hunger in my loins for what lay ahead. I was walking on air, every sense in me alive, like never before. The smallest of things, the tiniest minutia of ordinary life became nothing but joy. Puttering around wearing nothing but tiger-striped tanga panties, my ass filled again with the mushroom, while seeing the entire world in a new light, a new erotic light, made me realize I'd missed out on so much living, for so long.

But not anymore!

I had plans.

The drive into the city may have been the normal frustration of too much traffic and not enough roads, but I didn't notice. I was flying high on the best drug of all.

The love of life.

Walking amongst people, on the streets, in the city, filled me with a secret giddy thrill, knowing how many of them would be shocked to learn the average-looking middle-aged man who didn't generate a second look was secretly wearing panties under everything.

It gave me a lovely half-chubby, the whole time, no matter where I went or what I was doing, which is an indescribable pleasure the old me had never considered, to my regret.

Luckily, the sensual touch of silk on the skin of my nether regions more than made those regrets go away, big time.

The two young women behind the counter of the lingerie shop must have thought me completely weird, or a freak, but if they did it didn't matter at all to me. My credit card was more than good enough for a purchase of hundreds of dollars worth of products, all boldly inferred for me, though not verbally spoken, and I somehow knew that it would be their biggest sale all day, maybe all week, and they both smiled like they'd won a lottery when I promised them I'd be back.

Often.

The odd-smelling, tackily-dressed man in the shoe store didn't seem quite as exhilarated at the huge sale going in the till, although he tried somewhat to at least pretend like he wasn't totally offended by me, or the lifestyle he naturally assumed I was living, from my choices of pumps and heels and boots. But, at the end of the day, and at the beginning of the day, and all through the day, and every fucking second of the day, I was a changed man, a new man, and whereas in the past it would have bothered me, always to the point of stopping me from doing it in the first place, this time I couldn't have cared less that he probably thought horrid things about me.

My money is good, and that's all he cared about.

And me, the changed man, the now openly-sexual man, got what I was after too.

Enough clothes to start filling my own drawers and closets.

Dresses and skirts and blouses from the department store came next, followed by bags of makeup and skin care products and perfumes from a specialty shop, plus toiletries, including an enema kit, from the pharmacy. Plus, I bought a backpack, the kind teenagers would use, to safely carry things around, presuming future frequent visits to Barbara's place and the need for discretion.

By the time I got home, my bank account was down almost two grand.

I'd never felt better in my life about spending money.

It took me four trips from the car to get all the bags into my house, and I'd just kicked off my shoes and socks to start dressing when I heard a loud knock on my front door.

When I opened it, Kent was standing there.

"Howdy neighbor!" he said, loudly, in his booming voice, which he then lowered, to an almost-whisper, "we're going out for a walk," letting me know Wendy was nearby, so I leaned to my right and peered around him, and sure enough she was standing on the sidewalk on their side of the street.

She waved, and I waved back.

"Was talking to Hugh earlier," he said, bringing me back to him, and then he smiled, in a way his wife couldn't see, "he says you might be up for a game of Scrabble tonight."

It was a statement, but his voice went up at the end, turning it into a question.

"Wild horses couldn't keep me away," I answered, quietly.

I watched his smile turn into a shit-eating grin, and then I watched his posture change, he stood more upright a little bit, like he'd been energized by my answer, and then I watched a serious lump rise in his trousers.

His deep soft voice dragged his response out.

"O - u - t - s - t - a - n - d - i - n - g."

Then he just stared at me, and I could imagine a trillion different thoughts going through his cranium, all of them erotic and all of them involving me.

How cool is that?

His eyes travelled from my face to my groin and back to my face, and then back down south again, pausing at my crotch, and then slowly slipping down my exposed legs, until he saw my feet, his eyes suddenly shooting open, making me look down in worry, until I saw the pink of my nails, and then I knew why he'd reacted.

Looking up at him, pausing to admire the significant lump in his trousers, I couldn't help myself, and laughed, although I managed to keep it from being too loud, in case once he got back to his wife she asked him what was so funny, putting him in the position of having to make up a story, on the spot.

"I'm wearing panties," I told him, out of the blue, completely stream-of-consciousness, with as much flirt in my voice as I've ever imagined, as if I somehow thought he should know, and I watched him swallow, his large Adam's apple going down and then up in a drastic motion, and his nostrils flared, and he took three big deep breaths, slowly, trying to calm himself down, never taking his eyes from mine, letting me know in a laser beam of a stare that if he had his druthers he'd forget his wife was standing behind him waiting to go for a walk, and throw me down on my bed, ravaging me for hours.

I shot him back the look that let him know I'd like the same thing.

"See you tonight," he finally said, and winked at me.

I played it up for Wendy.

"Okay, thanks Kent," I said, loudly, "it'll be fun to play some scrabble again."

For the rest of the day, I existed on a plane of consciousness that made the time disappear. Every minute was lovely, every moment was exciting, every tick of the second hand on the clock kept me floating on the glow that burned inside me. No matter if I was doing the banal household chores that had to get done, like clearing the dishwasher, or straightening up, or emptying more boxes, still not completely unpacked from my move, or whether I was trying on different combinations of clothes that I'd bought, seeing which ones I liked best, and how all of their materials caressed my skin, as well as my soul.

Time itself caressed my spirit, especially when I slipped the mushroom out of my ass and lubed myself again, placing the ten-inch dildo on the cold tile of my kitchen floor, on my knees, and lowered my hole onto the pole, determined to take all of it on my first try, even if I hated it, just to satisfy that decades-long yearning in my soul, the one that always wondered what anal sex would actually feel like, and why so many of the men I'd seen in porn did it, despite the obvious hardships.

This was a whole new level of wow for me.

Squishy sounds accompanied my grunts and gasps, as I slowly penetrated myself, stopping upon the first flare of 'ring-fire', as Barbara had described it, letting that momentary pain ease, not all the way, but enough to start going again, until sitting down just a teeny bit more, one or two inches, forcing it inside, accompanied by yet more fire, harsher, my seething breath coming in snorts, like an athlete who'd just done something hugely strenuous, until I could lower a little more, a glorious trade-off for the discomfort, until something touched something inside me and I lost control of myself, despite having nowhere near all ten inches inside me. My whole body started quaking, from the inside out.

It was as if someone had lit a sparkler, in my body. A firework that sizzled and glowed and burnt bright, but not causing the pain of scorching, it roared in a steady, slow-burn way, and instead of the toe-curling ramp-up I usually had with an orgasm, this one just sizzled and hit me, with no advance notification at all, my penis, as hard and throbbing as I'd ever known it, just instantly spewing out pulses of white cream, in four bursting globs, all over the floor.

My body was so wracked with twitches and tremors that I fell forward, and off the dildo altogether, and lay face-down on the floor for several minutes, all my spilled cum creating a slowly-cooling puddle connected to my smooth skin, trying to catch my breath, disappointed that I'd not been able to take the whole thing, while at the same time trying to remember if there had ever been a day in my life when I'd enjoyed myself as much.

It took but a moment to realize the answer was yes.

Twice.

Once when I last played Scrabble, and the other last night, when I visited Barbara.

At one point my smart phone buzzed, and I saw I had a text message from Hugh.

Come an hour early if you're planning on being Olivia tonight.

Seven o'clock in the evening couldn't come fast enough.

Leading up to it, I changed my mind about what I'd wear a dozen times, or more.

At six o'clock, I stripped, hopped into the shower, and after reading the instructions, I cleaned my insides out, fully, before shaving my whole body again, just to be as smooth as possible.

For the first time in as far back as I could remember, I was excited about the future, both the immediate and the long-term. I was aquiver with anticipation, agog at how far outside the envelope I'd pushed, awash in awe at the very idea that I'd found other men to literally play with.

Under my boring boy clothes, I was packing.

Lingerie packing.

Finally, I stuffed what I needed into my brand-new backpack, including the panties I was returning to Barbara, slung it over my shoulder, and traipsed over to unit number twenty. I might have set a new land speed record in doing it.

Barely inside her front door, I unclasped my belt buckle, unsnapped and unzipped my pants, and let gravity take them to the floor, so she could see my new panties, and my thigh-high stockings, matching in their glorious lace and color, as black as coal.

Barbara herself was ready. She looked like she'd been ready for hours.

The plaid mini-skirt she wore would get most genetic women, especially younger ones, sent home from school, for inappropriate behavior. It barely covered her panties, which were shiny, silky, barely-there, and as red as a firetruck. The garter straps matched, as did the stockings, so I had to assume the bra did as well, under her blouse, what looked like a man's shirt, which was form-fitting, and as virginal white as fresh snow, tied under her bust in a little knot, the way girls do it, exposing her belly. She wore the same wig as last night, with tonight's make-up being gaudier than before, brighter than I'd seen, and more of it, as if she was creating a big blazing neon sign across the sky that screamed out the words 'feminine' and 'slut'.

I wanted her as much as I wanted to be her.

Like anything in life, the more you do it, the easier it gets, so while I didn't display her experience and finesse, I was able to do my face, with her constant help and guidance, a little bit faster than when I'd practiced during the day. All three times.

At one point, she asked me what kind of look I was going for, and I couldn't help my response.

"Lust."

Half an hour before the 'game' was supposed to start, Henrik arrived, in a hurry. I was still in front of the mirror, primping and preening my make-up, when Barbara brought him in.

To say he was ecstatic seeing me as Olivia would be like saying the sun is a warm thing.

"Oh my god, oh my god," he kept repeating, excitedly, torn between hugging and kissing me, which I loved, and getting dressed himself.

As Sonja.

She was so fast at everything, from preparing her face to slipping into her dress, a long evening gown with a slitted left leg, all the way up to her hip, as green as damp grass and as glittery as a disco ball, that I got jealous. But, it lasted only a few seconds. They'd both been doing this for longer than me, and it just made sense they were better at it.

Barbara left us when the doorbell rang, and Sonja and I giggled like teenagers, knowing there were men, grown adult men, waiting to meet us, just down the hall. Horny men, of course, she stated. But, equally true, romantic men. Romantic men, waiting to spend time with their feminine lovers, the kisses and hugs and caresses and delightful conversation all as important, or even more important, than whatever sex acts might actually happen.

"Make no mistake, though" Sonja warned me, with the hugest smile on her face, "sex will happen," and she waited a few seconds, to gauge my reaction, which must have been a positive one from me, because she began to glow, as if her soul was on fire.

Barbara re-entered the room, a proud smile on her face.

"Everyone ready?" she asked, directed at us both, but looking straight at me.

"You bet," Sonja said, and I nodded my agreement.

"Everybody's make-up perfect?"

She got two "checks" in return.

"Hair?"

The both of us shook our heads, letting her know our wigs were on. Sonja was blonde, almost white, long straight tresses parted in the middle and falling straight down to her upper back, while I was in the flowing red wig again.

"Jewelry?"

Two checks. I had the same clip-ons, borrowed again from Barbara, as well as a half-dozen bangles on each wrist and a simple thick golden necklace hanging halfway down to my bosom, made noticeable by the push-up bra I'd bought, framing my middle-aged slightly-saggy pectorals and creating the genuine appearance of breasts.

"Everyone lubed?" she asked, failing at suppressing her grin of pride.

Sonja snorted out a laugh.

"You have to ask such a silly question?"

Then they both looked at me.

"Oh yes," I beamed, "I'm lubed and plugged."

Barbara turned on her heels, and then looked back at us over her shoulder, before starting off down the hall.

"Let's go ladies! And let the games begin!"

Swelling with pride, to match the swelling in my panties, I took one last long deep breath in, holding it, calming my nerves, which were rampant.

The look Sonja gave me was as loving and understanding as it could be.

She knew what I was feeling, what I was going through.

She'd had a first time herself, at one point.

Taking my hand in hers, pink nails intertwined with blood-red nails, we were both finally ready, fully prepared, her looking like she'd just walked off a Hollywood movie set from fifty years ago, and me in my 'out for a night of dancing and attracting men' cocktail dress, as yellow as a canary, backless, open from the thin tie around my neck to just above my ass cheeks, the straps of my bra dark against my paler skin on full display, the skirt flared and pleated and swishing as I walked, or even breathed. It made me look like I was in motion, even when I was completely still.

Sonja stopped me, in the hall, just before we entered Barbara's living room, where voices were subdued, and winked at me, letting me know she wanted to do something special.

She took two steps into the room, and cleared her throat.

All the noises stopped.

A voice, that was probably Sterling's, groaned out a hugely appreciative sound, at just the sight of her.

With a grin bigger than a dinner plate, Sonja stood with hands on hips and made her pronouncement.

"Lady and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to formally introduce the newest member of the Brandywine Estates Scrabble Club. Would you please say hello," and then she paused, reaching backwards with one arm to motion me forward, "to Olivia."

Was I nervous? Hoo boy, never more so in my life.

Was I excited? Hoo boy, never more so in my life.

Kent and Sterling were seated, at the Scrabble table, a few words already spelled out, and both of them gazed at me when I came around the corner and stopped, modelling for them.

The both of them had what can only be described as the best looks a woman like me could ever possibly want, or possibly hope to attain.

They were stunned, and shocked, and plain old gobsmacked.

Both of their mouths opened, in a silent 'o'.

Both of them stood up.

Both of them suddenly had some serious problems with tightness in their pants.

Barbara was at the back of the room, one of her arms fished behind a tall, gorgeous darker man, who had one of his arms wrapped around her waist, snuggling the front of himself into her body.

Gorgeous was the only word I could think of to describe him.

Taller by at least two inches than both Kent and Sterling, who were both just an inch over six feet, the man I assumed was Ian broke into a grin that shone, like a million-watt bulb. The whitest teeth known to mankind blazed at me, contrasted by what surrounded his mouth, skin the color of dark caramel.

Round cheekbones bookended a truly wide nose, with large round nostrils, all above a huge mouth with plump, thick, protruding lips, a fence of snow-white teeth gleaming, with enough stray grey hairs on his upper lip to be generously called a moustache.

The hair on his head was thinning, and mostly grey, and curly-tight, like a short afro, but there were reddish glints too, which stood out like a sore thumb, as if maybe he dyed his hair, which seemed at first like an entirely female thing to do, until I remembered lots of men tried to cover up their grey as well.

His shoulders slumped, which was the only negative nit I could find in his appearance. Otherwise, he stood tall and strong. A broad chest, with a big belly that showed his age, the slowing down of life where men tend to gain weight and all of it in their mid-section, he had long thick muscular legs appearing from under his shorts, and overall presented himself as a masculine, mature, life-experienced man.

My pussy was clenching on the plug inside me, gripping and releasing and gripping and releasing on the mushroom.

Sterling moved faster than I'd expected, suddenly standing in front of me, perilously close to me, and I looked up into his eyes, ablaze with energy.

"Olivia," he crooned, "it is an honor to meet you."

Then he took me into his arms, slowly, not forward at all, but with care and respect, and I willingly pressed into his hug, my heart jumping to feel his heat, and his musculature, tipping my head up in invitation, the last thing I saw before my eyes closed was his serious ardor, his stern lust, and then his lips found mine and everything was right with the world.

To be held by a man, wrapped up in his strength and his passion, dressed in the sexiest clothes possible, his flagpole of a cock rigid in his pants, up against my right side, tasting his lips and his tongue as they teased mine, this, I knew, right down to the smallest microbe of my genetic base, was that awesome life I'd dreamed about, all those years.

That existence I'd thought as the stuff of dreams, never to be attained by the common man, purely the work of fantasy.

Luckily, I was no longer common, or reflective of much that describes being a man.

And this was so much better than fantasy.

I got to hug and kiss Kent next, wrapped in his arms, feeling protected and safe, from any danger, his kiss sweet and soft and as deliciously-romantic as Sterling's. Maybe more.

When Ian swept me into his arms and lifted me off the floor and planted those big lips on mine, I couldn't suppress the moan that bounced off of Barbara's walls, that guttural groan bouncing bigger when he pressed his belly into me and I felt his hardness.

Kent and Sterling were big, certainly bigger and thicker than me.

Ian out-did both of them, by an inch or two.

There was laughter and rousing conversation as the game re-commenced, the four non-players standing around watching, always caressing each other, touching, stealing hugs or half-hugs or kisses, enjoying wine and each other's company.

The air in the room was abuzz with the best kind of energy and tension. It was alive, like an invisible monster, and ready to swallow us all up.

It was a tough-fought game, but with his last word Sterling managed to better Kent, by two points, and with a triumphant, "YEAH, BABY!" he stood up and proclaimed that as the winner he was going to claim his winning prize.

Heaven notified me I'd arrived when he turned and said my name.

Sterling and I kissed and hugged and caressed and groped for a long time, minutes on end, the most romantic and sensual kissing I'd ever done, until finally some sort of signal went off and we broke, staring at each other's eyes as we huffed and puffed our way back to normal, the only thing interrupting our attention on each other being the noises elsewhere in the room, and when I looked around, what I saw made me moan.

Sonja was in Ian's arms, much like the grasp that Sterling and I had, and they were softly kissing, little gentle pecks, full of emotion and intimacy, her neck craned up almost ninety degrees, his hands slowly caressing her ass, in clockwise circles.

A quick peek in the other direction showed me Barbara, sitting in Kent's lap, at the Scrabble table, the both of them wide-mouthed, tongues stabbing and playing, his big left hand groping her right breast, like a teenaged kid gleefully getting to first base, which was apropos of the naughty school-girl look she'd created, while she ran her fingers, with their freshly-painted nails, through his thick hair.

"We're not actually going to play any Scrabble, are we?" I asked Sterling, with a pretend-innocent look on my face, and he guffawed, in a pleased way, and shook his head.

"Probably not," he whispered, and I knew what came next, and I couldn't have wanted it more, once again welcoming his mouth on mine, his hands on my ass, kneading in the slowest, strongest way, making the plug inside me move, sending little fissures of jolts through my guts, making me press my groin into his harder, and stronger.

Both of us moaned.

Then the both of us got seriously serious, about our passions.

Somehow, we made it to one of the big old comfy chairs, and as he went to sit down, and pull me into his lap while doing it, I noticed that Barbara had covered the chair with a loose blanket, and it took me a few seconds to realize that it was her way of keeping potential stains off the fabric, which made me consider what kinds of stains those would be, instantly understanding it was all about protection from cum, shooting out of very excited cocks.

Or, it hit me, oozing out of freshly-fucked asses.

A quick glance around the room showed me that she'd covered all the chairs, and the sofa, with blankets or towels, and there was a blow-up air mattress on the floor, wedged behind the sofa, wide enough, I instantly guessed, for at least two couples, should the mood strike them.

Then I espied a punch bowl, on the coffee table, which had about a couple of dozen condom packets, which seemed unnecessary, as well as four different-sized bottles or tubes of lube.

A good hostess, is my new friend Barbara.

I can't begin to describe how glorious it was, the next hour or so. Sterling and I did nothing but kiss, and caress, and hold each other, and touch, and fondle, and grope, all of it impromptu, unplanned, going with the romantic flow, the whole time marvelling at just how powerful romance can be, if done honestly, and regretting that my wife, and for that matter every other woman I've ever been with, none of them even tried to go there. Ever.

They had no idea what they were missing.

It was like going to Disneyland, and never going on any of the rides. And they thought they were living?

They didn't have a goddamned clue what living was.

All around us, there were sounds.

They drifted in and out of my awareness, on the outskirts, but they were unmistakable.

Voices, of course. Moans and gasps and hums and giggles and occasional words, 'yeses' and 'oohs' and groaned-out 'fucks'.

There were lots of other sounds too.

Kissing sounds. Wild and passionate kissing sounds, lip-on-lip sounds, and tongue gushes.

Buried in Sterling's grip, feeling his big cock against my body, his hands on my ass, or my back, caressing me, stroking me, with every fibre of his being showing me in touch and kiss that he wanted me, that his passion for me was primal, and as natural and animalistic as could be found, lost in the rapture of it, I could still find some awareness to marvel at the sounds in the room.

After a time, there were sucking noises, somewhere around me. Slurping sounds, wet gulps and glugs and glorps, and smacks, always accompanied by moans. There were moments of sound that could only be fabrics being moved, or manipulated, or cast aside.

At one point, probably forty-five minutes in, I distinctly heard a bottle cap being snapped open, and some squishy sounds, and I didn't have to wait long to hear the next obvious sounds.

Raw human groans, visceral in their honesty.

Deep masculine groans, the smooth wet channel wrapping around millions of their nerve endings, and throatier breathier sighs, in response to being opened, and penetrated.

People at the height of their sensorial awareness, making by the very nature of their passion the most profound sounds known to humanity.

Such were the sounds that naturally ensued, quickly racing up to unmistakable sounds of pelvic bones ramming into pillowy glutes, and escaping breaths and grunts.

Sterling seemed disappointed when I finally broke our kiss and cuddle, but that only lasted as long as it took him to realize I was sliding out of his lap and onto my knees, on the floor, between his legs.

Then he beamed at me, and uttered out, "YEAH BABY!"

I found the act of unbuttoning his aloha shirt with my painted nails erotic, all by itself. His eyes kept bouncing from my hands to my face, watching me, and watching me watch him. Peeling it off, he threw it haphazardly behind him, while I reached up and stroked my nails over the forest of grey hair on his chest, in willy-nilly circles, until I slid them to his nipples, in a flash, and squeezed them.

He was gritting his teeth, in the loveliest of ways, so I leaned over and took his left nipple in my lips, and bit at it gently, while my tongue played taps on his nub, and his whole body jolted, and his breath seized, remembering how it had felt last night when Barbara sucked my nipples, knowing exactly how it was affecting him, my sucking, and making me realize I'd spent too many decades ignoring them, that they were an erogenous zone just as much as women's nipples were.

His slacks came off without a hitch, and I could see the outline of his erection in his tighty-whitey's, and it was moving! I could see it shift, a titch here and a titch there, but it was also throbbing!

FOR ME!

I couldn't stop the gasp that came out of my lips when I slid his underwear off of him and gazed upon his cock.

All those years of watching porn, and all of those suppressed gay fantasies of mine, having seen hundreds of cocks, this one stood out, this one was just categorically better. And not only because it was real, and right in front of me, waiting for me.

No, it catapulted me into the emotional stratosphere.

Shock doesn't describe it. I was transfixed by him.

His thickness, his solidity.

It was like a statue, carved from granite.

His helmet-shaped head, with the thin strip of flesh at the bottom where they'd cut him in the circumcision, it made my mouth water. I wanted to bathe it.

My first cock, I realized, and I couldn't ask for a better example of the male sexual organ.

Wrapping my right hand around the bottom of his shaft, right where it met his big hairy balls, I put pressure on and tipped it down, so the eye was pointed straight at my red lips, and I remembered something I'd seen in porn that I'd always thought was as sexy as hell, and I lowered my head so I wasn't quite touching him, my tongue barely an inch away, and then looked him straight in the eyes.

I let him know, wordlessly, that I wanted him in my mouth.

He groaned out a tiny little "mmm", and without taking my eyes from his, I moved the last little inch.

And in doing so, I moved myself.

The last little inch.

From fifty-seven years of boring life, to the most exciting future imaginable. However many years I have left, I promised, I'd be living them to their fullest.

My tongue dipped into his pee-hole, the eye, instantly awash in a sea of salty clear juice, almost a syrup, making him growl, which just turned me on to no end, and without thinking about it, I took another man's entire cock head into my mouth, for the second time.

The abject joy of it closed my eyes. I couldn't stop them.

I WAS SUCKING A COCK AGAIN!

The angel on one shoulder tried to make one last valiant attempt to dissuade me, 'before it's too late!', which didn't last longer than a heartbeat, and then she was banished from my world forever.

Awash in saliva, I coated his helmet, my tongue going crazy on the underside of him, back and forth and back and forth, my right hand automatically stroking the base of him, as if I'd done it a thousand times, and without thinking about it my left hand shimmied up his leg and inner thigh and I cradled his ball sac, feeling the heft of the two big eggs, startled at how much rounder and heftier they were than mine.

Two big eggs, I thought.

Full of cum.

Like flicking a switch, my soul kicked into a different gear, determined to get all that cum out, and straight into my belly. Opening my mouth up, I slid down his shaft, as far as I could, until he banged into the back of my throat, which clamped down, even though I didn't want it to, but opening my eyes I could see that I had just over half of his cock in me, so I snorted out of my nostrils and while still slobbering and slurping and sucking on him, I pushed my head, down, and then more down, the back of my throat fighting me, until whichever brain cell was acting as operations manager at that moment gave the command, and he sunk another two inches into me.

I HAD ALMOST ALL OF HIS COCK IN ME!

My guts started to wrench, as if I was choking, which scared me a little, so I backed off, and came off him completely, letting out a huge gasp of air and then taking more in, all the while stunned into amazement at the viscous string of my own saliva and spit that was still connected to him, joining his cock and my mouth, just starting to sag, under the pull of gravity, so I hurriedly sucked at it, gurgling it back into my mouth, instantly plunging my mouth back down on him anew, until he banged at the back again, and this time I fought the horrible feeling of gagging long enough to let even more of him into me.

Your brain is telling you there's something choking you, and you start swallowing like crazy, as if there's a piece of food stuck in your windpipe, and you're trying to force it down, but a rigid turgid throbbing cock won't fall, so your next natural reaction is to try to spit it out, and that's what I fought the most.

I came off again, again amazed at the amount of sticky liquid on him from me, long enough to pull in another huge gulp of air, and then I sucked him back into me, as far as I could.

More than anything in the universe, I wanted to get all of his seven-and-a-half, close-to-eight inches of man meat inside me. I wanted to deep throat him, something I'd seen in so many videos, sometimes never believing it was possible, but always never thinking it'd ever happen to me.

And yet here it was.

I never got the chance to get all of his cock in my mouth and throat, because on my next swallow, maybe only half-way down, Sterling seethed out a loud, sharp, "OH FUCK!" and then his whole body shook, and before I could react, or do anything, an ocean of his cum flooded into me, spraying in my throat and in my mouth, and to swallow I had to open my mouth, just momentarily, losing the grip with my lips, and half of his load dripped out of me, in a second, into his groin.

NOOOOOOOOO!

I coughed and gagged a little and coughed some more, swallowing in-between, until all the juicy cum that I hadn't spilled deliciously slid down my throat, a million billion trillion times better than swallowing my own cum, his load warm, almost hot, and saltier than brine!

Once I got my breath back, my right hand stroking his now-deflating erection, I dived into his pubic hair, which was where most of the rest of his cum had landed, and I sucked at his forest and fished at it with my tongue, slurping cum up when I could find it, lastly chasing a stream that had slid down onto his left testicle.

I wrapped my lips around another man's ball, and sucked at it, gently, letting his cream slide onto my tongue.

And, what a surprise!

He was hardening again, as I sucked on his ball.

His shaft was filling again, the noises he was making telling me that he was super-sensitive, like I am after I cum, but at the same time he was rip-roaring with determination for more.

When I stopped sucking his ball, his big hand reached to the back of my head, and he gently pulled at me, inviting me up to his lap again, a dreamy kind of visage on his face, and after gently depositing my bum without crushing his cock, he gazed at my eyes, gratitude and lust mixed together, and we kissed.

We kissed, long slow lip-wriggling kisses, with sweeping tongue washes, making me realize he liked the taste of his cum as much as I did.

Well, he enjoyed it, but come to think of it, it couldn't have been as much as I did. Not a chance.

Kissing and cuddling, we spent almost fifteen minutes holding each other, loving each other, feeding each other with the power of romance, and the power of unfettered passion. We were two people, lost in the frontiers of loving, hoping no one sends out a search party.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to look up, to see Barbara's eyes.

Everything was slightly disheveled about her, as if her clothes didn't quite fit correctly, and her hair was askew. She looked like she was stoned.

Then I realized that she was, like me, overdosing, but on something far better than drugs.

"Time for the ladies to fix our make-up," she said, slowly, almost in a daze, and then she turned and clunked her way back towards her bedroom, down the hall, and I kissed Sterling one more time before he helped me onto my feet, and I followed behind her.

When I got to the bedroom, a little shaky, Barbara was just standing in front of her mirror, staring at herself, in a daze.

Sonja was lying on the bed, on her back.

She looked like was way past disheveled.

She looked like she'd been through a war.

Rolling her head to one side, she gazed up at me with glazed eyes.

"He tried to fuck me to death!" she uttered, strain in her voice.

I laughed. Barbara made a little noise, still staring at herself in the mirror.

"And you!" Sonja said, focussing better now, looking more awake, actually staring at me, "you've got cum on your chin."

I brought my hand up, to wipe it off, but for someone who'd just been fucked to death she moved surprisingly fast, bouncing to her feet, and swatting my hand away, before I could touch it.

Then, with a huge grin on her face, her lipstick smudged well past the outline of her lips, reminding me somewhat of a clown's makeup, she tilted over and licked my chin.

"Mmmmmm," she purred.

All three of us sat for a few moments, on the bed, just cooling down, from our individual ordeals. There was no conversation at all. We were just three soul-sisters, letting our bodies and our minds take the slow trip back towards normalcy, sharing the moment together.

It was obvious that all three of us were glowing with pride.

"This is the most fun I've ever had in my entire life," I finally uttered, my words meant not just for them, but for the heavens above.

Barbara moved over, shuffling on her bum, and one-arm hugged me.

"Let's get ready for more."

Between giggles and descriptions, all three of us delighting in our evenings, I discovered that both of them had been fucked, or as Sonja called it, from Ian, "being railed," while they were both super excited for me after I talked about sucking Sterling off, and how life-altering it was for me, being held by a man and kissed by a man and romanced by a man and then sucking him off, his cum my reward for the happiest work I've ever done, and how all three of us confessed we loved the taste and texture of cum, and all three of us didn't want to wait for more.

"Isn't it amazing?" Sonja asked, "we get their rocks off for them and yet we're the ones who benefit the most!"

We found our energies returning, perhaps our ages making it a little bit longer than would have happened with our younger selves, and while we preened and touched up our make-up, they both asked me if I wanted more, from a man, the obvious act being anal, or if I was even ready for that sort of thing yet, the both of them laughing their heads off when I told them flat out that I was walking back out there and finding the first hard-on available to take my virginity.

Which, as it turned out, was Kent.

The others paired off as well, but I don't know in which combinations. From the second I walked into the room, and saw Kent sprawled on the sofa, the blanket squished by his form, his erection pointed straight at the ceiling, and wobbly, like one of those toys you can punch but it will always return to vertical, I knew what I wanted.

I knew what I needed.

Slipping into his lap, and his hug, was a pleasure unlike any other. His lips found mine, and we began smooching, ramping up the pleasure, each minute feeling more romantic, each minute building up the yearning in my soul, until I couldn't wait any longer.

I rolled off of his lap, onto my back, with my head on the arm of the far end of the sofa. His chest was rising and falling fast, his lungs needing to work harder to satisfy the blood boiling in his veins, and his eyes got bigger as he watched me lift my legs up, until the toes of my high heels were pointed at the roof, and then I split my legs, as I brought them back further, bending them at the knees, until they were on either side of my head, with my bottom pointed directly at him.

When I reached around my own ass with both hands and pulled my panties away, he could see the round end of my butt plug, and we both heard the squishy sounds it made as I slowly pulled at the mushroom, until with a 'POP' it was out of me, and I was empty, and the air in the room squeezed into my gaping hole and shivers of coolness ran through me, shaking me right up to my head.

It hit me that this was the most profound moment of my life.

I had tears in my eyes.

"PLEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEE!" I begged him, in long slow vowels. "Make love to me."

Just like at my front door yesterday, he gave me his answer, the first word that came to his mind.

"O - u - t - s - t - a -n - d - i - n - g,"

Never breaking eye contact with me, he reached his big arm over to the coffee table and grabbed a bottle of lube, squeezing some out onto his fingers, and then sliding them onto his cock, this way and that, until he wrapped his whole palm around himself and greased up and down, from the tip of his pee-hole to the bottom of his shaft, and I could feel my ring puckering, the image of a blowfish shooting through my head.

The next thing I knew, his whole body was falling onto me, but with control, until I couldn't see anything but his face, and the weight of his considerable chest and belly pressed into me, and I welcomed his kiss, my own hands reaching under his arms to run down his back, my fingernails struggling to gain purchase in his skin without hurting him, desperate to impel him to begin his journey into the center of me.

Displaying a skill I'd never developed as a lover, without using his hands he somehow managed to line up his cock with the hole, without the clumsiness I always displayed with women.

Revelling in the waves of delight his kisses were sending me, there was still a part of my mind that was sober enough to think, and it was working overtime, at full volume.

This is it.

This is the moment.

This is my Everest.

This is that forbidden taboo, which is what you've always called it and thought of it. Anal sex.

This is that heretofore-considered never-gonna-happen event.

This is where you let another man penetrate you with his cock. This is where you finally give up all the pretenses you've had about being 'a man', instead letting that woman that's also inside you, the one you've carried in you for your whole life, letting her take over, letting her shine.

This is that epiphany.

This is what you've waited for, your entire existence.

With unnoticed pressure, Kent slid slowly into me, until his entire big fat helmet was inside, forcing me open, and my ring shut tight, just behind his ridge, as tight as a drum.

There was a voice in my head, shrill, and loud, screaming "OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!" on a continuous loop.

Then I realized I was screaming it out loud, straight into his mouth.

I WAS BEING FUCKED!!!!!

I HAD A MAN'S ERECT COCK IN MY BODY!!!

I HAVE CROSSED THE RUBICON!!!!

My joy, overtop of the discomfort, was as boundless as the universe.

Which, as an experienced man, he felt.

So he pushed some more, everything inside me going into a kind of shock, pressure building in my guts, now partially-filled with a man's shaft, which was BLOWING MY MIND, yet his kisses kept balancing me, never letting me get too wacko, bringing me back down to earth somewhat.

Which was his plan.

Kiss, to calm and revive, and then push, to fill.

Every nanosecond felt like an hour, every twitch of him pressed the skin of his cock into the flesh of my channel, and I could feel it! I could feel the tip of him, rising like the head of a triceratops into a giant flange, with an almost-as-thick body behind it. I could feel the veins in him, the big one on the underside especially, like an added little trench-cover, rounded and gliding in.

Not his first go-round, Kent was considerate and loving and knew what he was doing to get his partner as warmed-up as he was, so much so that when I felt his upper thighs touch the smooth sensitive skin at the backs of my legs, and felt his pelvic bones thumping into my ass cheeks, all the discomfort I'd been feeling disappeared, like a puff of smoke.

I was full.

Full of cock.

Buried under a man, taking his tongue into my mouth and his cock into my ass at the same time.

It was wonder, pure and simple.

A never-ending pulse of wave after wave of bliss shot through me, and around me, and from me, and within me.

I felt ten pounds heavier, with his cock inside me.

I WAS FULL!

Filled with cock.

Without breaking our kiss, he began to move, a little at a time, slipping back, and then pausing, and slipping back again, and then pausing, enough times until just the barest tip of him was still inside me, making me moan and shout into his mouth to fill me again, my voice going shrill and screaming when he finally did.

On his fourth penetration, he went much faster.

He slammed into me.

All the buzzes and tremors and vibrations I'd felt with the dildo were pale compared to Kent, so much so that it took all my available concentration, which wasn't much, to withstand the agony and ecstasy of them. They were trying to make me explode, but at the same time stopping me from exploding.

I wanted to cum so badly, and yet I was fighting it at the same time.

Kent's pace slowly increased, from push to push, in the most romantic of ways. He didn't want a wham-bam situation any more than I did. He was making love to me, with grace and dignity, which made me love him all the more for it.

It made me love the act itself all the more for it.

We kissed and moaned and whispered out occasional words of wonderful exasperation, mine probably mostly gibberish, each new tick on the clock bringing me higher, revelling in the feeling of being full, high on the emotions raging through me.

A short time later, he got faster.

That told me something, I knew what that shift meant.

He was gearing up to go, big time.

And he did.

There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead when we finally stopped making out, and when, in the middle of the onslaught, I opened my eyes, his were closed, in deep concentration, as his pace got more frantic still, and our love-making was naturally morphing into plain, old-fashioned fucking.

All my previous fucking had been from the top, and had always felt awkward, in ways I could never quite define.

On the bottom, I knew I'd found my place in the world, despite the enormous pounding my body was taking.

When he got to the point of out-and-out drilling me, the buzzes and the tremors got too much for me to control any more, and it made me scream, but I didn't want to get Barbara in trouble with her neighbors, so I bit my tongue, suffocating the noise somewhat, and then a gigantic white light flashed through my consciousness and every muscle and tendon and ligament and bit of flesh between my chest and my legs all convulsed, and I came so hard I saw stars.

A few strokes later, riding a tidal wave of my orgasm, devastated emotionally, I discovered a sensation I could never have imagined, in my past life.

Kent's head snapped up, and his eyes slammed shut, and his face went red, and he made one last final massive thrust into me, slamming into me, pounding me into the arm of the sofa, and my insides got wet.

I felt him cumming inside of me.

I felt him seeding me.

I could feel it, his cum oozing in me, sliding and slipping in my guts.

Then his whole body weight came down on me, as his arms collapsed on him, and it crushed almost all the air out of my lungs, and I gasped and gasped, in what he probably thought was a frenzy of passion.

And it was, to some extent.

I came again, a little one, when he sank us into the cushions.

Afterwards, we cuddled.

He showered me with soft kisses, holding onto me for dear life, and I to him. With women, it had always seemed to me that they didn't usually go for the lovey-dovey stuff, immediately after love-making, but these men sure did.

The two other couples were in various stages of post-coital intimacy, kisses and cuddles and caresses, more proof that the romantic aspect of these evenings were just as important as the actual sex aspect.

But make no mistake, the sex aspect was pretty damned good.

Other than some amazing kissing later, I didn't interact with Ian at all, physically. We talked, in between smooches, as he held me in his massive arms, and I found out his father was Irish and his mother was Jamaican, which explained the caramel color of his skin and the red tinges in his hair. A retired mechanical engineer, he lived with his wife Marina in lucky number thirteen. We were both exhausted, and 'shagged out', as Sonja gleefully described it, so we made a promise that we were first on deck at the next Scrabble game.

Which, sadly, had to wait for an entire seven days, and which was, in its own way, akin to a kind of agony.

Turns out Marina only lets Ian out once a week. Otherwise, she keeps a tight rein on her man.

But the rest of us, two men and three 'ladies', we all had less oversight in our houses, or none at all, and as a group we only had to wait three days to reconvene.

As it also turns out, Ian is a connoisseur of 'special lady loving', as he calls it, perhaps the most eager aficionado in the park, and demonstrated to me that there is hardly anything more erotic or exotic than a grown adult man spending minutes on end with his face buried between your buttocks, his wet wriggling tongue bathing your pussy hole, penetrating you with his spittle, getting you slippery for his cock, priming you for his penetration.

Nine thick inches of penetration.

Oh lordy, that's a threshold that will destroy your preconceptions of what loving is. Being stuffed full of throbbing black cock, spread farther and wider than at any other time, all the gazillions of reactions and pressures on your nervous system, will, without question, make you realize you're a living animal, bent in half and absorbing more physical stress than most people could bear, or even imagine doing.

And loving every second of it.

Barbara and I got together the next night, for more lesbian love-making, and girl-time together, our growing intimacy and friendship and romantic attraction to each other as important to me as my new wardrobe and my new sexual proclivities combined. Kent managed a quick visit a couple of days after that, telling me Wendy was at the hair salon, so I threw some make-up on quickly and a baby doll nighty to match the panties I was wearing, and after sucking him for a few minutes, he forced me off his cock, spun me around, and, after lubing me and himself up, took me from behind, doggy style.

I was filled again. And this time, it was off to the races from the get-go.

Kent pummelled me, and I was begging him for it.

When he came, he gripped my hips so hard that he left marks.

Sterling was, as it turns out, correct. Within the first couple of weeks five different ladies found excuses for stopping by, for a visit, or seeing me outside on one of my walks, making excuses for chatting me up. I found myself on the receiving end of several invitations, for tea, for drinks, for dinner, and even, as one old gal put it, winking at me and wriggling her considerable chest back and forth, some 'bouncy bouncy'.

As diplomatically as I could, I turned them all down.

I'd found what I was looking for, and it wasn't anywhere near those old birds.

For seven months, my life became what I'd always wanted. It became real. Every day I wafted along, publicly and privately, on the invisible aegis of sensuality. I always wore panties. Always. I found each new day so much better than the last, and filled my life with new friends, new neighbors, and of course, my new lovers.

Last week, my ex called me, out of the blue. She sounded slightly sad, despite going on and on about the beauty of the Italian countryside and the food and so on. She was doing her best to make it appear that it was everything she'd assumed it would be, but I knew her voice well enough to know she wasn't as convincing as she'd hoped.

When she finally got around to asking me if I was happy, or whether I might want to do something spontaneous, like 'go crazy' and hop on a plane and join her, I felt her sadness.

She'd not found it, yet, that amorphous magical ring we all search for, that forever happiness, that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. She couldn't say it outright, couldn't use the words, or admit that she'd been wrong, but her disappointment was dripping in her voice. She'd been the one to break us up, and end our marriage, and now she was regretting that decision.

With the surety of the ages, I promised her something I had no right to promise. It had happened to me, so it seemed at least conceivable that it could happen to her, or anybody, even though I know lots of people never find it.

I told her that love, in all of its glorious manifestations, was the be-all and end-all, and it didn't matter which direction it came from. An open mind, is what I told her she needed to have, at every second of the day. And then, if you're truly free and ready, it'll find you.

When you least expect it, I promised, it'll happen.

I was living proof of that.

This morning Sterling banged on my door, to let me know, with a huge grin on his face, that he'd had a chat with the new guy that just moved in to unit number sixteen, which had been vacant for months, following the passing five months ago of the sweet little old lady who'd lived there, Helen, and the 'new guy' had expressed an interest in joining the Scrabble club. Sterling had given him the same treatment he'd given me, on my first day, the whole gossip speech and the randy old lady routine, and the guy, first name Eric and last name Bowman, fresh off a divorce, like me, had turned his nose up right away at the idea of any relationships with women in the park.

"Plus," Sterling bragged, the hugest grin on his face, "he's got a great ass, like yours, and he's a skinny little thing too, like you."

Social is tomorrow. I'm looking forward to meeting the man. We'll set it up the same way they set it up with me. No funny business, until we warm the man up, gauge his reaction, and then, who knows? Maybe, if we get the right vibe from him, we'll show him how some of the men in this community treat each other. Just like the group did with me.

Maybe, at the next social perhaps, he can follow me into the deserted library, just like Kent and Henrik had done on my first Social, and after I brazenly flirt with him and show him the G-string panties I have on, under my casual slacks, maybe he'll be as into hugging and kissing as I had been.

As I was, back then, and as I am now.

Do not ever despair, or go gently into that good night, my friends.

Fight, with all your might, for that nirvana you seek, the one that's out there.

You can find it.

And the fight is worth it.

I know. I'm living proof.

THE END