Forced Layover

I was leaning over the washbasin in the bathroom of Ari’s small Tel Aviv apartment. The bathroom was clouded with steam as Ari had just turned off the water in the shower. I was watching him through the mirror above the basin, wiping it off periodically as it misted over. He had a great, hirsute body and swung low. He played a mean viola and a magnificent cock. I didn’t think I’d ever had a man that hirsute—black curly hair covering a berry-brown body. I certainly hadn’t had a violist who could fuck like that. He was still in the Israeli army and they were working his body hard. He was cut like a Roman gladiator.

He had worked my body hard too after bringing me back to his apartment after that final Tel Aviv orchestra concert I’d played in. I wanted him to fuck me from the moment I saw him warming up his viola at the concert and, boy, did he ever, fucking me in a sustained allegro staccato, with a cymbal-clashing, bombastic finish. In other words, he fucked me real good.

Tomorrow it was off to Frankfurt and to Max, to continue my summer gigs away from New York. I was playing in Alex North’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with the Hessian Radio Symphony at Frankfurt’s Grosser Saal. Max, who I had met when he was doing a similar exchange program with the New York Philharmonic, had gotten me a gig in the violin section for this concert. He had said he wanted to be with me again when he’d gotten it set up. Our more recent phone conversations indicated that he’d cooled down—or maybe that he’d found another guy he wanted to fuck more than he wanted to fuck me. I realized I would feel more relief than disappointment about that. Max was in his mid-twenties, as I was, and I preferred older men—older men who were assertive. Max was a bit passive. But he had a big dick, and that was a fetish of mine.

I had only recently attained to an obsession with good fucking, but, for the moment, I thought about it almost as much as I concentrated on the musical notes floating through my brain, and I continually was equating a man’s fingers stroking of my body to the rhythm of the thrusts of his cock inside me to my own finger play and bowing of my violin.

My plane was leaving at 6:10 in the morning. It already was past midnight here. There wasn’t enough time to ride Ari’s cock again before I had to leave for the airport—not if I wanted to get a couple of hours of sleep. But watching him shower had gotten me hot and bothered again. I’d worn my toothbrush out pretending I was here, at the sink, to brush my teeth.

Ari came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. He came in, close, behind me and wrapped his arms around me.

“Umm, that was nice,” he murmured. “Let’s do it again.”

“Can’t if I’m going to get any sleep before I have to be at the airport,” I said. I’m sure he could hear the regret in my voice. One of his hands glided down my belly, his fingers ruffling up my reddish-blond pubic hair in passing and grasped my cock.

“You’re hard again,” he murmured.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Sleep is overrated.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“You want me again, playing your body like I play my viola, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered, breathlessly.

“You want me to play Wagner on your body.”

“Yes.”

“Widen your stance and lean into the wall for me, baby. One last ride with the Valkyries.”

I heard his towel puddle down to the floor as I spread my legs and placed the palms of my hands, wide on the slick tile wall in front of me.

“Oh shit. Oh, fuck. Yes!” I cried out as he cupped my chin, arching my torso back, my shoulder blades pressed into his chest, slid up inside me—still open from when he’d fucked me, twice, on the bed—and began to pump. He was humming from Wagner’s Ring Cycle, something with a strong beat to match his vigorous thrusts. This would be over in a matter of minutes. My cum was already rising as he stroked my cock. This wouldn’t take long. I might get a bit of sleep after all.

* * * *

“Here, would you like me to put that in a compartment up front for you, sir?”

“No thank you, ma’am,” I answered, as I found a spot for my violin case just above my business class seat. I’d been upgraded, and I hadn’t asked why. I just took the ticket and smiled. El Al nonstop flight 357 to Frankfurt, Germany, wasn’t crowded—at least not in business class. There was a burly middle-aged man sitting in the aisle seat I had to cross over to get to the window seat, but there was room and there were only two seats across. Still I felt his hand on my butt as I passed over him and, looking down at him, I could see that he was giving me “that look.”

Why did they always know about me so quickly, I wondered. Max knew about me right off when he was at the New York Philharmonic. So did Ari just now in Tel Aviv. I didn’t dress queer, and I certainly wasn’t effeminate. Lots of guys had ear studs now, and even if my trousers were tight and I had bars in my nipples, none of that was out of the ordinary anymore for twenty-year-old guys following the fashions. I guess the bars could be discerned with the T-shirt I was wearing, but surely that wasn’t enough to make assumptions right off the bat—even if they were correct assumptions. But then maybe he’d seen Ari give me a farewell kiss by a column near the departure area. It hadn’t been a friendly peck on the cheek and it had come with a grope. Ari could help but be anything but high heat.

“Is that a violin case you put up there?” the man asked when I was settled in the seat. His accent was German, but his English was excellent.

“Yes,” I answered. “I play for the New York Philharmonic. I’m on my way to Frankfurt to play in a concert there.”

“Something pop or classical?” he asked.

“Something in between,” I answered. “A movie soundtrack. 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“Oh, At the Grosser Saal?”

“Yes. You know about the concert?”

“Certainly. I will be there. Perhaps we could meet afterward . . . for a drink . . . or something.”

“Perhaps,” I said, trying to make it noncommittal. But he was being polite, so I guess I should at least ask the minimal questions about him. I really had hoped to sleep on this flight. I hadn’t gotten any at Ari’s. The fuck in the bathroom had led to another fuck on the bed, and suddenly it was time to get to the airport. I didn’t feel all that tired, though.

“I’ll be at the concert alone,” he said, conveying a signal. He was giving me that look again. I’m sure that he knew that, if I was a submissive to men, I knew what that look meant.

“So, you must live in Frankfurt,” I said. It seemed to make sense if he already had a ticket to the concert I’d be playing in. “Are you connected with the theater?”

“Oh, no, not me,” he said with a little laugh. “I’m a Philistine when it comes to music, but I know what I like to hear, and, as you said, this concert will be between pop and classical. I enjoyed the movie. No, I work in management with Mercedes—the car, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And I know how to appreciate what I see that I like. I can pay for it.”

The signal couldn’t be more clear than that—and I can’t say that I hadn’t been paid for sex before.

“My name is Hans Brunner,” he continued. “I get to drive all of the prototypes before they reach the market. Young men like to cruise around in the cars I drive. I don’t think I ever disappoint them. I’ll have a sleek racing car at that concert, a C-Class cabriolet. It’s a convertible, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” I answered and gave him a smile. He was trying so hard to make me.

“We could go for a very nice ride.”

Now if that wasn’t a pickup line, I didn’t know what was. He was looking for me to say I wanted to ride him. He didn’t wait to see if I’d say so, though. And I’ll have to admit I was assessing him as a sex partner. He was on the heavy side, but he was expensively dressed and was a handsome man—I didn’t shy away from older men—and, as he said, he had access to all of the new Mercedes. I found myself looking at his crotch, assessing the bulge there, without any intention of going further with this—just out of curiosity. I liked big-cocked men. The man could be a bit pudgy, but if he had a good cock that was all I needed. With him, I couldn’t tell. His suit was cut too well. But he'd volunteered that young men who went with him weren’t disappointed. It could all be bluster, but . . .

“Perhaps you’d like to have my card,” he said. “Even if we didn’t rearrange an evening together, if you find yourself bored after the concert, you could call me on my cell. I know where there is a very nice, discreet bar near the Grosse Saal.”

“Umm, OK, thanks,” I said. “My name is Aiden Lanier,” I added. He’d told me his name; it was only polite for me to do so as well, but of course he’d take it as expressing interest. As I took the card, we were being instructed to buckle up and told to give our attention to what we should do in an emergency. After we took off, I leaned my head against the bulkhead and dozed off. I swam back up into consciousness a couple of times and when I did so once I realized that Hans was feeling me up. I opened my eyes and gazed at him. I didn’t stop him, though. I let my thighs come apart. I’d been daydreaming of Ari fucking me and I was both hard and in heat. I looked down at the hand on my crotch and then up into the man’s face. He smiled, realizing I wasn’t going to react against him groping me.

On the contrary, I turned a bit toward him in the seat and opened my stance more, letting him get a good feel of me and rewarded him by going hard.

Maintaining his smile, and his hand rubbing my basket, he said, “I’m a man of means. I can pay well.”

“We’ll see,” I answered. And we would. I was such a slut, but at least I acknowledged I was—at least to myself. I already was worried about arrangements in Frankfurt. When Max had set it all up, he’d been clear about staying with him—in his one bedroom, one bed apartment. I got the sense now that he was backpedaling on that. I hadn’t set anything else up. If this guy lived alone . . . and there was the Mercedes . . . I didn’t mind the idea of riding in a flash Mercedes. I didn’t even mind all that much of riding a guy’s cock in a flash Mercedes.

He took my hand and placed it on his crotch while continuing to touch the line of my engorging cock inside my trousers. He took the tab of my zipper between two fingers and pulled it down a couple of inches before I put my hand on his and stopped him. “Not here,” I murmured. “It would get too public.”

He gave me a questioning look but then smiled again when I returned my hand to his crotch. I traced the line of his cock down his thigh. He dressed left. And he was hard . . . and hung. Now I knew. “You afraid or are you interested? Are you a tease?” he murmured.

“I’m not afraid and I’m not into teasing. And we’ll see how my schedule goes.” I didn’t take my hand away.

“A cock this size doesn’t—?”

“No, it’s not a problem.”

He moved his hand to my chest to trace my nipple bars through the T-shirt material and whispered, “Nice. You are a beautiful young man,” before he returned to cupping and squeezing my package. I was fully hard, which must have given him a thrill. I’m sure he thought it was for him, but it was as much in memory of me with Ari earlier in the morning. The man was just framing my thoughts in the channel of sex.

“Don’t be afraid of it,” he said. “I’ll treat you right.” He reached into his back pocket and took his wallet out. He extracted two one-hundred-euro bills and laid them on the console between us. His wallet was stuffed with them. He winked at me as he leaned into me in the effort to put his wallet back into his back pocket. I left the notes where they were.

No, I wasn’t afraid then. It was much like any other pickup I’d been through. Very soon thereafter I was afraid, though. I wasn’t the only one who felt the plane turning—and we weren’t anywhere close to the Frankfurt holding pattern, I didn’t think. I could sense others registering concern in the cabin, and very soon thereafter a stewardess came on and said something, first in German—which only added to my concern because it ruffled the German-speaking passengers, include Hans, who turned a bit white in the face. Then, in English, she informed us that, unfortunately, we would have to make an unscheduled stop. We were going to land in Rome. The stewardess’s voice wavered a bit as she gave the announcement—I could feel the nerves more pronounced when she was speaking German and I couldn’t understand precisely what she was saying. I could see that she’d given a fuller explanation in German than in English and the effect it had on some passengers, though.

As we were taxiing in to Rome’s Fiumicino airport, on Italy’s western coast, the captain came on the speaker system. His voice was calm, but what I could see on the outside of the plane wasn’t reassuring. We weren’t taxiing to the terminal. We were rolling out to the edge of the field, and trucks, sirens blazing, were racing toward us. We weren’t the only plane gathering out here on the fringe. All the rest were the same airline as ours—El Al, the Israeli national carrier.

“Sorry for the diversion, folks,” he said, in English. His accent was Israeli. “No need for panic, but we are facing a forced layover. As soon as we come to a stop, the doors will open and the chutes will unfurl. Take your shoes off, please, walk as carefully and orderly as possible to the doors, and as quickly, please. We have to evacuate the aircraft.”

As I came out of the bank of seats behind Hans, I saw that the two banknotes had disappeared.

I clutched my violin case, containing my most precious possession, to my chest as I slid down the chute. I made it down OK, and so did the violin. I never saw Hans Brunner, the Mercedes man again, though.

Only when we got to the terminal, delivered in buses, and they were sorting us out, did we learn that two El Al transcontinental flights had been blasted out of the air while we were en route and they were bringing down the whole fleet. We would be accommodated on other flights to Frankfurt as they could be booked on other airlines.

* * * *

The terminal at Rome airport was a study in chaos and confusion, thanks to the sudden influx of forced layover passengers from the grounding of El Al aircraft in the region. This was exacerbated by the effects of a not-all-that-recent fire that had destroyed much of the terminal and hadn’t been fully cleaned up yet. Angry, upset, and otherwise bleary-eyed passengers were roaming around looking for ticket agents, who had not been fully mobilized yet. When instructions started coming in on a loudspeaker, though, the situation began to calm down.

An announcer explained that they would get everyone on their way to their destinations with rewoven connections, which was met with sighs of relief, but when they added that they couldn’t get it all done that day, the hubbub started again. Extra agents came into the part of the terminal we’d been herded to and people were forming around them before they could even get to wherever they were going to work their magic on flight connections. A voice came on again asking people to let the agents get to their stations—and asking them in Italian, Hebrew, English, French, German, so it was taking time to get the information across to everyone.

I latched into the English and heard them say that those having the need for fast connections to go the west end of the hall and those who were willing to take flight delays, with compensation, to go to the east end. There was considerable milling around, none of those who had been unexpectedly dropped on Rome knowing what was west and east in the hall, but eventually most of the surge was in one direction. The announcer was offering transportation into the city, the night at a designated hotel, with meals, and an additional 200 euros for passengers who would take next-day flights. Our luggage would be retrieved for us and booked again for free. I figured that few would take up this initial offer, assuming that the ante would go up from there, which told me which end of the hall that agent was positioned. I slung my violin case over my shoulder and moved against the thundering horde of the “right now” passengers. I had a two-day rest before the rehearsal for the concert in Frankfurt and I was increasingly nervous about the reception I could expect from Max. I’d never been to Rome. So, why not take the offer? I saw no reason to risk losing out in the game of “can I commit at the peak of the offering and get in on the deal?”

Two hours later, suitcase in hand—I traveled as light as I could—and violin case over my shoulder, I was on a train for what I was told would be a thirty-kilometer ride into the heart of Rome and I was holding directions to the UNA Hotel Rome, which I was assured was a good hotel and was close to the main Rome railroad station. Once in Rome, at the train station, I was spit out facing a park to the right in front of me and a parking and bus transfer lot to the left of me. The directions I had were to cross the Via Giovanni Giolitti at the station’s entrance and into the Via Daniele Mannin and that the hotel would be just one block in to the right and down half a block. What looked like the major street around was in front of me, on the other side of the parking lot and park, so that’s where I went. When I got there I saw a sign that said the street was the Via Solferino. I immediately was lost. I took out the city map I’d been given at the airport and kicked myself for not asking that the agent circle the train station and my hotel. I searched for the train station on the map.

“May I help you? Do you need directions?” The man was tall and slim and elegantly dressed—and extremely handsome, albeit old enough to be my father—or my grandfather. If I’d been told to describe a well-heeled Italian aristocrat, this would be the man. His auburn hair hadn’t gone fully gray, but the temples had, which added to the “distinguished” look. He had a patrician bearing; a tanned, handsome face; dark, expressive eyes; and a “I can help you get where you want to go?” friendly smile. He also had an “I stopped because you are a gorgeous young man and that interests me” smile. How, I wondered, not for the first time, could men so quickly figure me out? For that matter, how had I so quickly figured him out? But I had. He had approached me with interest in me. I’m sure he didn’t stop to help every confused-looking tourist in Rome. He wasn’t invested in getting me where I needed to go; he would like to take me to where he would like me to be.

“Yes, please. Perhaps you can help me find my hotel. I was told at the airport it was just a block from the train station, but I can’t figure out in which direction. I’m staying at the UNA Hotel Rome. Just the one night. A forced layover of my plane.” Why was I telling him all of this? Maybe it was because I was captivated by his smile, his perfect age for what I liked, his elegantly slim body . . . or all of it together. Or because he had approached me. I was in “alone and confused” mode. Or maybe I’d told him about the plane delay and the hotel assignment because his eyes had dimmed a bit at the mention of the hotel, as if it wasn’t in his league. And I was quite sure from the expensive look of his clothes and his bearing that the hotel probably wasn’t in his league.

“Ah, yes, that hotel is across the street running beside the rail station over there, the Via Giovanni Giolitti. You just enter the Via Daniele Mannin, walk one block, turn in the street to your right, and the hotel is on your left.”

Just like the directions I’d been given.

“Thank you. Thank you for stopping to help me.”

“You caught my attention,” the man said, his voice a rich baritone, his English impeccable and the Italian accent sexy.

I just bet I did, I thought. I recognize the look you’re giving me. I wish there were some way I could help develop that interest.

“The violin case,” he added. “You obviously are a visitor. American or English? But not many visitors come to Rome with a violin case under their arm.”

“Oh, yes, the violin,” I said. Shit, maybe it wasn’t me that made him stop, I thought. “I’m on my way to Frankfurt, Germany, from Tel Aviv on a series of concert assignments in Europe this summer. I’m American—with the New York Philharmonic. Yes, a violinist. I played in a ‘Raisins and Almonds’ tribute to the Jewish composer Goldfaden in Tel Aviv, and I’m playing in a sound track concert of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey by Alex North in Frankfurt. Do you know that work?” Why in the hell was I running at the mouth?

“Doesn’t everyone? From Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra.” He was smiling and his eyes were sparkling.

God, and he knew classical music too.

“Here. Let me show you where your hotel is,” he added.

“I don’t want to take you out of your way.”

“It’s on my way. And I will be delighted to aid a musician visiting my city—especially a young man who is as engaging as you are.”

In the hotel lobby, as I was checking in, he said, “Take your cases up to your room. I will wait for you down here and then I will show you a few places in Rome that I’m sure you will enjoy. You can’t be here for a day in Rome and not see some of the city. We can’t see anything famous at the Vatican, as everything requires prearranged tickets now, but there is a Sistine Chapel very close by.”

“A Sistine Chapel? Like the one in the Vatican?”

“One nearly as impressive,” he said.

“I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you—taking up your day like this. I’m sure I can arrange a tour in the time I have here through the hotel. You’ve been too kind already.” Please, convince me to let you show me around, I was thinking, inwardly panting.

“I doubt a tour could show you our major concert halls: the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma or the IUC hall—the Instituzione Universitarian Conanti. Surely those would be at the top of the list for a visitor from the New York Philharmonic.”

Would they ever? He had me salivating. “You’re making me salivate,” I said, with a laugh.

“I would be pleased to make your fluids flow,” he said, putting an elegant, gloved hand on my forearm and giving me a look of declaration. “I trust you know my meaning.”

He was wearing gloves, but the gloves were now off in this discussion. There was no misunderstanding what he was interested in. I shuddered in pleasure and anticipation. “You must have other business today,” I said, my demur weak. I couldn’t hide my interest.

“I do have plans, but those could be changed by phone calls as you are putting your cases in your room. I am Vincenzo di Abos. You must be thirsty. We can go to a nearby café first and plot our afternoon—and perhaps our evening . . . and night as well. It is possible you will spend the night with me, I think.”

“I am Aiden. Aiden Lanier,” I answered, purposely not responding to the obvious request—more of a command. I responded well to a man’s commands—especially a dominant older man. I wasn’t ready to openly discussing the possibilities, even though we’d been eyeing each other in a meaningful way since we had met on the street. “And, yes, a stop at a café would be very welcome.”

He sat close to me at the street café, his knee pushed in between mine as we discussed our itinerary. I squeezed his knee between mine to signal that we were going down the same path. “I mentioned the Sistine Chapel,” he said, “because there is a sixteenth-century chapel by that name in Santa Maria Maggiore, a Marian basilica just steps away from here. No one should come to Rome without seeing one of our magnificent churches. But then it is concert halls for you. We’ll take a hire car to the IUC hall and then back to The Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, which also isn’t far from here.”

“Do we have time for all of that?” I asked. In the back of my mind I already was building in the possibility of private intimate time. The knee between mine and the touch of his sensual, gloved hands on my forearm from time to time, along with the overall sexiness of him, were making me hard.

“We will make time. My flat is in the Via Modena, very close to the opera house. We can go there before supper. And then, after supper perhaps you will go to the opera with me. I have tickets for tonight. It will feature Gustav Mahler’s ‘Adogietto’ from Symphony Number 5. Do you know it?”

“Of course I know it,” I said. It was music to fuck by. “But I couldn’t expect—”

“I would be pleased—very pleased—to have a handsome young man accompany me to the opera tonight,” he said, giving me that meaningful look. This was almost too good to be happening. Of course I accepted. “And perhaps more.”

The Sistine Chapel was as magnificent as Vincenzo had said it would be. I was amazed at the IUC hall that, leaving me for a few minutes, Vincenzo was able to arrange for me to see the interior of and even to walk the concert stage. The same happened at the opera house, where he was greeted with a “It is a pleasure for you to come to us this afternoon, Count Abos. We would be delighted to show your visitor from the New York Philharmonic our hall and stage. And would he like to see our backstage?”

So, Vincenzo wasn’t just any patrician and music-savvy Roman. He was aristocracy here—a count. He had connections in the classical music world of Rome. And those connections were accustomed to seeing him squire young men around. He also wasn’t trying to seduce me with power and position. He was relying on his charisma, which he had in abundance. Although, I guess too that his power in position in Italy foster his assumption that he could have what he wanted. Well, he could have me.

When we left the opera house, he leaned into me, putting an arm around me and palming my buttocks and said, “Have I gauged you wrongly? Will you come back to my flat now—it’s just a few blocks in this direction—and let me make love to you?”

“It something to consider,” I answered. I was loath for him to think I was that easy. I wanted to say yes, of course—because, in fact, I was that easy.

“I believe I have read you right. You are a young man who will let a man make love to him—who will take a man’s cock when it’s given in worship. True? You are a David to me; I want to worship your body.”

“I am gay, and I am a submissive, yes,” I answered. It was the truth, and I’d been noncommittal long enough with him. There wasn’t anything about him I didn’t like.

“I find you very arousing, and I assure you that I am very good in covering young men like you.” He had become increasingly intimate in touching me as our sightseeing had progressed and I had done nothing to discourage him. I looked forward to fun and games later in the afternoon. I wondered how hard-bodied he was. He was quite slim and, of course, he wasn’t a young man. But everything I touched of him was hard. I also began to wonder how well equipped he was. He certainly won points on slow seduction. I was nearly panting for him and we weren’t even naked.

“You want to fuck me?” I said, surprised that he’d been so open about it.

“Yes, I want to fuck you—if you are able to take men who are, how do you Americans say it? horse hung. I am very well endowed. Some young men aren’t comfortable with me inside them. But am I being too forward? I thought I had you placed from the moment I saw you. And I wanted to be inside you from then. I engorged for you right there on the street corner.”

“No, you aren’t being too forward,” I said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how I could get you on top of me since I met you. If you had asked to come up to my hotel room when I checked in, I would have been delighted to lie with you. I am very pleased to have seen your chapel and concert halls, though. I hope your apartment isn’t far.”

“It’s not. If I assure you I am checked regularly and if you know of no impediment from your side, may I bareback you? It is the Italian way and is much more pleasurable than using condoms.”

“Yes.”

“Lovely. You have such a sweet body. Your blond hair, with its red highlights, is divine. It makes me wonder. Are you a natural blond? Is that coloring natural?” The hand he had been palming my buttocks with snaked around my hip and palmed my lower belly, fingers extended down to my groin. He was asking me if my pubes were blond with red highlights too.

“Yes, I’m that blond everywhere,” I answered. Many young men shave their pubes. I just shaved them back to a triangle of curls. I knew that the color of the hair was an asset.

“Delicious,” he murmured. “A young man’s pubes are a fetish of mine. Do you mind if I use the word ‘fuck’? I don’t know if that’s too much of a vulgarity with Americans.”

“No, it sounds quite erotic with your accent,” I answered. How do you say it in Italian, if I may ask?

“You could say ‘cazzo’ for ‘fuck’ in a crude sense. Or you can say ‘scopara’ or ‘fottere.’ Italians like to do it so much they have several words for the act, including ‘copulare’ for ‘copulate’. The polite word for it, meaning ‘sexual intercourse,’ would be rapporti sessuali. For me, with you, at this moment, I would say, Voglio fare un profondo amore con te.”

“And what does that mean?”

“I have said I want to make deep love to you. Do you understand what I mean by ‘deep’? It is sensual lovemaking, but it is total, deep inside you. It is both love and fuck.”

“Yes, I think I understand. Those words sound so sexy the way you say them. And how do you say ‘Yes, please fuck me’?”

“We say, Sì, per favore Fottermi. ‘Fottermi’ is even more intimate and explicit. I believe your word for that is ‘screw.’ Is that what you wish me to do, screw you?”

“Yes, that. That’s what I would like from you. And how do you say ‘bareback’?”

“‘Senza sella.’” He gave me a low laugh.

“I’ll take that too, please,” I said.

“Then I wish to fuck you and then fuck you again and again—senza sella,” Vincenzo said. “I am quite virile as well as thick and long. We have the rest of the afternoon and the night, if you wish to continue. If you can sheath me with more pleasure than pain, you will enjoy me as much as I enjoy you.”

I shivered.

* * * *

The count fucked me—repeatedly and senza sella—to classical music, and he was, indeed, virile and very thick and long. He knew his music and used it the best effect. He was a master at staying on the beat with his thrusts and of matching his and my climaxes to the crescendos of the music. Consequently, neither of us lasted long during each fuck. But there were plenty of them. I suppose you could think of it as lovemaking, but it was fucking and it was everything that I could have wanted from him.

The first session, consummated on a brocade-covered, and possibly original, Louis the Fifteenth settee in the cavernous living room of his penthouse apartment, was all for me. I was naked, reclining against the arm of the settee, a pillow under the small of my back, and my legs manipulated in multiple positions by the count as, dressed only in an open scarlet silk robe and hovering over me, he kissed and licked and nipped and fondled every square inch of me, reveling in the reddish-blond bush he had asked about, as his lips went to the base of my cock, he whispered what the Italian words for the blow job he was about to give me were: pompino, bocchino, lavoro di bocca. I sighed at the sound of the words.

He sucked me and ate me out, and finger fucked me to the sound of Pavarotti singing Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” from the opera Turandot, making me come in his throat on the high, strong note Pavarotti belts out at the end of the song.

He took longer in pulling his pleasure out of me in what he said was a heavily carved nineteenth-century Venetian four-poster bed while he fucked me in a missionary position to Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite, “Parts One and Two,” in which he masterfully managed two ejaculations in what seemed nearly a foot inside me with a thick, hung cock. The first part built in beat, which he coordinated his thrusts with, to a thunderous explosion on the kettle drums and his first ejaculation, calming down to an interlude, still with a beat and slow stroking of his cock, and ending in a second thundering storm on the kettle drums and a second, even more powerful release of cum.

As each knew composition played, he asked if I knew what we’d be fucking to, and he was thrilled that I always could identify it—and then more thrilled when I told him that I hadn’t realized just how conducive it was to copulation.

I lay there, exhausted and panting as the count stretched out beside me, his body turned to me and one arm encircling me and holding me close to his sinewy, hard body, and stroked my belly and thighs and gave me a slow hand job, whispering in my ear the Italian words for what he was doing to me: sega, servizietto, lavoretto di mano.

After I’d come, I dozed off to a recording of Mahler’s “Adogietto” from his Symphony Number 5, which was sensual, and which Vincenzo said we would be hearing at the opera that evening. All of the music the count ever played for me was music to fuck by and, more often than not, he was fucking me to the beat and mood of the music.

“I’ll have to go back to the hotel to retrieve my tuxedo for tonight,” I murmured. “I just hope it isn’t too wrinkled from having been in a suitcase.”

“No need,” the count said. “I will show you a bedroom with a closet full of tuxedos. I’m sure one will fit you perfectly.”

“You keep a wardrobe of opera clothes for all the young men you fuck?” I asked. I probably was unconsciously fishing for a declaration that I was one of only a few.

“Yes, of course. I am heavily sexed. I always like to have a beautiful young man on my arm when I go to the opera. And I always fuck him both before and afterward. One of the calls I made in the hotel was to cancel the young man I was taking to dinner and to the opera this evening.”

That was deflating. “You were that sure of me as early as when we were in the hotel?”

“Certainly. You responded to me like I could have laid you in the park in front of the train station.” He laughed.

“So, what’s the Italian translation of male whore?” I asked.

He shot right back with “maschio puttana,” with another little laugh. He wasn’t going to apologize about anything we were doing—anything he was doing to me—or give me any slack on what I was agreeing to do. I could see now that he, in fact, was an old-line patrician, taking what he wanted as if by right. I had let him. But I had no thought that I should apologize for that either.

His easy assumptions of me further deflated me, even if they were the honest truth. Once again I wondered how men knew I would be easy for them. One lover had told me that I exuded pheromones of easy submission. But I couldn’t stay deflated for long. He was worshiping my body, murmuring how beautiful and perfectly formed I was. He was kissing down my body again, running his fingers into the blond curls of my bush, and taking my cock in his mouth. He sucked me off quickly, and he was still working me intimately with his mouth when, exhausted, I went to sleep.

When I woke, on my back, he was stretched out beside me, propped up on his elbow, and gazing down at me. “Are you disappointed?” I asked. It had been a surprise to me, but he was far more advanced and masterful in sex with men than I was. He worked my body like I played the violin.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “You are a beautiful young man and you are a superior lay.” His fingers worked their way into my blond bush and I knew that the color of it was a fetish of his. I turned my thighs out to maximize the access and raised my groin to his caressing hand. “But I’m wondering if you really can play the violin,” he said. He bounced out of bed, left the bedroom, and returned with a violin. He played a few runs to assure me that he mastered the violin as much as he mastered me and then held it out to me. “Show me.”

I rolled out of bed and, naked, took the violin from him. I gasped. “This is an Amati.”

“Yes,” he said.

An Amati violin cost about a thousand times what the violin I used in concerts cost. “You want me to play something?”

“Yes. Show me what you can do other than ride my shaft divinely.”

Earlier, at the café, we’d discussed how much classical music had been adapted for movie tracks. So, I played the violin version of Mozart’s “Piano Concerto Number 21,” known as the Elvira Madigan concerto and eventually used as the theme song for the movie of that title. After that, just to assure him I did know what I was doing on a concert stage, I swung into Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Half way through that, he came off the bed, panting and in full erection.

“Fine. You can play the violin. Please put it aside now. I must fuck you again—senza sella. I must take you like Stravinsky thrust out that composition.” He took the violin out of my hands, laid it off to the side on the carpet, gently pushed me down on the floor, covered me, moving his knees between my spread thighs and under my buttocks, raising my pelvis to his thrust. He fucked the shit out of me there on the floor, thick, long, virile, vigorous . . . everything.

* * * *

Count Abos took me to a supper club near the opera house for dinner before the concert. He knew everyone in the restaurant, and all of them fawned over him. He made no attempt to hide me or pretend that I was any less than his sexual escort for the evening, and the diners, all elegantly and expensively dressed, fawned over me too. I couldn’t help but be impressed and to feel important. The mention of the New York Philharmonic made them warm to me. This was a highly literate crowd musically.

Of course he had his own box at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, an ornate, gilded hall, with several tiers of boxes curving around three sides of the hall. As promised, the first section of the program was dedicated to the romantic—and sensual—works of Gustav Mahler. When the “Adogietto” was played, Vincenzo turned to me, winked, and cupped my basket with his hand. His lips brushed my cheek. He obviously didn’t care if anyone saw us. I found that arousing. In fact, I was pretty much hard the whole day.

At the interval, he told me he would be gone briefly, and when the curtain opened and the lights dimmed he still hadn’t returned. To my surprise—but why should anything he did or was surprise me at that point?—when the orchestra members had completed their retuning, someone scurried out on the stage, bearing sheets of music, which he distributed among the musicians. When he retreated, the Count Vincenzo di Abos walked out to the conductor’s platform from the wings, picked up the baton to the sound of thunderous applause from the audience, and conducted Gustav Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War” from his Planets Suite. Most of the world was familiar with that music as a theme used in the soundtrack for the Star Wars movies.

When that was finished and as the musicians were rearranging sheet music on their music stands, the count turned and announced, in both Italian and English, that they were adding a piece to the evening’s repertoire. He smiled and gave a salute up to the box where I, also smiling, was sitting and then conducted Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, which is used in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and which I was scheduled to play in Frankfurt later that week.

He returned to the box for the third section of the concert, turning the baton back to the regular conductor to shouts of “Bravo!” and “Meister!” As the music returned to that of Gustav Mahler, the count drew me back into the shadows of the box, where we were shielded from the rest of the audience.

“I must have you again now,” he whispered. I didn’t object. I was so much in arousal that I was leaking.

He locked the box door from the inside, stripped my borrowed—and perfectly fitting—tuxedo off me, unzipped his fly and released his cock, and set me down on my knees facing him. “Fammi un pompino—Give me a blow job,” he whispered. “Me lo succhiasse—Suck me off. Be my maschio puttana.”

I sucked him to full erection in the deep shadows of the box through one Mahler piece and then he sat me on the cock, facing away from him during the next Mahler piece. I knew it well. I understood the beat. I knew where it crescendoed to a frenzy and an explosion, and, I’m proud to say that, using the leverage of the pads of my feet on the floor of the box and what I had learned from him earlier in the day, I managed to bring us both off at the height of the cymbals clash.

As the orchestra kept playing Mahler, the count whispered in my ear. “You are a delight. Sei il migliore—You are the best. You don’t have to go on to Frankfurt or back to New York. There is a place for you here in Rome. I know that the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is in need of a first violinist. They would take you in a heartbeat on my recommendation. You, of course, would live with me. It’s time for me to settle down, and you are an outstanding lay.”

I didn’t answer him then. Was “you are an outstanding lay” the equivalent of “I love you”? Did I care whether or not it was? I was falling in love for him, I think, and it was for more than his money or his big cock. He fulfilled me in many ways.

After the opera, he fucked me in the doggie position on his bed to the sound of Carol Orff’s bombastic “O Fortuna” from the Carmina Burana, not missing a beat in wild thrusts, fucking me hard like I’d never been fucked before. The two of us tumbled off the bed in the middle of the piece and he rode my ass across the ancient, nearly threadbare Oriental carpeting, to his bathroom, where he continued fucking me up against the tiled wall of his shower, reaching deep up inside and filling me to the brim with his cum.

Later in the night, when I had recovered, he lay on his back on his bed while I rode his cock in the cowboy position to Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” from The Ring Cycle, with the count instructing me about coming crescendos and how to make the most of them.

The next afternoon, as I was in my unused UNA Hotel Roma room, picking up my bag and violin case, I called Max in Frankfurt to tell him I wasn’t coming. He seemed almost relieved. I know I was.

The count was downstairs, in the lobby, ready to take me to the Sala Santa Cecilia Auditorium for an audition with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. I also was letting him arrange for the cashing in of my plane ticket to Frankfurt. He obviously knew how to get things done in this city. He most certainly knew how to do me.

I had left New York for a summer of learning to live the music. I had learned all I needed to know in one day in Rome with the Count Vincenzo di Abos—and I was learning some very useful Italian to boot.