Interrupted Escape

By the sixth day of the cruise up the Rhine and onto the Main, I had nearly convinced myself that I could pull this off—settle into the life of an asexual middle-aged professor, specializing in chatting at cocktail parties. There certainly were enough happy hours on board the River Princess. I would lose myself in schmoozing with another hundred and a few passengers thrown together for eight days with brief interludes of leaving the ship and delving into the treasures of the riverside communities. There always seemed to be a music aspect to these excursions and, as a German music expert, I was also called on to inform and delight, which I diligently worked at accomplishing, to the pleasure of the gray and blue hairs. Maybe I could just rent myself out to Rhine River cruise lines for the next ten years to provide commentary and atmospherics.

I was less content with the prospect of no longer being a sexual animal, but I assumed that nature would take me there at some point whether I wanted it to or not. When I thought about it, though, about escaping into celibacy at thirty-seven, the image of Tom, at fifty-seven, still having been able to make me pant and spout, floated up in my mind.

By the sixth day, when we were leaving Volkach, the elements intervened to change the direction of my life. Some on board had noticed the problem as soon as we steamed away from the town after winery tours there and told us they had later in evening as we were gathering to be entertained by a young guitar player in the Rhine Lady lounge. There was a slight pinging sound coming from the engine room. There perhaps was a little hesitation in the ride against the current as well. But I, at least, noticed nothing that evening.

What I did notice was that the young musician who had come on board at Volkach to entertain us that night was a beautiful young man, having all of the attributes of what I had looked for in a submissive—when I was looking for one, which I told myself no longer was the case. My body hadn’t gotten the message, though, and it reacted in sexual ways from the first moment I saw the young man settling at the front of the lounge to begin his guitar set. In a slight panic, I looked around at the nearby gray and blue hairs to see if anyone noticed, but it didn’t seem they had. I’d worn trousers with enough “give” in them to hide my arousal.

He wasn’t tall, and he was a little more muscular and looking like a man of the fields than the music college students I usually focused on, but he was “oh my gosh” handsome in a shy sort of way, with matching smile, up there under the spotlight. And he was blond, his hair bound into a ponytail this night, just aching for me to release the band and, in my imagination, his inhibitions at the same time. And his eyes were a pale blue. His fingers on the guitar were long and sensuous, his lips full and kissable.

To top everything off he played magnificent music on the guitar, the first song he played was a fast and intricate Spanish flamenco after Horst introduced him as twenty-two-year-old Axel Weiss off his father’s dairy farm near Munich, spending a summer playing on the cruise boats on this section of the river and conducting private tours in the Bavaria area when he could. He captured the audience immediately. He certainly had me. He went from there to going through a repertoire of classic guitar songs, pop, and German folk songs. To top everything off, he took some requests, able to manage whatever anyone asked for.

“Do you know any Wagner?” one of the gray hairs sitting near me asked. I wanted to lean over and tell her that wasn’t likely, as Wagner was hardly appropriate for guitar, but she went on to say, “We have a German music expert with us, a professor at an American music college. The two of you really should get together.” She turned to me and beamed and everyone else in the audience did as well. I like to think she wasn’t purposely acting as a matchmaker.

That took the wind out of my sails and before I could think of anything to say, the young man started playing the familiar wedding march song on the guitar. Laughter erupted all over the lounge, the passengers enjoying what they thought was a little “no, Wagner isn’t appropriate for guitar” joke.

But then Weiss spoke up. “No, I’m not trying to be funny, am I, professor? Are you out there? Ah, that’s you? But you’re much too young and handsome to be a college professor,” he said, which made me go a little harder. “You must know that tune, professor. Can you tell your fellow passengers what it is?”

“It’s the ‘Bridal Chorus’ from Wagner’s opera Lohengrin,” I called out. And he had me there. He’d remembered his Wagner better than I had.

“There you go. The handsome man is a musical genius too. And how about this one, professor?” He moved into the strains of Wagner’s tune for the “Ride of the Valkyries,” played in a haunting, new, very evocative way. I called out the tune.

“Brilliant. You’re a very impressive man.”

“I think it’s more you who is brilliant and impressive,” I responded. “I only can identify Wagner music and give the background on it. You can play it—and you can play it in such an evocative way.”

“Evocative? Perhaps we can talk more of that later,” the young man responded, causing my heart to go ‘thunk.’ And then he finished up with a couple of songs and we broke up for drinks.

“Axel can stay around for a while for anyone who would like to talk with him about his music,” Horst said as the entertainment transitioned into yet another bar fest.

As the guitarist talked with others, I caught him looking at me from time to time. I caught him and Horst talking while they both were looking in my direction. Was Horst into matchmaking again, I wondered. And if he was, did that mean that the handsome young guitarist was gay?

I got the impression Axel wanted to chat with me, and that kept me in the lounge. Most nights I had disappeared right after the entertainment was over or didn’t show up for it at all. Eventually, I felt like we were working our way toward each other. But then Horst intervened, with Tom and Sean in tow, and he was introducing Axel to the couple in my neighboring cabin. The conversation appeared intimate to me, probably colored by what I knew of Horst and Tom, but quite possibly verified by the hand Tom put on the musician’s arm and that Axel didn’t shrink from.

Was it really possible Axel was gay—and a submissive? For some reason that started my juices going in a way that the thought of being able to cover the sexy little Sean had not done since we left Cologne. Perhaps it was that Axel equaled Sean in sexiness to my preferences but also was a musical genius. I could only fuck Sean; if Axel was a gay submissive, I could have a meaningful discussion with him on the music we were fucking to.

But then Axel was free and came to me of his own accord.

“You’re still here,” he said. “I was afraid you’d leave before we could talk.” He spoke excellent English, as I had found all Europeans I’d encountered on this trip did and as he’d done with his commentary as he performed for us on the guitar. The German only slipped in when he was passionate about what we were discussing, and when it did it charmed me. Finding another knowledgeable person on the trip who was passionate about music was exhilarating. And when it was a beautiful young man . . .

“You surprised me,” I said. “My name is Craig,” I added.

“I know,” he said. “Horst told me about you—who you were and that you were an American music professor.”

“Is that all he told you about me?”

“No, it’s not,” Axel said, and he smiled at me shyly. I was smitten. Oh, please have him gay and have him free the next day when we stop in Bamberg, I mused. I wanted to reach out with a hand and touch his arm, as Tom had done, just to see if he would leave it there as he had done with Tom. This was the first time since I’d been with Kurt that I felt this sexually charged with a young man. While I was still contemplating whether to try it while still trying to keep up with our conversation, Axel reached out and touched my arm with those long, sensuous fingers of his while making a point on German folk songs and I nearly melted on the spot.

We conversed a few minutes, but Horst came to pull him away to introduce him to someone else. I had no other reason to still be there after that, so, making the rounds of the last gray and blue hairs still in the room to keep them all atwitter, I retreated to my cabin.

My cabin had been made up for night already. Both bunks were made, although I’d only used the one side. I guess the principle was that I paid for a double cabin, so I should get the full service. I read for a while, but couldn’t concentrate. I kept thinking of Axel Weiss, starting with how divine his music was, moving to the play of his sensitive fingers on the guitar strings. When I realized that I was thinking about how divine his body was, I knew I wasn’t reading. I took a shower, pulled on my sleeping shorts, and got in the bunk I’d been sleeping in every night—the one that abutted Tom and Sean’s cabin.

They already were at it on the other side of the wall—fucking. I had visions of what Tom was doing. I now knew how well he did it and I fully understood why Sean made the sounds he did of being taken fully. That’s because he was being fucked royally. The young man didn’t stay with Tom just because the man was rich and took care of him financially. He stayed with Tom because the older man took care of him sexually as well. My hand worked its way under my waistband and I fondled myself in the memory of what Tom did with me as I listened to Sean’s reaction to what Tom was doing to him just on the other side of the wall.

But then I realized that wasn’t Sean. I’d had plenty of time and opportunity to know what Sean sounded like when he was been fucked hard and that wasn’t him. It was a familiar voice. I nearly curled up and vomited when I realized that was Axel Weiss’s voice. Tom had the divine guitarist on his back on the bunk just on the other side of the cabin wall and was between his thighs, feeding his long, thick cock inside Axel. Axel was responding vocally similarly to how Sean did it, except that most of it was in German. I knew what frick meant and gross and I knew the sound one made when Tom set up the rhythm of the fuck.

“Mein Gott, der so gross ist. Oh, ficken. Oh, ficken!—My god that's so big. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck! Ja, Ja! Fuck YES! Scheisse, es ist so tief—Shit, it’s in so deep!” Axel cried out, making the wall between us reverberate. Memories of Tom doing that to me and of the size of him flooded in and I stroked my own cock to the rhythm I was sensing from the other side of the wall.

“Fuck him! Fuck him hard. Let me in too!” Shockingly, Horst’s voice.

I couldn’t get off my bunk fast enough. I careened to the other side of the cabin and looked at the other bunk, ready to sleep there instead—or to try to. But the sounds of the taking could be heard over there too—at much less volume, but I would involuntarily try to pick it out and follow the progress of the fuck. And also, nonsensically, I couldn’t sleep on that bunk after having used the sheets on this other bunk. It would be embarrassing to let the cabin steward think I’d had someone else sleeping in the cabin tonight.

“Ja, beides. Oh, ficken. Oh, ficken!—Yes, both. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck!” The sounds subsided into rhythmic bumping against the cabin wall. They had him over there, Axel, sandwiched between them—Tom and Horst. Both men had their cocks inside him; they were both embracing him, both kissing him—and each other—both fucking him together. It was too much to contemplate.

Where could I go? I couldn’t hear the lovemaking from the bathroom, but I couldn’t sit on the toilet in that confining space all night. I came out of the bathroom, leaned my back into the cabin door to the corridor, and slid down to the floor into a lotus position. I couldn’t hear Tom and Horst taking their pleasure on Axel from here. I remained there, sitting, and pressing into the door to the corridor until, exhausted, I fell into a restless sleep.

I couldn’t explain even to myself how disappointed and frustrated I was that Axel was being shared on the other side of the wall. I just was.

I had decided to give all of this up . . . hadn’t I?

* * * *

When I opened the door of my cabin the next morning to go down to breakfast, the door to Horst’s cabin at the end of the corridor opened as well. Axel Weiss, dressed in the clothes he’d performed in the previous evening, was in the doorway. Behind him, wearing only briefs, was Horst. Horst turned Axel toward him and kissed him on the lips before Axel turned back and then walked up the corridor toward me. Numbed, I remained in my doorway as Axel passed me. He turned his head and gave me a shy, embarrassed look before continuing forward. When I looked back down the corridor, Horst had closed his door.

It took me a moment to recover, but then I went on to the center of the ship and then up to the dining room. As I passed the gangplank to the riverbank in Bamberg, our stop for the day, Axel was departing, now carrying his guitar case and a duffel bag. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

I went on to breakfast and sat with and jollied along the gray and blue hairs. Much of the discussion was on how good the music had been the previous night and how some of them were delighted we were in the ancient, picturesque village of Bamberg, as they had considered that to be the highlight of the cruise when they’d signed up for it. Leo served us. It had been days—it seemed like centuries—since that first night when he’d come to my cabin and I’d fucked him while Tom was fucking Sean across the thin divide between our cabins. I hadn’t called for Leo since that night, and with each passing day we’d reverted more to just privileged passenger and dining room server, so I no longer was uncomfortable sitting at this table and being served by him in this way among the gray and blue hairs.

While we were still at breakfast, an announcement came over the loudspeaker requesting that we all go to the Rhine Lady lounge after we’d eaten—and by 9:30 a.m. for very important announcements.

The announcements concerned a couple of cruise tragedies that would mean the river segment of our cruise would end here in Bamberg, although the tour would continue to fill out the eighth day. This was the seventh day. The cruise was to end the next day, in Nurnberg, anyway. There were two problems—one we’d all sensed was coming anyway. The engine room had developed a problem they were having difficulty locating, and thus they didn’t know how serious it was. The slight tick we’d all heard the previous morning and had not started mentioning until it worsened had become a distinct knock before we berthed in Bamberg. All of us noted at breakfast that it had awakened us sometime in the night. To compound this, there had been damage from a ship hitting the doors at a lock between Bamberg and Nurnberg, at Erlangen. The lock was closed temporarily for repairs. Thus, our journey by water had ended.

Since the River Princess couldn’t go further anyway, they were shutting everything down, including the electricity, within the hour and working on the engine. We would all have to disembark in Bamberg. Arrangements had already been made, however, to house us in various hotels, all at least four stars, and we would be bused to Nurnberg the next morning and helped to make whatever after-tour travel connections we’d previously had. We were to check with the purser, in turn, now to find out which hotel we were in. Our luggage would be taken there for us.

When it was my turn with the purser, I found I was booked in the four-star Nepomuk Hotel, a Baroque-style city institution, on the banks of the same waterway the ship was tied up to. It was a short walk from here in the historic cobble-stone street city center. While I was there, I informed the purser that I wouldn’t need the bus to Nurnberg. The cruise was essentially over anyway and I had planned to travel tomorrow from Nurnberg to the music festival venue in Bayreuth, where I was booked—in a double again, as I had not had time to change the arrangements after my falling out with Kurt—at a hotel in Bayreuth. Bayreuth was actually closer to Bamberg than to Nurnberg, so it made sense for me to go directly there from here.

I went back to my cabin and packed my bag, leaving it for the crew to take to the hotel. I then went to the lounge to say my good-byes to the gray and blue hairs—and to Tom and Sean—but not to Horst, who I studiously ignored. After that I was free to disembark and contemplate what to do before lunch, where to have lunch, and what to do for the rest of the day.

Ours was not the only passenger ship tied up to the riverbank, and the hawkers were out on the grassy areas between the river path and the streets of the old town. They had their wares displayed on blankets on the grass and were giving the eye to passengers from the ships as they came into the town for the day.

Axel Weiss was one of the hawkers. CDs of local musicians, including himself, were strewn out on his blanket, and he was strumming his guitar lightly to attract those passing by. He stopped when I approached him and looked up at me. His expression was one of apprehension.

“Hello, Axel,” I said, smiling at him. “Are these CDs of your music? Yes, I can see they are . . . and of others. Other musicians from the region?”

“Yes, these are all musicians that play on the river cruise boats. When we have a gig on the ships, we also try to sell each others’ CDs. But I’m surprised you would speak to me today.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked. In fact, I was delighted I’d seen him again.

“Well, because of this morning. Seeing me leave the entertainment officer’s cabin.”

“And I heard you last night with him and with another man—in the cabin next to mine.”

“Oh,” Axel said, looking down at his blanket in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. Please understand. Last night. I need the money . . . and when I looked up in the lounge, you were gone. And later, the entertainment officer. I have to keep him pleased to be able to get the gigs to play on the River Princess. He doesn’t pay me to go with him. He would not let me entertain on the ships if I didn’t go with him and with any guests he wanted me to go with.”

“No need to apologize, Axel,” I said. And, indeed, there wasn’t. Who would I be to judge him? I, in fact, was delighted he was a player. “Look at me, Axel.” He lifted his eyes, his look now with a bit of hope in it. “You said you looked up in the lounge last night and I was gone.”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying that you would have come with me last night—that you would have gone under me last night as you did for Tom in the cabin next to me and as you did with Horst?”

“Yes.” His voice was husky.

“I don’t know my way around town. Would you be my guide today? Would you show me what sights there are to see within walking distance and show me were a good place to have lunch is?”

“I really should sell a few of these CDs,” he answered.

“But otherwise you would come with me?” We both understood it wasn’t just as a sightseeing guide or to give advice on where to eat.

“Yes, of course.”

“How many CDs do you need to sell?” He told me and I bought twice that number. I assured him that, since German music was my area of study, I wanted examples of contemporary artists; it wasn’t just to buy him. Any I didn’t want myself would be appropriate gifts for me to give others.

“Where would be a good place to eat?” I asked. He named a café on the water, saying it was right next to the Nepomuk Hotel. I laughed, but, when Axel asked, I didn’t say why that was amusing to me.

Axel gathered up his blanket and wares, including my purchases, in his duffel bag. He carried the bag and I carried his guitar case as he walked me through the old streets of the quaint village that somehow had gone largely untouched by the wars that had raged across Germany for ages. We walked in a pattern that took us to the square the Nepomuk Hotel was on a bit after noon. We had a delightful lunch and discussion of music and then I took Axel to my room at the Nepomuk Hotel and we fucked all afternoon.

* * * *

The Nepomuk Hotel in Bamberg was somewhat of an anomaly. The architecture on the outside was early Baroque. On the inside both the architecture and the fittings were modern, streamlined Scandinavian blond wood. And, though a four-star hotel, the room was small, dominated by a platform bed. Perhaps the four-stars were for the service, but we didn’t require service. We’d brought our own services. The bed was handy, though, and it was good it dominated the room. We fucked on it for three hours.

I sat, crosslegged in the center of the bed, naked, with Axel sitting in my lap, facing me, his legs wrapped around my buttocks. We each had a reefer we were dragging on, and our foreheads were pressed together. We were murmuring in amusing tones. I was some seven inches inside him.

“So gross. Du bist so gross,” he whispered, telling me, as others tended to do, that I was a big-cocked man. It was hardly a revelation for me to hear, but I was pleased that he said it with satisfaction, which not all of my young men had. I also was pleased that he noticed. I still couldn’t decide if the blond whore in Cologne had been complaining or complimenting me. That Axel said it in German sent me into the heavens. He was lost to me and in the throes of passion. I was thrilled that it wasn’t just me.

I took the joint from between his fingers, upon which he touched me on a nipple and let his fingers trail down my torso and belly to touch me at the root of my cock buried in his ass. I place his reefer with mine in a ceramic bowl on the nightstand, placed my fist at the base of his spine, and pulled in as I thrust my cock forward, stretching him more open, invading him deep.

He gave a little cry of “Scheiss! Fuck! So gross. Fick mich. Fuck me!” and leaned back, pressing his fists into the mattress behind him, arched his back and his head, opened his mouth in a yawn, and whimpered, “Ja, Ja. Fick mich hart!”

I grasped his hips and pulled back and forward, rowing him on the cock buried deep inside his soft core, fucking him raw for the third time that afternoon. I pulled and released until passion overtook Axel and he came up again, clutching my breast close to his with one arm, both of us with a hand on his cock between our bellies, and he set his hips in motion, fucking himself on me. We came together in a cry of completion.

We fit like a glove from the first fuck, giving and taking, mentally conveying what each of us liked and what we liked better and servicing each other fully, spiraling up to heaven together. Just as we were completely compatible with each other in our likes and dislikes as we wandered the old town and then on the music topics we covered at lunch—and even in what we ordered to eat—we were one in sex.

When I had come out of the bathroom, naked, and carrying a condom packet and lube, very soon after we’d come into the room, Axel, like the whore in Cologne, had been sitting on the bed. But, in contrast to Ryker, Axle was naked and sitting at the foot of the bed, facing the bathroom door. I approached him and he reached out for me, and the sex started there, with him cupping my buttocks and taking my erection in his mouth.

From there, I followed the same pattern I’d taken with Ryker until all mental calculation went by the board. I wanted to know if it could be different. I needed to know if I could still satisfy a younger man enough to satisfy myself. First Kurt and then Ryker had left me in doubt. Leo hadn’t counted. He’d been a flash of lust, of physical exercise and relief, a quick in and out. I started with moving behind Axel, kneeling, my erection pressed into his back, rubbing his shoulders and then over and down his chest until I was touching his cock. Axel went hard immediately. Ryker hadn’t. The letting down of his hair was nothing much for Ryker, but it always was symbolic for me. With Axel, it clicked on an arousal button. He twisted back to me and we went into a passionate clutch—touching and fondling and kissing. I put him in my lap and fucked him, facing me, in the lotus position. We fucked wildly, vigorously, passionately—nothing like it had been with Ryker.

Then, after a rest, he gave himself to me completely in a languid missionary, Axel lying on his back, completely open and vulnerable to me, his arms raised over his head, his hands clutching the top edge of the headboard. “Take it. Take what you want,” he’d called out, being the submissive for me that I’d been for Cowboy and for so many other men for my first nine active years.

I did just that. I made passionate music on his body. I buried my face between his buttocks cheeks and ate him out as he whimpered and moaned and murmured in German. When he cried out “Jetzt. jetzt. Fick mich jetzt!—Now. Now. Fuck me now!” I rose over him, mounted and penetrated him, and made him mine. He lay there, open and vulnerable, pelvis raised to me, taking me deep and hard. He had eschewed the use of a condom this time, so I released deep inside him again and again, breeding him, owning him.

The third time we returned to the lotus position, having liked it so much the first time.

Three times. That had been a burning question. Could I satisfy a younger man multiple times still? Could I possibly own them and keep them with me? Even Tom, who could do it magnificently again and again, could only own Sean by buying him. And then he had to agree to share. If I had what I truly wanted in a mate, I didn’t think I could share. But could I come even close to what Tom could do at fifty-seven for enough more years not to just give it up now—to escape into a mediocre existence?

Axel was giving me that answer—and hope.

“When do you have to leave?” he whispered after we’d both come the third time and, still in a lotus embrace, me going flaccid inside him, and after we’d retrieved the reefers Axel had provided and I’d been leery of but had decided “What the hell? Anything to get him to open his legs to me again.”

“Tomorrow. I’m going to Bayreuth—for the music festival.”

“The festival,” he exclaimed. “I’d do anything to be able to attend that. I live here but never have been able to get tickets.”

“Anything?” I said, with a little laugh. He’d just done everything for me, without asking for anything in return. I’m sure he’d forgotten the CDs I bought. I would have wanted the ones by him anyway. “I have an extra ticket for the week. You could go with me. You could stay with me. I’d pay your way. I’d love to have the companionship and someone to discuss the music with.” That wasn’t a spontaneous suggestion, really. Since well into the second fuck I’d been scheming to have more time with him.

“How could I do that?”

“Easy. You could just do it. Even if you had another performance to do on the River Princess, that’s on hold now.”

“But I only came for the one day and night. I should be going back home to Munich now. There will be a night train.”

“You won’t be on a train tonight. You’ll be in this bed.” I held my breath, but he didn’t say no.

What he said was “I only brought my guitar and what I’m wearing—when I’m wearing something.” He stopped and we both chuckled. “I can’t take a trip.”

“We’ll shop for clothes for you tomorrow, before we go. I’ll take care of all of your needs. Let me take care of you.”

Again I risked it. Would he be submissive to me in everything? He didn’t say no.

“And while we’re about it,” I continued, “you said you live in Munich, didn’t you? And Horst said you worked as a tour guide. I want to tour Bavaria after the Bayreuth festival. I need a tour guide. I want someone I will enjoy.”

“Enjoy? Do you enjoy me?” Axel asked.

“You needn’t ask that. I want someone I can gloriously fuck. Say yes. Give me the next two weeks of your life.” Once again, I held my breath. I think I was asking for more than two weeks. I think I was trying to answer the question of whether I was ready to escape the lifestyle of maintaining a younger lover. But even if it would just be the two weeks, an interruption—two weeks with Axel—was better than what I had been afraid of.

“Yes,” Axel said.

END