Richard in Paris

'Although I'm half-French', said Richard, 'I had hardly ever visited France until I was reading Classics at Cambridge. I had gone there once as a child with my adoptive parents, the Finches, although they preferred Spain, and once with an organised school trip, which was not much fun.' 

He paused for a moment. 'I must have been about nineteen, going on twenty; no longer an innocent, when I made my first solo visit to Paris. Avoir vingt ans... it's supposed to be the happiest time of a young man's life; in France, anyway. It was June, warm but not too hot, and I loved the place. Lots of culture; good food and wine; and the feeling of being off the leash. The French do not like scruffily dressed tourists, so I wore a blazer and flannels with a white shirt, well-buffed shoes and a tasteful tie. Thus clad, on the first day I went for a stroll along the left bank of the Seine, pausing to look at bookstalls. The scent of the tilleuls – lime trees – was intoxicating.' 

I waited for him to continue. I knew Richard; what else did he look at?

'Near Notre Dame I saw something worthy of my attention. The fire service, les sapeur-pompiers de Paris, are part of the armed services; I have seldom seen a fitter or better-looking bunch of men. They are often included in French Olympic teams, especially the swimming and diving teams. They have a centre de secours on the Seine which is a barge, moored opposite the Ile de la Cite. Anyway, one of the firemen was sunbathing on deck. He was handsome, tanned and fucking beautiful. His minute bathing-slip was blue. I got an erection. He didn't seem to mind the admiration that he was getting from me and a few other people. None of this meant that he was queer; straight Frenchmen, as well as gays, like to be admired and to emphasise their sexiness: the most expensive suits; the closest-fitting jeans; the smallest and most erotic trunks... As for those khaki shorts that French soldiers wear in the tropics, they are so tight and so short that they'd get arrested anywhere else... Shall I go on?' 

'Please do!'

'Then I noticed someone else, who was also paying the sexy sapeur-pompier close attention. Oddly enough, I'd seen him before, that very same day. I had been browsing in a men's shop. I'd forgotten to pack one or two items and was shopping for replacements, when I looked up and saw him. He was a very young man; attractive, but not in the flaunting way of the sapeur-pompier. For one thing, he was fully-clad in an understated grey chalk-striped business suit, whose cut emphasised his slim waist. Like me, he was wearing a white shirt, which set off his lightly-tanned, red-cheeked complexion, and a red polka-dot neck-tie. He was clean-shaven. His features were delicate; his hair was fair and wavy; very short at the back and sides, with a high parting. All his movements were quick, deft and graceful. After contemplating the fireman for a few moments, he smiled, shrugged and walked off briskly. As he did so, the back flap of his jacket flew up on the breeze; it was lined with red satin, to match his tie; a nice touch, and he had a nice ass. His socks were the same red. He was not just sexy; he was the neatest, smartest guy I'd ever encountered. He looked very clean. You could tell that he was intelligent and fun. I decided to follow him at a discreet distance. My senses – all of them, especially my curiosity – were aroused.'

'So you fancied him! And where did he lead you?'

'Not far; he turned into a quiet street in the Faubourg St-Germain. Beside an impressive double door he quickly tapped in a code and disappeared into the courtyard of an old aristocratic hotel particulier which was now, I imagined, divided into flats; a fortress of propriety. Damn! That almost certainly meant that he was either from outside Paris and was renting a room from a formidably respectable family, or else he was the son of such a family, still living at home with his parents. Double damn! However hope springs eternal and there was a cafe-tabac not far away. I sat outside on the terrace, ordered a demi and waited, while pretending to read Le Figaro. I took the precaution of settling my bill immediately, just in case he should reappear and I then have to make a quick departure.  

'In far less time than I had expected, the young man reappeared. He still wore his white shirt, now without a tie, gaping at the neck to show a vee of tanned skin, a glimpse of gold chain, and with the sleeves neatly rolled up above the elbow. A pair of designer jeans covered his slim, muscular legs and revealed... a lot. He saw me, apparently recognised me and marched straight over. Our eyes met; for an awkward nanosecond we grinned at each other; in my case uncertain what to do next, and in his, with great amusement. 

'”Tiens, tiens!” he said, as though we had been old friends, and gave me a big hug, pressing himself against me. It felt wonderful; a slow-burning warmth spread from my ass and crotch all over me. Like the out-bursting of a trodden star, as some damfool poet once wrote. “On y va?” and he nodded towards his apartment block. I nodded enthusiastically. Off we ran. He again opened the wicket in the enormous porte-cochere and politely stood aside to let me in first. Then he grabbed my hand and we set off at a run: across the courtyard, into the cool, shadowed front hall, past the concierge's lodge and into the lift.

The lift had been inserted into the stairwell; I would guess a long time ago, under the Third Republic. Frenchmen had been a lot smaller back then. For two modern men that lift was a tight fit, which my new friend did not mind. With his right hand he expertly groped my crotch, squeezing my cock through the material of my trousers. Then he unzipped me and got inside... Wow! His left hand tilted my head down to the most-kissable angle, while he thrust his tongue into my mouth. The lift was old and slow. From time to time we would briefly surface, laughing and gasping for breath like swimmers; then we'd be at it again. Even back then I was no prude – I'd been broken in - but I was concerned that someone might stop the lift and catch us practically in flagrant delit. That did not happen, however. We tumbled out at the fifth floor and were soon inside his flat, which was the smaller half of a family-sized apartment that had been subdivided into two. It was incredibly tidy. 

'We headed for the bedroom. He pushed me onto the bed and set about removing my shoes. He placed them neatly to one side, with my socks inside them. Ditto, his own. He hung my blazer carefully on a coat-hanger. He stripped quickly, while I watched him; soon he was naked apart from his gold chain. He was as stunning as I had guessed; slim, very fit, with an almost all-over tan. Faint tan-lines above his beautiful ass-cheeks showed he wore a thong to sunbathe. Then it was my turn. I was now lying on the bed. He knelt astride me, unbuttoning my shirt. He slid his hand inside to fondle my nipples and stroke the skin. He evidently liked what he found; especially the fact that I had shaved most of my body. We both now had strong erections. He pulled down my trousers; at this point I learned that he spoke English – with an American accent and idiom – as well as correct French: 

“Tiens! T'as d'jolies cuisses! 'T'es rugbyman?” [Wow, you have great thighs. Are you a rugby player?]

“Oui; je fais du catch aussi” [Yes; I do a bit of wrestling too] I responded. At this point he removed my briefs and tossed them across the room. 

“You're a seriously hard mother-fucker!” he chuckled in American-English, leaning over to kiss me. “I'm Nicolas, by the way.”

“You don't say! I'm Richard”, I responded. We melted into each other's arms. Then he went down on me... 

'So began one of my most intense relationships. I didn't go in for lerve; friendship with fucking seemed much better, but this was an exception; we got emotionally involved. Nicolas was apt to be jealous, as well. It was flattering but potentially inconvenient; it would all have to come to an end when my holiday ended. Meanwhile I taught him to wrestle; a useful survival-skill, as I explained.' 

'Nicolas found wrestling irresistible; many gay men do. It is pretty erotic, even if you are wearing trunks, which we were not. He fought hard but I always won, which he did not like, unless I deliberately let him win; he did not like that, either. It was sadistically amusing to subject him to a 'Mexican ceiling': stretched out above me: his legs twined around my legs; his hands braced against the ground and his neck in my hands; his cock rigid, while I subjected him to painful stretching and rocking. All the time he would be issuing death-threats, which he was in no position to implement, and calling me all the names he could think of in English and French. Eventually I'd relent and release the slim, golden body. Then, he'd want to fuck or be fucked; he was enthusiastic and inexhaustible. The first time I had him, I took him from behind as we lay on our sides. Of course it hurt him a bit. He swore and then started moaning: 

“Oh mon amour, mon amour!”

'His legs were kicking and squirming. His eyes were tight shut and his mouth open. I reached over and jacked him off. He came vigorously, like a foaming, shaken champagne bottle! There was a mess on the duvet-cover after we had both shot our loads. 

'Nicolas was quite promiscuous; he seemed to know intuitively whether a man was up for it. One example will suffice. We'd taken a train to spend the day at Versailles. On the outskirts of Versailles we passed a small block of flats. On the top was a roof-garden in which a handsome and athletic man was topping-up his suntan. He was wearing a black speedo. He stood up to watch the train go past; it was losing speed. Nicolas, who was standing by the open window, waved and grinned at him. He gave a dazzling smile and waved back. The train moved on. 

'At Versailles, all thoughts of Louis XIV's château forgotten, Nicolas bought an A to Z and worked out that the block of flats must be in the rue Bussy. Ten minutes later, we rang a buzzer. A man's amused voice answered us. It was him, all right. He was expecting us and, yes, he was up for it. He later admitted that - thanks to his habit of sunbathing on the roof garden – he had had a few unsolicited approaches from people, of both sexes, who'd either glimpsed him from the train or from other buildings. He was called Jean-Louis. He liked rugby-players and found wrestling -called le catch in France - erotic; he was himself an amateur catcheur. That is a more common hobby sport in France than the UK. I issued a challenge; we'd wrestle there and then. Again, he was up for it. 

'I quickly stripped to my briefs, which were black and very brief indeed, while he watched. I looked at him; he looked at me. He was an intriguing mixture of the tough and the suave: regular features, neat, dark, short hair cut en brosse; a muscular but well-proportioned physique. Like Nicolas, he was sun-tanned all over; black curly hair on his chest. He radiated a sexy aura, like an elusive perfume; even when he was fully-clad in a suit, as I later saw him once or twice. It was something to do with his eyes and the way he moved... Having sat down to shed my socks, I stood up and saw him smiling mischievously at me; his trunks were pulled down to expose his curly crotch hair and the root of his penis. He locked eyes with me and his smile became broader: Shall we fight naked? I nodded Yes. We pulled off our fig-leaves, tossed them aside and within minutes were sweatily entangled, our cocks erect and hard. For all his elegance, Jean-Louis was as hard as nails; he fought like a tiger and was not above the odd dirty trick, such as squeezing my genitals; suddenly probing my asshole with his finger, eating my cock or biting my ass-cheeks. At one point we were mixed up in a complicated and sadistic soixante-neuf. 

Eventually we had to stop because were were completely exhausted. We had both under-estimated our opponent; we were very evenly-matched. We lay there, facing each other, gasping as if we'd run a marathon and staring into each other's eyes. We'd developed a strong, albeit wary, respect for each other. I stretched out my hand to shake his; he pulled me over to him and we kissed, taking our time over it. I was finally on top of him. 

'You may wonder what Nicolas was doing meanwhile?' (To be continued)