Visting Grandpa on Leave from the Army

I had just completed Army basic training and it was mid-December, so all the new soldiers still in the training pipeline were sent on leave for two weeks for Christmas. I never got along so well with my parents and never had much freedom in their house, so I opted to visit my grandpa for the two weeks instead.

Grandpa was a US Army veteran too but thankfully didn’t have to participate in Vietnam, he just did his 4 years and ducked out before that whole mess started. Growing up we never had many one-on-one conversations so I didn’t feel like I knew him that well, but when I was planning on enlisting we had lengthy phone conversations where he convinced me to volunteer for Airborne School like he did decades before. His stories were great and revealed him to be a really sharp and funny guy.

Grandpa lived alone, as Grandma died before I was born. He drove to pick me up from the airport, where I had arrived in uniform as required by the training unit I was in. He gave me a long, tight hug as soon as he saw me, and even a kiss on the cheek, which I never remembered him doing. Feeling his bristly mustache on my clean-shaven face evoked the same confusing feelings I’d felt about men since about puberty. I had never explored those feelings and hid that part of myself from everyone. But with my new-found independence and confidence I had already planned on exploring sex with men… in secret, of course. No way in hell did I want anyone to find out I was a sissy.

The drive to his house in rural Washington took over two hours, so he excitedly talked about what I should expect in Airborne School and what it was like at his first duty station. As we neared his house on the winding rural highway, he hesitated. He asked, “Are you nervous?”

“Kind of. I wouldn’t say ‘nervous’, but there’s some uncertainty there since I’m so new to the military.”

“That’s a good answer. But I know you’re going to do great.” His tone was reassuring and brimming with pride. He put his right hand on my thigh for a moment, then somewhat abruptly moved it back to the steering wheel. I felt lucky that he did, because his touch inspired the beginning of an erection he would have been able to feel through the uniform pants.

That December brought a lot of snow, and it was snowing when we arrived at his house. “Now, I gotta ask for a favor before you get settled in. We need to move some firewood inside, might as well do it before you take your boots off. I keep the fire going 24/7 when it gets this cold,” he said.

As he opened the door and we stacked our armloads of firewood in the crib, I said, “Wow, you weren’t lying about the fire.” It felt like it was 80 degrees in there.

He chuckled. “Yeah, maybe I’ve gotten to be a wimp about the cold in my old age. But it’s nice to be able to walk around the house with just my underwear on.”

He wasn’t lying about the dress code, either. In the first few days at his house, we had become really comfortable around each other. It was the first time he treated me like an equal instead of a grandson, and I enjoyed and appreciated it. That naturally lead to a relaxation of personal boundaries that I also really enjoyed. Anytime we were in the house I wore running shorts and nothing else, he wore just boxers and a white undershirt.

The house was barely bigger than a cabin, with just a single bedroom and bathroom, and a combined kitchen and living room where the couch and his easy chair was. We ate dinner at the coffee table in front of the couch, and spent the evenings there sharing whiskey. By the third night together, we had upgraded to several glasses of whiskey each and the stories he shared got even more personal and hilarious. After one particularly funny story that kept me in stitches, he wiped away some tears of laughter and suddenly got sincere.

“I bet you’re already tired of hearing me tell you how proud of you I am, but I’m probably gonna say it every goddamn day.”

“You might want to save it for later, Pa. You know, after I’ve actually done stuff? I just graduated basic training.”

“You already did something I haven’t. You enlisted during a time of war. You and I both know you’ll be in Iraq or Afghanistan this time next year, and you seem absolutely fearless.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘fearless’, Pa.”

“Brave then. And that’s exactly what men are supposed to be and not much else matters. You could be a rocket scientist or a dumb hick farmer, black or white or Asian or Indian, a ladies man or a raging queer, and I’d still respect bravery.”

I chuckled to mask my nervousness. “Do you know a lot of raging queers who are brave?” I joked, probably less subtly than I meant to.

“Hell yeah I do! There’s every Marine I’ve ever met for a start!” He slapped his thigh and laughed awkwardly loud at his own joke. He may have noticed my muted response. He continued, “There’s nothing wrong with being a queer as long as you keep it to yourself. Hell, some of the shit we did in the barracks back in my day was so borderline queer you wouldn’t know the difference. We just didn’t talk about it.

“What kind of stuff did you do?”

He took a long pull of whiskey and then eyed me quizzically. “You really want to know?”

“Sure. It can’t be worse than the guys on the swim team and their antics.”

“I guess you ain’t been in the military long enough, because I guarantee we were worse! Soldiers are absolute dogs. Hell, one night me and my buddy took turns on a girl back and forth so many times it was practically like rubbing our cocks together! We were drinking, so we both kept going soft inside her. So I’d have to pull out and give him a turn while I got myself hard again, watching his cock go in hard and come out soft, rinse and repeat!”

We both laughed until we were teary-eyed once again, but I had developed an erection that the running shorts did absolutely nothing to hide. I non-nonchalantly pretended to scratch an itch down there and adjusted the angle of my cock to make the situation less obvious. It didn’t work. Grandpa glanced down and then shot me another quizzical look.

“Looks like the whiskey ain’t doing much to keep your willy soft,” he said with a hint of admiration and then motioned for my empty glass to pour me more. “Young guys are like that. Doesn’t take much more than a gentle breeze to get a guy to… uh… ‘stand at attention’!”

The alcohol didn’t calm my dick down, but it did give me a lot more confidence… or maybe carelessness… than I’d ever had before. “Well, I suppose we’re all a little bit queer. Whether we want to admit it or not.”

He looked a little bemused and answered, “That’s definitely true. But we go by the same rules as in the barracks: all the queer stuff we talk about stays between just the two of us.”

There was a slight pause in the discussion, as we both took a few more sips. I think we both knew what was coming next. I broke the silence with a short laugh, and admitted: “Scouts honor, I swear to keep it all confidential. I’m not naming any names, but me and a buddy used to look at porn and jack off together. It got a little awkward as we got older. But one time we jacked each other off. Neither of us ever told a soul.”

Grandpa laughed but quickly reassured me. “I think that’s pretty common... it’s the telling people part that’s uncommon. I guess I’m allowed to tell you about me and my twin brother, since he passed away a long time ago. We used to get in wrestling matches on the rug in the living room when no one else in the family was home. Quite a few times, that was was just an excuse for one of us to pull the other’s pants down and fool around with his dick. I lost count of how many times he jerked me off or I jerked him off. We stopped doing it when we got old enough that girls started wanting to spend time with us.”

“I haven’t been very, uh… lucky with girls,” I admitted.

“That’s all gonna change now that you’re a soldier. You’re going to be nailing them down left and right. You’re going to wake up with the taste of pussy in your mouth five times a week.” Grandpa yawned and drained his glass, then stood up and put a log in the stove. “I’m going to bed. Don’t finish off that bottle, I need your help with some outside work tomorrow.”

He closed the door to his room and I spread myself out on the couch for the night. I had to jerk off first, of course. That was just our first discussion that would lead to many more like it, and unbeknownst to me at the time, my first love affair with another man.