Tribulation

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Napa, CA

Philip

THE DRIVE FROM San Francisco to Napa took considerably more than an hour with Charles driving. I’d have gotten us there much more quickly, but he drove at a steady five miles above the limit, no more. We’d booked a room in a nice hotel on the Napa River near downtown, just a couple of blocks from the terminal of the Napa Valley Wine Train. We checked into the hotel just before noon and were shown to a large room with a king-size bed and a balcony overlooking the Napa River. We’d discussed a few things that we might like to do while in Napa, and in furtherance of that we’d gathered some brochures in the lobby of the hotel when we checked in. After we unpacked, we went down to the terrace overlooking the river, ordered a bottle of wine, and began perusing the brochures.

We’d already put the Napa Valley Wine Train on our must do list, as well as tours of some of the wineries. To that latter end, we found a brochure offering tours, and since neither of us particularly wanted to drive around from tasting room to tasting room, we agreed to book the tour. Having made our plans, we went to the concierge and left it in her hands to book the things we’d outlined, along with reservations for dinner at a couple of restaurants whose menus looked interesting. We took the remains of the wine and our glasses and went up to our room, settling down in the easy chairs on our balcony. It was a very pleasant afternoon and extremely relaxing.

“Have the events of the past few weeks caught up with you physically yet?” I said. “They surely have done so with me.”

“Too right. You know what we both need?”

“What?”

“A full-body massage,” he said.

“That’s not a bad idea. How would we go about doing that here?”

“Give me a few minutes with the laptop,” he said, and left the balcony.

I wandered into our room a few minutes later and found he’d hooked the laptop up to the high-speed Internet outlet in the room and was perusing websites, so I looked over his shoulder.

“Gay men for men massage…,” I read aloud. “That sounds interesting.”

“Indeed. How does this one sound to you?” He showed me an ad for a massage therapist who lived near Napa and would come to our hotel. The ad said that he used a variety of techniques, including Body Electric.

“I’ve never heard of Body Electric massage, have you?”

“I have, in fact. Among other things, practitioners of that school prefer to work nude, and there’s always a sensual element.”

“Interesting,” I said, “and I see from the ad that this guy prefers to work nude.”

“Shall we give him a call?”

“Why not? I’m always up for a new experience. By all means, call him.”

Charles picked up his cell phone, dialed the listed number, and evidently got right through to the guy. After a short conversation, he hung up, turned to me, and said, “We’re in luck, Marco had a cancellation, and he’ll be here in an hour.”

“Great. I guess we need to take a shower and clean up.”

Charles didn’t reply. He simply started pulling off his clothes. We walked naked to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror.

Charles looked our images up and down, ran his fingers lightly across both of our crotches, said, “We both need a touch-up,” and got out the shaving gear. After we’d shaved everything, we got in the shower together and thoroughly soaped each other’s bodies.

Eventually, we decided that we were clean, not to mention sated, so we rinsed, dried, and dressed in jeans and long-sleeved shirts. Then we went back to the balcony with our wineglasses and settled down to wait.

At the appointed time, there was a knock on the door, and Charles went to answer it. I took another sip of wine before getting up and walking back into our room in time to see Charles ushering the masseur into the room ahead of him. The guy was carrying his table, folded up in a zippered cover with a handle for easy carrying.

Charles introduced me to Marco, a not-unattractive thirtysomething man, who smiled and said, “Okay, guys, who’s gonna go first?”

I said, “You go ahead, babe, I’ll take my wine back out on the balcony and finish it.” I watched while Marco set up his table, covered it with a sheet, laid out lotions, and set up a small CD player on the bedside table. Following Marco’s instructions, Charles stripped and lay facedown on the table with his face nestled in the little round thing at the end of the table. Marco, meanwhile, finished his setup preparations and proceeded to remove his shirt, jeans, and somewhat baggy boxer briefs, revealing a lean and muscular body. I took that as my cue to return to the balcony, where I closed the door and settled back down in a lounge chair. I could hear muffled conversation from the room but couldn’t make out the words. Eventually, I began to hear moans and groans and wondered what exactly was transpiring in the room, but I controlled my curiosity and kept my seat. Finally, after what seemed an eternity but was in reality only sixty minutes, the door opened and Marco stuck his head around the corner and said, “Next.”

I went back into the room, and before I could ask, Marco said, “Your boyfriend is in the shower, getting the oils cleaned off his body.”

I undressed and lay facedown on the table, just as Charles had done. Marco started some soft and soothing music on his CD player. Then I felt hands applying warm oil to my shoulders and upper body, and the massage began.

Marco applied a lot of pressure as he worked, and said, “Man, you are as tense as your boyfriend.”

“You should have seen me ten days ago; we’ve been under a great deal of pressure over the past few months.”

“I know. He filled me in. I thought I recognized you guys when I got here, and he told me something of what you’ve been through. Even though your ordeal, as he put it, is over, your body is still wound up tightly.”

He continued, “When I push, you need to groan and let out the stress. I’m not kidding; groan just like you’re having an orgasm. I promise it’ll help.”

So that’s what I was hearing, I thought as I settled into the experience. I heard the bathroom door open and close, and Charles walked by the table. I felt his lips briefly kiss me on the butt, and he said, “God, you have a great ass.” A minute later, I heard the door to the balcony open and close.

Marco began to manipulate my shoulders in earnest and said, “Now groan.” I groaned, and to my surprise, it did help. When I forgot to groan or he thought I wasn’t groaning enough, he would moan in encouragement. We began to sound like the soundtrack from a B-grade porno film.

Finally he worked his way down to my feet and massaged them a bit. Then he slid his hands up the inside of my legs all the way to my inner thighs, working my muscles all the way up. It was extremely sensual, and I spread my legs just a bit to make access easier for him, and I also began to get an erection. He did more of the same until finally he slapped me playfully on the butt and said, “Time to turn over.”

When he worked on my shoulders and upper arms, my erection began to subside. As he’d done on my back, he worked his way down my body, talented hands finding areas of tension that I hadn’t known existed. He worked on my feet for a while and then began to slide his hands up my legs to the insides of my thighs, just as he had done when I was lying facedown. My p***s sprang back to attention as he worked on my legs and thighs. Then he began working on my abdominal muscles, during the course of which his flat palm ran across my smooth crotch a few times. In short order, I shot semen clear up to my chest.

A minute or two later, he took a towel, dried me off, and said, “Now, go get in the shower. First as hot as you can stand it, then as cold as you can stand it.”

I got up off the table to comply and found that I was a bit weak in the knees. I showered as instructed, and when I pulled the shower curtain back before toweling myself dry, I saw Marco wander into the bathroom, still naked, to take a leak. When you’ve got it, flaunt it, I thought.

I finished toweling myself dry and returned to the bedroom to retrieve my clothes. By this time, Marco was dressed and Charles was back in the room, and the three of us talked for a bit as I was dressing. Finally, Marco collected his fee and a generous tip, gave each of us a hug, and departed.

When the door had closed behind Marco, I said, “Wow!”

“Wow, indeed.”

“That was truly amazing. I’m so relaxed. I feel like a limp noodle.”

“How limp?” he said, sliding his hands into my pants.

“I don’t know, want to find out?”

I walked over to the bed, pulled the covers back, shed my clothes, and climbed in. He joined me and said, “Just because we’re over thirty doesn’t mean we can’t have more than one orgasm in the same afternoon.”

“One! First in the shower, then on the massage table. If we do this, it’ll be three orgasms in a little over three hours.”

“I’m not at all certain that a release triggered by massage counts as a genuine orgasm,” he said.

“That’s true, and now that I think about it, the experience was sensual but not at all s****l. Now shut up and get on with it.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said, as he pressed his body into mine and stuck his tongue down my throat. To our amazement, we did have a third orgasm each, and about thirty minutes later, a fourth.

Afterward, I snuggled up against him so that we were face to face, and said, “I love you so much it hurts sometimes.”

“I know, babe, I feel the same way, and look at us, trying to set some sort of record.”

“Hey, if it feels good, do it.”

“Indeed,” he said, “but I know what we need now.”

“What?”

“Food, of course. We can’t live on love forever. We need nourishment.”

“Ideas?”

“Frankly, I have neither the desire nor the energy to go anywhere, except maybe downstairs to the restaurant on the terrace.”

“I’ll be ready as soon as I can clean up,” I said.

“Right behind you.”

“I think we’ve played this scene before,” I said, and smiled as I got up and headed to the bathroom.

In what seemed like no time, we were sitting at a table on the terrace perusing the menu. Two hours after that, full of grilled salmon, side dishes, and the better part of a bottle of Pinot Grigio, we were sound asleep.

The next morning I woke up and glanced over to find Charles lying on his side, looking at me.

“What are you doing?”

“Just lying here looking at you,” he said, “and wondering how I ever got so lucky.”

“That’s every bit a two-way street, babe, and you know it.” I snuggled face to face and body to body with him and said, “I don’t know about you, but I can barely remember the last time I slept so well and woke up so relaxed.”

“All it took was a full-body massage, a few orgasms, and the equivalent of almost a bottle of wine each.”

“Do you think we could market that treatment?”

“I doubt it. There’d be no way to patent the idea, and everyone would copy it.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said.

“Why don’t I call room service and have breakfast sent up? We can take a quick shower while we’re waiting.”

I said, “Okay,” and I headed for the bathroom. I heard him on the phone, and after a few minutes he joined me in the bathroom.

We had just pulled on our underwear when there was a knock at the door and we heard a somewhat muffled, “Room service.”

Charles went to the door dressed in only his underwear, admitted the waiter, and followed him back into the bedroom. Both Charles and I were wearing low-rise boxer briefs with one-inch legs. The pouches in the front were both prominent and revealing, and the waiter’s eyes kept darting from one of us to the other, never looking at us above waist level. Charles signed the check and showed the waiter, whose name badge had ‘Terry’ printed on it, out of the room.

“What is this effect we seem to have on room service waiters?” he said. “First Pittsburgh, and now Napa.”

“It’s not too hard to figure out when you consider the high percentage of gays working as waiters, particularly in high-end hotels and resorts.”

“Maybe we should offer to let the waiter see us naked sometime in lieu of leaving a tip.”

I smiled at that thought and said, “Maybe.”

We settled down to eat our breakfast, then dressed for the day. We spent the morning sightseeing on our own and were back in Napa just in time to board the wine train. The Napa Valley Wine Train operates on a branch railroad that was purchased some years back by the man who made a fortune with Rice-A-Roni. It features diesel engines from the sixties and vintage dining and parlor cars.

You board the train at the station in Napa and either go straight to the dining cars or to the parlor and observation cars. Our group went to the observation cars, where we sat in comfortable swivel chairs sipping Champagne and viewing the scenery while the train rolled slowly up the valley through the vineyards, passing several famous wineries along the way. The trip took something over an hour, and at the end of the line, the train stopped and went back in the other direction. The change in the direction of travel was also the signal for the diners to change places with the folks in the parlor and observation cars. For the trip back, we were seated at tables for four and were served a wonderful multicourse meal complete with appropriate wines. All in all, it was a great culinary experience and a fun thing to do.

We returned to our hotel, where we felt the need for a nap after all that food, wine, and Champagne. That evening we had dinner in downtown Napa at an Italian restaurant that was located in an old bank building. The original vault of the bank had been converted into a small private dining room just off the main dining room. It was a memorable meal.

On the way back to the hotel, I said, “How many miles do you think we need to run in the morning to make up for all this indulgence?”

“Quite a few, I should think. Perhaps one or two more than usual.” He thought a moment before continuing, “On the other hand, we are on vacation and can always make up for it later.”

We settled on our balcony with glasses of Port and were quiet for a long time, contemplating everything. I reached over, took Charles’ hand, and said, “It’s so nice just being here with you that I don’t really care whether or not we actually do much more sightseeing.”

“I know, babe. Sometimes it all seems like a wonderful dream, doesn’t it?”

“That sums things up pretty well.” He yawned, so I said, “Ready to climb the well-worn stairs, metaphorically speaking?”

“You bet.” He got up and reached for my hand. Then he pulled me to him, and we embraced. “Does it get any better than this?” he said.

“I can’t see how it could.”

The next morning was a virtual replay of the day before, except we were both fully dressed by the time room service appeared with our breakfast. It was the same waiter as the day before, and he seemed a little disappointed. We guessed that he’d been looking forward to seeing us in our underwear again. We were downstairs waiting for the tour bus when it arrived, and during the course of the next five hours, we learned more about French oak versus American oak as pertaining to wine barrels than we ever wanted to know. We also got to taste an amazing variety of wines at several different wineries, and even though tasting consisted largely of sipping and spitting, we were both feeling a bit drowsy by the time we were dropped off at the hotel. The tour had included lunch, with wine, of course, and we were in bed asleep almost immediately after arriving back at our room.

That evening we drove up to a very popular and highly rated restaurant in the town of St. Helena, where we consumed yet another great meal and a fair amount of very good wine. Back in our hotel room and snuggling in bed, Charles once again showed that he could literally read my mind and said, “You know, this has been wonderful.”

“But.”

“But what I would really like to be doing right now is to be either sitting on the deck of the beach house holding hands and listening to the surf, or sitting on the deck at the Keep, holding hands and listening to the waterfall.”

“That works for me, but I think the mountains in January are a bit too cold for outdoor hand-holding.”

“Then the beach house it is. We have the interview in Sacramento tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll see if we can get a late flight out from there to Atlanta, and we won’t tell anybody. Deal?”

“Deal.”

With that, he got up, turned on his laptop, and started searching airline schedules. After a few minutes, he said, “We’re in luck, there’s a flight that will take us to Atlanta with a change of planes in Denver. In Atlanta we can take a taxi to Marietta, and fly my plane to Fort Walton Beach.”

“Handle it, handle it,” I said. And he did.