Disclaimer: This is a work of gay fiction. It will contain scenes describing sex between adult males. If that offends you, if you are underage, or if it is illegal to possess such material where you are, then stop now!
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CHAPTER EIGHT: TRIBULATION
Our naked leaders rousted us shortly after I awakened, and the word was out that we were to go rafting. That woke us up! We were getting off the property and out of our strict, daily routine to do something together just for fun (or so we thought). There was a special breakfast of waffles and bacon that morning, traditional but less healthy foods we didn't see much of at The Farm. By 9:30, we were loading up, without our shackles, but still buck naked, onto an unmarked private bus, its top loaded with rubber rafts, to head for the river.
One surprise of the morning pleased me more than the waffles. Adam's partner Colin came out with the other leaders, as naked as they were. And my, oh my, what a sight he was. He was impressive enough in the school caf with clothes on, but naked, he turned every head. With his sandy hair, handsome features, attractive aw-shucks grin, perfect tan, and the body of a Greek god-only with a piece of meat dangling between his legs like none I've ever seen on a marble statue-he exuded masculine charm and confidence. He and Adam never touched one another, yet there was something in their glance, even the way they positioned themselves near one another, that proclaimed their special relationship.
Since I didn't know exactly where in West Virginia we were, I also didn't know what river we were going to. It seemed to me that we would have to wear something on a river where rafting was taking place, but Adam and the others showed no concern about that. After a winding journey on a series of back country roads, we eased down a rutted, graveled access trail and parked near the bank of a swift-flowing, rock-strewn river about twenty to thirty yards across.
There was equipment to unload, but the group made short work of it. For the first time in a week, we all got something to wear-a life jacket and a helmet. Nothing else. We also each had a paddle, and we divided the forty-two of us up into six boats. First, though, Adam called us together to tell us that the stretch of river we were using was well known to Association members, but not used commercially-it was too variable in difficulty. It had some easy, class two and three sections. But it also had some class five and six stretches, too. It would test our strength and ability to work together. We were cautioned to pay attention, marshal our strength, and be prepared to paddle like hell on the leader's command. Each leader, including Colin, chose a boat. Nicholas and I teamed up with William and Patrick, who were now our intimate buds, and Matthew and Taylor. When Adam strode up to our raft and announced he would be in with us, I was thrilled. Everything was coming together to make for a fun day.
We melded as a team quickly, and every man had the strength and stamina required to muscle the raft into position for the rapids. The six rafts strung out along the river, and we enjoyed several easy drops, and then a couple of more challenging ones that got the adrenaline up. There was a long stretch where we could get out into the stream, half at a time, and float along beside the raft to cool off. The cold, rushing current felt great on the 'nads. About twelve-thirty, we reached a sandy beach, where an SUV was parked, its hatch open. Cold soft drinks, sandwiches, chips, and salads awaited us. We lolled about for almost an hour, enjoying the break, some of us splashing around in the river. The sight of forty-two handsome, lean, naked men playing and wrestling around together on the riverbank was memorable, to say the least. That was a lot of dick on display. Then, we were on our way again for the second half of the adventure.
It turned ugly within half an hour of lunch. What happened was that our raft was the last to go over a particularly steep drop. Apparently, the river had been rising all morning, and conditions were deteriorating. We made the drop fine, but after that was a long, narrow rapid of very fast-moving water. Our raft got slightly off-center, and the port side raised over a boulder, then dropped suddenly, and raised again. Nicholas was right in the back corner of the raft, and he got bucked out like a rodeo cowboy.
I was horrified. Everyone was shouting, but also paddling with all their might. I could see the concern and resolve in Adam's eyes. There was nothing to do but ride the stream, and let Nicholas ride it, too, until we could fetch him back in at the bottom.
As soon as I could, I turned to see how he was doing. My heart stopped. Nicholas was hanging by his life-jacket from a tree-limb jammed between the boulders, fifty yards back upstream. And his head lolled limply under the water.
I didn't wait for instructions or help. I leaped out of the raft and thrashed my way to the bank. Naked and barefoot, I scrambled and slid up the bank to a point just above where Nicholas dangled, seemingly unconscious. I waded into the rushing water as far as I could, then leaped into the funnel of swirling current that would take me past my friend. Miraculously, I remained top-up. I collided with his solid form, and latched onto him. Now I was suspended in the deluge, too, and his jacket was still holding us. But I got his head up, and his eyes opened half-way.
"I've got you!" I shouted into his ear. "Unfasten the jacket and hold on to me!"
I felt his hand fumbling around between our chests. I clung with all my might to his slippery flesh, not his lifejacket. Suddenly, we were swept away, with me clutching his naked body tightly. His arms locked around my torso.
That's all I remember. When I came to, I was stretched out on the muddy river bank with my head in Adam's lap and his arms enfolding me gently. His worried green eyes were inches from mine as he dabbed with something at the side of my head. Every skin cell seemed to hurt. But I began to struggle. "Help Nicholas!" I cried. "We have to save Nicholas!"
Adam shushed me gently like a tender mother. "Easy, easy. He's O. K. You saved him already. He's right here."
He turned my head so that I could see Nicholas, actually sitting up just two feet away, watching intently, as I came to and proved to him that I was alive. I never saw quite such an expression as was on his face. Worry. Fear. Appreciation. Dawning joy. Love. It is emblazoned on my memory for all time.
Somehow, my helmet had gotten battered off. I had hit my head a couple of times, knocking myself out. Nicholas had held to me as to life itself. But he told me I never let him out of my grip, even unconscious.
The other men were shocked and awed. Their faces told the tale of their fear and relief. But there was more to it than that. That first Sunday of the summer was the day I became the acknowledged leader of the class. From that day every other man in the group looked to me for example, for advice, for encouragement, even for comfort and friendship. It was an experience unlike any I had ever had.
In the past, I may have sometimes thought too highly of myself in comparison to others. I considered myself to be smarter than most, to the point that I didn't even bother with grades or achievements to prove it. I took pride in my physical strength and, to the extent I ever thought of it, even my appearance-and again, I didn't bother with it, I just took it for granted. But on that day, I was humbled. I almost lost the man who had become one of the most important people in my life, and by my strength and swift action, I was able to prevent that happening. The enormity of what might have been, and the relief I felt, made me more deeply grateful than I had ever been before.
To get us out, it was necessary to continue down the river. They put Nicholas in one raft and me in another, and swapped one rower. When we got to the end of our journey, there was an ambulance waiting to take us to the nearest emergency room, over an hour away.
We got x-rays and a few bandages. After a while, the doc came in to tell us the news that we were basically O. K.-I had a mild concussion, and we both had a number of bruises and scrapes. We would be very sore for a few days, and he didn't have to tell us to cut down on strenuous activities, because our aching bodies would take care of that.
"What happened to your clothes?" he asked, scribbling absently on his clipboard.
"Er, river swept 'em right off," asserted Nicholas.
"Well, we'd have cut your shorts off of you when you got here, anyway," he chuckled. "Did it sweep all the hair off your bodies, too?" he smiled coyly.
"Uh, no, we did that ourselves."
"Hot." He departed quickly, and left me and Nicholas exchanging bemused looks.
"I never even got a good look at that guy," I commented.
"He'd count as cute in most circles," said Nicholas. "Not in our present circle of friends, though."
"I dunno. Have you seen yourself? I'm not that keen on black, violet, and blue as a fashion motif."
"I haven't seen myself, but I've seen you. And I know exactly what you mean!"
We were laughing when Adam came in, dressed in khakis and tee shirt, tube-steak hanging down the pants leg, with the news that he had sprung us from the joint. We had to make our less-than-dignified exit in hospital gowns, our purple-blotched butts hanging out the back, hobbling on sore, bruised feet. We didn't bother blocking off the breeze from behind. Our doc was in the hall when we passed. One look at Adam, and his eyes practically telescoped out of his head. An orderly and a nurse came up and joined him, and the three of them turned and just watched us all the way down the hall and out the door.
"Why didn't they bring that one in naked, too?" I heard the doc murmur to the orderly. Adam paid no attention to this ogling at all. He was used to it, and Nicholas and I have become used to it, too, since then. But that was our first experience of being that kind of object for fascination in public.
Before I even got into the Beamer Adam was driving, I slipped out of the hospital gown and tossed it on the floorboard. Nicholas did the same, and we slid naked into the back seat together. Grinning, Adam did a slow strip-tease right there beside the open driver's door, tossing his threads over onto the passenger seat. I glanced over toward the ER door-our three admirers, plus two more were watching the show. Adam waved, slid onto the leather seat, cranked the engine, and drove out of the lot. So, in the safety of the tinted glass of an Association vehicle, we drove back to The Farm in our customary, and preferred, uniform.
He led us to an elevator back behind the main stairway-I'd never even noticed we had one coming to our floor, we always used the stairs. But I appreciated the ride that night. It was past 10:00 when we got there, and the hall was quiet.
"The others were sent on to bed," he explained, "But they know you guys are alright." He opened the door to our room.
It had a queen-size bed in it now, with much nicer linens. The walls had been painted, and there were draperies on the windows and a rug on the floor.
"Reward for nearly getting killed?" I asked.
"Acknowledgment of progress made in your program. It's just starting to look more like the way it will be the remainder of the year. We only strip it down to basics to begin the summer program." He paused. "You might be surprised how many Members request this floor when they visit here. Lots of times, they want the room they lived in during their training summer. It's that important to them."
We pulled back the covers and prepared to slip in. Nobody had said anything about shackles, and we did not raise the subject. Adam was ready to bid us good-night.
"I can't tell you how glad I am that you both came out of this safely. We haven't lost a trainee since 1983," he added smiling facetiously. "But seriously," he looked at me intently, "well done, Douglas. Well done."
He was about to close the door.
"Hey, what were you doing when you lost the guy in 1983?" Nicholas asked.
"I'll tell you later-after you've done that activity." He closed the door quietly.
When I woke up Monday morning, I hurt in places I hadn't even known I had nerve endings. Nicholas was awake also, just lying there watching me. He smiled.
"Nice to see your eyes open, bud."
"I liked it better asleep. I didn't know how much I hurt then."
"You ready for some breakfast? The morning run is out, you know. They came back an hour ago."
"I couldn't run six steps. Hey, would you take my bladder down to the john and wring it out for me? I can't move." I looked down. My feet and ankles were shades of magenta and swollen to triple size from my race across the rocks.
"No, but I can help in another way. Here, piss in this bottle."
He got up and limped around the bed, picking up an almost-empty water bottle on the way. As I slowly swung my legs out and pulled myself up into a sitting position, he guided my dick to the mouth of the bottle and held it while I pissed the bottle full.
As I finished, there was a rap on the door, and Dennis entered with a covered tray on a cart. Nicholas and I munched on breakfast in bed, while Dennis filled us in on some altered expectations for us. The team was going to ask us to go on down after breakfast, if we felt we could, to do our academic program, and we could pick up some extra time on that in the afternoon, too. We'd skip road work and weight training this week. We could use the whirlpool spa and get daily therapeutic massage, though, and add other physical activity gradually, as we felt like it.
We appreciated the consideration, but both of us felt left out of the group if we could not run with them in the mornings. We vowed to get back at it just as soon as our aching feet and legs would let us.
We limped on down to the class area, where our tutor, Frank, suggested that, since we had additional time on our hands, we might work on foreign language fluency. The Association expected every member to be fluent in at least one non-English language. "Both of you had high school French. You want to do our French conversation program?"
That gave me a kind of pang for Stephanie. That was exactly what she was doing in France this summer, surrounded by uncut Frenchie dicks. I couldn't dwell on that, though. Nicholas was looking at me inquisitively.
"Sure. Well, if you want to, Nicholas," I said. "We could work together."
"What we recommend is that the two of you switch to French for your communication together. Work on vocabulary together-the computer program will coach you on your grammar. What do you say?"
Nicholas shrugged. "Oui."
So it happened that in our second week at The Farm, Nicholas and I became French-speaking. It was comical at first, but gradually, we began to get past four-year- old sentences. Over the next couple of weeks, we discovered that Ford and Richard, Michael and Peter, and Jeffrey and Mark were doing the same thing, along with Jason, whose partner Keith was working on Italian. That gave us a little French-speaking enclave within the group, and we began to sit together at meals for further conversation. Three of the five leaders spoke French, and they used it when speaking directly to us. Lo and behold, I found myself in a French language immersion program after all, and I wasn't even taking the subject at the University. Stephanie was going to get quite a surprise in September! Of course, the first vocabulary I learned had to do with men's body parts and sex acts, things I hadn't been taught in high school.
For free time that afternoon, Nicholas and I opted for bed rest. We had just laid down when Gregory stuck his head in the door.
"Does your dick hurt, too?"
"No," I said, "That was the only part of me that had the good sense to shrink up tiny, stay limp, and keep out of the way of rocks."
"Can we come in and blow you guys?"
"Knock yourselves out."
He and Lawrence entered, grinning, and set to work on our dicks. I was a bit surprised to be able to get it up, I was so sore everywhere else. But I found that my unit responded eagerly to the attention. Gregory's tongue was all over my crotch area. He particularly enjoyed holding my hairless balls, one at a time, in his mouth and tonguing them. I enjoyed it, too. They kept us happy for over half an hour before they finally let us cum. When I let go of my load at last, it felt like I shot a bucket-load down Gregory's willing throat.
"Damn, that's good stuff," he commented. "Tastiest seed I've ever had. I'll be back for more of that!"
"Same here," added Lawrence.
"Any time, bro's," said Nicholas. Lawrence was carefully licking the last dregs of his cum off of the head and shaft of his dick at the time.
Those two must have told some of the others what they had done, because it became a regular class activity to come into our room and suck us off at every free opportunity. At one time or another, all the guys did it, though Gregory and Lawrence were probably our steadiest customers. William and Patrick were regulars, too. During the two weeks of our recuperation, we got blown three to four times a day, all without raising a finger ourselves. I also never got rimmed so much as during that time.
During the second week of recuperation, Nicholas and I began to get it on with one another, too, carefully. We found that we could fuck one another side to side without too much strain or pressure on sore parts. It turned out, then, that our down time in physical activity didn't cost us a thing when it came to mental and sexual activity. We missed the ropes course on the following Sunday. But after that, we were back in the groove for naked sky-diving the following week.
And, you guessed it-after we were safely on the ground following our first free jump from a plane, Adam told us-that was the way they lost that other guy, back in '83. Nicholas' arm slipped around my waist and he gave me a hug.