Chapter One
I waited at the bar, waiting and praying that he would show up, afraid he wouldn't. There was always that fear that gripped my guts when were to meet up.
Toby's Bar was typical of GI hangouts in Saigon; dark, smoky, not very fancy, with hookers, the whole package, except for one thing. Toby's also catered to gays. Not openly. He didn't advertise it but word got around that it was safe for gay soldiers and Marines to go there. It was enough of a mix of straights and women that the MPs never bothered the place. Of course, Toby was strict as hell about flaunting it or being too obvious. Toby was a former Marine, big and muscular, one of the original advisors sent to Vietnam. He liked it and stayed. Nobody messed with him.
I watched every guy who came through the door, if only for a quick glimpse before he was shrouded in the darkness of the bar. Toby got me another beer without me asking for it. I didn't know if he knew who I was waiting on but if he did he didn't say so.
"Did she stand you up?" he asked.
"Too early to tell," I said. That was the way it was….a lot of times he knew better but you talked in heterosexual terms. It was a code; one that even the straight guys respected if they found out about you. It wouldn't have been that way in any other bar. Toby was quick and quite capable of dealing with loud homophobia. One time there were a couple of guys who looked like raw recruits who came in with the sole purpose of finding and beating up gays. They didn't make any bones about it. They talked to each other loud enough that others could hear, as they looked around and tried to guess if this or that guy was gay. Toby put a stop to it right away. Politely at first, till one of the stupid shits had the balls to ask him if he was gay. Toby played along with them. He nodded for them to follow him back to the rest room. Moments later, there was a lot of noise back there, then the back door was slamming shut. Toby came back to the bar without a scratch. The other two guys came out, one embarrassedly nursing a bloody nose and the other one with a black eye and holding his stomach. Hell, anybody in his right mind would know better than to mess with Toby.
I didn't say who I was. Brad Courter, 19, six feet even, 196 pounds, regulation jarhead, buzz-cut Marine. My 196 pounds were good, solid muscle. Most of us were; we had a workout room right in the barracks. The guy I was waiting on was Jason Seaborn, also nineteen but his 195 pounds were spread over a five-ten frame which made him look heavier. He was Navy, which I liked to kid him was a distant cousin to the Marines. More correctly, he was a Navy Seal. Okay, you want all of it....he was a sniper.
I started to get the sweats as the night wore on. He should have been there an hour ago. My guts tightened at the thought that maybe something had happened to him. I tried to shrug it off. It was something we both understood and lived with….. him, obviously, more than me. He was the Navy Seal, doing covert ops. I was just an interpreter at Intel….interrogation…we dealt many times with the guys he sometimes brought in. I tried more than once to imagine how I would handle it if he didn't come back from one of those missions. I couldn't even think about it without getting suck to my stomach.
Finally, he was there. I recognized his very masculine frame as he appeared in the doorway and his cocky, sexy walk confirmed it. He had incredibly wide shoulders with balled muscles that looked soccer balls and big arms sticking out of a muscle shirt and his pecs protruded in two solid masses of muscle. He had a waist that made women jealous and his jeans shifted loosely around his waist, held up not by a belt but by his round, tight bubble butt. He sauntered up to the bar and slid onto the stool next to me with that crooked smile as if he weren't late at all. I didn't make mention of it either.
"You been waiting long?" he asked.
Toby brought him a beer.
"Only since noon," I said.
He knew I was kidding, probably knew I was covering up that I was worried. He turned full circle on the bar stool, I thought to check the place out and see if there was anybody he knew or who might know him. There was and he went over to a table to say hello. I was watching in the mirror over the bar. A waitress came up to the table with a half dozen beers and ran her cold hand down his bare arm. He cringed and laughed and smacked her on the ass. A hooker came up to his other side and put her arms around his waist and squeezed his butt and said something in his ear. He laughed and squeezed her butt hard and she left. It was like that with him; with all Navy Seals. They were quiet, unassuming heroes that took it all in stride. I could have been jealous except that I was happy in my own skin, and I marveled that he was as comfortable with me as he was with women. He came back to his bar stool with that little twist and swagger in his hips.
"I was afraid you wouldn't make it," I said after first looking around to see if anybody was in earshot. There was nobody except Toby and he didn't matter but you had to be always on guard about everything you said.
"I did," he said.
As always, I had a hard time keeping my eyes off of him; especially his huge arms sticking out of his shirt. Dam, they were sexy. It was easier for me to look at him in the mirror but I was still cautious.
Jason looked around the bar and asked. "Did you get a room?"
I nodded. We talked for awhile, bringing Toby into the conversation when he had time. Jason downed the rest of his beer and slid the bottle across the bar with a finality that said he was ready to go.
"Hey, Toby, if those two girls show up, tell them don't go away, we'll be back," he said in a loud voice as he stood down off the bar stool. It didn't matter whether Toby believed there really were two girls. Somehow, I think he knew better.
A dozen blocks away, down side streets and through alleys, was what was known as the Trent Hotel. It wasn't designed as a hotel. It was a two-story structure that had been converted to a maze of rooms and they put a hotel sign over the door. On the way, Jason stopped off in a gift shop. I told him the room number, two-thirty-eight, and went on to the hotel. He would spend a few minutes in the shop then leave and go down the alley and come into the hotel by way of the rear stairs. The hotel clerk knew the routine. It wasn't smart for two GIs to be seen going into a hotel together unless there were one or two women on their arms.
I went up the stairs to the room. I'd already showered and got ready for him. I took a big dose of breath freshener and took off my clothes, down to my shorts. I was waiting on the bed when he came in. He double-bolted the door behind him and went over and closed the shutters over the windows facing the street. He left the windows open that faced the alley and a blank wall but he was always careful, afraid there might be somebody spying from a window across the street.
He began taking off his clothes which always made me breathless, all the while with his eyes on me, and that thrilled me that he was so open about wanting me so. I loved everything about him; his looks, eyes, sense of humor, most of all his body. His triceps danced as he took off his boots and socks. He stood up and his arms bulged as he took off his pants. He climbed on the bed and knelt between my legs, still wearing his muscle shirt and his briefs. He crossed his arms across his chest and pulled his shirt up, his torso spreading out wide when he pulled it off over his head. I leaned up and placed my hands on his sides, high on the V where the finger-like muscles rapped around his rib cage, then on up into his hairy armpits. He tossed the shirt aside and his pecs settled thick and heavy on his rib cage when he lowered his arms. Nice hair there, too, a spattering on each side around his tits then the neat, straight line down the center of his abs, disappearing under the waistband of his shorts. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband to shove his briefs down but I stopped him.
"Wait. Leave them on…..let me look at you for a minute."
He moved his hands down to his sides and knelt there, a little awkward, with a goofy, embarrassed smile on his face. I let my eyes rake up and down his muscular body, zeroing in on his tiny briefs. They weren't regulation, although they should have been. The military would save a lot of money on material if they were regulation. There was barely anything to them; two thin strips curved up over his hip bones trying mightily to support the weight in the pouch stretched around his manhood. They barely contained his massive manhood, and stretched so low that you could see the curls of hair over the top.
"You ought to be on a recruiting poster," I said
"Like this?"
"If I was in charge of recruiting."
"Is that enough looking?" he asked, shrugging his heavy shoulders.
"Yeah. Are you getting anxious?"
"You know it," he said.
He shoved his briefs down and lifted each knee to shove them off. His big cock hanging out proudly, not yet hard but thick and meaty, with a network of bulging veins. My breath caught in my throat. His cock was easily six/seven inches, with a network of bluish veins under the silken sheath that gave it a bit of a gnarled, virile look when he was hard. He never got hard fast. It was like he took his time, no big rush, it would be hard when the time came.
"I don't know how you carry all that around," I said.
He laughed as he ran his hands up and down my thighs several times then tugged at my shorts. I raised up so he could take them off of me. I watched his muscles bulge and ripple and it was a moment of feeling ravished as he stripped me naked. He tossed my shorts to me and his eyes shifted to my own cock but didn't linger. He was just noticing, with no particular desire for it except that it made me a man and a man was what he wanted. But there was desire in his eyes.
