Arabists' Literary Weeend

The man was thin and wiry, a regular beanpole, but he certainly knew what to do with his cock, which was also long, but not thick. It was a surprise, but an arrested surprise. Justin didn't quite know what to make of it, this encounter he originally had thought would be a total bust and then had hopes for and now was completely confused about. Peters was nearing his ejaculation, Justin could tell. Justin had had a weak one already, but it wasn't anything close to what he had wanted and, there for a short time, had anticipated.

Justin was on his back on the bed in his rooms in Oxford, grabbing for the rails of the brass headboard overhead, bruising his knuckles as the headboard hit the wall in the rhythm of the fuck—disappointed at having to do the grasping himself, but taking what arousal he could get from the bruising of his knuckles. His knees were bent and his feet gripping the mattress, giving him leverage to counterpunch Peters' penetrations. Peters knelt between Justin's thighs, his hands gripping Justin's knees—much too lightly for Justin's tastes—and rowed the knees back and forth to the tune of his fuck. Pulling them in as he drew his hips back and slid out of Justin's channel and pushing the knees apart as he glided in.

Glided in. Glided out. All very civilized.

Although the man was hitting all of the right spots, he was being much too delicate to fully arouse Justin. Justin was doing what he could: positioning his knuckles where they could get bruised, counterpunching to encourage thrusting, talking the want of punishment, trying to arouse anger by brutally twisting Peters' nipples when he could reach them. It wasn't happening.

There had been some hope—not only because of where Peters had taken him before coming back to Justin's rooms at the university but also because when Peters had stripped there, surprisingly, had been those barbed-wire band tattoos around his biceps. Not just tattooing on an Oxford don, but also signals of BDSM inclination.

As Justin laid down on his bed and opened his legs, he had reached over and pulled the lower drawer of his nightstand open, showing the collection of restraints, ball gags, tit clamps, ball stretchers, and the flogger. But, although Peters must surely have seen them and, when he'd first bottomed inside Justin's channel, he paused and ran fingers over the most recent welts on Justin's torso and thighs, he had said nothing—and done nothing beyond taking a gentle hold on Justin's knees and beginning a slow, long stroking action. Justin wasn't sure he'd even call it an action. As Peters was working that long, promising cock inside him, Justin had taken a hit from an amyl nitrite popper bottle and settled back on his elbow ready to watch the root of the cock pistoning into him and aiding the buildup to fireworks.

But there hadn't been any fireworks, any glorious punishment.

Peters had gotten off, jerking several times and then pulling—gliding—out, ripping the now-white-slug of a condom off and rubbing his moist cock head on Justin's lower belly while telling Justin what a good lay he was. But for Justin, there hadn't been any more than a little precum squirt when he was frantically working his own cock, expecting and wanting so much more.

And then Justin was alone. Peters hadn't even suggested another assignation. Justin rolled over to a sitting position on the bed, opened the upper drawer of the nightstand, and took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He sat up on the side of the bed, lit a cigarette, and punished himself mentally by going through an assessment of the evening. It was the best punishment he was going to get out of the evening.

He'd had a hell of a time finding even one gay bar in Oxford. He was here from Stanford as a visiting scholar, an Arabist. He knew they weren't all straight here. In the short time here he'd already observed how randy they were for men in the rooming lodges and he'd already been spiked himself hard and deliciously brutally by a fellow Arabist student and robust rugby player named Thomas. Thomas had been the most satisfying fuck Justin had had here as yet. The beefy young florid, sandy-haired ruffian must have been an expert horseman. He both was a horse himself and rode Justin hard, spurring him on with frequent applications of a riding crop.

It had been Thomas who told him the nearly impossible to believe—that there was only one gay bar in or around Oxford, the Plush Lounge, and that it was pretty lame. The best night there was Saturday, although "best" was all relative.

"I go to London when I want entertainment. When I want tail, I stay right here. There is plenty of that to be had in the university rooms. You, for instance, are very nice tail indeed." He was following the welts he had raised on Justin's buttocks with his fingers and building up to another ride.

So having heard that Saturday was the least tame night at Oxford's Plush Lounge, that was the night Justin had gone there. And indeed it seemed as tame to him as he feared. It got a little interesting, though, when an Arabist tutor, Peters, entered the lounge, where a loud band and pulsating strobe lights tried to make up for the lack of a crowd. He scanned the room and, seeing Justin at the bar, raised his eyebrows. Justin raised his half-full stout glass to the tutor, and the tall, thin man fairly glided over to the bar and onto the stool next to Justin.

After a couple of drinks, Peters had confirmed that this was the only gay bar within miles of Oxford, and Justin had been constant in voicing his disbelief this possibly could be so.

As the buzz from the drinks increased, the discussion got more pointed.

"Do you really understand what sort of bar this is or are you just bored and slumming?" Peters asked. "You have a divine body, by the way."

"Yes, like any other establishment of its kind, bored men come here to hook up and get bored, I would think," Justin said.

"That doesn't really answer the question—which is you, specifically. Could you have gotten those jeans any tighter, by the way?"

Justin laughed. "Yes, I came here because I knew it was a gay hookup bar—not much of one, though, it appears."

"Well, one never knows about Americans who come here," Peters said, snuffing out his cigarette in an ash tray shaped like a set of buttocks and turning full toward Justin. "They seem to have the silliest notions about what we do and have in stores and establishments here. But say, young man," Peters plowed right ahead, "Do you take cock?"

Justin's mug stopped half way to his lips and he peered at Peters over the top of it for a quarter of a minute. Then he continued with the swipe and took a long swig, put the mug down on the counter, and moved his hand to Peters' thigh.

"It depends on the cock."

"Go ahead, be my guest."

Justin move his hand to Peters' crotch and ascertained that the staff was one of the "keeps on going" kind. He smiled in Peters face, not moving his hand from the bulge between the thin man's thighs.

"Satisfied?" Peters asked, giving Justin a level stare.

"Do you think you would be satisfied with me?" Justin responded. "Do you want to check?"

"Those jeans leave nothing to speculate about, and I am far less interested in cocks than in holes. But, oh, yes, dear boy. You are the best thing in here. And you are the best fresh thing I've seen at the university this term."

"Then perhaps," Justin answered.

"Would you now? Through those beaded curtains in the back corridor . . . if I was to tell you about some of the other choices underground here for young men like you, depending on your interests?"

"That would be closer to a yes," Justin said.

"And if I took you to one of your choice afterward?"

Peters stood against the wall, far back in the darkened corridor beyond the beaded curtain, where many another tryst had been consummated if the scattering of spent condoms on the floor could be trusted. Justin was draped on the front of the tall, thin academician, hanging from his neck from hands clasped behind Peters' head, Justin's feet flat on the wall and spread at the sides and level of Peters' chest, Justin's trousers and briefs on the floor below and Peters' around his ankles. Peters was grasping and separating Justin's buttocks with the palms of his hands, and Justin, using the leverage of his feet, rode the long cock as both panted and pursued their individual fleeting pleasure.

Afterward, Peters had raised an eyebrow when Justin told him what sort of underground club he would like to visit, but he took him to one in an English basement of a seedy tenement off a main drag that advertised itself in a dimly lit red-on-black sign as the Club S. Peters told Justin that the initial stood for "satyr."

Justin received his first real arousal of the evening, seeing a young man tied to an X frame on a small stage and being flogged before he was fucked from behind by a big bruiser. And then when Justin invited the tutor up to his Oxford rooms and the invitation was accepted, Justin thought the night would turn out well. Peters' reaction to the performance had seemed to match Justin's and he'd sat on a stool, with Justin gathered into his spread thighs and run hands into Justin's clothing and played with both Justin's nipples and his cock, pinching the nipples as the bruiser on the platform stage thrust inside the channel of his bound, blush-bottomed captive.

As Justin sat and smoked his cigarette after Peters left his room and reviewed the night, he still couldn't quite figure out why it hadn't given him what he wanted.

With a sigh, he rummaged around in the lower nightstand drawer, pulled out a leather cock ring and ball stretcher combination and a slapper crop. Taking another hit from the popper bottle, he laid back on the bed, groaned as he painfully laced his balls into the stretcher and splitter until the balls were tight, separated orbs pulled far away from his groin, and then moaned and writhed and stroked his cock to an ejaculation, eyes watering, as he mercilessly slapped his extended and tightly bunched balls with the crop.

It just wasn't the same arousal value if he had to do it himself, though.

* * * *

When the invitation came for a weekend gathering at Philip Hardesty's country home in the Forest of Dean to the west in Gloucestershire, Justin was both surprised and impressed. Hardesty was

Mr.

Arabist at Oxford. Although his reputation was part of what had drawn Justin to take the Oxford fellowship, Justin had known that he probably never would meet Hardesty, just those around him who basked in his light. Joshua Ramsay, Justin's own tutor, had been the one to deliver the invitation.

"Oh, by the way, Justin. Since you have transport, perhaps you could take along the other students who have been invited as well. It will be the three students and then the Arabist seniors who will be there."

Justin was delighted to agree to that, especially when told that one of the students would be that rough rider, Thomas. The other one was Leonard, a somewhat timid young man, who was small of stature, as beautiful in face and physicality as any woman, and, Justin had heard, a favorite of the more aggressive and rough tops at the university.

Who knew what mischief the three of them could find in the Forest of Dean during a weekend, although Justin quickly dispelled that from his mind. The payoff this weekend would be in hearing the senior Arabists speak of whatever things of the Arab world the informal discussions would lead them to. The main topics were to be Arab literature, but Justin knew from reputation that the talks would range much further and could, he hoped, touch on his own specialty, below-the-surface sexual practices in the medieval Arab world. Justin's research had told him that some of the current BDSM practices and equipment dated from this source, and these were possibilities he sought to verify—not least with the hope of discovering practices that had gone dormant in subsequent centuries.

Coleford Hall, the country home of Philip Hardesty, set high above the Severn River, was both famous and infamous in the lore of the Forest of Dean. Set on a Saxon site, it had been a place of worship—pagan worship of the most licentious nature some said—in Norman times. The foundations of the main section of the house, the existing structure being Jacobean of the early seventeenth, dated to the fifth century. The "modern" wing dated only back as far as the late seventeenth century. Extensive catacombs had been set in the Norman period, though, and the appendages of the current manor house appeared to follow the footprint of the original Norman cellars. Even older than all of these, though was a Roman temple site set at the edge of the extensive lawns on the hillside above the Severn. The manor house at one time must have had extensive vistas of the river valley, but now it was blocked in by tall and ancient trees that gave the house an aura of being tucked away in total isolation from the outside world.

The three students arrived in the late afternoon and were assigned to second-floor—which Justin had to remind himself was the third floor in American terms—chambers in a wing running between the back of the Jacobean manor house and the stable wing. Justin was assigned to his own room and Thomas and Lenoard to an adjacent, larger one. Dinner was set in an hour's time in the dining room on the Jacobean manor's first floor, where the only other room was the large library in which the group would meet for their discussions. The ground floor of the Jacobean manor was taken up with three stone-floored chambers, the central entrance hall, with the stair hall running behind it, a former parlor, which was maintained as a museum of the house's history, and, on the opposite side of the entrance all, the former dining room, which was left unfurnished as a memorial to the four Royalist officers who had been trapped there by the Roundhead forces of Cromwell during the English Revolution and who had fought to their deaths in that room.

Justin spent the hour before dinner studying the discussion agenda for the evening, while, if what he could hear was indicative despite the foot-thick stone walls in this wing, Thomas spent much of that hour riding Leonard's ass in their chamber. Justin's own ass twitched at the thought, and he hoped that Thomas had brought his riding crop.

The presence of the Arabist seniors at dinner was humbling to Justin. Not only were Philip Hardesty and his own tutor, Joshua Ramsay, present but also there were the notable scholars James Stowell and Timothy Coleson. The one guest who gave Justin pause was Charles Peters—the man who Justin had so recently had a sexual encounter with, starting in the Plush Lounge. Peters made no unusual comment of foreknowledge upon introductions, which Justin was thankful for, but a knowing look transpired between the two.

The five seniors sat in a circle of easy chairs surrounding a low table piled high with books that all were Arabic literature in both the original and translations that the scholars would occasionally dive for, separate from the rest, and wave over their heads as they made points that often were arcane even to Justin. Justin was the only one of the three students, sitting outside of the circle in straight chairs, to be making much of an effort to follow the discussion. Thomas alternated expressions of boredom and of a cat having caught a mouse, and Leonard maintained the expression of ever being the caught mouse.

But Justin listened to as much of the dense and erudite conversation as he could, reveling in being this close to scholars who were so passionate and glib about a literature largely ignored by much of the world and also by being in a musty, wood-paneled library with dusty overstuffed chairs, rich mahogany tables and bookcases, oriental rugs on the floor, and a full surround of old and moldering books. The smell was musky, not at all unlike the smell of a brutish man in heat. Justin was in heaven.

"Any discussion of this sort must start with that Arabian nights in reverse Sudanese classic, Tayeb Salih's

Season of Migration to the North

," the slightly bent, grayish James Stowell with the ferret face tossed out as an opening gambit as soon as the scholars, varied drinks in hand, had settled in their easy chairs.

"Utterly ridiculous," the hunky youngest among the scholars, Timothy Coleson, favoring his Egyptian mother in his dark beauty more than his English father, countered, with a snort. "If it's the Arabian Nights literature where we must start, it must be with Anton Shammas'

Arabesques

."

"Why would we want to start at the Arabian Nights literature at all," Justin's tall, slender fuck friend from a previous encounter, Charles Peters, interjected. "And should it not be Philip who introduces the subject?" With this, he turned and cast a worshipful gaze on Philip Hardesty, their host and their seniormost.

"I believe Philip has said that we cannot start anywhere but with Naguib Mahfouz and the Cairo Trilogy," Justin's own tutor, the short, slightly rotund, hirsute and decidedly Jewish Joshua Ramsay said.

"Mahfouz has his own

Arabian Nights

work," Coleson countered doggedly. "We could segue into his other works from that topic. We have not recently delved farther back into the base than Mahfouz's early twentieth-century themes in the Cairo Trilogy."

Justin perked up with eagerness. The Arabian Nights tales were thinly disguised erotica, and this would be a splendid place for the discussion to start as far as he was concerned. And he was all for pushing back to the medieval period.

All eyes turned toward Hardesty for a verdict—all except those of Leonard, who had eyes only for Thomas, and the olive-skinned hunk, Timothy Coleson, who had turned his dark, fluttering eyelashes in Justin's direction, openly assessing the young American scholar in what Justin understood as an open invitation to getting better acquainted. There was some hope for Justin's Oxford nights, the thought. There was a look of cruelty in Coleson's eyes.

Hardesty, the most imposing figure in the room in stature, bulk, and presence, spoke in a low, rumbling voice that, probably on purpose, made all lean in his direction. "Of course the discussion must start with the Nobel Laureate, Mahfouz, and, in deference to our young colleagues, Thomas and Leonard, we will discuss from the Kenney English translations." Hardesty inclined his head toward the two students in the outer ring and gave an indulgent smile. Leonard looked up, startled, as if he wondered whether the master was asking him a question. For his part, Justin smiled and beamed inwardly that Hardesty had known that he was fluent in Arabic.

"We only have the weekend, so, with Mahfouz, the Egyptian Dickens, we can reach a depth into Arabic life and mores in the first half of the last century quickly and efficiently. Beginning with

Palace Walk

, we are given detailed images of the life and family of the prosperous wholesale grocer, Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, at the beginning of the century. I hope that no later than noon tomorrow we can reach the disintegration of the family unit and the values it holds to on the surface into a modern Egyptian state, influenced by English decadence. For this we will need the third book of the trilogy, Sugar Street, and the follow-up novel

Midaq Alley

. And then, as you like we can move on to such lesser lights and less both lush and succinct looks into an Arabic world with Shammas and Salih. Mahfouz's

Arabian Nights

can be used as a segue into eroticism in the opposite direction than you are proposing, Timothy."

He'd said the last somewhat dismissively and both Coleson and Stowell were cowering and blushing a bit.

As the discussion commenced, Justin leaned forward, listening for any mention of Ahmad's philandering son, Yasin, for signs of Mahfouz's subtle introduction of sexual mores of the time on a normally taboo topic for literature of the 1950s. He was even more interested in discussion of the youngest son, Kamal, as his own readings of Mahfouz had led him to believe that Mahfouz was hinting at the forbidden male domains of the Cairo coffee shops as places for rich merchants to assess and bid on the attentions of young men, something Justin had encountered in underground writings on Arab life in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but not something he had discerned thus far in Arabic literature. If there was an Arabic author brave enough to even hint at this custom, his tutor Ramsay had told him, it would be in the brave and subtle works of Mahfouz.