I was sitting outside the cottage door, just in my shorts, wondering if the farmer who had rented the rustic Cotswold cottage with the thatched roof and the rose trellis beside the door to me for two weeks had misinterpreted my offer. It hadn't been in so many words, but I think I had been clear enough in my nonverbal delivery. But maybe not. Maybe signaling here in England was much different from how it was in the States.
I had been antsy with my writing, not being able to make much progress. Back in New York, I would have known what I needed to break the blockage: attention from one of the muscle men in the gym down on the first floor of my building. I would go downstairs and stand in the doorway. They would see and understand what I needed, and one of the hunks would put his bar bells down, climb the stairs with me, and fuck the stuffing out of me. Then I would give him the proverbial pat on the head and send him back to the gym. After that I could and would write all night. I never had a problem finding someone down there who wanted me. I always was in control.
The Gloucestershire farmer had reminded me of the men in the gym, but more honestly built, less malleable perhaps, and a man of determination. A bit of danger for someone like me, who wanted to call all of the shots. He was a man of the fields, big and bulky, but built like a bodybuilder. His muscles were, I'm sure, the result of hard work on the land rather than the artifice of the gym. His cottage had been listed on a gay-friendly Web site, and it had rather explicitly indicated that single, young, gay men were preferred. So I had hope that there would be something to be had from him while I hid away in the Cotswolds and tried to make progress on my book. A bit of dalliance when it pleased me. When I saw him, standing by the cottage door this morning, when I drove up, I almost melted. He was big and beautiful in a brutish, stubbornly arrogant way. I had occasion to hope there would be something from him for me, and even more reason to hope that when he told me that he was single, that he lived alone, and that he worked the farm himself.
I told him I was gay and a writer, and that I had come to write, not to sightsee. I asked him if he was a reader, but he said he was more of a music listener—and a dancer. I had visions of him clogging away at a village fair and regretted that he wasn't a reader. If he had read my books, he would have known what I wanted from a man like him, what I expected from a man who wanted to go with me. I told him, still hopeful, that I worked mainly at night at the computer and that my mornings, such as they were, were spent spinning the stories in my mind. But the evenings, I said, I usually liked to be away from the writing. I often read in the evening, or talked with someone, if someone was there to talk to.
"I dance in the evenings," he said, simply. From the first moment, he was direct, straightforward, with me, not the least anxious to fit in with my plans.
I thought then that he hadn't taken the hint—or, worse, had caught the invitation and had rejected it. I was a bit miffed. I wasn't used to being rejected. But then, this was England, not the United States. I recognized that tastes could be different by differing location. He looked like he probably fancied someone rougher, less complex, less sophisticated than I was. I had visions that while I was reading in the evening, he would be in the village dancing, probably clogging. I don't know why I thought they clogged in this region, but it seemed to go with the atmospherics here. Everything was rural. Beautiful, but rural. The farmer seemed rural too. Very basic, probably his whole life devoted to his farm. Rural but beautiful. But seeing him in my mind dancing some silly village dance lessened his appeal to me. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have given up earlier in the day before he set off for his fields; I'd have been at his door asking for a cup of whiskey or something—with the emphasis on the "something."
The twilight was so inviting that I was sitting at the cottage door next to the rose trellis, using the light streaming through the doorway of the essentially one-room cottage to light my page. I had only read a few pages when I saw him approaching.
He was all cleaned up, a bottle of some liquor—probably a local brew—in his hand. He was stripped to the waist, wearing baggy farmer's trousers below, which only accentuated the hard, barrel chest and tapering down the torso to flat abs telling the tale of what a serious six pack meant. I gasped at the sight of him, not only the massive musculature of his torso, magnificently cut, but because he had tattooing of roses running down his chest—roses that matched the color of those on the rose trellis next to where I sat.
"I thought you danced in the evenings," I said in a low, wanting voice as he approached me.
"I do. I think you should dance tonight rather than read. I have come to dance."
He had also brought CDs. They surprised me. No clogging music here—whatever that was. Not even any fast music. All slow, sensuous, strangely unfamiliar music to me. Sounds of haunting instruments I could not identify and what were either other instrumental sounds or voices in the background, I could not tell which, as well blended in the rest of the music as it was. Behind it all, a good beat. Not a beat that I heard from the beginning, but a beat that became stronger as the evening unraveled.
"The music. Very strange," I said. "Almost primeval."
"It's Celtic music. It's what I dance to. It is music we use to make love to, out here on the farms."
Visions of fertility dances in the fields zipped through my brain. How could I use this image in my novels?
We were inside at that point, him standing by the CD player and me sitting on the edge of the bed. There were straight chairs in the room, and a small table near the kitchen bar, but not room for much else. Just a square of space in the center of the room. While standing at the CD player, he undid his belt buckle, unbuttoned his fly, and let his farmer's wide-legged trousers sink to the floor.
Just like that. Straightforward, direct. Sure of himself. Knowing that what he had gave him entry where he wanted to go. Arrogance unbounded.
I moaned. He was in half erection, already magnificent. His thighs were beefy, but all muscle, strong as oaks. The vining from the rose trellis tattoo continued down across his smooth-shaved groin, and wrapped around the base of his cock. He had taken a handful of small packets and a tube of something out of the pocket of his trousers before they fell to the floor, and as I watched, he placed the tube and some of the packets on the table, opened the packet he still was holding, and rolled the condom on his cock. There was no question what he wanted—or that he had plans to get it more than once, if he fancied doing so. For the first time I felt that decisions, control were not mine here. We clearly were on his turf.
No courting here. This was the farm. Do your business and get back to work. I was the business that he would do this evening. Lonely on the farm? Invite a young man to use your cottage and get your rocks off covering him, again and again, if you wanted to. Leave him moaning on his back, unable to close his legs, and go back to the fields whistling.
I shuddered, conflicted by both desire and fear.
He walked to the center of the room. "Come, dance with me." He was holding an arm out, in invitation.
"I don't dance. Well, not well," I answered, my voice more of a croak than as I would have him hear it.
"You can dance with me. I will lead. I will control."
I bet you will was my thought. I was trembling. I barely could make it up to my feet. I took one step.
"No, take the shorts off first. I want to see you." and when I had fumbled my way out of the shorts, "Ah, you are a right sexy piece, you are. Turn around. Nice arse that. Plump. Should hole straight and true, and something to grab onto during the slide. I am glad you have booked for two weeks. And you are showing me that you want to dance with me. We will be good dance partners together."
Just a sexy piece with a nice, plump "arse" to slide into. Just verbal running of the farmer's hands down the flanks of the livestock. Good breeding stock. The dance crap just so much subterfuge. Not that that mattered, he was such a prime example of manhood. But that cock . . . the size of that.
"I admit I want to . . . but I am frightened. You are so large . . . I'm not accustomed . . ."
"You will love the dance. Come. You answered the advert. We both know what you wanted when you came here. We will both be happy, I'm sure. This is why I make the effort to have this cottage to rent. I make it sound like I prefer single-tenant gay men. If I like the look of them, I cock them. They never complain that I have."
