Rob stood up in the lifeguard's chair and stretched his body, flexing his muscles and giving his best deadpan John Wayne expression. Most of the lifeguards wore T-shirts, but Rob was vain that way. He was shirtless, his torso deeply tanned, his muscles glistening in the late afternoon sun, thanks to a film of sweat and a light lathering of suntan lotion. He looked good—even at the age of thirty-two—and he knew he looked good. He worked out an hour or two a day—religiously. It was about as close as he came to a religion—the worship of good body definition—his own body definition. He was pushing 200 pounds, but had a fullback's body. All hard muscle and cut definition. Still, the body of a Zeus now rather than an Apollo.
The lifeguard chairs extended all the way down the ten-mile stretch of the Ocean City, Maryland, beach from the inlet to the Delaware line, the stands set at intervals of five city blocks. Rob held court at 95th Street, on the beach side of the Pyramid condo. It was a choice spot, as well it should be, because, after sixteen years as a lifeguard on this beach, Rob, by far the oldest lifeguard ever on the Ocean City Beach Patrol—OCPB—had the most seniority. By rights he should be chief of the guards now and work in an office and occasionally drive between the stands on the beach in a dune buggy to check on the guys. But Rob had never wanted to be in an office. He'd always wanted to be out here on the beach.
Of course there was more money to being chief and working in the office, but Rob didn't do this for the money. This was what Rob wanted to do in life, and he was a little concerned that his application for a seventeenth year hadn't come back approved yet. It was mid-September, nearly the end of the OCPB coverage season. He didn't know what else he'd do over the summers if it wasn't this.
He looked down and saw that one of his regulars, Eric Someoneorother, had a hand on his bare foot and was looking up at where he stood in the chair, his gaze seeming to be more focused up the leg opening of Rob's shorts than up into his face.
"Hi, there, Rob," said Eric, a short and thin nineteen-year-old with reddish blond hair and not a bad build. Rob knew the young man was good on a board and that he'd been here off and on all summer—this being his first summer out here. Rob also knew him to be one of his regulars now. Probably not a resident of Ocean City, but living not too far away. And Rob knew the guy had money.
"How's it goin', Eric?" Rob called down to him. They seemed to appreciate it if he remembered their names.
"Wondered if maybe . . . whether you . . .?"
"Will you be at Randy's later?" Rob asked. "No can do before that. I'll be spinning them at Randy's after 8:30, though."
"See you then," Eric said, backing away from the stand reluctantly and returning to the group of other young, well-cut guys he was with. All the good-looking young guys on the beach seemed to congregate around Rob's stand. As long as they did, Rob continued to believe that he had it—had what it took to hold down this lifestyle.
Rob's lifestyle had pretty much stopped in time fifteen years previously. He'd become a lifeguard at sixteen, one of the youngest accepted into the OCPB at the time. His parents had split up and he'd gone with his dad for the summer. His dad had rented a place in an old "hodge-podge" complex of wooden buildings put together in the early 1950s around Baltimore and 6th, one block off the ocean-side boardwalk and three blocks off the bay. They hadn't any better place to be, so the father bought the two-bedroom walkup with a view of an alley and had left it to Rob when he died seven years later.
He had left Rob some money too, but Rob saved the earnings from this to help finance his beach bum trips to the Caribbean seven months out of the year. To augment the work he picked up in bars and the tourists he picked up on the beach. For his months here, he lived off the skimpy lifeguard salary, which he augmented by disk jockeying at Randy's a couple of hours most nights, pimping to tourists—a source of income that had gone down over the past six years—and his "other pursuit."
Ocean City was not gay friendly, at least on the surface. There was only one gay-friendly bar, the Underground, in Ocean City proper. This had always worked to Rob's advantage, though. There were gays vacationing in Ocean City, whether the city was friendly to them or not. And they didn't want to be deprived while they were here. Rob had always helped them not be deprived—for a price. At some point, fewer men were willing to pay for it and Rob had to either give it away or seek it out himself. But he wasn't at the stage of paying for it himself—yet.
Where Rob did most of his extracurricular activity, including hooking up, was at Randy's, which was the short name for Randy's Flight Club, which was on the mainland across the Route 50 causeway from Ocean City, in a growing area known as Ocean City West. The club was in what had once been an airplane hangar next to the airport off Stephen Decatur Highway. This was where Rob hung out most evenings, sharing DJ duties and hooking up with guys in various ways.
Eric's need would have to wait for Randy's this evening—and could only come after Rob's own itch was scratched.
Meanwhile, Rob finished his stretches and sat back down on the lifeguard stand seat. Another hour, and it would be 5:30, the lifeguard stand-down for the day. Another week and a half of this, and another summer season would be chalked up. The beach was more and more deserted with each passing day now—except for the hopeful group of young men congregating around his stand and using the presence of a volleyball net to cover their real purpose for gathering here. Attendance would flare up on the weekends through the rest of September, but be pretty dead during the week.
Rob looked down at the group of young men milling around below and around his stand. Best-looking tail on the beach, he decided. He looked them up and down real good, trying to decide if there was one of them above the age of eighteen that he hadn't already fucked. At first scan he couldn't identify a single one who hadn't already writhed under him.
But then, yes, his eyes lit on the quiet one—the toned black guy, Cal. He'd shown up on the last four weekends and had come into Randy's one Saturday night too. That must mean that he was approachable, Rob thought. Could be a top, though. Rob couldn't think of any reason he was sticking with the crowd unless he was cruising or seeking. In either department Rob could take care of him—and would like to. But then maybe he was a top too. Rob had managed to turn his share of tops, but there was something determined and stubborn about Cal that indicated he wasn't likely to change.
* * * *
Eric fought to focus on Rob's ass as the older man rose from the bed and moved toward the bathroom. He didn't know what was in those white pills Rob had given him beyond the base of Caberlin-brand dopamine, medically used for Parkinson's Disease but used in Erick and Rob's circles for sustained erections and multiple ejaculations.
The young mainline Philadelphian had had the multiple ejaculations and, still having a long, thick erection, he was looking forward to a couple more ejaculations when Rob got back from the john. The drug was what Eric had come home with Rob from Randy's the previous night to obtain—the Caberlin and the Ecstasy, barbiturates, amphetamines, and even the pot. The whole line of goods that Rob supplied to the young men who came to Ocean City and sought him out.
Eric had just started at Swarthmore and had come back to Ocean City the second weekend because he believed he couldn't maintain the pace of university studies or get in good with the math professor who had made a pass at him after his second class without the help of the drugs. And there were some other students he wanted to impress off the bat. So, although he thought the experimentation, guided by the older lifeguard, Rob, all summer was just a summer thing, he was hooked now.
The major kicker to the arrangement was the expense—and not just what Rob charged him for the drugs—but that Rob took an extra cut out of the service each time by getting Eric high on the drugs he had to buy and that, while he was high on sexual enhancers, Rob fucked him.
"No fuckee, no drugee," was one of Rob's favorite expressions.
