Xmas in Madrid
It was my gap year. I was traveling Europe. That's when the second pandemic hit. It arrived in October, faster and harder than the first one, which seemed like a joke in comparison.
At the beginning the deaths weren't piling up, but the statistics didn't bode well for the coming months.
I had too short a supply of insulin for my type 1 and didn't trust the supply chains on this side of the pond. I feared shortages and decided to get home as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, me and millions of others all decided we had somewhere better to be all at the same time.
When the government of France converted the Eli Lilly insulin plant in Le Havre to produce vaccines my anxiety doubled.
And then when the governments in the UK and Switzerland converted labs too, I felt desperate. If my supply ran out I'd die within weeks. Were they really going to make vaccines on the backs of diabetics?
Horrified at the callousness, I realized there was no sense in either trusting emergency rooms or waiting it out.
When I failed to get a travel pass at the American embassy I knew I would need to find my own way to the States where they were still manufacturing my much needed medicine. In the meantime, I stopped in at every pharmacy I passed, occasionally picking up a single rationed cartridge. Once with a bribe.
The travel restrictions were a harsh maze of conflicting bureaucratic nonsensical red tape. Being dependent on a steady supply of insulin wasn't even addressed in the rules, while skin color and sexual orientation seemed to take top priority. Sometimes it seemed like they wanted people to die. In retrospect, I think the wheels of governments just grind on, indifferent to anything other than the stated goals of distant committees.
I was hoofing it through Belgium when some dudes in a hostel told me about an organization that pairs you up with a girl so you can meet the hardship requirements for travel. As long as she was pregnant you could get a pass stateside. Since there was no shortage of desperate girls headed to the only open port in New York, and since a certain percentage would by coincidence be pregnant, it was just a matter of fraudulently filling out forms with the help of an unscrupulous clerk.
Forty-five "couples" were created by the scam organization over the course of the next week until at the end of the process everyone was paired up except me and this guy Mathis.
We were sharing a room at the facility, when his shaky voice pierced the dark, "James...if we were gay they'd issue us a pass."
"Yea, but we're not."
"James, don't be an idiot."
I thought about it for a long second until what he was saying dawned on me. We planned to travel as a gay couple and got in line for our papers early the next morning. The dude giving out papers decided that James wasn't a gay enough name and put my name down as Daniel, despite it not being on my birth certificate. What the fuck!
Next, we were moved to a halfway station in Bastogne, with other mostly regular, not sham, couples. The food was bad and the walls were thin, so at night we were kept up by the sex sounds of the "couple" next door who apparently decided to make their relationship more real. They were the only other couple from our organization, otherwise we would have just assumed they were doing what couples do.
I lay there imagining what it would be like to have sex with a young woman in her condition. What would such a large pregnant stomach be like? I imagined doggy style as the only appropriate way to fuck a girl who was knocked up. Yet, somehow the image in my mind of a naked pregnant lady really started to turn me on. I don't know why. Maybe because there were so many of them roaming the halls that they were the only women I saw while there.
Bleary eyed and hungry, at breakfast we learned that the group was going to be culled by visiting bureaucrats. Any couple suspected of not being legitimate would be denied. The noisy couple got their stamps right away. The rest of us were scheduled for formal interviews. Crazily, Mathis and I only passed the informals because my fake name was Daniel.
Mathis and I decided that to keep our cover we need to have sex - noisy sex.
Not for real of course. It just needed to sound real. That night we knelt on the floor between our beds, "Daniel," Mathis said loudly, "all this stress has me so tense. I need some of your special help." I feared we weren't great actors.
"Sure Mathis, I'll help out, just like always." Then we made moaning noises. Mathis really put the icing on the cake when he pushed on the bed rhythmically so the springs would creak.
Afterward we whispered to each other, "Do you think they heard us in the next room?" And, "Will they buy it?" And also, "Will they gossip enough so word gets around?" With a silent high five we slept in our separate bunks.
We made sure to sit with that couple from room 301 at breakfast, "We hope we didn't keep you up last night. We're so sorry." But they were totally cool with hearing a gay couple next door and were unfortunately unlikely to say anything to the inquisitors.
We kept up the ruse for eight more nights, trying to "do" anything that would get people talking:
The second night of our play, instead of "stress release" we decided we needed to up the ante, "Daniel, you never do what I want. Can't you just do it? It's not like we haven't done it before." I liked where he was going with this. Wouldn't they all be wondering what "it" was? Wouldn't that get them talking? Wouldn't they all love to hear about our gay tiff?
I decided on the fly that we needed a back story, "OK, I'll do it. But when we get to New York we have to tell your family about us. No more hiding who we are."
Mathis replied, "I'm not ready." Then his character backtracked, "And do you think a regular blowjob would be ok? For tonight?"
We added a few more dirty phrases to spice it up. Then instead of making the mattress squeak, he slapped the wall a few times. Neither of us knew what kind of sexual act that was supposed to simulate, but it might get our audience thinking - and talking.
The next night we had 'kinky sex' and used all sorts of props to make ambiguous noises that were open to interpretation. We also included dialogue. His ideas were so wild I went to bed with a hard on. The lewd pornographic language was pushing me over the edge.
The next night we did anal. Mathis prostrated his clothed body over mine, driving his crotch into my bum. The bedsprings made sounds that to me seemed uniquely fitting to butt stuff. If he hadn't been on top of me I doubt the effect would have sounded the same. On a side note, it had been a month since I'd been with anyone and the feeling of a body pressing on top of mine, even a male body, wasn't entirely objectionable.
One day After breakfast Mathis ad libbed with no warning, "Daniel! I saw the way you were looking at Pieter. When will you respect me?" And he stormed off.
I played my part, chasing after him, "Mathis, don't be like that. I wasn't. I promise."
Everyone in the room bought it, and the bureaucrats moved us up to yellow, which meant we made it past the second round of interviews.
That night in the aftermath of our success, naturally, Mathis and I put on another loud auditory sex show. The theme was 'make-up sex'. We were pretending to kiss, bringing our faces close to each other's and making kissing noises when our lips accidentally touched. Horrified, I ran to the bathroom to wash. When I returned Mathis wasn't there. How would the neighbors interpret that?
We didn't plan the next night, but part way into the "foreplay" Mathis just informed me that we were doing a sixty-nine as he pushed me over and climbed on top.
