“So how exactly do we do this?”

I study the instructions and sigh. It seemed like such a cool idea when I ordered the thing online, visions of a hot night with an even hotter guy dancing in my head. Now, though, as the sun beats down, I can’t even look at you. Not far away, kids shriek, splashing in the lake, giggling maniacally. Neither of us are on duty, but I feel like I’m wasting my time and yours.

Then you bend over and that makes this whole fool’s errand worth it.

“CJ?” You say my name, glancing over your shoulder, but your ass is still on full glorious display and I have no words. Most masculine guys don’t go for shorts that aren’t khaki, cargo and baggy but you’re different. Whomever manufactured those denim wonders hugging your round, muscled tush should beg for an endorsement deal.

You repeat yourself and I shake out of my reverie. “Sorry. Heat.”

You move closer and I get a whiff of boy-sweat and apple shampoo and something uniquely you: the Orgasm King of Camp Ardenne. 

Your looks are babely boy-next-door, your manners sweetly Southern, your reputation legendary as the peaches of your home state. Your eyes are the scenic blue of the lake under your well-worn University of Georgia cap. By day you co-teach improv with Kimberly, by night you stir up Ardenne counselor libido like it’s your job. If the stories are true, you suck cock and eat pussy with equal fervor, leaving your lovers in splendor, clutching grass or sheets or walls, catching their breath and murmuring, “who the fuck are you?”

Or so I’ve heard. 

From Zazie. From Aubrey. From Krysten and her girlfriend, Foster. From Rainbow and Ian and Tara and a few others. “He’ll get the job done,” they promised me as I listened to their testimonies one by one, muttered in dusty corners of the theater building, in the cafeteria on fried chicken and fried tempeh day when appetites and voices rose to a frenzy, in front of the mirror in the empty dance studio when I saw Krysten’s round dark eyes and graceful gestures in double. They all said: “He’ll make it happen.”

Looking at you, doffing your hat and running your hand through glorious dark curls, I sure as fuck hope so.

“Okay,” you call. “I think I figured it out.” When you lean over to show me the diagram, our shoulders touch and my face flushes bright red. I could endure hours of training from my grad school voice teacher – who’d been trained by Maria Callas and wasn’t opposed to making students cry – and remain cool as a cucumber. One clothed touch from you? I’m a mess. But a hopeful mess. 

Tonight’s plan might work.

“Right here.” You point. “We just gotta get thing A into slot B.” 

I can’t help it – I snort and you smile like, relax. My nerves dissipate slowly, like the sweat rolling down my back, evaporating in the unexpected August breeze. I wish I could take my shirt off, but we’re in the midst of minors. When I look up, our eyes meet, and I feel the full effect of your gaze, brightly curious…about me? Tonight? This ridiculous blanket fort?

“You ready?” you ask, gesturing to the pile of white fabric and heavy metal poles.

I take a deep breath all the way from my diaphragm and reply, “Yeah,” hoping I’m right.

---

It’s not like I’m a virgin. Far from it. I enjoy the details of sex: the sharp intake of breath when connection’s made, the feel of lips and tongue on skin, the warmth of a T-shirt when I doff it, the coolness when my shoulders meet the air. But no matter how much I touch myself, no matter what toys I use, what porn I watch, no matter how understanding and open my partner or partners, I just. Can’t. Get there.

I never have.

Hence, the blanket fort at the edge of the woods, the sleeping bags we lie on, the humidity swirling around us as you reach for my hand. There it is again: that same sensation I had when you looked into my eyes a few hours ago. 

You turn on your side to face me, eyes glowing, dark hair standing out against the white of the blankets. “Nice place you got here.”

I laugh and shift to my side too. “Some chump helped me put it together this afternoon.”

“Lucky guy.” Your words are like honey, slow and thick as they pour out of your lovely mouth. I’m about to banter back – I like the rhythm we have going – when suddenly you sit up.

“Going so soon?” I blurt, before I see what you’re doing and my mouth goes Sahara-dry.

Slowly but surely, you peel off your shirt, revealing the inch of boxers sticking out over your shorts, your lightly muscled back, your shoulders that are just broad enough, bare biceps round as a fist, your long neck graceful in the low light. 

And I feel – something.

A flicker. Resonating through my body, small but sure. I’m new to this flicker, but I welcome it, wondering if this is how it starts for everyone.

You turn to me and lay back down on your sleeping bag, a cocksure smile on your face. “Better.”

“Can I touch?” I ask, my trained voice shooting up to a barely discernible squeak. 

You scoot closer, grin wiped away, face serious. “Go ahead.”

I start with your jaw, my fingers just barely brushing it, taking in the roughness of your slight stubble, the silk of your skin underneath, warm with sunburn and the heat of the blanket fort. I can feel the grass poking up between our sleeping bags and the touch grounds me, here in this safe small place in the wild wide woods. You groan in appreciation as my hand travels up to your face and tangles in those soft dark curls. 

“Can I?” you ask softly, arm sliding around my waist, and right after I nod, you pull me in for our first kiss.

There’s that flicker again, but now I feel it below my waist, centering itself, making a home. As your lips play over mine, your tongue sliding in, I move closer, threading both hands in your hair, massaging your scalp.

“I feel like I’m in high school again,” you murmur, laughing as you fumble for the hem of my shirt and pull it over my head, and again we’re skin to skin as you pull me on top of you. I feel your cock, hard under your shorts, and that and the heat and the close quarters all become too much for me.

 I have to roll off of you and crawl to the edge of the fort, throwing up the blanket and sucking in a lungful of cool night air, then another, then a third before I place it neatly on the ground again and look back at you, your beautiful face now confused. I feel like such a freak.

“Did I do something wrong?” You look like a Greek god who’s just thrown down a bolt of lightning and can’t believe his one gesture set off a natural disaster.

I know I have to come clean.

I gaze down at my lap, trying to ignore the arousal that’s burning stronger than ever. “I’ve…” Taking a shallow breath, I wet my lips like I used to do in fifth-grade band when I played clarinet, before I discovered my voice was the best instrument of all. “I’ve never had one.”

You move closer, never taking your eyes off me. “Never what?”

I look at you hard, and I can see you put two and two together, your face scrunched up then smoothing out with understanding. “Oh.” And then the magnitude of my confession hits you. “Ohhhhh.”

 “Everyone…they said you could help me. And I got this stupid blanket fort and made this whole plan and now…I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?” you ask, not laughing, not judging. Just here.

I bury my face in my hands, flicker replaced by shame.

“Hey.” And suddenly you’re next to me, your hand gentle on my shoulder, big and warm and comforting. Without thinking about it, I turn my face and kiss your palm. “Look at me.” I do, waiting for the usual platitudes: it’s normal, happens to the best of us, I went fifteen whole years without coming.

Instead, your saucy grin returns and without thinking about it I find myself grinning back. You’re contagious. You incline your head to the sleeping bags, limp and lonely in the middle of the fort. Leaning in, your lips brush my ear and I shiver as you whisper, “Want a backrub?”

Now I realize my shoulders are hunched up near my ears, that your strong hands on my bare back are exactly what I want. Need.

Orgasm be damned.

I let you lead me back to the bags, both of us crawling on our knees, and lay me out flat.

Apparently, you’re also the Backrub King.

“Ohhhhhh,” I groan into the sleeping bag before I get a mouthful of nylon, making us both laugh. Yours is a surprisingly high giggle and it’s delightful.

Closing my mouth, I turn my head to the side as your fingers find their way to my neck, working out the kinks one by one, kneading my tense muscles in a way that hurts so very, very good.

“Too hard? Too soft?” you murmur.

“Just right, Baby Bear,” I moan.

You chuckle and now your laugh is low and deep. “Baby Bear. I like that.” You pause and I can hear your hesitation crackling in the air. You take a breath, fingers still working away. “CJ?”

“Yeah?”

“Mind if I straddle you?”

There was that flicker again. I twist my neck around to see you, shirtless, muscled torso gleaming with sweat, white blankets billowing. A different kind of tension starts to build.

I smile. “Straddle away.”

You waste no time, planting a knee around each of my hips, then starting to work on my shoulders. I’ve never been too into massages as a precursor for sex – most people just aren’t good at them – but here, with your hands all over me, hearing you breathe and sneaking glances at your face, a mask of concentration infused with arousal – I’m pretty sure I can live in this backrub.

And then it happens.

I can’t explain where it comes from, but I’m hit with pure urgency: a desire to make something happen, and make it happen now. Not just in my shorts, but my entire body, thrumming through my skin. 

Demanding. 

“I need to roll over,” I hear myself say, my tone low and sultry, the way I’ve never heard myself even when singing the jazz standards my musical theater prof loves. 

“Okay,” I can hear the excitement in your voice, trying not to overwhelm me but letting me know you’re up for anything.

My hair is soaked with sweat, my skin prickling, my legs falling open. I don’t want to say anything and jinx it.

But in my mind and heart and… other parts, I want.

I want. 

Sitting up just enough to pull you down, I run my hands over your back as we kiss again, harder and faster and deeper, you groaning in my mouth.

I always thought orgasm slapped you in the face. Look at any porn, hear any story from a friend who just got laid. The eyes going big, the mouth forming a big round O, the thrusts getting suddenly more intense. Maybe that’s why I thought they’d never happen to me. I’m just not a slapper. You can’t be, as a singer: you strive to hit the right note, but it comes from hours, months, sometimes years, of practice. 

As we kiss and touch, teasing each other with lips and fingers, topless but never removing our bottoms – because that would involve leaving each other’s mouths and we don’t know how to do that – I feel like I’m levitating off the hard ground, the nylon and cotton of the sleeping bag, hovering at the top of the tent where pole A meets slot B and the fabric wafts about in the gentle summer breeze. I can see us, your mouth traveling over my chest, hear each quiet exhalation, shiny sweat illuminating your form. Myself below you, thighs wrapped around your waist, wanting to live in this moment forever, feel this unique cocktail of intense calm and rapid insistence to arrive at a destination I don’t yet know but am certain I will love.

I hear a high-pitched sigh, almost a mewl, and realize it’s coming from me. “You’re getting close,” a voice rumbles in my ear, and I realize it’s you. All I’m doing is undulating under you, rubbing against your hard cock, squeezing your ass and pulling you in tighter as your mouth works its magic and I think I’ll die if you stop kissing me. I’ve always worried about coming, struggling, showing the other person what they’re worth to me, but here, I’m savoring this journey, eagerly finding ways to make it better, teasing your earlobes with my tongue, biting your neck and hearing a sigh that matches mine.

And then.

White drifts around metal, as you and I move with and around one another, skin against skin, muscle on muscle, I grasp and stroke and close my eyes, and I open up. And as I give myself over to pure sensation, throbbing and licking your neck and hearing you encouraging me, yes, that’s right, let it come CJ let it come, and the fleeting thought you really are the Orgasm King floats through me as I hear a note, prolonged and perfect, ringing through the blanket fort as my body thrums and tingles and cries, and the note continues, my mouth in a perfect O, my eyes open and staring straight into yours as I come and I come and I come and I wonder what the fuck I was so worried about.