JOEL

The first time I noticed the man who told me his name was Tom was in the waiting lounge at Washington, D.C.’s, Union Station. I was taking the overnight train, the Capitol Limited, out to Chicago to be dumped there with my dad, Clay, by my mom, Marian, and her husband, Jarrod. I’d been a bad boy—badder than they knew. Certainly badder than Mom Marian knew, or decided to know. They could hardly wait for my eight-grade classes at Sidwell Friends in D.C. to be over for summer vacation to ship me out before, as Jarrod said, “things got any worse—and, worse yet, in the papers.”

And Jarrod should know about things becoming “worse.” They certainly were becoming more paper interesting. Jarrod himself didn’t mind doing it with me. He just didn’t like that I’d let him do it, and, more so, that I let the congressman he worked for do it. Marian, of course, didn’t know what “it” was—and she very actively didn’t want to know. She just wanted to unload me even to the point of turning me over to an indifferent father she’d once fought tooth and nail to “save” me from. Clay wouldn’t be so bad, though. He’d continue not paying much attention to me—or not paying the right kind of attention to—and I could continue exploring the pleasure I could get from men being inside me.

We were within a half hour of boarding the Capitol Limited, which was scheduled to leave at 4:05 in the afternoon and was on schedule when Tom caught my attention, standing across the waiting room where Marian, Jarrod, and I were seated, and looking at me. He had just been to the complimentary wine table when he noticed I was looking at him. He smiled at me and raised his plastic glass in a toast.

He was much the same age as Jarrod and the congressmen were—late thirties or early forties—the age and type of men I’d already gone with and laid under. He was tall and slim, but muscular through the chest. Dark haired. He still had a full head of hair. Good-looking in the face and with an easy smile. He was in a dress shirt and tailored slacks, both looking expensive, and the sleeves were rolled up on his shirt, showing hairy forearms—tight, black curls. That was something that got me going.

I wondered from seeing that whether his chest was hairy too. The congressman was, Jarrod wasn’t. Jarrod was what they were now calling a Metro Groomer—he was shaved smooth and groomed right down to trimming his pubes in a close-cropped V. The congressman wasn’t. His bush was bushy. I didn’t mind it either way. I preferred the congressmen’s cocking, but I don’t know if that’s because he was more natural than Jarrod was, or whether he was just thicker and longer. Part of the thrill for me was the knowledge of how much of it was inside me and how much I had to open up to sheath it.

I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be able to write about experiences and feelings and sensations and relationships and naughty couplings and all that. I wanted to experience it all—and capture it in writing. My eighth-grade English teacher at Sidwell Friends said I had writing talent. He’d helped me write about it. He said I shouldn’t hold anything back—that writing about everything I was thinking would help develop my writing. We were getting pretty close when my mother and Jarrod decided I needed to leave Washington. I’m sure it was my mother’s idea, but I was disappointed that Jarrod was going along with her. He’d fucked me three times before that. I thought we were doing fine and getting better and freer at it each time. I was disappointed that he could give me up that easily. But then he’d been a little shook when he’d found his boss, the congressman, on top of me in the woods during that office picnic in Rock Creek Park.

He’d said something about me being only fourteen. Well, I was only fourteen when Jarrod first fucked me too.

I was thinking up an excuse—a last minute visit to the john maybe—to be on my own, not sitting with my mom and her husband. If I went to the men’s room, would the man across the waiting room decide he needed to take a leek too? Was this man was thinking what I was? I was dying to find out. But then they announced our boarding call. I was happy to see, as we pulled our suitcases down the platform beside the Capitol Limited, looking for our car number, that the man was ahead of us, beyond about half a dozen other boarders. We found our cars, though, before he stopped at one.

But he stopped and looked around at us—at me, I was sure—when we boarded the train. Jarrod had told me I was obsessed with sex. What did he expect. I was coming of age. He certainly hadn’t done anything to keep me from being interested in it.

We were in separate cars. Mom and Jarrod had a first-class compartment, upper and lower bunks at night and their own john, and I had a seat in a coach car. I was happy to see that I had both seats in a row at the end of the car, with no one in the row of seats across from me. Jarrod had said we could all make do in the private compartment, with me in the upper bunk and he and Mom in the lower—and during the day, there would be three places to sit. But I’d wanted the freedom to be able to move around on my own, so I’d begged for the coach-car seating—for the experience to inform my writing about the trip, I had said—and they’d given in. I’d still have to take my meals with them, they’d said.

At dinner I saw him again. I was at a table facing Mom and Jarrod, and the man was down the dining car seated at the aisle-edge of a table and facing me. I wondered if he’d chosen the seat so that we’d have eye contact. It was perfect. I could be seen as looking at Mom when I actually was looking beyond her down the dining car. The man could be seen as looking at and talking to the woman sitting across from him at the table while really looking at me.

We exchanged looks. I thought—and hoped—they were knowing looks. There couldn’t be many men with an interest—a sexual interest—in fourteen-year-old boys. My hormones were raging, though. I definitely had such an interest with every good-looking man I saw. Sex was so new to me—so fascinating. The man kept giving me the eye and smiling, but I had no idea about the world of signaling between two males wanting to do the mating dance with each other.

It was all just too new for me to know what to do.

When our desert came, the man was gone, leaving me to wonder if I was just fantasizing a sexual interest. I’d of course write that there was one anyway. I’d already been fucked in real life by men, so it wasn’t just all a fantasy. And I had hopes of a freer life in Chicago. But it would be nice to have an experience on the train to write about. My English teacher had told me not to hold back, to write about it all. And he always showed great interest in reading it and discussing it with me.

TOM

There was every evidence the boy was signaling, but with boys you never could tell. Most of them weren’t this blatant about it even if they were experienced in going with men. And he was quite young—and, I must say, quite delectable. A blond Apollo. He was with his parents, although that didn’t seem to stop him from giving me the eye and that special smile in the departure lounge at Union Station, or to fall in behind me when we were boarding the train. And then when I was in the dining car for dinner, he and his parents came in and he had them seated so that he’d have a direct line of sight to me. And the eyeing and smiling resumed.

How old was he, I wondered. He looked to be fourteen or fifteen. Just what I liked. How did he guess I’d be interested, though? Was he even really signaling? If he was on the train with his parents, there wouldn’t be much of an opportunity for me to pick him off. They surely had a private compartment. They looked like money.

I finished my dinner and those at my table—all strangers—were breaking up. There was another seating following ours, so we had to move on. They seated you randomly if you didn’t have enough in your party to make up a table. And I didn’t. I was traveling alone. I was a “National Geographic” photographer, based in D.C., with some side businesses. Traveled the world. Found some places of the world that weren’t as puritanical as the States—that would look the other way when I got the urge or, such places at Thailand that actually catered to my needs—the need for boys just starting to blossom. I was on leave now, going to the Boystown district of Chicago to do some filming for collectors. The cute boy and his family were lingering. I would have liked to see where they went, where their compartment was.

I gave him a “look” when I got up, but he was looking away from me, talking to his dad. I had a private compartment two cars back from the dining car, at the farther end of the train. In case the family was in the same car, I lingered at my door. Sure enough, the mother and father came into the corridor and went into a cabin near the other end from mine. But no boy. I wondered where the boy was.

I went looking for him. He wasn’t with his parents now. It was an opportunity to hunt. The boy was worth the effort and my juices were bubbling up.

I found him in the logical place, the club car, with its observation dome glass, not much help now because darkness had descended. Also, the glass dome was dirty and the condensation from the difference of the air conditioned inside and the hot, muggy outside, even after dark, in Western Pennsylvania in the summer, clouded the glass even further. Probably for this reason there weren’t many in the car. A young couple was leaving as I was arriving, which reduced those in the lounge to just three: me, a middle-aged woman trying to look twenty-five, with some success, and the boy.

The woman and boy were sitting in the middle of the car, in chairs facing the window. She was a cougar, I could tell immediately, as she was leaning into the boy and had her skirt pulled up high on her thighs. He was just a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy, and this woman in her late forties or so was trying to put the make on him. Well, and I think I laughed when I thought of that, because both of them turned their faces to me to see that I’d come into the car, I wasn’t in my late forties yet, but I was trying to put the make on the boy myself, wasn’t I?

When he looked at me, I could tell at a glance that he wanted it to be me sitting next to him rather than the woman. I’d encountered boys like this all over the world—boys who wanted men. They all acted alike during the mating phase.

I sat down in a chair facing the opposite window near the end of the car, where I could hear their conversation and could watch them in the reflection of the glass window I was facing. The boy knew I was watching, because he made eye contact with me in the reflection in the glass on his side of the car.

“You’re not traveling alone, are you?” the woman was asking.

“My mother and step-father are taking me out to Chicago to live with my dad. They’ve gone to bed in their compartment, I think.”

“Those compartments are really crowded for three, aren’t they?” she asked.

“They look crowded for two,” the boy said, with a laugh. “When the bunks are down, you can hardly even get into the compartment. I’m not staying with them. I’m in one of the coach cars in that direction...” he pointed forward “ ... and my mom and her husband are in a compartment back in the other area.”

“Interesting,” the woman said. “My compartment is in the same direction your seating car is in. I have the compartment to myself.”

They were silent for a bit. I figured the cougar was shutting up on purpose to let the boy absorb that she was traveling alone and had a compartment all to herself. I looked into the glass and saw that he was looking at me rather than straight at her, and that he had a little smile on his face. OK, it seemed he wasn’t naïve—that he knew what she was sliding into.

“I wanted the coach car on purpose,” he said. “I didn’t want to be cramped up with my mom and her husband. And I wanted to observe other people. I’m writing something up on the travel experience.”

“For school?” she asked.

“No. Well, yes, my English teacher at Sidwell Friends back in D.C. had suggested I write something. But I’m not going back to that school. I’m being taken to Chicago to live with my father. He owns a restaurant there. I’ll have to go to a different school in Chicago.”

I’d picked up his mention of Sidwell Friends. It was an exclusive Quaker school. It’s where presidents and other dignitaries in Washington send their kids if they have ones in school younger than college. So the boy was well connected. I wondered why he was moving to Chicago—although he’d talked about like he was “being moved.” And he didn’t talk about his parents, but about his mother and her husband—his step-father. So, some trouble with the step-father that meant the kid had to go west? Something I could work with maybe if I could get alone with him. Making a boy his age often meant finding where the sensitivity was—where he was hurting—and play on that. It often was a matter of giving the kid what he wanted to get what you wanted. And this boy looked easily. Part of what he was projecting he wanted was to be fucked.

“So, is there some girl back in D.C. who is pining her heart out that you are moving to Chicago?” the cougar asked. She was leaning into the boy, giving him a deeply sympathetic look. Her hand was on the arm of the chair he was setting in. There was little doubt she wanted to touch him and would do so at the slightest invitation.

“No, I’m not into girls.”

“Not mature enough for you? You’re more interested in women? Someone with more experience?”

“Look. Lots of lights. We’re going through a town,” the boy said. “I wish the glass was clear enough that we could see what we’re traveling through.”

I almost laughed out loud. As quickly as the lights of a town or something came up, they were gone again and the glass returned to a mirror backed by a dark landscape. I looked into the glass on my side of the car, to see that the boy was looking at my face in the reflection in the glass on my side of the train car by way of the reflection in the glass of his face on his side. He could see that I had heard and understood his deflection. I smile and he smiled. And then I knew I could have him if I only could get him alone.

The cougar tired after a few more feints at the boy that she no doubt thought were countered with innocence and naivete. I knew otherwise, though, and I stayed put, hoping to get my turn.

“It’s getting late and we’ll be in Chicago before nine,” she eventually said, stretching, more for the effect of showing the boy how her tits filled out her blouse, I thought, than because she was tired. I wanted to note that it would seem later than nine in Chicago to someone coming from Washington, D.C., but I didn’t want to say anything that would give her a chance to stay longer. “My car will be just two forward of yours. Car 27, F compartment. If you get lonely or anything and just want to talk—”

“Thanks,” the boy said, “but you’re right. It’s getting late. About time to get settled for the night.”

“Yes, well.”

“I enjoyed meeting you. Good-night.”

There wasn’t much she could say to that. She rose, with a sigh, and moved to the end of the car—not to quickly and not without swinging her hips—and then with another saucy look back at the boy, she was gone.

I waited for a good five minutes to see if he’d get up and leave. That would mean he was just flirting and did, indeed, want to get settled for the night, or it meant he’d follow her and I had him all wrong. But he didn’t leave. He kept looking at my reflection in the glass through his reflection on the other side of the car, both of us with our backs to each other but both of us very much aware of the presence of the other. I stood and turned. He turned in his swivel chair as I did that, and we froze for another twenty second, me letting him get a good look, both of us smiling slightly. I knew I looked good. I knew I could deliver.

“Were you about to leave, or would you like some company?” I asked.

“By all means, join me,” the boy said.

I covered the distance between us and stood over him where he was seated in the chair. I wanted him to know that anything that might happen would have me in the dominant position. He seemed comfortable with that. I held out my hand, folding my thumb under to rub in his palm during the handshake. He didn’t seem to understand that signal of a top to a bottom, but he was just fourteen or fifteen. I couldn’t expect him to be that much into signaling. The smile certainly was welcoming enough. “I’m Tom,” I said.

“Joel,” he responded.

“You don’t have a drink, Joel,” I said. “I’m sure the snack bar is open”—it was in the same car, on the level below us, reached by a winding staircase midway in the car—”I’m going down for a beer. Would you like something too? My treat. A Coke or something?”

“The beer sounds great, but yes, a Coke would be good, thanks.”

When I returned, I had three cans. Two beers and a Coke. I put them down on the table, along with a twenty and a five. Joel stared at the money. I handed him one of the beer cans. “This is for you, if you want it. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. If someone comes into the car, you can pick up the Coke instead.”

“Thanks,” he said, giving me a shy smile and still looking at the twenty and the five but picking up the can of beer.

We were on our way.

After popping the top of my beer, I sat in a seat two seats down from the boy—Joel—facing the view of blackness outside the speeding train. Not too close. I didn’t want to spook him. I’d done this before. Often. I enjoyed doing this. The seduction increased the pleasure of the victory. Joel gave me a sideways look, like maybe he wasn’t watching me but, rather, was mesmerized by the view of a dark countryside through a window that reflected more of his and my faces and bodies than what was outside the train. We searched each other’s faces in the reflection of the glass.

“Traveling with your parents, but not staying with them in their compartment? You have a seat in the coach car?” I put that down as I doubted he would have the courage to start this dance. “I overheard you.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he answered, moving his gaze to the twenty-five dollars I’d put on the table by him again. I was sure he knew what that was for. It was part of the seduction, making him want to pick it up, seal the deal.

“You talked about your mom, but you mentioned her husband rather than calling him your step-father or father. And it sounds like you’re being forced to move to Chicago—away from them and to your father. Like you and your step-father have issues.”

“Yeah, my dad owns and runs a restaurant there. It’s called the Top of the Town, I think.”

“I know the restaurant,” I said. “It’s a good one. I live part time in Chicago. I work in D.C., at the ‘National Geographic.’ I’m a features photographer. But I do some filming in Chicago to—for private collectors and subscription Web sites.” I wanted to get that out there for him to think about.

“Neat,” he said.

“But back to your step-father,” I said. “I saw the three of you together at dinner. You looked comfortable with your mother but not with your step-father. So, I guess this trip has some ‘stuff’ behind it. You and I have been exchanging glances. It seems to me that you want to talk to someone about something going on in your life. I know it’s forward of me, but if you need to let it all out with someone, maybe a stranger you’ll only see on the train and then never again might be a good person for you to talk to. It may help you come to grips with issues.”

“Let it all out?” the boy said.

“Yes. Like, has your step-father been mean to you? Are you having trouble with him? Is he a violent man? Is he knocking you around?”

“No, just the opposite,” Joel said to me. He wasn’t looking directly at me, though. I don’t think he could. But he still seemed to need to have eye contact with me. We connected in the reflection of the wall of glass, where occasional flashes of light blanked our reflections out as the train roared through the night. But losing contact seemed to be prompting us both to connect again in reflection as quickly as we could.

The opposite. Ah so. His step-father was screwing him and, for some reason, that needed to stop. “You told the woman you were talking to here that you didn’t have a girlfriend.”

“That’s right.”

“Am I wrong in thinking that you do have a boyfriend.”

It took the boy a moment to respond. “Not a boyfriend, no.”

“Oh, I’m sorry I asked then.” I also was disappointed. I wasn’t new to this. I didn’t know how I could have misjudged.

“Not a boyfriend. Men. I like men.”

I gave that a minute—time for him to realize I was going to take that in stride, not fall apart at that news. “Your step-father? It’s OK. That happens, I know.” I was opening him up now. I wanted to get right to it.

“Among others.”

Now, that was a bit of a surprise. “You like men? You go with men? And not just one?” I carefully modulated my voice so that he wouldn’t think I thought that was unusual for someone his age.

“I have, yes.”

“And you like that?”

“Yes.”

“Men my age? Your step-father looks about my age.”

“Yes. I like older men. Not real old. Just a lot older than me. I like them to be in good shape, though.”

“I’m in pretty good shape.”

“Yes, you are.”

“You’ve been smiling at me. I could be thinking you were flirting with me, Joel.”

“Yes, I’m glad you noticed.”

“How old are you, Joel?”

“Fourteen.”

“Sweet. So, I put twenty-five dollars on that table there. Would you like to earn that, Joel?”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t say no. And his eyes were latched onto mine in the reflection in the glass.

Time to take command. I moved over to the seat beside him and put a hand on his knee. He looked down at the hand but did nothing to move away from it or me.

“You’ve finished your beer, Joel. So have I. I’d like to have another one. I think they’d sell me two more. It looked like someone else was coming on duty down there when I was coming up the stairs. Would you like me to get you another one too?” I kept my voice low, hoarse like. It was a voice of pursuit known among guys with special interests. I was declaring myself as a seeking top. “Maybe another drink before we ... well, you know.”

“That would be good,” he said. He didn’t ask me what I meant by the “well, you know.” I moved my hand farther up on his thigh and slightly to the inside. He spread his thighs for me and looked down at the hand.

“You really have gone with men before, haven’t you, Joel?” I asked. This was proving to be very easy.

“Yes. I like going with men,” he answered.

“So, hold tight, and I’ll see whether I can get more beer.” I was a bit loathe to leave him. What if he was just stringing me along until I went to the lower level and then he’d flee? Or what if others came into the club car while I was gone? I needed to get this moved to my compartment for the main event. It’s a good thing I had a compartment all to myself.

“That would be great,” the boy said, his eyes focused on my hand that had moved up his inner thigh, a finger extended up, touching what I knew would be something hardening up inside the material of his crotch. “Then afterward...”

“Yeah, afterward,” he said, “I’d like that.” His voice came out in a croak. Just like that, his flag of surrender had flipped up. But then I knew that’s what he’d wanted all along.

When I came back, he was sitting there, staring at his reflection in the glass. He looked keyed up. He gave me a weak smile as I handed him his drink. I sat in the seat beside him and put my hand back on the inside of his thigh. He spread his legs again and nearly gulped his drink. He obviously was a beer drinker despite his age. He was into some real adult shit for his age. He was a real looker. It was sort of a disappointment that it wouldn’t be his first time, but he acted like he had experience and enthusiasm. Such a nubile, flexible body, though. This was going to be fun. He seemed to be able to take his beer—managing to stay just in the buzz zone. There was no problem with the hand on his thigh, though. He was more than ready to take up from where I’d left off.

We both knew I was going to fuck him.

I drank my beer more slowly, showing him who was in control. We continued eyeing each other in the reflection of the glass, not saying anything until, in that low, hoarse voice again, I said, “Just lay back in the seat and enjoy the view—as long as there’s no one but us in the observation car.”

He docilely did just that, spreading his legs. The seat back did recline a bit when you put pressure on it. While still sipping my beer, I moved my hand down to the hem of his baggy, silky shorts and then inside them and up his inner thigh. My eyes took possession of his and didn’t waver. His look of need was latched onto my eyes as well.

“I’m going to give you a hand job now, Joel,” I said, staring into his eyes. He gave a low moan but he didn’t move away from me.

I finished my beer and set it down on a side table. His eyes went big as I worked my other hand up his thigh inside his shorts. I encased his cock with both of my hands inside his shorts and briefs, and, with a sigh, he collapsed back into the lounge chair. He moved the nearest thigh to mine over my legs and spread and raised the other leg, the pad of his foot going to the metal frame of the wall of windows. He was completely open to me, surrendered and vulnerable. I rolled his cock between my hands. He was hard, as I knew he would be, and going harder, which I knew he would. He had a nice cock too.

He was putty in my hands. I could do anything I wanted with him. He was cut, but there was still a bit foreskin to pull clear off his bulb, which I did and ran a finger under and around the base of the glans. He jerked a bit and moaned—and then again when I pressed the tip of a pinky finger into his piss slit, which immediately burbled up precum.

I went down on my knees on the carpet between his spread thighs, both of us concentrating on me working his cock inside his shorts with both hands. We simultaneously leaned our heads together momentarily, with our foreheads touching and our eyes locked together.

“You’re going to lay down for me, aren’t you?” I whispered.

“Yes. Whatever you want,” he answered.

When I moved to possess his lips, he opened his mouth fully and let me stick my tongue down his throat and grab and suck on his tongue. I slowly jacked him off, edging him. I could tell that he didn’t have it under control, that he’d fire off fast. So I controlled it for him, backing off when I felt he was tensing and ready to blow and resuming when he’d cooled down a bit. He lay there, quiet, moaning softly, in complete surrender. Such a young, beautiful body. Smooth, supple skin. And a very nice cock. Very nice indeed. I loosened the sheath I had formed around his cock with my hand, and he was moving against me, fucking himself. He was in to it. And he was giving me a low, sustained moan.

I released him from my control after he’d ejaculated to me working his cock with both hands and turned and sat back on my chair. He closed his legs up and looked at me like he was my puppy dog.

“I have a compartment to myself,” I murmured. “I want you to—”

But then we weren’t alone. Luckily, we both heard them approaching—two couples, chattering away with each other—and we were able to get separated, me barreling over to the other side of the car, before they entered the club car. In the bustle of their arrival, the boy—Joel—rose from his seat and disappeared at the other end of the car. I waited for several minutes before I left. I checked the area Joel and I had been in, where the sweet boy had lain back and let me jack him off. He had taken the money. I checked my wallet to make sure I had more—I didn’t think he’d do more for me without being paid more.

And then I followed the route he’d taken to exit the club car and went looking for him. I was hard and throbbing. I wanted more. I wanted it all. He was a sweet piece. He was worth the hunt. Conditions were ideal.

I found him in the lower level of the last coach compartment, with only a baggage car beyond it. There was a sign on the door into baggage carriage that it was closed to passengers. There wouldn’t be any foot traffic through here. They’d already turned off the overhead lighting for the night part of the run. The boy couldn’t have picked a better place to sit. He had an overhead light on, shining down on a couple of glossy magazines he’d been reading. I saw an exercise magazine on top, but under that was that a men’s skin magazine?

Yes, it was. The boy pulled the other magazine off it for an ever-so-short time, but that was time enough for me to see it—and for Joel to know I had seen it.

“Oh, I was just thinking about you,” the boy said. “I didn’t want you to think that I’d left the club car because I was upset or anything. It’s just because...”

“Because others had come into the car.”

“Yes.”

I leaned over the back of the empty aisle seat in the boy’s row, wondering if I could get him to rise up so our mouths could meet. It was sure Joel wanted to do that even though he was hesitating. There was willingness but there still was some hesitation there. There was no one else for several rows back from them in the carriage. The nearest row had an old man who already was trying to make a bed out of his two seats. He was covered with a blue train blanket. His eyes were closed and his breathing was both noisy and regular.