Men I Might Have Known
Brad Saunders
KENSINGTON BOOKS
Contents
Prologue
Summer Camp
The Jungle Gym
Americans in Paris
The Beach Bus Ride
Tristan in the Rain
The Austrian Doorman
Mixed Drinks in Prague
Ingmar the Swede
William Waiting for Me
Scottish Shenanigans
Rooftops of New York
Max in Montreal
Crosswalk Connection
The Consecutive Threesome
Gourmet Sampling
Prologue
We all have those moments. The ones where we lock eyes with another person and think to ourselves: what if? This book turns “what if” into “what happened.” These stories are moments taken from my life. Moments when I have seen another man and have wanted to say something, to do something, to make something happen…but which inevitably amounted to nothing. Craigslist has a whole section called “Missed Connections,” where people who experience moments like this can have a second chance to find the person they connected with, however briefly. My own way of making up for my missed connections is to complete the fantasy by writing down the way I imagined these situations playing out.
The stories I have written here are personal and very real—after all, the best fantasies are both. That is what makes fantasy so powerful, especially sexual fantasy: the idea that something that has happened only in your mind can still leave you breathless. The way you imagine the smallest details and nuances of each possible scenario when you play it over and over in your head countless times can take on even more significance than the reality that exists. The fantasy becomes realistic enough that you are left asking: did that really happen, or was it just a dream?
Just a caveat now. Though these are all fantasies, they are based on real people, places and events in my life. They are my real-life fantasies, down on the page for everyone to see. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have over the years.
Summer Camp
Martin and I had been feeling each other out all summer. We were working together as counselors at a summer camp in the lake-studded woods of Minnesota. I was a slender, olive-skinned seventeen-year-old from the coast of California, with a nut-brown complexion from the summer sun and a boundless supply of wide-eyed energy. Martin was the picture-perfect Iowa farm boy fresh from the fields. He was nineteen years old, friendly, tall, well muscled, with a healthy glow in his cheeks and soft brown eyes. I adored him the minute I saw him.
Our days were full of corralling rowdy kids from activity to activity, tending to their cuts and bug bites, building campfires and leading sing-alongs. Every few days, we would manage to slip away for an hour to take long, humid, solitary runs down leafy forest trails before cooling off in the crisp waters of the clear sky-blue lake nearby, often stripping down to just our underwear when no one else was around—sometimes splashing and wrestling in the muddy shallows near the shore.
The summer had been full of little moments like that. Moments when our eyes met from across the crowded, noisy dining hall, when we quickly smiled and looked away. Moments when we hung back at the campfire to talk while we put out the dying embers, letting the other counselors get the campers to bed, just so we could walk back to our cabins together in the moonlight. Moments before we knew for sure that the other liked boys instead of girls, before we each knew ourselves we liked boys instead of girls.
Then there was the moment that started one night with my announcement, “I’m going to go look at the stars.”
“Mind if I come along?” he asked.
I smiled to myself, knowing I did not mind at all. Without giving any hint of my quickened pulse, I replied, “Not at all.”
We said good night to the other counselors in the dining hall, gathered our backpacks and strolled out from the main hall into the warm, still night. Mosquitoes buzzed around us, but neither of us paid much attention. We were caught up in delicious silence of walking side by side.
We hiked down the dark, wandering path to our separate cabins and deposited our things in our bunks, taking care not to wake the sleeping campers at that late hour.
We met again down in the counselors’ lounge—secretly grinning to ourselves that the other had actually shown, and that this was actually happening—and took the large plaid blanket that we would lay out on the grass.
We chose to stargaze in a dark corner of a nearby field, settling down and stretching out next to each other on our backs. Our arms brushed against each other’s lightly, but neither of us moved.
For a moment, it seemed as if we were indeed just going to look at the stars. And we did. For a while. Testing each other’s knowledge of astronomy and renaming the constellations. Poking and grabbing one another’s arms as we each found star patterns we thought we recognized.
Then the mosquitoes started biting, and I tried to cover my face with a corner of the blanket. This was an insufficient defense, so I took an entire edge of the blanket and rolled it over my body lengthwise. Martin asked what I was doing. I told him I was making “a human crepe” of myself.
Martin, laughing, “Human crepe?”
“Yeah. You lie next to another person on a blanket, and then roll the side of the blanket over yourself, then keep rolling over the person next to you, pulling along the blanket, until you’re both covered evenly.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I’m trying to make one now to protect us from the mosquitoes.”
Martin playfully grabbed the corner of the blanket and rolled toward me, asking, “Like this?”
“Uh-huh.”
Those were the last words we spoke for quite a while. Martin rolled toward me and I rolled up even further in the blanket toward him. A sense of fearful delight enveloped us along with the blanket.
As the night progressed—for it took rather a long time—we became more and more entwined in one another, steadily pulling closer and closer, little trickles of sweat forming on our foreheads and lips since it was so warm. But that didn’t matter.
Our breathing became louder as our faces approached one another. Our legs wrapped tighter around each other’s bodies. Our hearts began to beat faster as more and more physical contact was inevitably made.
What to do? Go on in this gradual embrace that was sweeter than all the romantic intimacies either of us had known before, or retreat from the threat of the unexplored?
Before we could really make that choice, our lips met, to our mutual astonishment. And once they met, there was no retreat. We became bolder. Our hands were no longer hesitant explorers upon vast new continents but sovereigns duly claiming tribute from conquered territories.
Hand caressed hand. Lip caressed lip. Tongue caressed tongue. And all were temporarily fused by the tremendous, pent-up, and finally admitted heat of the passion that had brought us together—like the physical forging of a human chain of misdirected energy finally channeled into its full power.
It was the most wonderful thing