AJ & Noah

[muscleaddict]

On 4/28/2019 at 9:11 PM, WashburnDaddy said:

My pleasure as I meant what I wrote - that story made me happy and thoughtful. What more could I want? I've drafted a real response to this - it's quite a length and quite a read but I want to share it with you - author and, hopefully, other readers will understand - it is a big thing to put your own story 'online'!

I'd love to read any/all thoughts you have on it!

[muscleaddict]

If anyone would like to read a draft of the first chapter of my new story let me know/message me and I'll send you a link. Just be aware the full thing won't be ready for a little while!

[crushme99]

3 hours ago, muscleaddict said:

If anyone would like to read a draft of the first chapter of my new story let me know/message me and I'll send you a link. Just be aware the full thing won't be ready for a little while!

It would be my pleasure.

[WashburnDaddy]

20 hours ago, muscleaddict said:

If anyone would like to read a draft of the first chapter of my new story let me know/message me and I'll send you a link. Just be aware the full thing won't be ready for a little while!

Happy to if its of use.

[dredlifter]

YESSSSS please

 

[WashburnDaddy]

On 5/2/2019 at 7:21 PM, muscleaddict said:

I'd love to read any/all thoughts you have on it!

I don’t think your response let you down at all! It was my pleasure to comment in the first place as I meant what I said when I wrote how that story so resonated with me and my life experience, albeit that it worked out very differently. The oddest thing, the resonance, is that 40 years on for me something huge has happened in my life that has made me re-evaluate my experiences and given me, possibly, the opportunity to finally be the person I possibly should have embraced all those years ago.

 

It is also the case that I’m trying to give a response to the story you’ve written about Noah and AJ and the thoughts it sparked in my mind whilst I read it. Re-reading the story well, yes, I can imagine that a degree of your experience does come through and that could well be the thing that rings true and gives many parts of the story such honesty and relevance.

 

My apologies in advance for what follows. It’s sort of a chapter in my story – quite a big part it seems now I’ve written it. I feel at ease writing about it now – I’m a bit reticent about posting it online but here goes. I’m not sure if I should be even contemplating my ‘story’ in such a public arena as this but for what it is worth.

 

I suppose knew I was ‘gay’ when I was six or seven – well, I knew I liked boys even if the word ‘gay’ didn’t exist in such a way as it does now. Goodness, it was still illegal, not that it was of any consequence as such to me as such, but growing up in urban, industrial England in the 1970s, it was against a back drop of homosexuality being ‘wrong’ and ‘obscene’ – something to laugh at, something effeminate. Yes, at secondary school I did find myself part of a small group of lads who would turn out to be gay but again, their reaction to the world we lived in was to embrace the ‘queer’ and camp – and please don’t read that wrongly as there is nothing wrong with that at all. The only thing that puzzled me was that I wasn’t taken by that ‘aspect’ of gay life. My feelings and inclinations were much more masculine, much more drawn to masculinity and, quite simply, to big, strong lads. OK, I came close during school years to something resembling what I yearned for – the feel, the smell and the taste of a fit, muscular lad who was happy to let me tentatively explore his body. That was until, yes, literally my mother walked in on us.

 

So, for a thousand and one other reasons my early and mid-teens were a time of increasingly hiding from my own feelings and yearnings, unable to really explore my sexual orientation and sexual being. Those grim times of looking and wishing and hoping, not quite understanding what was driving me and what was stopping me from finding out about myself.  There was, for me, an inability to fully understand those feelings let alone act upon them as you just didn’t “talk about it” then. I could find no one to talk about it to.  There grew a feeling inside of me that I was odd or wrong. So, the incipient seeds of my coping with all these powerful emotions was sown; by driving them deeper down into my soul.

 

As the family moved around the UK until we landed in Scotland in the 1970s I just retreated into myself and found ways of being ‘different’ in any way other than being sexual. Frankly, I became a bit of a nerd, an expert of subjects that no one else could question me on and so I became ‘detached’ if that makes sense. That retreat included anything organised such as school sports and indeed, my retreat became a full scale rout around the body. My feelings for what I desired and what I saw in changing rooms or on the sports field, well, they rebounded on my own feelings about myself and the issue of body inadequacy started to worm its way into my psyche. Oddly, the one thing I did love and did do was cycling. Cycling; my escape and my joy. Me alone. Me against the road, the miles and the weather. Me in my own world. Other parts of my world, the world of what should have been growing sexual expression, remained muted but never totally repressed. How I plucked up courage to buy bodybuilding magazines in other parts of town or other towns I shall never know. They were for my non-existent ‘older brother’! But the pictures and the men, the bodies that seemed to me to epitomise a certain expression of masculinity that just seemed so right to me, that just fitted with what I knew I wanted to explore and of men I could only dream and fantasise about. And to me, in my mind, they became not only unobtainable but, in my tortured logic, drove me further away from an honest and healthy self expression of myself and my desires.

 

And then – my Noah moment.

 

I was 18 and I was really involved in one social activity around the transport world and when, one day, a group of friends of friends arrived and there he was. Yes, the quietest of the group of garrulous, cocky Scots lads but – my heart stopped when I saw him. And I couldn’t stop looking that day. I squirmed as I glanced his way, trying to make out I wasn’t looking. Whereas I was lanky and slender, although in the bulky coat I always wore to hide myself, he was broad and so obviously muscled. Everywhere I looked at him he was muscle. I looked everywhere. By the end of the day I was exhausted just from looking! I felt as if my breath had been stolen and my night time was taken up with thoughts of him and his body. All those pictures of all those wonderful muscular men in the bodybuilding magazines had appeared for real in front of me, living and breathing and this one even had a home near me! The gang went out for drinks and I did somehow talk to him. Emboldened, I asked what he did and he answered and seemed pleased to talk about his hobby and lifestyle. He did bodybuilding. Ah Noah! – knowing all the lingo and pretending it was all new! How I acted dumb about names and terms! He came from a family of bodybuilders and strongmen and so it was the obvious thing he had a home gym. He twigged that I cycled through his suburb frequently and so – yes, I should call in if I wanted. One day I did, gingerly, knock on the door. His mum answered and was so kind, his dad came and admired the bike and yes, “come on in – he’s in the gym”.

 

Stunned, I sat and watched and I swear I thought I was in heaven. There on display, just in his shorts, working out was the most astonishing body I had ever seen, ever been so close to. He was, I think, pleased to have some one around to chat with and, I suspect, to admire what was going on with his body. I know lots of people have a lot to say about bodybuilding and bodybuilders but one thing I do know is the work and dedication. In an odd way I shared that time with him. He was oddly shy which is why he worked out at home not in a gym. There was me, ill at ease with my slender, cyclist’s body and strangely there, pumping iron, was the epitome of my dreams and of my understanding of masculinity, equally uncertain about his body. But there it was, that stunning, perfect body. The body he lived in and moved about in. Bit by bit, visit by visit, I started to sit closer as he worked out. He came closer. Started to help spot him. Held his towel so he could wipe himself down and then so I could wipe him down when he asked me to. Started to rub his muscles when he’d done a set – and how he started to sit in front of me and slowly he’d push back so he was up against me, pinning me as I massaged round his torso. The feel of his skin and the pumped muscles underneath, the sweat that made us cling together as I was in my cycling gear and the fact that nothing, but nothing, shows a hard on up like Lycra. So I leaked pre-cum. I limped to their bathroom to attempt to push the quivering monster between my legs back down and so many evenings I cycled the five miles home breathless not because of the hills but because of the tension and frustration I felt. And yes, the evening I did cum in the saddle as I pedalled.

 

Grinning he posed for me as he asked me what I thought and how he looked. What can you say apart from “yes, you look stunning, obscene, ripped” and what you really want to say is “now come over here and pick me up in those arms, hold me against those pecs and just cuddle me. You are the most adorable, handsome man and I just want to explore my sexual feelings with you. Yeah, I want to idolise you and show you how much I admire your muscles”. But you can’t and you don’t ‘cos you just don’t know what would happen. He was seemingly so comfortable with my reaction to his body but it was as if we were both in a dance in which we never quite came to the same place.

 

Then came the bombshell. The day I went in and they excitedly told me that they’d decided to emigrate to join family abroad. I smiled and I told them how thrilled I was for them and how it was just the best news. I went home feeling as if my guts had been pulled out. The weeks passed and I was in a world of misery counting down days and visits, wondering if I dared go the ‘whole hog’ and say what I really felt. But I didn’t and the night of his leaving party I stood on the corner of the street when we left the pub and I did hug him and wish him all the best. I told him “you’ll be fine” and that he’d just get bigger in the States and that I’d see him in a magazine and …. I slowly walked away. To me, that night, the problem seemed to me to be simple. Not that I’d never found the words to say but I’d allowed my heart to grow and hope for a moment. I told myself that this was the mistake. That I was somehow the mistake, that my feelings and desires were the mistake. The next day I went cycling and on the way back, after 50 miles, this time there was no ‘pit stop’ at his home gym. Just pedal home.

 

What happened next probably didn’t help. “You must come and see me!” So I did! My first big solo trip abroad and to such an amazingly different country! A country where working out seemed the norm and America seemed full of big lads to fill a big country! I took my bike and cycled out for days, almost falling off as I passed playing grounds full of the most unimaginably handsome lads. It was endless torment! At the house my mate worked out and then we’d go out – me, more than a bit in the glow of this huge, muscled pal who was looking after me and who got so many admiring glances. The night we actually went into NYC and went to gay clubs. The nights riding along in the truck, music blaring, and his leg against mine, his shoulder against mine, the feel of that pumped, perfect muscle through the thin, hot cotton. Just wanting to be able to lean in with more feeling, further and with more effect. I wanted to properly cuddle him and then feel him, run my hands over those pumped, flexed biceps and to find his mouth with mine. To take one hand off his muscles and honestly, openly, place it on my cock.

 

I just longed to be able to be honest and up front about my feelings but, although by now he knew I was gay, he just always sort of held back. He wasn’t offended and perhaps he was just open minded, cool with what was going on. But more and more I couldn’t work him out – it seemed like I was getting so many mixed up and confused messages. I didn’t want to lose something special, what friendship we had. So, I just enjoyed that holiday and the others I went on but just feeling more and more achingly unable to be who I wanted to be with him. I puzzled, trying and failing to work out what was going on, what were the dynamics. Of course, I can’t speak for him but I suppose given I got no words from him and just such mixed messages, I was almost bound to fail. Not ‘it’ was bound to fail – no, it was “I” was bound to fail.

 

Slowly, I now know, what I was doing was internalising my feelings. Taking more and more responsibility for the ‘failure’ of the friendship and social relationship and ‘accepting’ that it was me, and my feelings and desires, that were at fault.  By now, looking at the pictures and watching these gorgeous muscle men flex and enjoy their bodies well, that became a guilty secret. I was extrapolating my ‘reality’ and my apparent ‘failure’ with him as being illustrative of me being wrong. I started to turn down invitations to go and see him as it became a torment. The nights when I knew he was just through the bedroom door and when I slept fearfully because I had to control the urge just to quietly go through and get into bed with him. Just to nuzzle that neck, to feel those mighty, powerful muscles to show him someone valued him and his dedication and sacrifice. Someone who just wanted to sexually revel in all that monstrous muscular wonderfulness. Something I just wanted to try and experience. Someone who was so physically close and yet was so unobtainable.

 

I’d thought that night we’d said goodbye outside the pub in Scotland was the worst but it wasn’t. No, being best man at his wedding was the worst! He caused havoc in that lovely woman’s life, and his child’s. It was never right for him and the substance abuse caught up with him. The prison sentence certainly did for the relationship and his livelihood. The letters stopped, the phone calls ceased and that was that.

 

Looking back well, perhaps he possibly was never able to accept his real feelings and sexual orientation and that’s so sad if it was the case. Not for my sake, beautiful as that could have been, but for himself. But I don’t know and it would be presumptuous of me to claim I know. But that isn’t really for me to judge. It is me and my thoughts I need to try to acknowledge and accept.

 

Life does move on and the 30 or so years since then, well, I’ve seen a lot and done a lot. I’ve cared for and buried one partner. I’ve escaped a second. I’ve been given a lot of time and space to think, perhaps to internalise too much, but to re-evaluate myself, the feelings and events that have brought me to this point in my life. But I need to bring this ‘comment’ back to answer the author’s thoughts and my initial posting on the story of AJ and Noah. And as you may be thinking by now, that may not have appeared to be easy or simple but I will try!

 

The story that muscleaddict has written so well; on one level you could scoff and say it is just fantasy and we should all live in the real world. We should not create the great sin of hiding in such stuff that doesn’t match what goes on in the real world. OK that is your choice. But, as in all good and compelling fiction, you can just enjoy it for what it is. To me it read as a heartfelt, well written love story that gave a roller coaster of a ride! At the end of the day, it was sweet and fun and erotic and hey, we all need some of that!

 

For me the story obviously gave rise to other reactions. The resonance is for me amazing. My ‘story’ and my mate’s, well it didn’t end quite as AJ and Noah’s but that’s fiction for you. For me, the biggest lesson, if you want to call it that, is what reading the story triggered in my thoughts about myself and my reaction to things that had happened to me.

 

It is how I spent so many years, even as a gay man, running from my own truth. I, perhaps, understandably, took that ‘failure’ as I saw it and allowed it to colour my life and my subsequent relationships to the point where I had never fully accepted who I am, what I feel and what I could be. I’m not saying I would have ever met my AJ but I effectively made sure I never would allow myself to meet any AJ. I’ve spent decades fighting my body dysmorphia, an issue that my misreading of my feelings helped fuel and that has had profound consequences on my life and living. I’ve spent a long time hiding and denied my likes and desires – physical and sexual – and really, no one should have to do that. That has fundamentally affected my relationships to their detriment I think, and certainly at times, to mine. To those reading the story of AJ and Noah, yes, read it as it should be read with the fun, the lovely, sexy, romantic and at times painful story the author has conjured up so well. But don’t forget, as I did, that you must be honest with your own story as you are the author of that, really you are. That is what the story of AJ and Noah triggered in me.

 

So Mr Muscleaddict, erm, that is probably a brain dump of an answer to your misapprehensions about responding to me and I worry that my response back may be equally overwhelming. In fact, I’m afraid I’ve stolen your thread!

 

It is just what that story has made me reflect on and at a time where OK, I’m never going to be 20 again, but here I am back cycling and actually in a gym, getting some upper body strength so I can hold on to the bike off road! It has helped crystallise thoughts about many of my feelings and experiences. And now, I’m starting to feel ‘right’ about my sexual self, and enjoy being honest about what I like, what I like looking at, what that’s about and just being happier in life. Hell, I’ll probably never know another bodybuilder and the chances are I may never speak to another one. I suspect there won’t quite be an AJ in my life now but I’m getting healthier, physically and psychologically. I’m just being more honest with myself and my feelings as I have the great good fortune not to have left it too late and your story has helped, in lots of ways, to make me realise that. I like big men and I like looking at them and enjoying the fact they enjoy doing what they choose to do. And it’s great when a story does that!

[muscleaddict]

@WashburnDaddy - I have sent you a private message! 

[muscleaddict]

Thought some of you guys might like to see this amazing AJ & Noah fan art! Drawn by a guy called Alexendre86 (he has a Twitter here and an Instagram here). Never heard of him or spoken to him before so it came completely out of the blue! 

[Shawn1978]

That's beautiful.  I love it!

[brawnygods]

Adding a little AJ & Noah fan art.  Loved this story.

Click here to see it on my tumblr.