Mistleton and Other Men

Their bodies were still warm, and Mistleton’s was moist underneath Hunter’s red flannel shirt that he hastily put on and left unbuttoned after another turbulent encounter, this time in the hayloft. Hunter lay on his back on a plaid blanket with elbows bent and fingers enlaced to support the back of his head. Pressed up against him, lying on his right side with his left leg bent and resting on Hunter’s just below his groin, Mistleton gently drew small circles around Hunter’s hard right nipple, pausing now and then to tug lightly at the caramel brown hairs on his chest, glistening with a mixture of sweat and ejaculate, or to relish the sensation of Hunter’s beating heart against his forearm. The earthy, slightly sweet scent of the hay bales they just desecrated together filled the air, creating a comforting, intimate environment.

In the same calm, steady voice that had minutes earlier ordered every act and position of their fervid lovemaking, Hunter recounted the first few years of his life after their forced separation nearly a hundred years ago.

“It felt like a punch to the gut, Cerf. But I survived.”

He paused, letting the words settle, a quiet strength in his eyes that hadn’t faded, despite the years and whatever wounds they’d left.

Unlike Cerf, he didn’t come from money. Nor did he have a father with connections who could pry him free from the scandal of getting caught sodomizing another man in a speakeasy bathroom, though, admittedly, he had been in the better position to avoid reproach. Since he couldn’t afford a secret escape to Europe, Duchene began clearing a long path for himself that he knew one day would lead him back to Mistleton.

Duchene came from a family of lusty teamsters who drank, swore, and bred like rabbits but barely kept their families clothed and fed by hauling freshly cut white pine and hemlock timber from the Pennsylvania wilds to nearby sawmills. He broke the teamster tradition when he turned 21, securing work as a farmhand at Mistleton. The cultivation of the land aligned much better with his temperament and sensibilities than its over-exploitation and eventual destruction through deforestation. Access to the apothecary and the speakeasy enabled him to apply his knowledge of native herbs and plants. Access to Cerf, his boss’s son, and the outbuildings on the farm allowed him to feed his inherited, insatiable sexual appetite.

When he lost his job at Mistleton a year later, Duchene struggled on his own to make ends meet. The collapse of the stock market the following year only compounded his misery. Having few personal possessions, he roamed across the region, fixing machinery and performing odd jobs, surviving on a diet of wild mushrooms, berries, small game, and whatever else came his way through the kindness of strangers. He slept under the stars most of the time so that he could afford a room in a boarding house when the weather turned cold. He satisfied his other needs mostly with his left hand.

As only destiny would have it, Duchene secured a spot in S-53, one of the CCC camps in the state set up to provide work for unemployed men during the Depression. He eagerly accepted every task the camp offered. He planted trees, cleared paths through the woods for trails and roads, and built stone bridges and log cabins. He took advantage of free vocational and academic courses at the camp, ultimately focusing on carpentry, which he’d transform into a career once the worst of the country’s economic woes were over. Although he was required to re-enlist every six months, his outstanding performance during his initial months at S-53 made the process a mere formality rather than a competition for one of a limited number of beds.

After regaining the weight he had lost during his lean years, Duchene joined the wrestling team at S-53. Alongside the other “CCC boys,” as they were known, he not only put in hard work but also played hard, leading the team to victory in every match against other camps and clubs from nearby towns. Strong and agile, he earned a reputation throughout the camp network—and the admiration of his opponents—for his creative pinning techniques.

Hunter stopped there. Whereas ordinarily Mistleton would drift asleep in his arms during their afterglow conversations, both then and now, he could feel him twitching and growing against his upper thigh. He knew that all he had to do to arouse was to mention a wrestling move or physical contact with other men. Of course, he had other stories to share about his CCC life besides the work, professional betterment, and sport, many of them about life in the men’s barracks. By today’s standards, he thought to himself, surprised by his own audacity, some of the men he violated would have been considered minors.

Cued by the sudden quiet, Mistleton lifted his head and traced a few soft kisses along Hunter’s sculpted upper arm, wondering if the time was right to share a chapter from his own story. He knew they came from different worlds, each shaped by their own experiences during their period of separation, and that those differences were at the heart of their timeless attraction to each other. However, studying pastry and confectionery at Paris’s most prestigious culinary institution, participating in the city’s flourishing artistic and intellectual life, and drunkenly interrupting Hemingway while in the middle of writing one of his novels at the Café Select in Montparnasse somehow seemed trivial compared to Duchene surviving on his own in the Pennsylvania wilds during the Depression. Besides, he wanted to go another round.

He extended his bent leg over Hunter’s body, sliding himself across his warm chest and groin until he was directly on top of him. Supporting his chin on his closed fists, he looked Hunter straight in the eyes and whispered, “I’m ready for more.”

Although the styles and fabrics have changed over the past century, one thing that hasn’t changed, Mistleton noticed, was the alluring way Hunter Duchene put on a pair of pants. He was all but certain that Hunter could transform the act of removing them into an equally electrifying spectacle, but during the early stages of foreplay Mistleton was usually so juiced up for what was to come that he focused solely on getting them both out of their clothes as quickly as possible. Afterwards, in the post-orgasmic euphoria in which Hunter Duchene always left him, Cerf Mistleton marveled at the slow and deliberate way he’d skip the underwear and slowly but deliberately pull his trousers or jeans up his sinewy calves, past his knees, over his muscular thighs, and then up and around his firm, shapely ass. For Mistleton, it was a sensual coda to an exemplary and erotic immersive performance that he could watch time and time again.

And, though hard to explain, Hunter Duchene’s modified farmer’s tan drove him wild. He had the typical defined tan lines on his upper arms and at the neckline, but because he’d sometimes work shirtless on the farm, his entire upper body, front and back, from his waist to his neck had a warm amber tone that accentuated every muscle group when he flexed. Solid and sure, his golden torso was an object lesson in raw, physical power.

As for Mistleton himself, his cyclist’s tan, with its sharp lines cutting across his arms and legs, might have seemed a little funny on anyone else, but on him, it was oddly endearing, a badge of his devotion to the road.

With the show over and Hunter on his way back to the mundane world of farming, Mistleton got up and changed into his cycling kit, slathering a generous amount of chamois butter along his perineum, from his scrotum to his still smarting anus. Considering the miles in the saddle ahead of him—he was going to do a century—and after this morning’s double workout, he was going to need it.