He was a man who had missed out on a lot of fun in life is how Nate would have described himself. After college, he went straight to law school; after that, he went back to his dreary hometown to open a small law office and take care of his aging mother. He lived in Martha Falls, MD, a small, square hamlet about fifty miles outside of Baltimore and a million miles away from any hint of a gay lifestyle. He'd settled there into the banal, uninspired existence of caregiver and didn't bother to leave again until a week after his mother's funeral.
He was thirty-five years old by then but looked more like twenty-five. An only child who had been left with the responsibility of dealing with Alzheimer's. He could have put her in a nursing home. But he didn't.
Though many of his nights were spent rubbing the clenched fists of his mother's boney, translucent hands and softly explaining to her there was no need to rant about being lost and afraid, there had also been plenty of free time to work out with weights in the basement and run endless miles on the treadmill in his childhood bedroom. While saving his sanity with exercise, Nate developed strong, solid legs that led upward to a lean, tight waist. His hard chest muscles popped like upside down coffee cups after bench presses; when he squeezed his arms across his chest, a thin line of muscle cleavage made his dick grow long and hard. It wasn't unusual for him to masturbate in front of the faded workout mirror against the dusty cinderblock wall two or three times a week.
It's not that he was a virgin or that he'd never been with other men. Two or three times a year he'd make sure his mother was slightly over-medicated and sleeping soundly, and then he'd sneak off to a highway rest stop for a little safe action.
The married men on the down low liked to tug his soft blond hair when he kneeled on the pavement and blew them in public places. The way the eager, closeted, young guys in college were always in such a hurry to pull his pants down and bend him over the hood of a car made him smile when he was alone in bed at night.
He liked spreading his legs and submitting to them; the serious exhibitionist in him couldn't resist their hungry stares and heavy breathing. Many of them asked if he was a professional male stripper because he felt so comfortable being nude in public. In the summer months, he sometimes undressed, got out of his car and walked slowly into the woods, knowing all too well that the guys who had been sitting alone in parked cars couldn't resist following him. Then he'd bend over a picnic bench and let them take turns. All this was safe: Nate never went there without a handful of condoms.
But a week after his mother died, he booked a trip to the most tropical, exotic place he could find on the map: Cairns, in the heart of tropical North Queensland, which is Australia's primary gateway to the magnificent Great Barrier Reef Islands. There were tropical dreamlands there, with names like Lizard Island and Green Island.
He was so tired of jerking off in the mirror; he was bored with the frustrating routine at the rest stop (on a good night, two or three guys would nail him, but most of the time, he sat there alone in the darkness waiting for dick that never came).
Cairns looked like the kind of vibrant, eclectic city he needed to visit in order to stay sane. Oh, he'd been dreaming about a trip like this for some time. His heart raced at the thought of walking the reef island beaches at twilight in nothing but a skimpy Speedo while other men stared at his smooth legs and round ass. His cock pitched a tent when he imagined all those hot, hairy-legged Australian men in rowing shorts. The thought of traveling to such a far-off paradise not only stimulated his intellect, but also stirred his starved libido.
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