Nights & Sharks

By Benjamin Ashton and Daniel Sharpe

Dan and Nathan were never supposed to meet. They live on different continents, with different pasts and different secrets. But Nathan visits his childhood friend Jonah, who has moved to Australia, and Jonah needs to tell him something about Dan.

Two writers tell one story of hunger and intimacy, of violence and shame, of sex and release. Two voices to track the movements and hidings of Dan and Nathan, as they navigate through longing and lust, lies and deceptions, and the streets and river of Brisbane.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benjamin Ashton
• Release date: Dec 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370703197

Benjamin Ashton

Benjamin Ashton was born in Philadelphia, PA. He lived on both coasts before settling in Washington, DC.

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Nights & Sharks

Benjamin Ashton and Daniel Sharpe

Nights & Sharks

By Benjamin Ashton and Daniel Sharpe

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright 2017 Benjamin Ashton and Daniel Sharpe

Cover picture by Luis SH, with the permission of the photographer. Discover his work at http://luisshphotos.tumblr.com/

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Foreword

Part 1

Nathan

Dan

Part 2

Nathan

Dan

Part 3

Nathan

Dan

Part 4

Nathan

Dan

Part 5

Nathan

Dan

Part 6

Nathan

Dan

Part 7

Nathan

Dan

Part 8

Nathan

Dan

Part 9

Nathan

Dan

About the authors

Foreword

This novel originated from a simple wish of the two authors to try and write a piece together. The idea was to alternate chapters and points of view on a developing story. We didn’t know where this would lead us, let alone how it would unfold and end. Each chapter would have to build on the previous one and we’d do our best to open up possibilities, make room for surprises, expand and deepen the hints and glimpses that the narrative would seed.

The project grew quickly and very much organically. We kept our exchanges to the minimum, correcting only minor continuity errors. We made a point not to adjust misunderstandings, since one of the themes of the story is what we think we know and think we understand about other people. Only on two occasions did we engage in actual collaborative writing, when we thought some paragraphs needed to be fleshed out to carry out their full meaning or impact.

Part 1 // Nathan

His name is Dan.

There was earnestness and a somewhat cryptic weight in Jonah’s voice, as if giving out the name of the young man was a graver, more solemn admission of his predicament. Or as if in the name itself lay the reasons of Jonah’s confusion, the justification explaining why a man recently married to a trophy wife would now be sneaking off to screw the brains out of an almost-stranger. Or, more likely, an uncomfortable admission that his name was virtually all that Jonah knew about Dan.

It was my second evening in Brisbane, Australia, where Jonah had moved eight months earlier. It was a warm early March night and Jonah's eager, even if tentative, confession was unsettling.

Jonah and I had been friends since our teenage years in Western Massachusetts. We were in high school together, vying for the top spot in the soccer team while forging an unlikely and ultimately lasting connection. I had known him for more than twenty years now, an eerie and disturbing figure for two men not yet adjusted to turning forty soon.

I have come to realize over the years how fragile that connection was; indeed, it often felt as if our intimacy was always an ideal we wished into existence, making conscious and unconscious efforts to build it, feed it, sustain it, restore it for the sake of its uniqueness and of its permanently unrealized potential. We wallowed in the concept of our best friendship, we basked in the intense familiarity of each other’s presence and approval. We thickened the substance and weight of our bond through both our differences and our similarities, each the apparent testimony of the uniqueness of our connection. I came from a working-class background, which seemed exotic and dangerous to Jonah, who first talked to me when he’d heard of my getting into trouble for shoplifting and getting involved in a brawl – two incidents I was rather embarrassed about, but which seemed to make my aura glow brighter in his eyes. He came from a conservative and affluent family, and my forays into his home and domestic dynamics were simultaneously alluring and off-putting, a combination which would last throughout Jonah’s own evolution into a successful, slightly obnoxious, high finance professional of New York’s Upper East Side. Jonah was never academically oriented and saw education at any level as the expedient and expected path to making money. Once I got my life back on track, I saw in books and bright minds the path to emulation, self-realization, and independence.

But we also extolled everything we seemed to have in common, even though the exercise often left me a little more perplexed than him: soccer and foreign beers, a similar build (tall and lean, though I always had an inch less than his 6ft 2, and age and the gym have given him more muscle in his arms and chest), a non-judgmental view of people’s lives and proclivities, and a vigorous sexual appetite.

I had often wondered, though not long enough for the thought to be conclusive, whether the odd and recurrent sexual tension between us was the source or the consequence of our close friendship. Looking back, it certainly had been both the fuel to push our intimacy deeper and the source of halting and obstructing aggravation, awkwardness and frustration.

I frequently stayed over at his place during our high school years, his mother having taken a shine to me after an initial and quite overt wariness. Very quickly, masturbation became a regular part our hanging out. It’s difficult to pinpoint who actually originated the habit: Jonah had told me he had stumbled upon his younger brother jacking off in his room and he had taken the time to convince him how healthy and common the activity was, but I had pushed the point further, mocking how stuck-up and lame people’s hang-ups and secrecy about it all were and we had both concluded that, indeed, there’d be nothing weird about jacking off together. And we did. All the time. Here too, Jonah enthused about our similar 8 inches but found equally awesome the fact that I was uncut, a playful and fascinating alternative to his circumcised dick. We did touch and play with each other’s cocks, but that was a rather rare occurrence; mostly, it was enough for Jonah to relieve himself, to expunge his overwhelming teenage horniness in the company of another male. His stare at my cock, at my jerking movements, his insistence that we try to come at the same time all seemed to be part of an exaltation of his own masculinity, as if my hormones, my erection, my ejaculation boosted his own, vindicated and heightened his sense of becoming a man. It was a natural complement, an extension of our increasingly frequent conversations about girls, about the hand-jobs and blow-jobs we were getting, about the actual fucking a woman which finally happened, for me first, for him shortly after. It wasn’t about bragging, not really, it seemed to be about overindulging in the intoxication of our virility.

I was a little less comfortable than he was. Not while we were jacking off, not in the moments before (a wink during a hike signifying the wish to unzip and whip out, the shuffle in the sheets at night, the opening of the secret porn stash) nor in the moments after (the sighs, the giggles, the wiping, the licking). But I was aware of my growing attraction to guys, I was aware of an ambivalence towards Jonah which could jeopardize our connection. I wanted him to suck my cock, I wanted to suck his. I wanted to fuck him. I never suggested it, let alone attempted to initiate it because I was never sure that what I really wanted was actually to get sucked by a guy, to suck a cock, to fuck an ass, rather than Jonah being the actual object of my infatuation. So, one afternoon, a couple of weeks before graduation, when he suggested a good jack-off in his car while he was driving us back from soccer practice, I told him, most likely out of self-restraint, that we might be a little too old for that shit, now. He tensed and frowned, obviously chastened, and just mumbled Yeah, you’re right.

I got a scholarship to go to NYU and he went to Cornell. We obviously saw less of each other, but he would come to the city frequently, to escape the isolation of rural New York, sometimes staying in my dorm room the first year and in my tiny apartment afterwards. We talked about sex often, I remember, with me increasingly excluding details from my then effectively bisexual activities. Oddly, and this is something I can neither explain nor accurately recall, he sucked me off one night. We were both wasted, on beer and weed, and everything is blurry about that night, even about when exactly within these four college years it happened, but I have one vivid memory: looking down on his bobbing handsome face, thinking about how I had fucked the previous night a guy I had followed on the subway, and marveling at Jonah eagerly sucking on a cock which had recently been buried deep into the ass of a young hunk wearing a Dartmouth Lacrosse sweat-shirt.

I relocated to Boston when I graduated and he moved to New York. We then saw each other about once every three months, but regularly talked on the phone. He started dating Hannah, a bright, serious and charming young doctor. Hannah and I got along extremely well, often to the point of ganging up against him, something which Jonah affected to take offense to, but which obviously made him feel important and loved.

But we maintained a yearly tradition which had started after his 16th birthday, when he had invited me to spend a weekend alone at his parents’ house in the Catskills. A tradition which neither of us ever broke and which decisively contributed to our staying in touch. Over the years, these two or three days together replicated a fairly similar pattern: we would drink beers, smoke weed, walk long hikes, play video games, talk about sex, read books and magazines, shoot with Jonah’s BB gun in the woods, take long and scorching baths, and discuss our lives and our futures with touching candor and elation. It was during one of those weekends that I came out to him, the spring of our graduations. He affected to be unfazed and grinned that he was proud to have a gay friend. It was also during those weekends, after college, that we started to jerk off together again, often outdoors but not always: Jonah had made it a rule that we share his large double bed and it became routine during our first night up there for his hand to rummage through the sheets and the slit of my boxers shorts, to notice my erection or to generate it.

Jonah was curious about my sex life, about gay sex too I might recall, but he never badgered me or dwelled on it at excessive lengths. He spent more time and seemed to enjoy more his retelling of his own sexual prowess with Hannah (which did make me a little uncomfortable sometimes), then after they got married and divorced three years later, with the various women he would fuck. My own attitude varied from one year to the other; if I was in a relationship or had been through active sexual activity, I would be laid back and quietly welcoming of his sexual anecdotes, limiting our own interactions to the one jack-off session of the first night. Sometimes, however, when he’d pick me up at the train station to make the last leg driving together in his car, I would already be so horny that his cock, his legs, his chest, his arms, his ass were overwhelming distractions and I would spend the weekend subtly but effectively pushing Jonah towards a similar horn-dog vivacity.

We were threading in complex territory, I knew. Jonah had grown into a full, strikingly handsome man, confident and vibrant. His short dark hair and his square jaw, his large wrists and big feet, his hoarse voice and dark blue eyes. The way he had once said Fuck, man, you’re so hot, watching me cum from a few feet away as I leaned against a tree in the woods, watching my cum splatter his New Balance while he aimed and splattered my Stan Smiths. His body, his cock, his semen were so available, so seemingly there for the taking, the sharing, the possessing, yet inaccessible too: the distance created by our sexualities, by our amorphous connection, by our friendship itself could never be breached, even it falsely appeared to whither, to vanish in these intense yet brief moments of breathless, lustful abandonment. At the end of one of those unusually sexual weekends, he told me with an almost childish glee: You’re the only person with who I can talk about shit like this, the only person with who I can do shit like this. And what had obviously been either a compliment or a positive reflection on his state of contentment hit me hard and uncomfortably, bringing forth the unescapable fact of how little we actually had in common and the disturbing thought that the only reason why we did still spend time together was precisely because I was someone with whom he could do shit like this. I knew it would be unfair to think that I was little less than a fleshlight to him (the hugs and the information he shared dispelled that notion), but it was that ambivalence which always precluded me from pushing him further, from testing his willingness to suck my cock again and to let me fuck him.

The sexual tension did abate. A few years ago, our weekend together had not started with us jerking off on the first night. I didn’t make much of it, Jonah had probed my crotch, but his efforts to make me hard had not been immediately effective and he had given up, falling asleep almost immediately afterwards. The last night, as we finished watching a movie, he casually asked if I wanted to rub one off before heading to bed.

Do you remember, I asked, we were seventeen, I think, it must have been our second weekend here, and we sneaked into your neighbor’s property, up the road? The house with the pool?

Yes, he chuckled, we jerked off by that pool. And jizzed all over the water.

Let’s do that again.

We walked up there, noticed that the house seemed empty, climbed over the fence, and headed for the back garden, where the pool was only lit by the moonglow. Jonah quickly unzipped his jeans and pulled them and his underwear slightly down, his already hard cock springing forth. I did the same and we started jacking our dicks, Jonah spitting on his to lube it. We were panting, staring at each other, Jonah giggling, me smiling. His pants suddenly dropped down to his ankles, his belt clanking against the tiled floor. He laughed, then gasped a little. I’m getting so close, man, he said, his eyes widening, his smile tensing. Fucking come with me, Nate, he breathed, his frantic jerking movements halting his speech. He was facing me, displaying his fantastic body, a body now contorting almost comically; the sight of his tight stomach, strong thighs and calves, rock solid long cock, and his large hand tugging it furiously was intoxicating. He turned suddenly towards the pool and started squirting volleys of cum which splashed into the water; I came too, aiming my own ejaculation where his cum had flown, hoping to mix our cums as they’d merge and drift down towards the bottom of the pool.

Jonah dropped to his knees, breathing heavily and giggling. He leaned towards the water, trying to watch in the dark pool the descent of our ejaculations.

I felt overwhelmed by a sense of completion, of an ending, of a closure. I was watching Jonah pant and slowly stand back up, I watched his subsiding erection, the hefty, reddened, moistened heft of his dick shrinking with every throb. I saw Jonah at seventeen, in front of that very pool, a similar post-climactic glee in his eyes. We had come full circle, maybe, or we had done and experimented all there was to do and experiment for Jonah and Nathan, for two grown men with a strange bond, an intimacy which would have to get its fuel and feed from elsewhere.

We never jacked off together ever since, nor did we mention it awkwardly or coyly. We talked on the phone, we visited each other when possible and we spent our yearly weekend in the Catskills, sleeping in the same bed but oblivious to horniness or morning woods. Maybe we drifted apart, maybe these weekends were actually the only moments in the year when we found in each other’s company the bond and connection we once thought we had. But it was never awkward, or almost never, and when it was, or seemed to be, we would sternly ignore it.

Two years ago, Jonah told me he got engaged to Chloe, a flashily gorgeous 25-year old woman, a model now busy launching her own clothing line. Chloe never warmed up to me, neither I to her. She didn’t see me a threat, I think she didn’t see the point of me and probably knew a left-wing gay man, writing about architecture, literature and politics for a glossy subscription-based website would not think much of her. Jonah seemed enthralled by her and vainly proud to have bagged the archetypical accessory to the handsome man in his late thirties that he was. It was strange, then, what had possibly happened during his wedding. Chloe’s brother was in an indie-rock band which had played right after dinner. An hour later, I found myself outside, in a back alley, getting a blow job from the bass player of the band. I was drunk and a little dazed, and stood against the wall, my eyes closed, until I was cumming and watched the tattoo on the guy’s neck tensing as he swallowed my jizz. He wiped his mouth and said with a mischievous smile Dude, is it weird that the groom was watching us the whole time from over there? I looked up in the alley but Jonah, if he had indeed been there, was gone.

A year ago, Jonah announced they were moving to Brisbane. He had been offered the chance to run the local branch of the bank in which he had been making his way up. Chloe was glad to follow, claiming she could run her business from anywhere in the world. Two months ago, Jonah surprised me with his insistence that I should visit and stay with them for a while.

You can work from here. We have an independent little studio in our home. It’ll be yours, you can come and go as you please. Chloe was even willing to use her new connections to arrange a couple of lectures I could deliver at Griffith. Stay a month or so, Jonah added, you’ll love it here. He moved his computer for his webcam to point at Chloe who went on to say, pouty lips and flirtatious tone in her voice, Yes, you will love it here. We live in a terrific neighborhood. Full of hipsters like you, you’ll fit right in.

I’m not sure what convinced me to agree, but I booked a ticket and planned to stay indeed for a month, for the whole month of March, which Jonah had promised to be splendid – though I didn’t know whether he was referring to the weather or to the time we’d spend together.

The house was lovely, a sort of large clapboard house, fully renovated inside. Their living room was little ostentatious, but my little studio at the back of house was cozy and filled with sunlight. I could access it by its own outdoor staircase and could, as promised, come and go as I pleased. The house, like most others in the neighborhood, was large but boxed in its lot by tall picket fences; there wasn’t any garden to speak of, but a small pool in the back courtyard, which my studio overlooked. Jonah and Chloe lived in New Farm, a trendy, vibrant and somewhat quaint neighborhood, central and beautiful. You could easily walk to the river, to an area called Fortitude (That’s where we’ll get drunk, Jonah had quipped), to cafés and restaurants. I spent my first day walking about, taking in my new surroundings. I looked for and found the Powerhouse, a pre-war industrial power station converted into an art center. I loved the place immediately and spent an hour wandering through an exhibition of abstract photographs. A man in his early thirties was giving a tour to a group of Americans; he was, like so many of the men I had seen since I’d arrived, blond and tanned and buffed, wearing shorts and flip-flops. The beach culture had never been part of my environment and I wondered how Jonah acclimated himself to it. The blond guy kept checking me out, however, and I enjoyed distracting him with a stare and making him lose track of the speech he was delivering.

My first evening was pleasant, even if Chloe made little efforts to contribute to the conversation. I did gather she would actually be away much the coming month, jetting back and forth to Sydney (That’s where things really happen, you know, she said with the weary expertise of a long-time resident). I wondered if her insistence to have me visit in March was due to her wish for me to keep company to (or an eye on) her husband. I then pondered whether Jonah’s own eagerness was also rooted in the possibilities offered by a month together, often alone.

You missed my birthday last week, he said.

Yeah, I know. Sorry.

No worries. But I thought maybe we could transplant our little tradition here. Maybe I can find a little house out there in the country and we could hang out for a weekend.

Sounds good.

I started to jerk off later that night, in my new bed, hoping to squirt out the weirdness of the jet lag. I then heard some noises coming from the other side of the wall, mapping it mentally to be Jonah and Chloe’s bedroom. I wasn’t sure whether Jonah’s groans and Chloe’s porn-ish moans would prove to be a turn on, so I finished myself off quickly and forced myself into sleep.

The following evening, Jonah and I went for a run. For an hour, he pressed on strenuously, through the leafy streets and the river banks. We were both exhausted and sweaty when we stopped.

I don’t want to go home just yet. Why don’t we get a cold beer somewhere? I know a cool place, right on the river.

The place wasn’t crowded and the setting sun shined an amazing light on the river – and on the healthy looking skin of the young Australians around us.

We cheered silently our two chilled bottles of beer and looked ahead. Jonah slowly turned to me.

I… I need to tell you something.

Okay.

Well, first of all, I’m so fucking happy you’re here. I really am.

Me too, Jonah. Thanks for making it happen.

Sure, he said, distracted. "I guess one of the reasons I’m happy you’re here is that I really need a friend right now. I really need you, actually, he chuckled. I need to tell you something."

Shoot.

I’ve fucked… a guy.

Wow, I couldn’t help but shudder.

I know.

He stayed silent, sipping on his beer, looking at the water.

I need a cigarette for this, I said, looking around for a smoker. I got up and was kindly offered one by a guy who was, predictably, blond, tanned and buffed.

So, I sighed when I sat back next to Jonah. Tell me.

There isn’t much to tell really, Jonah said, a little reluctant, as if my short absence had dampened his need to share. "It was fucking, you know, like intense, mind-blowing fucking, he finally said, looking at me intently. It was… awesome. And weird. And intense, Nate, shocking and intense."

How did you meet the dude? How did it happen?

Jonah just shrugged and ignored the questions. I don’t understand. I mean, I’ve been having sex for a long time. You know. I’ve fucked, like, a whole lot of women. But this thing, Nate, this thing. I never experienced that.

Does Chloe know? Or suspect anything?

Fuck, no.

And things are good between you two?

Yeah. I mean, we still fuck as much as before, if that’s you’re wondering.

I know, I heard, I smiled, trying to lighten the mood.

Oh, shit, really?

Yes. Well, you know. Faintly. Through the wall.

Right, he said, uninterested. So, no, it’s not like I’m all gay now.

That’s not what I asked.

It’s not like I’m eyeing every guy that walks by, thinking about getting in his pants.

So, it’s just this guy.

Well, yes. I guess. I don’t even know anything about him really. We barely talked. We fucked. Like crazy. He took a gulp of his beer before turning to me and asking intently You’re a top, right?

Yes.

So you know how incredible fucking can be.

Yes, definitely.

You’ve never been fucked?

I have. But rarely. And it was never really my thing.

Right, he looked away, as if disappointed. I just wonder. You know, when I fuck this guy, he’s obviously enjoying it too. Like, a lot. But I can’t connect to that, not really. I don’t know what he feels, the kind of pleasure he gets, you know?

Well, you don’t know what Chloe feels either.

Sure, but she’s a woman. Here, it was like, we were two guys, two cocks, two… sweaty bodies really going at it. Like animals connecting, mating. But I have no clue what he felt.

Stick a finger up your ass, I joked, a little impatient and weary of the conversation. It did make me smile though that, while I was on the plane a couple of days ago, thinking about what I’d write and visit and ponder during my month away, Jonah may have been hoping I could share with him some expertise on the experience of getting fucked in the ass.

I have, he said nonchalantly, shocking me out of my thoughts. But, it’s not fucking, you know.

Jonah, what are trying to say? What do you want from me?

Nothing, Nate, he said quickly and warmly.

Had you ever hooked up about with a guy before? I asked, suddenly aware of that possibility.

Again, he shrugged. Nothing like this.

I was fighting the urge to get angry and bitter, to reproach his apparently selective candor and honesty all these years. Bu the quiet smile on his face deterred me. What was so mind-blowing about it, then? I asked instead.

"His ass. His legs, up in the air. His body, a mass of flesh and muscles just so completely mine. But especially the intensity of his determination. Like he demanded to get fucked, without saying anything. Harder, harder, harder. I felt like my dick will never be hard enough, big enough, deep enough. But, you know, in a good way, like I’m ramming it inside like there was no tomorrow and still he wanted more. I wanted more."

I had noticed earlier, while running alongside Jonah, that I wasn’t sure if he was wearing any underwear under his loose shorts. If he was, it had to be very loose boxer shorts, for his cock had been visibly dangling and swaying with each of his lap. Now, as my eyes instinctively looked down, I could see the highly visible shape of his erection, tenting aggressively the front of his shorts.

Yeah, that’s how good the fucking was, he chuckled, catching my stare. I looked away, gazed at the crowd in silence. I watched the local men, I looked at their bodies, their legs, their asses, I thought about Jonah’s cock ramming inside them. Harder, harder, harder. The very thought was utterly unreal and unsettling, shifting assumptions and pulling the rug under everything I thought I knew about him. Still, I closed my legs to conceal the slow gorging of my own dick.

Are you going to see him again? I asked.

He seems… complicated. But I want to.

I was curious what the man looked like. Who he was. What was his story? I realized I’d be here a month. Chloe would be gone a lot. Jonah was in heat. I wanted to see the guy, I wanted to see the guy whom Jonah fucked like an animal.

Do you at least know his name? I asked, standing up to get us another beer, discreetly shifting my semi-hard cock in my underwear.

His name is Dan.

// Dan

I woke up as the sun streaked across my face, and turned to fumble for my phone. The digits came into