The Great God Dionysus

Hiking for hookups: a letter I wrote to Rob Doyle last summer. His third novel, Cameo, is out 22 January.

Rob,

I’m sitting in bed naked as I write you, cock throbbing in between my legs. I’m not, but that would have been the dream set up based on what you asked for (“make it gay Henry Miller – NO censoring.”).

I’ve been enjoying the summer, which is why this letter is over a month late. I’d feel bad about keeping you waiting, edging you with this delay, then again it is you I’m writing to and I think you’d agree that if sex is on the table fuck writing, right? I’m writing this in Nice, but by the time I finish I’ll likely be back in London.

In mid-July I went to a small town on the Catalan coast, about half an hour’s drive south of Barcelona. Part of the reason for this trip is to let loose and by let loose I’m talking about being surrounded by Spanish men.

The first three days I take it easy. Sleeping in every morning, going to sleep early every night. Days at the beach, absorbing the summer sun. In between reading books, I jump in the sea and float on the water, arms and legs stretched out, eyes closed, all my feelings falling away like the tide. By the time I leave a week later, sand will have found its way into every inch of me – every single one – it will have invaded every item I’ve brought home. An unexpected keepsake.

The town isn’t all that exciting, although during this trip I found out that it is home to one of the most important horror film festivals in the world, held every year in October – the true end of the summer for those living on the Mediterranean coast. I naturally thought of you, and I say naturally because there is a quality of horror to you, like you’re some sort of esoteric figure from Irish folklore that has tricked everyone into believing you’re a man posing as an author in the second and third decades of the new millennium. An idea for a film came to me on the second day at the beach – a fictional, vampiric Rob Doyle arrives at the height of winter, following this letter, and under the cloaking of the short days’ darkness and the sea’s harsh waves, he roams and throws the town into despair and death.

But we’re in mid-July now, sea and sand and SO MUCH SEX. It all starts on Saturday, when three days after we arrive and have sufficiently recovered from the horrors of our jobs, we decide it’s time to go thrill-seeking – the thrill being a historic nude beach an hour’s walk away from the town and accessible only by hiking. Did I mention it’s a gay beach? Because it’s kind of important.

We take a cab from our hotel to the edge of town, driving up the mountain past expensive villas to arrive at a clearing at a high elevation. At the sound of the beach’s name – Playa del Muerto – the taxi driver knows we’re homos looking to suck and fuck. “Ah, Playa del Muerto,” he says, like he’s in on some secret.

Backpacks on, we set off into the forest and follow the path illuminated by Google Maps (and painted stones positioned across the path to help strapping young men find their way). We hike up and we hike down and soon enough we see the deep blue of the Mediterranean. The trees around us are tall and green despite the temperature (33 degrees, I believe), shading us from the sun. We carry on down, down, down until, as promised by guides we found online, we reach a set of train tracks.

How did lads find this beach pre-internet? If you were from a nowhere town at the recesses of Greece or Ireland, would you just never hear about it? Was it written about in books or magazines? Did willing lads tear out the pages and carry them in their back pockets?

We reach the train tracks, big smiles on our faces as we’re sun-kissed. We walk over them to the other side, then walk straight on till we see a beach and steps that can take us down to it. This isn’t the one. We keep walking, the view of the sea disappears as we walk past the leftovers of a mountain wall on which the word GAY ZONE has been painted in bold, black capital letters. A warning to anyone happening to walk past and not in the mood for a sword fight. A few steps forward and we see the sea again and the famed beach.

The sun is burning. My skin feels hot to the touch, I’m soaked in that glow of the summer where your hair sticks to your skin, you’re glittering and seem fresh, new again. We descend to the beach and every step feels heavier than the last, a strange blend of excitement and comprehension crushing over me in a way I haven’t felt in decades.

We settle on the left side of the beach and so begins a day of seeing and being seen. It’s a small patch of sand but by the end of the day hundreds will have passed through, some staying past 8 pm, which is when we leave, while others spend an hour or two before heading off. The day is a daze. I had a weird sensation of something impending, something about to happen – and that I should let it. Something rattling inside me. It was a real sexual odyssey, you really had to be there.

In the afternoon we head back up, jump on the other side of the train tracks and enter the forest. Some men are heading in the same direction, others the opposite, heading back to the beach. As we walk around, more and more eyes land on me. I can feel them piercing me with their gaze, following me around the woods as I step in and out of shafts of sunlight like an actor on stage moving in and out of the spotlight in a deranged performance. Two walk not that far behind me and H, then three. We come to new spots in the forest with every few steps, walk past human presence visible in discarded beer cans, cigarette buds.

I’m sober but I can feel the trees greeting me, their overgrown roots giving me a heads up (don’t trip, look down), their twigs too (look up, don’t knock into us). I can feel the leaves, their calming shade, I can feel the sunlight (don’t stay under me too long, I’m too hot), I can feel the soil, hear the birds. I can feel the breeze, a strange effect when it passes me by like it’s coming from another world. And in the end, all I see is muscle, muscle, muscle, skin, hair, moustaches, eyebrows, eyes, eyes, eyes too many to count. I have stopped in the middle of the forest, but I forgot how or why I stopped. My shorts and my speedos are at my thighs and H kneeling in front of me has made all seven inches of me disappear in his mouth. By the time this scene is done every single pair of eyes has moved close enough for me to feel their breath.

They’re breathing on me, my skin is glowing, my arms, my hands, my palms are all strong. You can see my veins running on my biceps, my sex lines somehow more visible even though I haven’t been hitting the gym in recent months. My hands are clasped at the back of H’s head, keeping him immobile. I’m thrusting into him, into the back of his throat. I can hear him gagging and I can hear their breaths, the sound of their hands rubbing the front of their shorts, black and blue and orange. After a while, colour no longer exists. I can hear the squelching escaping from their palms, their hearts pumping blood. I can hear myself, my breath – my breath 20 years ago in another forest, another town, another country, when we were kids. I remember my breaths throughout time and I see them – I see every man I’ve gazed down on, their eyes looking up at me, faces planted into my crotch. I see the guy with the huge muscles wearing his bucket hat low on his face. I see men entranced jerking off behind H, I look back and I see more behind me. I am in two places, then three, then countless places. I am reliving every oral-induced orgasm again and I explode in one, two, three blows, four, five, six. There is so much love spilling out of me. I can see them all looking at me, their faces standing so close to me and H, their mouths hanging ajar, their eyes fixed like they’ve been frozen in time by a magic spell. I feel the forest itself shake with me, seven, eight. Nine. I look down to see Harvey’s face, rivers of me graffitied on him and the forest floor.

One by one they walk off. I exit the forest, go for another dip in the sea. I spend the rest of the afternoon in the nude. I gotta get the pull-ups, push-ups in. Everyone from my audience returns to the beach, they each take a turn cracking a smile at me when they spot me. As the sun retreats, there is an urgency spreading across the beach, like the one I felt in the forest. They’ve been naked all day, but with the sun announcing his imminent exit stage left their lost time has caught up with them and now they want to make the most of it. Cocks at half mast, some hold each other as they hold conversations. A tall lad my age in black Adidas speedos, who has spent some time sitting on his knees and chatting to two Spaniards, suddenly topples over on his stomach. He buries his face in one of the lads’ laps, while the third pulls down his speedos to reveal a round, toned ass that disappears from my view, replaced by the back of a head. I’ve never eaten ass on the beach, I think to myself, my competitive instincts kicking in as always. Another threesome standing up and getting dressed can’t decide whether they’ll leave or stay. Their swimsuits are only halfway up. They’re deep in conversation, occasionally reaching out to stroke each other into a hard-on. Bucket hat glances me, nods. Before I can respond, we decide it’s time we head back.

Back by the train tracks, we walk straight on and hike on a new path that will lead us back to town. The air is light, carrying the scent and taste of the sea. An older lad I’ve been having eye sex with all day walks behind us till he eventually overtakes us. He looks back and smiles.

“He’s waiting for you to make the first move,” H says.

“Tomorrow,” I reply, guided by the forest.

Up and down and up and down again and we’re eventually at the town’s edge. We cross a small but deep patch of the sea on foot and I almost lose my balance and fall in. We’ll do this again tomorrow and the day after too.

That night I have vivid dreams that shake me out of sleep. I sink back in seconds later. I don’t remember them when I wake up, but I remember this notion of falling.

On Sunday the beach is overflowing with naked men, everyone hiking over to enjoy the last of the weekend. There’s so many of us that the sand has disappeared beneath us. We’re so close to each other, we can smell each other’s armpits. Legs and hands and toned muscle everywhere, old and young, it’s like every dream I had at 15 has come true – an endless supply of men lined up.

I walk to the forest to scope out the talent. I walk around, come across new spots far deeper in the forest. I come up at a clearing where I stumble on a tall, Spanish-Asian lad wearing all black – black shorts, black sleeveless tee, black cap on backwards. He smiles, bends down for a kiss. I’m wearing a pair of blue shorts, a black cap and shades. Easy access. He caresses the front of my shorts and pulls back to look me in the eyes (well, shades), caught off guard. Smiles and down he goes on his knees, unwraps me and with a surprised grin he takes me in his mouth. I notice the indents on his back, I want to run my tongue across them, fall into them. He gets back up when he spots a group of men looking at us, not a fan of acting as entertainment.

I follow him through the woods until we reach a high elevation shielded by giant trees (the Rob Doyles of trees, you could say). We kiss and he sinks with his back against a tree trunk. I pull his top off and he steps out of his shorts with the grace of a ballerino. He turns around, forearms stretched on the tree, back arched, a perfect view. Imagine Pamela Anderson in this position in front of you and you’ll understand my excitement. He tastes like a combination perfumers would kill for – the after-effect of the sea water, blended with his sweat. My tongue extends inside him with such force that I can barely breathe. Sweating, I think, as always, that I’ll end up bruising my nose from eating ass too enthusiastically.

“Ready to fuck?” I utter as I stand back up behind him.

“Si,” he replies, “slow please, slow.”

Then begins an ordeal I wasn’t anticipating, how to fuck a dude in the forest standing up without lube, both of you covered in sea salt. Have you ever tried to put on a condom when your cock has been in the sea? Believe me, it isn’t easy. Almost killed my hard on sticking it on. We take turns spitting on it, I spit in my palm, run it across my length, then I spit on his hole, one last lick and I try to enter. He’s so tight. He arches even more, spreads his legs apart (again, I’m sure I had this dream before) and I try again. I try different angles. I stand closer to him, then step away, I stand to his left, then to his right, I push his torso down until his face is by his feet, but I can’t enter him, not fully, nor properly. He’s so tight, which makes me even harder. I yank the condom off and try to see if I can loosen him up without one first, using my fingers. Breakthrough. We try again and I’m close to disappearing inside him, then boom! His hole rejects me again.

“It’s not gonna happen,” I say, “you’re so fucking tight.”

He’s devastated.

“I’m just not ready. Do you live here? Maybe we can meet later.”

We get dressed and I go on my separate path, cock throbbing in my shorts and so visible a blind man could sense my erection if he stood close. I come across various men, ignore their attempts. The hunter instinct. I come back to the main clearing as you walk into the forest. A French lad I spotted on the beach earlier is getting pounded by a (grand)daddy. When I say pounded, I mean no passion, just pure jack rabbit sex. A few lads are taking in the view. I too stop momentarily. A tall, Spanish bear comes up to me and says something in Catalan. He grabs my erection, looks me right in the shades with his huge eyes.

“GRANDE,” he utters loudly. I walk away.

I see movement in between the trees to the left of me. There are seven of them standing tall and leafy, an assortment of plants grown by their roots obstructing passersby views. I enter and instantly breathe in the sex. One lad is bent over. Others are flowing in and out. I haven’t been in for more than a few minutes and I’ve disappeared in various mouths until this Spanish Arab arrives. We magnetise each other. Silky smooth skin, thick eyebrows and hair. His mouth is wide, his jaw strong. He’s the best head I had all week. Just one problem.

“I’m not clean, I can’t,” he says, with me still pulsating in his palm.

“Damn,” he continues, “so fucking big. I want it.”

But he has to head back and get the train to Barcelona.

I go back down to the beach and dip in the sea to cool off. I lose my sunglasses in the spindrift. Later, I will also lose my cap, which I’ve had since university. It belonged to my friend Frankie, a lad I was close to, one of my best friends. One of the two keepsakes I have from him – the other being a grey jumper – swallowed by the sea. I choose to believe the items I lost were offerings and in return she’ll give me something else, grant me what I want.

H has been swimming around the corner from the beach, where a small cave has become house to a 20, 30-man strong orgy. Cocks out, cumming one after the other, faces full of cum, jumping back into the water to wash it off. I’m not the strongest swimmer (embarrassing for a Greek, I know) and the sea today has been rough, so I’ve opted for the forest. I’m more at home here than a cave smashed by the waves. That I have been reading The Bacchae may also have something to do with it.

I head back up, become the rider for various lads. I enter the tree fortress again, more lads than before. Is it because I’m the new arrival and word has gotten out or is there something else in me that leads them all to take turns sucking me? I can feel their tongues, their lips. I can hear their grunts, their shallow breaths, but I’ve sort of stopped looking. I’m thrusting in deeper and deeper and I can hear gagging, I can feel heads pulling away, I can hear coughing. I’m as solid as the boulders, my body’s rock hard, stomach flat and ready to take a punch. The last of them, he’s had enough. He turns around and guides me inside him. I grasp him by his sides and, Rob, I fuck him so hard, I don’t recall the l last time I fucked like this, like I’ve lost contact with reality. I’m fucking him with an ever-increasing rhythm, like I’m moving on Duracell batteries. Sweat is dripping down all over me, the centre of my back, two lines down from my blades, three on my chest, my pits, my neck, I’m so fucking wet! I’m slipping inside him. His moans are beginning to echo and gather a crowd. I hear words of encouragement, like I needed them. Yes, fuck yes, fuck him deeper, yes, like that, go on, fuck that ass. Like the day before, I slip in and out of consciousness. I’m present, but I’m also in other places. I’m in a hotel room in Geneva fucking Xavier, a 40-year-old bloke. I’m in London fucking an Irish lad called Paul on the Queen’s Jubilee Weekend. We have the same name, which is vocally comical. We melt into each other perfectly. I’m in Paris, where I’ve taken the Eurostar to spend the weekend with a couple I met on Instagram and where over two nights I will take turns fucking them – a weekend long fuckfest by the end of which all three of us struggle to walk. I left it all on the playing field that weekend, nothing in me by the end. I’m in Greece, I’m in Spain, I’m in Italy. I’m fucking every single man and woman I’ve ever fucked. I’m fucking this Spanish lad in front of me, who’s moaning so loud I feel I will carry the sound inside me forever. I’m Paul, I’m Pavlos, Pablo, Paolo, I’ve peeled back every experience and I am someone else. I’m fucking all my conquests over the years and then one. I’m cumming. Two, three. His moans get so loud, they shake the leaves on the trees. Four, five, six, seven.

“Yes, get me pregnant,” he says in a broken accent.

I keep shooting ropes inside him until I am empty. I pull my shorts back on, cock still dripping, and walk out without pleasantries. Most of the men gathered follow me back down to the beach. Were they hoping to take their turn? Or did my exit signal the end of the day in the forest?

Earlier that day during my first foray in the forest I saw the man from the day before, the one that kept smiling at me on our walk back.

“I’ve been looking for you,” I tell him, as I didn’t see him on the beach that morning.

“I’ve been in here,” he says grinning in a French accent.

“Damn, I was hoping I’d fuck you today.”

“Activ?”

I nod.

“Ahhhhhhh, me too.”

I pull him close one hand around his waist and then we kiss. He’s the sort of man that loves to use the fullness of his tongue when he’s kissing.

We go down to the side, just out of view, and he goes down on me. I wanna fuck him so bad, I’d sell my body and my soul if it’s what it took. You ever felt that way about someone, Rob?

He says he wants to eat my ass. If he can’t fuck me, he wants to taste me. And so, I turn over. I can bend better than the rest of them, better than the greatest power bottom, Rob. Maybe one day you’ll see?

He wants to swallow me, he’s like me, he does everything with utter enthusiasm, with the full force of his life. He reaches around with one hand, jacks me off, faces still buried inside me, before he motions me to turn around.

I clasp my hands at the back of his head. He’s a sensational sucker, dizzies me with his tongue. I feel like a film still out of End of the Century, which is set in Barcelona. The main character in it, a tall, gorgeous Argentine, goes cruising in the forest and is so enraptured getting sucked that you can see him cracking. He def got wood filming it. The director, Lucio Castro, has two films on the festival circuit this year that I really want to see. I’ll watch anything by anyone who understands men’s sex drive. Fucking and still not getting enough. I remember watching that film and wanting to get lost in the woods. My new French friend and I kiss. I tell him we should go down to the beach and maybe later we can split a third.

At the end of the day we hike back to the hotel again, shirtless, cock still swollen in my shorts. H jacks me off in bed, I still have so much to give. I splash everywhere. We shower, head out for dinner.

Our last day at the gay beach falls on a Monday so the weekend crowd, those boys who took a train here to fuck in the woods, or for those who chose the cave, as one annoying Brit put it, “risked their lives for a sandy blowjob”, were back at work. Some new faces, some familiar ones, endless opportunities.

I was reading Euripides these three days, partly because I was in a vengeful mood and Dionysus is really good at revenge. Do you remember when I said, I will have my revenge? I suppose that’s my toxic masculinity showing through. Some call it toxicity, I call it creativity. I thought of two writers during my stay. You, mostly because I thought you’d be interested in the details of how many holes I scored, and Henry Miller, because being in nature and having sex in the open reminded me of two passages:

“Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.”

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”

No, I wasn’t thinking about books while I was fucking. But hiking for hookups reminded me I love nature. I love dirt, I’d love nothing more than to tackle another man to the ground and to fuck in the dirt! Let it rain, let’s fuck in the rain and then be in bed with a fever for two days. It reminded me I need to escape into the wild every now and again and if I could go hiking in the forest every weekend I would. It’d help if scoring ass was also a part of it. Perhaps I’ll hang out at Hampstead Heath from now on.

Back to Catalonia…

I’m climbing up again, crossing the train tracks to enter the forest. Are you bored of reading about butt sex yet? Remember, it’s a part of my culture…I’m not just fucking, I’m embracing my ancestral traditions. Maybe next time I’ll wear one of those pro cameras on my head like my beloved bike riders do when they’re on the open road and just send the film to you instead.

As I walk by the spot where I left it all yesterday, I see my French friend again. He’s got a lad bent over, his body glistening in the shade of the trees. He lifts a hand and motions for me to join. I walk in and stand right behind him, my face in his neck, I take in his scent. We kiss while he carries on fucking. I walk on in search of new adventures.

I meet an Irish guy in a pink speedo. We don’t bother stepping out of view, he drops down and brings my shorts to my thighs and I’m in his mouth. I’m shocked at the depth of his throat. He can almost take my balls in too.

I walk deeper in the forest. I go down on this tall and shredded runner, fluffy, dirty blonde hair, cock so salty my mouth’s on fire.

I’m stopped multiple times. Someone wants to kiss me, someone else to suck me, another to smell me, to “worship” me. I lost count again.

In the end, I find myself back with my French friend, still inside that lad. The fucker’s got stamina! If I can’t fuck him, I think, I can at least fuck with him. If he can’t fuck me, he can at least drape an arm over my shoulder and kiss me as I’m getting my dick sucked.

Head to hips, we’ve got this lad horizontal between us. I’m fucking his face, while French is fucking him in the ass. We’re like a pair of secret lovers, the entire time locking eyes as if the third person wasn’t there at all, just the two of us, in a world where I can fuck him and in a world where he can fuck me all at once. It is his lips locked around my cock, my smooth-like-silk ass welcoming his throbbing dick. We lock fingers and smile. I pull him by the back of the neck in for a kiss and we make out like teenagers, sloppily, hungrily, tonguing each other in the mouth and in the face.

Our bottom tries to switch and have me fuck him, but I push him back in his original position and carry on kissing over him. I don’t know how long we stayed in lip lock, but I knew moments before he did that French was getting close. The breathing gives us all away. His breath quickened, his hands closed around our bottom’s sides, his torso tensed as his hips began swinging back and forth at a superman pace. His face reddened, his mouth opened wide, eyes still locked on me when he shot his load inside the other lad. I couldn’t contain my smile, I had witnessed the most beautiful of scenes, I imagined in the moment, this is what normal lads feel at their best friend’s wedding. It was me he imagined he was getting pregnant as he was shooting inside the other lad.

He immediately pulled out and came over and stood next to me. He kissed me again and I put my arm around him pulling him closer. We were both so wet with sweat. He smelled my left armpit, kissed me, licked me on the chest. As if ordered, the third guy dropped to his knees in front of me and took my cock back in his mouth. We were both so slippery I felt I couldn’t slip it in him without it causing too much pain. He was the eldest, but he felt subservient to me now, his hands travelling across my body, his tongue swirling around my mouth, one hand at the back of the other lad’s head, motioning him, his eyes on me, full and waiting for my release. He kept taking in my smell, nostrils expanding with his inhale, eyes dropping shut in pleasure. I kissed him on the neck, pulled him even closer with one arm, felt his still wet cock with the other. I took in his scent, my face buried in his neck until it was all that I could sense. I fell into a void where the world around me fell silent, went black, and all my senses abandoned me, only his scent guiding me, reminding me I’m alive. I can’t explain what happened to me very well yet. Maybe I’ll just jack off and let the cum scent this letter. I’m just messing with you. Maybe in a few years, when I’ve had a chance to think about it from a critical distance, I’ll be able to explain what happened. It was a death of some sort…for some seconds I wasn’t on earth, or if I was, I wasn’t on our current plane, the one I’m inhabiting right now and the one in which you’ll receive and read this letter, but somewhere else, maybe a divine realm, having attained communion with the gods. I left behind the forest and everyone inside it, I left behind my life and everyone in it, and I saw myself outside my body back in the forest getting blown. All that was guiding me was the sweat, the scent on the neck of my French lover. In the void, I felt this tidal wave of strength, like my body was reconstituted, reassembled with new life. I felt virile. Seconds later, I was back and let it all go. Rob, there was so much. Like three of me had orgasmed. If it was Dionysus I was in communion with, then he really is the god who comes. My body was shaking, my joints were in so much pain and then in pure relief. My body had been emptied. I sweated so much I was dripping wet even in the face. We got dressed in silence, exchanged another kiss and ran our hands through each other’s hair before walking back.

I haven’t stopped thinking about those woods since we left. My death and rebirth, this new chapter that opened up that afternoon, the next chapter of my life (yet another one where I am guided by my cock!).

Maybe I’ve been summoned by Dionysus. Maybe like Harvey has said before, I am an intense reader, so intense that I call things into existence. Something I’ve read that really captured me, I will find ways to bring it to life. Is that the path to the divine, Rob?

What happened to me in that Catalan forest?

Been sad not to see you in Berlin this summer. I need to hear about your adventures.

Best,
Pavlos

PS. I received a copy of Cameo from your publisher and I am super excited to read it at last! Imagine. I had iterations of this book in my hands TWICE and I didn’t steal it. I’m an angel. My copy is slightly salted, the result of me carrying it with me to another nude beach, in Nice this time. The beach sucked but Nice has a sexual underbelly beneath its Piedmontese beauty that is straight out of a French novel, or 2000s indie film. Perhaps I’ll tell you all about it in another letter…