Mountain Climber

*** A Story from Dr Wallace’s Casebook

Last summer, a guy came into my surgery asking if he could talk to me about something which was important to him but which wasn’t, as he put it, “necessarily medical”.

Normally I’m far too pushed for time to act as a counsellor, but he was my last appointment before lunch so I nodded and he sat down.

He was a big guy: tall and athletic, with a well-developed chest, broad shoulders and thick, muscular arms. His hair was cut short and he had a day’s growth of stubble on his chin. I glanced down at his record to check his name – Steven MacAlister – and saw that his appointment had written next to it, “Requested male doctor.”

I asked him what the problem was.

“Well,” he started. “I don’t think I have a problem. It’s just that, well, my wife asked me to come and see you. The problem’s sort of hers... kind of...”

“Your wife has a problem? Shouldn’t she come and see me herself?”

“No, there’s nothing wrong with her. It’s just... well, this is difficult to explain...”

I smiled to try and put him at his ease. “Tell me what your wife’s problem is. We’ll start there.”

He took a deep breath, trying to figure out how he could best put what was clearly a complicated issue into words. Eventually he said, “Okay. It’s probably easiest to explain like this. My hobby is mountaineering – well, it’s more than a hobby. I’d do it full-time if I could afford to.”

He glanced up at me and I said, “Okay...”

He went on, “I go away a couple of times a year with a mate of mine. We’ve climbed together pretty much everywhere from the Cairngorms to the Himalayas, usually for a two or three weeks at a stretch. As much time as we can both get off work. So we spend a lot of time together in some pretty remote places, relying on each other to stay alive, you know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“When you’re around someone for so long, you get pretty close to them. It doesn’t matter if it’s a guy or a woman, you’re gonna get pretty... well – intimate together, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “And your wife is jealous of that?”

“Yeah, kind of. I mean, if I was climbing with a woman, I could sort of understand where Susan – that’s my wife – was coming from, but we’re talking about another guy. I don’t see a problem with it, be she... well – she insisted I come to see you...”

“How long have you been climbing with your friend?”

He thought back and mentally worked out the timescale. “It must be like twenty years or something by now.”

I glanced at his record and saw that he was, like me, in his early thirties.

“So you both started in your teens?”

“Yeah – he was a school friend. Culley and I – sorry, his name’s Tim but I’ve always called him Culley and he’s always called me Macca – joined a school climbing club and we’ve stuck to it ever since. I’ve never climbed with anyone else – I don’t want to have to get to know someone else’s strengths and weaknesses, you know?”

I nodded. “That makes sense...”

He went on, “I mean, it’s inevitable two guys who are together for so long are gonna get pretty close. We see a lot of each other...”

“But your wife surely knew about all this before you married?”

He nodded. “Yeah. But I don’t think she realised how intense things can get when you’re climbing with someone. Not until I said something stupid a few weeks ago and put my foot right in it.”

“What did you say?”

That question stopped him in his tracks. He looked like he was about to say something in reply and then thought better of it and hesitated. Then, after seeming to consider and reject several possible responses, he ventured, “This is kind of crux of things. This is where you tell me that she’s right to be threatening me with divorce...”

He waited for me to say something but I held back and gave him the space to explain himself.

After another pause he said, “Okay. What if I said that my closeness with Culley is physical as well as emotional?”

“When you say ‘physical’, do you also mean ‘sexual’?”

He looked down guiltily and blushed. He muttered, “Nothing too serious... just helping each other out when we’re both away from our wives for so long...”

I smiled reassuringly and said, “Well, that would seem pretty natural to me.”

He looked back up at me. “Yeah? That’s what I’ve been telling her...”

“So can I ask what exactly we’re talking about here? Masturbation or a more developed homosexual –“

“It’s not a homosexual thing,” he cut in, angrily. “I want to make that clear from the start. Neither of us are gay – we’re both married and happy with that – and it’s not something we’d ever do if we weren’t stuck halfway up a mountain sharing a tent.”

“Okay,” I said calmly, making a mental note not to use the words ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’ again. “So how far have things gone between you?”

He considered my question, looking less agitated, and then explained, “I think all guys wank together on a climb. I mean, you have to – there’s next to no privacy and it’s something every guy needs to do when his missus or girlfriend or whatever isn’t around.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Culley and I have wanked off together on climbs since we were in our teens. It was never a big deal – never spoken about at all, actually. I mean, once you’ve had to see each other taking a crap a couple of times, every thing else kind of pales into insignificance, you know what I mean?”

I smiled.

“Well, it must have been about ten years ago and we were in the Alps. It was cold – I mean, really cold – and we’d zipped our sleeping bags together for warmth. That’s also pretty standard, by the way,” he threw in defensively as if I might be considering mentioning the ‘h’ word again.

He went on, “I had a hard-on and started playing with it, thinking Culley had gone to sleep. It turned out he hadn’t and so he started wanking his – that’s how things usually go with us. It didn’t take me too long to come and afterwards I lay there listening to Culley as he continued. He always took longer than me to have a wank but that night he seemed to be going on for ages.

“Eventually I must have said, ‘How long are you gonna be?’ or something. I was desperate to get some sleep and couldn’t with him going at it next to me.

“He said, ‘Sorry, mate, but I’m gonna need a bit of help’. Then he grabbed my hand and put it on his cock.”

“How did you feel about that?” I asked.

“To be honest, I wasn’t too bothered. When you’re climbing with a guy, you get to see each other’s bodies from every angle as a matter of course, so touching him was only a small step beyond that. And... well – it felt pretty similar to mine. A bit thicker, maybe, but it seemed to enjoy the same things being done to it as mine does.”

“So you masturbated him?”

“Yeah. I wanked him like I would myself and he enjoyed it. I felt him coming in less than a minute. Afterwards, he muttered, ‘I’ll do you tomorrow night, Macca.’ Then we went to sleep.”

“And did he reciprocate the following night?”

Steven nodded. “Yeah. It became a regular thing. Another person’s hand is better than your own, you know what I mean?”

I smiled.

He went on, “We’d zip our bags together most nights and if one of us started wanking and the other wanted to join in, usually we’d swap hands over and wank each other.”

Before I could ask him another question, he cut in, “I don’t like talking about this kind of stuff, you know. It’s private stuff between me and my mate... it feels kind of like I’m betraying his trust...”

“If you’re not comfortable about us continuing...”

“No, it needs to be said,” he interrupted. “I need to tell you it all... it’s just I wanted you to understand that it’s not easy for me...”

I nodded. “So far everything you’ve told me is perfectly normal. Many men have high sex drives and need regular relief. Without female company, it’s natural two straight guys would turn to each other.”

Steven nodded and then said, tentatively: “What if I told you that things went a bit further?”

“How much further?”

He paused and then went on, “Well... we were in northern Norway: fantastic scenery but absolutely freezing. We were actually on the descent from the summit, but the weather had turned nasty and we’d been holed up in the tent for a couple of days. We were perched on what was little more than a ledge and there was a blizzard howling around us.”

“You know, that’s not my idea of a relaxing hobby.”

He smiled and went on, “We were both pretty tense, I guess. Rations were getting low and we didn’t know how long the blizzard was going hold for.

“One night it was especially cold and we clung onto each other in our joined sleeping bag. We had a little whisky with us and we’d shared it and were trying to get some sleep despite the noise of the storm.

“I became aware that Culley was hard and my own cock stiffened too. It’s weird that, in such a dangerous situation facing possible death, guys still think about sex...”

I smiled and nodded.

“We moved our cocks against each other through our thermals, our arms wrapped tightly around each other. Our rhythm became faster and faster until we were humping each other. Culley was panting into my face – his breath smelt of alcohol – and his cock was jabbing really quickly against mine.”

“Did it feel good?” I asked.

“Yeah, I was incredibly turned on,” he smiled. “I don’t think either of us had wanked for half a week and we really needed a release. I liked the feel of what we were doing – it was almost like being with Susan.”

I nodded. “Were you thinking about your wife?”

“Of women generally, perhaps. Of being with a woman, I mean. I certainly wasn’t turned on by the fact that this was Culley I was with...”

I nodded. “Okay. So what happened next?”

“Culley pulled his cock out of his thermals and I expected that he’d want me to wank it. He pushed my hand away, though, and said, ‘Turn over, mate.’ I knew what he wanted to do to me but I was so turned on that I went along with it.”

He looked at me, perhaps expecting me to be shocked or judgemental, but I remained impassive and gestured for him to continue.

“He yanked the back of my thermals down and climbed on top of me. His chest was on top of my back and it was hard to breathe. Culley’s a big bloke – well built – like me.

“He grabbed his cock and pressed it into my arse cleft. The way he’d put it was really uncomfortable and I struggled to get into a position where he could enter me more easily.

“Eventually, he managed to get it inside me and he started sliding it in and out. It was really painful at first but I soon got used to it...”

“He was making love to you?” I asked. I used the term ‘making love’ without thinking about it: when talking about the sexual act with patients, most find it to be the least offensive term.

“No!” Steven snapped. “There was no love in it. We were... well – I dunno the right word for it. I suppose he was wanking but using my arse instead of my hand to help him.”

“That seems a strange way to describe it. He was penetrating you, doesn’t the term ‘making love’ apply?”

“If I’d been a woman, then yeah, maybe. But we were both men so it doesn’t fit.”

I nodded. “Okay, so he was ‘using’ your backside. Did he enjoy it?”

Steven laughed. “Jesus, yeah! Of course he did. He grabbed my chest and held onto me, grunting into the back of my head. His cock started hammering in and out of me really quickly and I could actually hear his hips slapping against my cheeks over the noise of the wind.”

“How did you feel?”

He shrugged. “Like I did when I first wanked him off, I guess. Pleased I was helping him but not especially enjoying it.”

“Were you erect while he was doing it?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I think so. But not because of the sensation of what he was doing. It was just... well – you have to understand that, even though we were two guys and what we were doing probably sounds pretty disgusting, it was still an incredibly intense situation. It was good to feel connected to someone else’s body, to have someone else’s arms around me.”

I smiled. “It doesn’t sound at all disgusting, actually.”

“Good, because it wasn’t,” he said appreciatively. “I mean, it’s not the way either of us would have chosen to have had sex, but right then it felt good for both of us.”

“But I don’t understand how you don’t see what you were doing as a gay act.” He flinched at the word ‘gay’ but I went on, “We’ve both seen the cartoon drawings in public toilets of guys having sex: didn’t you think to yourself, ‘Jesus – I’m actually in a gay position here’?”

He thought for a moment and then replied, “I don’t relate what we were doing to that kind of stuff. For us it was a necessity, not a choice. Culley used my arse because he was desperate for sex and it happens to be the only hole I have down there. I let him because I knew how much he must need it. I didn’t consider whether it was gay or not; I just let him do what he had to do.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I suppose I can see where you’re coming from. So what happened after Culley had climaxed?”

Steven threw me a small smile. “I think you already know the answer to that.”

I smiled back. “You ‘used’ his backside too?”

He nodded. “I felt him come inside me. It felt hot and sloppy – not too pleasant, really. Then he pulled out and moved over to his own side of the sleeping bag, lay face down and yanked the back of his thermals down. Without saying anything, I pulled my cock out, wanked it to get it hard enough, and then got on top of him.”

“Were you turned on by what you were about to do to him?” I asked.

Steven shook his head. “No. I think if I hadn’t have waited so long without a release, I would have gone limp, to be honest. But I was desperate to have sex – any sex – and his arse seemed like it might feel better than his hand, if the way he’d acted when he was on top of me was anything to go by.”

“Did you imagine it was your wife you were about to penetrate?”

Steven laughed hollowly. “Look, I don’t want to go into details, but there was no way my imagination could have run to that.”

I must have looked a little puzzled, because he went on: “When you’re on a climb, personal hygiene can’t always be your number one priority. Like I say, I don’t want to go into any details, but it was pretty clear from the feel and the smell that this was a guy’s arse I was sticking my cock into, not a woman’s pussy...”

“And that didn’t turn you off?”

“My cock was aching for some action. I guess I just put anything unpleasant out of my mind. After all, my own arse was probably not at its best at the end of a two week climb and Culley had managed to get his cock into it...”

“So you pushed yourself into him?”

He nodded. “He found it painful at first, like I had, but he let me do the same to him as he had done to me.”