Under the Mountain

I would like to tell you about what is happening to me. It is scaring me a bit but at the same time I have never felt so excited.

I have come on holiday to Tenerife. We are staying in a place on the west of the island called Playa de Santiago. They say Santiago is the Spanish word for St. James and that he is the patron saint of Spain. We are in a modern hotel overlooking the sea. We have a wide balcony from which we have a spectacular view of the Acantilados de los Gigantes, which are sheer sea-cliffs, about 2,000 feet high, they look like they are about half a mile away. Pictures and photographs of them don’t seem to work, they never capture the natural grandeur of the original. Perhaps they are just too big for pictures. When the sun first strikes them early in the morning, at an angle that picks out each rock and gives it a black shadow, the air is so clear I feel I can reach out and touch them.

In the opposite direction is something similar and yet completely different. It is usually to be seen first thing in the morning, high up and far off ; but mostly later in the day the cloud comes in and hides it away. We may be sunbathing down here and burning away in the heat, but up there everything is covered in snow. It is the crown of the Mountain of Tenerife, the highest place in all of Spain, which once gave the island its name, but now they call it Pico del Teide. Before the Spanish came, the people of the islands thought it was the home of their god, and looking at it now it is easy to see why. Unlike all the other islands of the Atlantic, the Europeans found inhabitants here when they first mastered the art of sailing out of sight of land, and they say that this is the reason. When the air is still and clear, with the sun low in the east behind them first thing in the morning, the people of the Mauritanian coast of Africa might just, now and again, catch a sight of the distant crown of the Mountain, well over a hundred miles off ; and so long ago they sailed towards it in their simple boats, knowing that they would find land.

I am here with my two daughters, Abi and Emma. They are thirteen and fifteen, and I was surprised and pleased that they wanted to come on holiday with me at all. They live with their mother who has a boyfriend nearer in age to them than to her. Of course they are properly looked after, but it makes me happy that they always like coming to see me, and now for the first time we have come abroad together.

The first night we were here we met another family, who were sitting at the next table in the dining room. The parents are Simon and Jan, and their daughters Sarah and Georgia immediately made friends with Abi and Emma. They started to spend all day with each other, doing what girls do, spending ages together in front of the mirror, making a total mess of their bedrooms, and giggling over the boys. I might have felt a bit left out, but I made a friend too, Simon’s younger brother Matthew.

Matthew was a bit distant at first, and not easy to get to know. I had the impression he didn’t have many friends, even though he has a lot of interests. He has a sort of quiet reserve which was difficult to get inside. But sitting by the pool or in the bar we began to talk to each other, slowly at first, but before long we started to realize we have things in common. Our homes in England are about twenty miles apart, we are in the same line of work, and somehow our minds seem to work in the same way. He doesn’t smile much and I used to wonder why not. One day Jan told me that Matt had been married, but his wife had been killed in a car crash about ten years ago. He had never been with anyone since. I felt sorry for him, but even then I wondered a little : I thought that ten years is a long time, surely by now he could enjoy himself a bit more.

Maybe it has been my imagination, but I think Matthew has been enjoying himself on this holiday. Each day he has seemed a little brighter. It has naturally worked out that he and I have spent a lot of time together, mainly just talking and playing games. The girls are always inseparable, and of course Simon and Jan have each other, it seems to me they are quite pleased that Matthew has found himself a friend. The last few days Matt has become positively animated, shouting and laughing when we play games in the pool with an inflatable ball, play wrestling with me in the water to stop each other getting the ball. There is nothing sexual in this. I have never been interested in men. We are just messing around. If this was a story, I would be telling you at this point how Matt and I both work out three times a week and have beautiful tanned toned bodies ; but it isn’t and we don’t and we haven’t. We are just ordinary guys in our early forties. We both cycle a lot so we are not unfit, but our other interests tend to be mental rather than physical, and we both work in offices so we are not forever in the sun. The best we can say is we now have a bit of a holiday tan and there is nothing actually wrong with either of us.

One day, our last day on the island, we try to climb the Mountain. The girls aren’t interested and stay at the hotel with Simon and Jan. Matthew and I hire a car and start driving. At first it is very twisty, but further up the road becomes wider and straighter, with just long sweeping bends, through open pine woods, but always climbing. Suddenly we come to the end of the woods and now we can see the top of the Mountain rising out of the cloud that still covers it lower down. It is awesome and forbidding and covered in snow, and we realize there is no way we will get right to the top. Further up we reach the crater of the old volcano. It is very windy. The wind is driving the air upwards and across the flat expanse of the crater where it becomes cloud ; but the summit is far above the cloud and is frowning down on us. There is a cable car up to a place not far below the top, but it is closed on account of the wind. A bit further on Matthew and I find a parking area where there is a pathway leading upwards. We get out and climb a little but we don’t get far. It is cold and very windy and we soon reach a place where there is snow on the ground which quickly becomes deep and treacherous. But there is something about this place which makes it important to both of us.

“I am going to find out more about this and come back in better weather with the right gear,” I say. “I want to get to the top.” And Matt laughs and says he was about to say the same thing. As we go back down to the warmth below I feel we are somehow closer and have become real friends.

It is our last night here. We have arranged that we will all go out for dinner at a restaurant down in the town. At the last minute I decide I do not want to go. I am not sure why. The day has maybe tired me out more than I thought. I am not hungry. I say I will stay in and do the packing for tomorrow. The girls are not bothered. They are happy to be going out with their friends. Fortunately Simon and Jan have no problem taking their daughters’ friends with them. I watch them and Matthew and the four girls all walking down the road towards the town, and then I go into the hotel bar for a drink.

I have been sitting for about fifteen minutes at a corner table reading a book, when I feel a shadow falling over the page. I look up and I see Matthew standing there.

I say, “I thought you went down to the town with the others.”

“I did,” he says, “but then I decided to come back. Don’t worry, they are all fine, they will get on better without us.”

In a way I am really happy to see him, but in another way I feel somehow awkward. We order a bottle of wine. We don’t say much to each other. I somehow feel that there is something really important I want to say, but I don’t know what it is or how to say it. Matt is obviously not going to help me. He has gone very quiet again, just like he was at the beginning of the holiday.

“I need to get back to do my packing,” I say.

“O.K.,” he says, “there is just a small glass of wine left.”

He reaches over to pour out the wine. Suddenly his hand shakes quite violently, and drops of wine go everywhere. Some of them go over the back of my hand where I put it out to pick up the glass. Automatically he takes a paper napkin and begins to mop up the spilt wine, and wipes my hand with it. Somehow his hand has stopped moving and is resting on top of mine. I do not understand what is happening. It is almost like an electric shock. I feel a great warmth going through me, and it makes me feel really happy, and I want something but I don’t know what it is. I look up at Matt.

“Tim – ” he says, and makes the tiniest gesture with his head towards the door. The next moment he is standing up and is walking away.

All this has taken seconds. I am not sure if I have been imagining it. Maybe he just touched me by accident. I do not know what it is that makes me get up and go after him.

I follow him out and across by the swimming pool towards our rooms. I do not know why but I just follow, I do not try to catch him up. I am looking at him from behind and for the first time in my life I am thinking about what a man looks like. I am thinking how good he looks in his cream three-quarter length shorts and how well they fit him. I am looking at the hairs on his legs and wondering what it would feel like to touch them. I am looking at the slow and easy way he is walking and wishing he was doing it without any clothes on.

The moon is nearly full, high in the south. I can see the sheer cliffs, so near I could touch them. Across the water, fifteen miles away, are twinkling the lights of San Sebastian de la Gomera. Far up above, the moonlight is shining on the snows of the Mountain.

Matt unlocks the door of his room and goes in and leaves the door open. I follow him and slowly close the door. He must know I am there but says nothing. He has lit a couple of candles on a table before turning to face me.

The light is flickering on his face. He is dark, and slightly shorter than me, and slightly stockier. I am taller and slim and fair. We look into each other’s eyes but we say nothing. His eyes are warm and inviting and almost pleading. He opens his mouth slightly and I see his tongue moistening his lips. I do not know what is happening.

We both move a step or two closer to each other. I am still looking into Matt’s eyes. Now very slowly he is undoing the buttons on his black shirt. It is suddenly very hot. He has undone the last button. I can see a few hairs on his chest and a thicker line of hairs running into his shorts. Slowly and deliberately he jerks his body back so that the shirt falls to the ground behind him.

Not knowing what I am doing, I come up to him. I reach out. His eyes say yes. I touch him on the side of the neck, where he wears a thin gold chain. My hand moves to the side of his face. I am thinking how much I like the feeling of the roughness of it. Meanwhile Matt’s hands are on my waist. He is running them over the skin just above my jeans. He is delicately sliding them just inside. Suddenly with a single fluid movement he pulls my shirt up over my head and throws it down. He smiles at me and I feel so good inside.

I am looking at his shorts again. I am wishing more than ever he wasn’t wearing them. There is a curious bulge inside them. I cannot resist it. I reach out and rub the bulge, and I hear Matt gasp with pleasure. Very deliberately I kneel down before him. My hands are exploring. I feel the inside of his legs, his waist, and then my fingers are on the button of his shorts. Smoothly I undo it and slide down the zip. Next moment he is wearing nothing but a pair of tight boxer shorts. I can see the exact shape of what is inside.

Now Matt has lifted me up and taken my hand and led me to the bed. Putting his arms round me from behind he has swiftly undone and removed my jeans. I can feel the warmth of his breath. He is trying to pull me down onto the bed. I am resisting and wrestling like we did in the pool. Two guys in nothing but boxers are each feeling the physical erotic joy of forceful contact with another male body. I can feel his how strong he is and it makes me more and more excited. We struggle for a few moments longer, then we are lying facing each other, tremendously aroused, and our eyes meet again. Once again I see him opening his mouth. There is his tongue. Our tongues touch so gently, sliding, exploring. Then our passion gathers and we kiss, long and forcefully, our bodies writhing.

“I need you, Tim,” whispers Matt, his hands slipping smoothly into my boxers.

“I need you, too,” I say, to my own astonishment, putting my arms round him and preparing to fight for it.

As we kiss again I realize that this is where I am meant to be. It is scaring me a bit, but it is so exciting too.