Through the center of Munich the water of the Isar river flows clear and cool between sandbars and rocks and if you stand on one of the bridges above it, you can look down and see fish in the clear water swimming in place as the ducks float above them. I was twenty-two and the year was 1990. I had followed a girl to Munich and was taking German lessons at the Goethe Institute; for work I taught English at Berlitz. Spring was evaporating into summer and almost every day I would cross the Isar on my way to German lessons or work or home and in the warm afternoons I would always see people lounging on the Isar’s banks. Mostly they were in swimsuits or some sort of summer fashion but every now and then I would see a topless woman or a man wearing something small, tight, and low.
I remember talking about this with my Swedish friend Niklas, whom I met at the Goethe Institute and was around four years younger than me, and he laughed and told me Americans were so “prude.” We were sitting in a cafe and Niklas was wearing a T-shirt and shorts that seemed almost feminine the way they ended well above the knee. But that’s the way Europeans liked it. He was sitting with his legs crossed as men from Europe do and I remember how my eyes and mind were drawn up his long, bare legs and over his thighs to where his smooth inner thighs pressed together and I hated myself. I wanted to be straight, to not have these thoughts, to be normal. He uncrossed his legs briefly and I caught a glimpse of his underwear before he recrossed them.
I was telling him how I was still kind of stunned that women went topless by the river so close to the city center.
“You Americans are such puritans,” he laughed. “You know, there’s a place on the Isar where most people don’t wear anything. It’s no big deal, nobody cares. I’ll show you if you want.”
“Do we have to be naked?” I asked.
“No,” he laughed, “but if we were, no one would notice or care. Want to go?”
The day Niklas and I decided to take the U-Bahn to the place on the Isar River where people apparently wore little to nothing was a Saturday and sunny and warm. On the subway we both talked about the kinds of girls we’d like to see: big tits, small tits, heavy, slim, shaved or not. Niklas was very casual but I was still disbelieving that such a place existed so close to the city center.
When Niklas and I arrived at the river it was crowded and while there were some people in swimsuits and some topless women, most were completely nude: men, women, boys, girls, age didn’t seem to matter on the high end or the low. We laid out our towels and sat down cross-legged facing each other and Niklas’ shorts rode almost to the top of his thighs. I was pretty sure there wasn’t anything underneath.
“Well, what do you think?” Niklas asked as he sipped one of the cold waters we had brought with us.
I mumbled some answer about so many naked people as I watched a girl a few feet away from us lay her bike on the sand and spread out a towel. She started to pull her shirt off and I was expecting a bikini top but there wasn’t one. Then she smoothly slid off her shorts and panties and lay down on her stomach. Niklas and I were both watching her and we looked at each other and laughed but when we took off our shirts, even though we were surrounded by naked women, it was Niklas I felt my body respond to. My brain roiled. Guilt, shame, confusion all showed up at the same time. I knew I was physically attracted to guys and that I thought about boys more than girls when I masturbated, but to be surrounded by naked girls and only feel a tingle when I saw Niklas’ chest and how his smooth torso disappeared into his small white shorts, well, that was unexpected.
My only experiences with guys had been innocent. Nothing happened in college, but in my junior year of high school, there was one time when I was at my friend Dave's house and we were talking about going swimming and Dave said he'd forgotten his suit at school and didn't have anything else to wear except an old Speedo, really old.
"Does it still fit?" I asked.
Dave laughed and said he had no idea but said he'd give it a shot. He rummaged through a dresser drawer and pulled out a faded blue suit and said, "Oh man, I dunno, this thing is kinda ratty." But he headed off to the bathroom and returned shirtless and with a towel around his waist, looking a little uncertain but smiling.
"Dude, I feel gay. Check it out."
Dave removed the towel and I had to laugh. The suit rode so low his pubes spilled over the top and his dick and balls filled what little fabric there was to point where it all seemed kind of pointless. I was transfixed. We had fooled around a little before this time felt different; there as heat and a pull between us. Should I say something? Should I move a little closer? Would he do something? Just then we heard a car pull in to the carport and the mood shattered. We never did swim that day and a month later Dave moved to Seattle.
As Niklas and I sat in the hot sun and commented on the girls, we both started sweating, and Niklas announced he was going to cool off in the river. With his back to me, he dropped his shorts and walked toward the water. No underwear, as I suspected. He had a hint of a V that tapered to his hips, and his ass was compact and a brilliant white, and when he turned around to ask me if I was coming, his penis was soft but heavy-looking and I was starting to get hard, so I told him to go ahead.
While he was gone, I lay on my stomach and without being too obvious, ground my pelvis into the sand and thought about Niklas. I also thought about times with Dave, and I thought about this one Andy Warhol picture of a cock I always used to jack off to when thumbing through Playboys. Thoughts of girls came forward, too, but the boys muscled them out. I liked girls; I loved their shapes and smells and sounds. I loved how they felt, but 99 times out of 100 when I got intimate with my dick I thought of boys. I wanted desperately to run my hands over a male chest and bury my face in male thighs and push a dick into my throat as it shot cum. Most of all, I wanted a guy to penetrate me and work me with gentle and brutal thrusts and then cum on my naked back. How long could I co-exist with these thoughts being only fantasies? I wanted to get out of my head and into bed with a man. Now.
As I wallowed in my fantasy and frustration, Niklas returned wet and with a big smile and said I should really get in the water or, he chided me, “Are you too prude?”
Water dripped from his hair onto his shoulders and his chest was wet—all of him was wet—and there were sparkly, glistening droplets in his blond pubes. One dripped off his tip.
Niklas pulled his shorts on and sat down cross-legged, and the wetness made his shorts ever so slightly see-through. “Seriously,” he said, “get in the water. It feels great,” I said I kinda had a hard-on.
“Think about the German dative case, it’ll go away,” he laughed.
When I finally stood up and pulled my shorts and underwear off, I was still more hard than not, and I saw Niklas look at me for a moment, then a little longer.
“Be careful with that,” he cautioned with mock seriousness. I walked quickly across the pebbly sand to the river and waded into the cool water.
I kept going until the water was up to my waist, and I squatted in it and thought, was today going to be the day? I was sure there was a connection between Niklas and me like the one I had had with Dave but doubt raged. Would he reject me straight up and say men were absolutely not his thing? Would he be more cruel and laugh or be angry and tell me to get away from him? Would he tell my girlfriend? And if we had sex, what about my relationship? How would I control the guilt? What if I wasn't attracted to her anymore? And how should I go about this? Should I start dropping heavy hints and see how he responds? Should I stop worrying about getting hard in front of him and stay naked and see if he does the same?
The cold water and nervous uncertainty had brought my erection under control and so I walked back to Niklas, who seemed to be sleeping. He was on his stomach, and I took a slow moment to watch his back move slowly and steadily with his breathing. I toweled off and placed my towel just inches from his and lay down on my stomach and stared at the back of his head and let my eyes lick his neck and shoulder and upper arm and down his side to his shorts and down his legs. I was getting hard again, but I stayed naked.
When Niklas woke me up, he turned toward me and said, “Ha, feeling comfortable?”
I remembered I hadn’t put my shorts back on and nodded and said, “Maybe I’m not such a prude American after all.”
Niklas propped himself up on his side, exposing his long, lean body and said, “Well, when in Rome.”
I was about to close my eyes again and snooze a little more when it hit me: he had a raging hard-on.
