MAKING CAMP
by Clare London


You see, I don’t do canvas. You know--the camping thing.

Never have done. I’m a city boy--I like the aggressive noise and the frantic haste of its people. I like to smell the dirt steaming off the pavements on a wet autumn day; to pass graffiti-decorated brickwork and peeling pub signs on my way home. I like to hear the hiss of buses and inhale their diesel-breath. I like it all--it’s invigorating.

“This is your chance,” said my friend, Em. She was leaning over my desk, peering at me. She wasn't so much giving me friendly advice as threatening me. “Christ, Nick, you’ve been going on to me about Max for months. This is your chance to go out with him, to talk to him about something other than Computer Virus Monthly. I’m sure he likes you. You know. That way.” She leant in even further, winking lecherously, rattling my pencils and my equilibrium in equal measures.

I glared back. “You know where he’s going?”

She shrugged. “To the West Country for the weekend. Just a short break.”

“No.” I frowned. “I mean where. To a campsite. He’s camping. In a tent.”

I’m pretty sure she rolled her eyes. “And he wants you to go with him. I heard him say so.” She smirked. “He stood right over there, turned his back on all of the girls in Cash Processing, and he invited you.”

I blushed. I hadn’t done much of that since the new kid in Underwriting touched me up at the Christmas party, then protested he’d been looking in my pocket for a pencil sharpener. I’d been wary of mixing business with pleasure ever since: understandably, some would say. “I can’t go.” Time for my eyes to roll. "It's outdoors!"

“Nick, don’t be a jerk,” she snapped, glancing over her shoulder. Max was in the next door office, right now--stalking his online shift rota was a guilty secret of mine that I shared with Em alone. Unfortunately, that fuelled her matchmaking, which currently consisted of pulling the plug out of my hard drive and calling Tech Support--and on a weekly basis. Humiliating, but it had the desired effect, calling Max to the rescue every time. I never complained.

I was a lost, lovesick cause from the day he joined the company. We went to the pub after work to welcome him, and he told us he’d been transferred from a remote branch office that clung to the cliffs of the West Country coastline, where you could only get a decent mobile signal on alternate Tuesdays, or something like that--he told a good story. I made some Town/Country Mouse jokes and he laughed, good-naturedly. In fact, he joked back, warning me the green fields would probably make me hyperventilate. But I remember I looked at his friendly grin, his natural tan and his bright eyes, and I knew I wanted more of him.

“Say yes,” hissed Em. She’d creased up half the papers on my desk while she harassed me. “I've poured coffee over your keyboard and he's on his way round. Say yes to this weekend, or I swear, the graffiti about you in the Ladies’ won’t stop at the pencil sharpener incident.”

Graffiti? “Who told you about--?”

But Em had gone, and Max was walking up the corridor towards me with that delicious grin---that cheerful, downright healthy grin of his. If that’s what a country life does for you, I thought, it can’t be all bad.

And so I said yes.


*


I awoke to a trumpet call from Hades itself--or that’s how it sounded. A wailing scream; a shriek of hate and despair, ripping through the dawn. Heart pounding with shock, I scrabbled out of the borrowed sleeping bag, cursing whoever had twisted the zip up between my arse cheeks while I slept. I blundered into the side of the (also borrowed) tent, breathing harshly, wondering if oxygen were available for those with an allergy to polyester. My elbow nudged the tent pole at the doorway and the whole structure shuddered around me.

I lurched outside, the fresh air hitting me like chemical warfare, my bare toes curling up with the shock of grass underneath them so early in the morning. There was a sudden flurry of black feathers as birds launched themselves from the nearby trees. I stared at the world through dilated pupils, panting, expecting to see the Four Horsemen.

Instead, Max was there, crouched outside his own tent. He was dressed in just his shorts: he looked completely at home, stirring away at something in a pan that bubbled and looked to me like it’d been vomited up within the last half-hour. I groaned: his head whipped around. “What is it?” He looked concerned. “The crows wake you up?”

I never got time to reply with something witty and face-saving because we were both distracted by a strange whistling sound behind me. Max stood up, abruptly, the spoon still clutched in his hand. The only other warning I got was a flap from the loosened flysheet, and then the whole damned tent started to crumple down on itself. I heard the dull twang of the poles tumbling free, scraping, squealing down the sides of the tent, and then the clang of them hitting the ground. I thought I’d knocked each peg securely into the field the night before, but… maybe I hadn’t.

There was a final thump, and everything went quiet again. I didn’t dare turn around. I coughed from grass seed in my throat: a stray acorn rolled past my foot. Max’s gaze shifted down from over my shoulder to a point barely six inches from the ground.

“Shit,” he said, thoughtfully. “Looks like the guy-ropes weren’t tightened properly.”

“I know nothing about tents,” I said, defensively. I glanced back at the damage, my face hot with embarrassment. One of the metal posts had ripped a jagged hole through the fabric and was propped upright, saluting the sky like a raised fist, claiming revenge against all camping virgins.

Max was laughing, gently. I sighed, turning back to face him.

His gaze was fixed on my waist region, now. “You buy them in town?” he asked, grinning. “You don’t get that sort of thing down here, you see.”

I stared back at him. I felt that sick lurch in the gut that you get when you know your life is about to end, and in great and glorious humiliation. My hand hovered protectively in front of my groin. I was standing in the middle of a field in broad--if early--daylight, and suddenly I knew I was dressed in nothing but the Christmas reindeer boxers that Em had bought me last year.

“I couldn’t look more of an arse, could I?” I said, hoarsely. I knew what graffiti joy this would bring Em, if she ever heard about it. “Can I start the day again?”

He was shaking his head, slowly. “Don’t see how. But who cares?” He was still smiling, and his eyes were brighter than before. Was that only because of the absence of carbon monoxide fumes down here? “Come and eat, we’ll sort your tent out later. You can share mine tonight, no problem.” He reached out a hand and touched my bare shoulder, as if consoling me. “Besides,” he said, “you look pretty good to me.” His cheeks were flushed--I’d assumed that was from the cooking.

I sat beside him on the blanket and helped serve up the sausage and beans. It smelled a hell of a sight better than it looked. Tasted good, too.

It didn’t feel so bad, sitting around outside in my underwear. Max was dressed just as sparingly, and he looked great. His chest was tanned like his face and arms, and he was just muscular enough for my liking. We looked at each other, looking at each other; then we smiled at ourselves, and relaxed. The sun was still pale, and the air was crisp, but neither of us seemed to feel the cold. He kept serving me more food, his hand brushing against mine. I laughed about my disaster and he laughed about some of his own. Time passed, comfortably enough.

He’d said I looked pretty good, I remembered. My stomach knotted with excitement.

And he said I could share his tent. Didn’t he?

Maybe I didn’t want to start this day again, after all.


*


Fresh air is really tiring, you know? I never realised how much. A stroll over the hills, a pub lunch and a game of one-on-one football, and I was in bed by nine--well, in Max’s bed. Well, sleeping bag, actually. They have that design nowadays, you can zip two of them together and make a double: it’s very efficient.

Listen to me, the field and trek salesman.

The noises were still odd--or the absence of them. No traffic or voices, just the crows calling the evening in; sheep bleating in a distant field; the rustle of unfamiliar night animals under the trees. We’d had a cold supper by the tent, watching each other, just like earlier: just as coyly. He said he hoped I was having a good time: I nodded back. We were both nervous that way, when you both want to do it, but neither wants to look like they’re desperate. He made some comment about Town/Country Mice and I laughed and then he curled a hand behind my neck and pulled me against him for a kiss. A long, wet and greedy kiss. Supper had been rushed, after that. Desperate wasn’t the half of it.

And it wasn’t so bad, inside the sleeping bag. I could imagine I was at home with the central heating humming in the background and the Chinese takeaway three doors away. After a while, I didn’t even imagine that. Max was strong, the muscles living up to their promise. Dirty talk was exciting in his soft West Country burr. His grin--the delicious one--felt even better when his mouth was wrapped devotedly around my dick.

“Damn good thing there’s no-one else camping in this field,” I murmured. We were clasped together post-coitally, the taste of his sweat still on my tongue, salty and tantalising.

He yawned: I was secretly proud of having worn him out. “Damn good,” he agreed, sleepily. “Made sure of that. I know the farmer who rents it out.”

Made sure of that?

“And I’m almost glad my tent collapsed,” I said. “It got me in here with you.” I laughed, awkwardly. “I still feel stupid about that.”

“No need,” he whispered in my ear. “I made sure of that, too.”

“Are you saying it was your fault, my tent falling down?” I was startled. His hand crawled around my waist and his lips were damp against my cheek: but he was confessing to setting me up, wasn’t he? What a nerve! “What the hell did you do?”

“Just accelerated things,” he said, softly. “Just got tired of fixing your hard drive and never getting more than a smile.”

I swallowed, suddenly nervous. “You didn’t read any… graffiti about me, did you?”

He laughed. “No.” His cock was hardening against my thigh: maybe he wasn’t as worn out as I’d thought. “Your friend Em said you didn’t do the camping thing,” he murmured. He shifted carefully, nudging his knee between my thighs. It was the best kind of distraction. “Is this so bad?”

His skin was damp and warm against mine: my hands tightened possessively in his hair. “No,” I murmured back. “Not so bad at all.” The distraction certainly worked for me. I rolled over in the sleeping bag, gasping and laughing and gripping him tightly. Maybe I’d be the first one to get worn out. Camping suddenly seemed the most attractive thing on my agenda.

Guess other things can be invigorating, too!