He was wearing one-piece leathers, and now he reached up to the neck, where there was a sort of lateral strap across the zip, fastened with a popper. He unsnapped it, and flicked it open with a finger. I watched, not really taking it in, as he slowly pulled the zip down all the way, down as far as it would go.
If Ray was six foot five, then a zip running from his neck down to a point between his legs must have been about three feet long. A zip a yard long. A zip more than half as tall as I am. It made a sort of whirring noise. A purring noise. Ray had a trick to keep zips from sticking, though of course I didn’t know that then. Every week he would rub the stump of a candle along the zips of all his leathers. Oil doesn’t work so well on a zip. It has to be wax. Oil dries out but wax remains.
The friction of the slide as it united or separated the chains of teeth would liquefy the wax, to form a lubricating layer. Ray’s zips always purred as he pulled them open or closed, maintaining an absolutely even pressure.
When the slide of Ray’s zip passed his collarbone, I thought he would stop there and pull something out to show me — I didn’t know what: a crucifix, a locket with a picture of his wife. When the zip was approaching his navel, gliding through its film of invisible wax, I could only think he was reaching for a knife, and that I would stay there humbly crouching while he carved me up. As the panels of leather were freed to slide apart, the gliding zip slowly uncovered two narrow zones of sweat-dampened fur, one on his breastbone and one below his navel.
I was sweating, too, with fear as well as the warmth of the day, but my sweat was no more than a waste product. His was a sheen on him, the finishing touch to beauty. A sort of elixir.
Then when his zip reached the end of his track, I had to admit to myself that there was nothing else he could possibly be reaching for but what he brought out, his cock and balls. He reached in and tugged out his balls with the greatest care, arranging them like rare fruit on a bowl, a sculpture in a gallery window. I expect he wanted me to notice the sheer extent of his scrotum, and the plump cushion it provided for a cock that was lazily swollen without troubling itself to stand up just yet. Lolling and waiting, to see if there was something worth its time.
I began to realise that Ray’s one-piece wasn’t quite like the one in the Lewis Leathers catalogue, where the zip stopped discreetly short, instead of going as Ray’s did right to the central seam of the crotch, to make possible just this frank presentation of himself. So one of the first things I learned from Ray was that there are other places to get specialised motorcycle clothes than Lewis Leathers in Great Portland Street, off Oxford Circus.
If I had been more observant I would have noticed something else: that Ray’s one-piece had a double zip, so that it would have been perfectly possible for him to expose his parts by working a zip up from the bottom and not down from the top. This was a design element borrowed from arctic clothing, for the benefit of those who need to take a leak in extreme conditions, uncovering as little flesh as possible to frost and blizzard.
It didn’t occur to me as I cowered hungrily in front of Ray that his unzipping had an element to it of ritual or of theatre. The absence of underwear announced not just experience but experience in the form that intoxicates. Not just experience but practice.
I was frozen in place, as if I really was exposed to a blizzard without the protection of arctic clothing. I couldn’t move. I was very conscious of my own breathing, more dimly aware of the rural rustle nearby and the distant roaring of bikes. I knew now what I was expected to do, and I also knew that I wanted it, but I wasn’t actually able to make a move. I couldn’t do it. Not by myself.
So Ray took pity on me. With one hand he shielded his cock, so as to put his balls on display even more prominently. With the other hand he clicked his fingers and nodded, once. The click of his fingers was muffled and made more subtly authoritative by his gloves.
He was making things easy for me, finding a task that even an absolute beginner like me could hardly mess up. After I’d paid attention to his balls, he flipped his cock forward and clicked his fingers again. That second click of his fingers resounded in a space that was not the space around us. It resounded inside my head. I felt as if he had clicked his fingers in the deepest part of my thinking, producing a brain event like the one that triggers a fit. In people prone to fits.
He was very patient with me. Whenever I choked, he let me recover with his gloved hand resting on my neck, before he pulled me forward again. If I’d seen any pornography at all in my life I might have realised that what was happening could only happen to the people in pornography. But I hadn’t, so it must really be happening.
I gave no thought to the possibility of someone walking in on us in our shaggy glade. Perhaps Ray was equally forgetful, fully taken up with his sensations, biting his lip and so on, trying not to moan, but I don’t flatter myself. Pleasure didn’t make him moan. On special occasions, it’s true, a hoarse kind of shout burst out of him, but that’s not the same thing.
The Ray I came to know would be fully aware of somebody coming near, however engrossed in pleasure he might seem to be. He was quite capable of keeping his eyes closed until a passer-by was too near to have any doubts about what was being done, then opening them, letting those dazzling blue eyes do their work while he drawled, ‘Do you mind? Can’t you see we’re busy?’ Then in a lower tone: some people have no manners.
When he pulled back from me and started to zip himself up, he slipped his thumb behind the head of the zip to make sure of not catching any of the hairs on his groin and chest. There was no hurry in his movements, but then it took a lot to make him hurry. He might have heard somebody coming after all, and been wanting to spare me the embarrassment that bothered him so little. He almost seemed to seek it out, to show how little it meant to him.
I didn’t know what was going on. I wondered if his stopping meant that I had passed some test. Or failed one. I didn’t know if it would be rude to pick stray hairs off my tongue. I hadn’t stood up since I had tripped over Ray in the first place, and though my knees were aching I wasn’t sure that my legs would carry me. I was dazed, half by what I had done and half by what Ray was. I might never have stood up if he hadn’t made it happen in the end, putting his hands under my arms and giving me a boost upwards until my legs remembered their business. I was amazed by how easily he did it. I’ve never been a lightweight. I hadn’t learned about his strength and fitness then — except that they were written all over him — his wrestling and martial arts.
‘I’m Ray,’ he said, resting his hands on my shoulders, and I was just about able to gasp out ‘Colin’. He was so much taller than me that I felt I’d been looking up at the same angle since the moment I’d laid eyes on him, even when I was connected to him by that angry tube of flesh. Even then, while I was trying to give him pleasure, in that tangle of anxious wanting, I was gazing crazily upwards in pubic darkness, wanting to look into his eyes.
I was still shaky, and he was so solidly built that even with his hands resting on my shoulders he seemed to be pushing me down to the ground one more time. My knees buckled again, and we went through a ridiculous repetition of the previous manoeuvre — his hands moving instantly to my armpits to give support. Up, down. It was no longer my responsibility.