working out and pining for Sean so when one day a friend of mine, Conn, told me he was going to New Orleans for a two-week holiday I jumped at the chance to go with him. I figured it would take my mind off of Sean and I had always wanted to visit New Orleans. I had met Conn at the gym. He was a good-looking stocky blond bodybuilder in his thirties. Although he was Irish, he had gone to university in New Orleans for some reason. His ex-boyfriend owned a guesthouse in the French Quarter, so accommodation would be provided, all I had to do was get the airfare together. I missed America, and the thought of traveling to somewhere as exotic as New Orleans filled me with wild excitement. I got on really well with Conn so I knew we would have a good time. We had had bad sex with each other once or twice so I knew there wouldn’t be any weird sexual tension between us. We booked our tickets and caught a plane to the Big Easy.
CHAPTER SIX
I LOVED EVERYTHING ABOUT NEW ORLEANS from the moment we arrived. The French Quarter is a mile square with one main street, Bourbon Street, running down the middle of it. As the taxi drove us to our accommodations on Burgundy Street, I hung out of the window and let my senses be assailed by the sights and sounds of the city “that care forgot.” Conn’s ex-boyfriend was full of southern hospitality and welcomed us warmly. He lived in the heart of the Quarter with his new boyfriend and they made us feel right at home. In the centre of their guesthouse was a swimming pool that none of the other guests seemed to use, so Conn and I would tan for hours in the thick humid air drinking iced tea. Because Conn worked in a bank in London he wanted to spend the two weeks doing nothing but relaxing by the pool. I, on the other hand wanted to explore the French Quarter from one end to the other and sleep with as many Southern rednecks as possible. The French Quarter is built on a grid system a little like Manhattan so it was impossible to get lost, plus the bars were open twenty-three hours a day so there was always some place to go. I would prowl the streets and sit on strangers’ stoops soaking up the decadent atmosphere. I soon learned two things: one was that the legal drinking age in New Orleans was eighteen, so there was an enormous number of young kids running around drunk; secondly there wasn’t even a sniff of a bodybuilder in the Quarter . . . there wasn’t a proper gym either. I complained about this to Conn one evening. He shrugged his shoulders and said to me, “Now you know why I didn’t stay here when I graduated school.” Having resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to meet the bodybuilder of my dreams, I simply enjoyed the good old-fashioned Southern cuisine and going dancing every night at one of the local gay bars, the Bourbon Pub. The two weeks flew by and I realized I wasn’t particularly looking forward to going back to London. My final night in the Big Easy arrived and I took one last walk down Bourbon Street enjoying the wild revelry of the other tourists and marveling how the city seemed to be caught in a time that no longer existed in any other part of the country . . . or world. Heading back to the guesthouse down a small backstreet, I suddenly noticed a pickup truck following me. I have never been the type to assume that I’m going to get mugged so I guessed the driver was looking for some action. I settled down on the step outside my guesthouse and the truck pulled to a stop. The passenger window rolled down and I fell instantly in lust. There sat an incredibly hot man with cropped short hair, deep brown eyes, and wearing a World Gym muscle t-shirt. “What’s the story?” I said very forwardly. I hadn’t had sex in two weeks because of the lack of muscle dick, and I was in no mood to beat around the bush. The guy in the truck looked a little taken aback. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Glenn,” I replied. “I’m Dale . . . do you