We had become good friends by the time we arrived at his base camp in a culvert on a mountainside. He stoked the campfire which lay dormant under stones and pulled out a fry pan and fried a couple of huge eggs. I dared not ask what they were. Too small for an ostrich egg, I supposed they were from some mutated bird, for if there were plant mutations like those I'd seen, then surely there would be similar changes in the fowl and fauna, too.

As Perry crouched down, one of his silky balls popped out to say hello to my wandering eye. He seemed unaware of the exciting display until he shifted and winced and tucked it in with an embarrassed glance my way. Although not one who generally fancied an older man, it was with titillated interest that I dined on the eggs with a side of biltong, the South African beef jerky I always carried with me for protein snacks.

From tin cups, we drank a pot of boiled coffee clarified with leftover egg shells the way my Irish grandmother used to do on the farmhouse woodstove while she stirred up heavenly puddings of sugared milk and Irish sea moss. I told Perry about her coffee, adding, "She made the best I ever drank, till now."

Throughout the afternoon, we hiked and talked. He pointed out remarkable plants unique to the Mountains of the Moon. He had made it his country, I could tell. He took me to a field of yellow-flowering, three-leafed clovers. I had been to Ireland. In those pre-jet days, most trans-Atlantic airliners refueled at Shannon, and on two occasions I had opted for a layover and trod the Old Sod to which my ancestors had fled from Scotland in the twelfth century A.D., as my historian grandfather had related. So I knew the dazzling green of shamrocks, and, lo, here they grew in this high country similar to nothing on earth but more likened to the moon. Of prodigious size they were, each leaf a hand-span across, and greener than can be imagined against the soft grey of mountain stone.

"My private Ireland," Perry murmured so gently I could scarce hear what he said. "I brought my wife to this place the year after we married in Ulster. She lies here under the shamrocks, right about there." he indicated a slight rise toward a nearby hill. "She was a good Irish woman who loved me more than her life and proved it when she threw herself between me and a great gorilla even bigger than my Jack. He must have been crazed from fever or just bad tempered for all I know, but he came at me with naught but murder in his eye. I dodged away, and as I did, my wife fairly flew into the space I had occupied. He killed her with one blow, and by that time I had reached my gun, but too late I shot him dead."

Perry sank to a squat and picked idly at a huge shamrock by his knee. "A man never knows the violence at rest inside until such a moment as that. If I could have got to the world, I'd have wrung it by the neck, but the world lay out there beyond the Mountains of the Moon, and here was I, as I am today, very much alone."

He sighed as he rose and kicked a stone before he turned to lead me away from the shamrock field. There was such peace between us after the moments when he had bared his soul that I felt as close to him as I ever had to any man. He strode ahead, and I kept his pace, grateful that his back was turned, and as we walked I spoke from my depths the way he had spoken also to me, of my own dead wife, and our dead child, and even of my longings toward the Irish actor, now so far, far away, as I had yearned after others of my sex before him. I spoke of the confusion of not knowing who or what I was. I told him that I, too, lived alone in the world, in the private Ireland of myself, but where no shamrocks grew.

"It can get desolate in here," I said, "like these Mountains of the Moon."

He made no reply. Few words passed between us again until the day wore on and melted nearly into night. We were near his camp when he stopped and knelt at a mountain spring burbling from a crevice in a natural stone wall.

"Damn near forgot it's New Year's Eve," he said. "I've no Irish whiskey to offer, but this is much better." He filled his canteen and then filled mine. "I call this God's champagne. Just enough bubble to tickle the nose." He gave me back my canteen and lifted his in a toast. "I'm happy at last to have a friend to share it with. Happy New Year, Ben."

We touched canteens. Our eyes met. His were so steady that mine faltered. I looked away.

As it does in those latitudes, night simply fell. Kerplunk. No twilight. Sudden dark. We crawled into our sleeping rolls by the light of the fire and said good night.

"Happy New Year," he murmured again, as did I, and soon we were fast asleep, but sometime during the night I awoke. I was not alone in my sleeping bag.

God, I thought in a panic, Giant Jack! But no, it was Perry, snoring gently in my ear. His body felt warm and comforting against the cold. His mustache tickled the nape of my neck. I shifted slightly, unable to avoid backing closer against him.

His penis was hard. He was wearing no shorts.

Notwithstanding the closeness we had enjoyed that afternoon, I trembled from head to toe. I had no idea what to do. I was no virgin, but I was unsure of his intent, if any. Was he asleep? He was not. His hand snaked around my hip and came to rest on my gonads. Young, and without a sexual partner for several weeks, my body responded on cue. My penis grew into his grasp, and I felt his thumb rub over the tip, smearing the pre-cum. His stiff cock slipped between my buttocks, not in penetration, but pressed tightly along the inner length of the cheeks.

Perry got even stiffer at one point. His hand rose to my hip, and clasped it as a sort of brace. After a few quick thrusts in absolute silence, he came in great spurts up my back. I went off seconds later, also quietly. When it was over, he got out of my bed roll without a word and crawled into his own.

By the time I was ready to get on my way astride the Road Angel the next morning, Perry still had not mentioned our lovemaking of the night before, but at the moment I stood beside the scooter preparing to go, he stepped to my side and gave me a bearish hug.

"Happy New Year," he said. "Wish you'd stick around. Y'know, Irishmen are not born to live alone. We need an audience." He chuckled softly, but his eyes bored into me with a deep and serious intent. "Stay with me, Ben," he added. "I think we could work something out."

Still young, still unsure, still foolish enough to think that every opportunity will come again, I shook my head and said goodbye. Revving up the Road Angel, I sped away.

From the vantage point of now, I know that Perry's private Ireland would have been a better choice than many I would make in later years. He offered me the great gift of himself in a land where shamrocks grew and where God provided fine champagne.

The End