Email address: pplesko@hotmail.com
Series/Sequel: Part 4 of the “Rumors” Series
Pairings: Brian/OMC
Category: Angst, Drama
Rating: NC-17
Date: June 27, 2003
Summary: Spring Break, a “partnership,” and the re-awakening of feelings.
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Unsafe sex
Author’s Note: The choices become clearer now...caring versus uncaring...unbridled passion versus self-restraint...danger versus safety...reason versus passion. Both poles of the magnet attract.
On Friday, I packed some clothes in a duffel bag and headed for Altoona. The folks back home hardly knew it was Spring Break, so I didn't even bother to tell them where I was going. I could always say that someone invited me to go home with them at the last minute,...but, chances were, no one would even ask.
I parked my car at the loading platform behind Rumors, even though the parking lot out front was still empty. I banged on the front door until Troy answered. He was getting the place ready to open, but stopped to give me a bear-hug and to muss my hair. "God, it seems like a long time between weekends," he said with the familiar big grin. "I hope you're ready to work...because I've got the plans all set and the materials ordered. You've probably never worked this hard in your whole life." We climbed the stairs to the Quarters. "Just dump your shit here," he said, indicating the corner of the bedroom. "Grab some food from the fridge...then come back downstairs and give me a hand. The thundering herd will be here in two hours."
I carried the cases of beer and liquor, mopped the john, and swept the theater. My favorite job was filling the condom dispensers...three of them...because I kept fingering them and imagining where they'd be in just a few hours. Some guys brought their own, if they had a favorite brand or needed a special size...but most of them just used the "house" variety. I slipped a few into my pocket. I knew Troy wouldn't mind. I had almost a week's-worth of jizz stored-up (except for an early-morning jackoff after a particularly erotic dream), so I planned to fill about half-a-dozen that night.
When I opened the door at 9:00, the eager ones were there, as usual. The place started to fill at 10:00...and the backroom was humming by 11:00. When I put on the collar and caught Troy's eye watching me. I alternated working and playing...some heavy-duty hand-action in the theater that gave my "partner" more pleasure than it gave me...and a quick feel-up in the hallway that was starting to get interesting when we were joined by three unattractive guys. The rest of the time, I stayed behind the bar re-filling beer glasses while Troy did the more complicated drink mixing.
"I'll give you ten dollars to take off that tee-shirt," one guy offered.
"The customer is always right," I said, slipping it over my head. He slapped a ten on the bar.
"How much for the pants?"
"Can't do that," I replied. "It'd distract Troy too much. He'd want to stir drinks with it." Everyone laughed and Troy nodded from the other end of the bar.
"Save it for the backroom," he said. Troy slipped a videotape into the player and the screen lit with the title "Nightstalker." "Watch this," he murmured in my ear. "Here's what we're gonna build on the third floor. You'll love it."
The video was about a 28-year-old leather guy who frequented bars to pick up tricks...until one night, after he had fucked a particularly nice-looking guy in the backseat of a parked car, another guy, who had been watching, handed him a card with an invitation to visit a particular private club. He does, of course,...and the place is a dark maze of rooms and passageways where all types of sexual "acrobatics" are practiced... glory-holes, slings, dildo-work, every combination of 3 or 4 guys...very intense. I guess I forgot what I was doing, because I was mesmerized by what was on the screen.
A hand clamped onto my shoulder at a particularly intense moment made me jump. "See anything you like?" Hammer was leaning over the bar.
"That guy prowls like a panther," I said. "Can you imagine meeting him in a dark alley?"
"Can you?" he countered.
I laughed and made light of it...but the images of danger and the unknown made my cock hard.
"Come downstairs later. I brought a couple of guys I want you to meet," he said, dropping a tablet of Speed on the bar. I put it in my pocket. I needed to help at the bar for a little while before I went downstairs, because I knew I wouldn't be coming back up for awhile. He turned and motioned to two guys who stood by the door...both in leather...they looked like brothers. They followed him into the arcade.
........................
Much later in the evening I found them downstairs working-over a guy I'd seen in the bar earlier leaning defiantly seductive against the wall. The boots were too new and the jeans were too tight; the red muscle shirt said "Lifequard." The two "brothers" were holding his back against the wall. His hands were behind his back, probably cuffed. The pants and boots were gone already... and any underwear he might have been wearing was gone too. Only the torn remnants of the shirt hung around his neck and right shoulder. Hammer had the guy's cock and balls in his fist. All four of them were tweaked beyond coherence. "Here, take this," Hammer ordered as he handed me another unidentified pill.
"Don't need any," I replied, taking his other hand and putting it on the stretched denim of my groin. He squeezed the bulge approvingly.
"I've got the perfect treat for this baby," he said giving me another squeeze and slipping his fingers down under the lower bulge of my confined balls. "Strip," he said, "and get on the table." I ripped open my fly and it popped out in all its glory. Hammer smiled and gave it a stroke while duplicating the movement on the other guy's shaft. The guy's eyes were focused on my cock as he licked his lips. "We're gonna share this one," Hammer continued.
As I lay on the table, hurriedly applying a condom to my stretched phallus, the "brothers" gripped hands behind the guy's back and bend down to clasp behind his knees with the others. They lifted him gingerly and carried him to the table. Hammer, in turn, grabbed my ankles and positioned me with my ass at the end of the platform with my legs dangling in the air. They lowered the guy onto my upward-thrusting shaft while I gripped the edges of the table for support. He struggled momentarily as my tip spread his cheeks, but he wanted it...and his weight settled around me quickly. They had lubed him with something because it slipped right into him until his weight rested on my pelvis. His cock leapt as my shaft hit bottom. I reached to grip it as it swayed over my belly, then jacked him slowly. His abs relaxed as he became accustomed to my size. The two guys who were supporting him in their arms began to lift him slowly and let him sink back down onto me...like using my cock as an up-thrusting dildo. The sensation was incredible. He tightened on me as his body was lifted...then tightened even more as I began to penetrate him again, until he couldn't resist the gravitational pull, and he sank rapidly onto me again.
Hammer gripped one of my knees with his hand as he stepped between my spread legs. I rested the other on his hip, bending my knee behind him and pulling him closer. He pressed his cock downward into my ass-crack as he stepped forward; I lifted my knees to improve the angle. I felt the latex against my inner thigh before it spread me wide, inching closer to my sphincter. "Hold on, Babe," he muttered as he released the base of his shaft and slid both forearms under my knees. "We're goin' for a ride."
I watched my cock sliding into the guy's ass as Hammer forced his cock into me. There was that inevitable moment when I thought I couldn't possibly take it...that he would rip me...but at the instant I inhaled to beg him to stop, the sphincter molded itself around his mushroom head and let the shaft slip into me. I'm sure my ass lifted off the table because the guy who was riding it stiffened uncomfortably for a moment. I could feel my shaft expanding inside him from the pressure exerted by Hammer. The rhythm began...almost like the parts of a large slow-motion machine...a reciprocating pump...a two cylinder engine. I remember hearing the shouts of arousal...the moans of encouragement; some of them were mine. Hammers chest sliding against the guy's back and bound wrists...his thighs spreading mine and pressing my knees upward along the guy's sides...my hands on the guy's shoulders pressing him downward...the two supporters with hard biceps setting the rhythm. We were like interlocking parts of a complex organism.
But, before I shot my load, Hammer had other plans. "Push him forward," he muttered to the two guys as he used his own hands on the guy's shoulders to force him downward onto my chest. His legs spread even wider as they grazed the outside of my raised thighs. My cock bent at the base following the new angle of his ass. Hammer gripped his shaft again as he pulled out of me slowly. I could feel my ass gaping open as the air hit my interior. And then I realized what he planned to do.
The guy whom I was fucking lay on my chest now, his face drenched in sweat and his eyes staring somewhere behind me. But he snapped back to reality when Hammer began to force his cock into the already-stretched asshole. He looked at me as if to say "You must be joking...this is impossible," but the look was quickly replaced by a furrowed brow, squinty eyes, and clenched teeth as Hammer pressed deeper into him.
"I can't..." he began, but then inhaled sharply and moaned against my cheek. "Oooooh...it hurts," he moaned. "Can't..."
I could feel the extreme tightness around my shaft which was suddenly unable to move in the guy's rectum. And I could feel Hammer's shaft, as thick as mine, pressing against my bulging urethra and expressing some of my pre-cum into the tip of the condom.
"Good thing you lubed him well," Hammer growled to the brothers. "He's as tight as a knot-hole."
"Give it to him," one of them moaned as they released their grip on the guy and stepped back to jack their own cocks.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and whispered "You can do it,...relax and don't think about it...it'll be over soon." He nodded, then winced again as I felt Hammer make a particularly brutal thrust. I clamped him between my biceps to keep the force from dragging him off my shaft.
And then Hammer began his fucking...in and out, slowly but forcibly...sliding along my shaft with his...grunting as his pelvis hit the guy's ass. His hands gripped my wrists as I clasped my hands between the guy's shoulder blades. There was no escape now; he was trapped between two bodies, surrounded by strong arms, and penetrated by two fuck-shafts.
Hammer's speed increased. "Cum with me," he ordered over the guy's shoulder. I was close, but still needed a little more. So I rocked my pelvis, joining Hammer's thrusts as we pounded the guy's ass. He started to yell then, not telling us to stop but to fuck him harder...and we did.
The climax was a flash of light as the guy's forehead hit my chin. My body convulsed, in reflex, then again as the load propelled itself in ripples down my urethra. Hammer came then...I could feel it pulsing against my shaft in a different rhythm to my own expulsions. The guy arched his back as his load shot all over my chest...and the two brothers joined-in with a shower of cum over all three of us.
I think I passed-out...or at least I lost the memory. The first thing I remembered was his body being lifted off my now-soft cock which flopped onto my belly like a dead animal. He was still trembling...and I caught a glimpse of his hole spasming red and raw as his legs dragged by mine. Hammer was stripping off the rubber...then he reached for mine.
"God damn, boy," he exclaimed. "They don't make these things big enough for one of your loads." I smiled with satisfaction, unable to say anything yet. I rolled off the table and stood with difficulty, massaging my raw hole with two fingers and trying to imagine how two cocks must feel.
Hammer stood there, naked and pumped...his chest rising and falling like the victorious gladiator. I knew then what I admired about him...his detachment from the guys he fucked, his total control of the situation, his ability to use guys for his own pleasure, and that ever-present element of danger that I found so attractive. The crowd parted when he walked through the bar. The boys were drawn to him like moths to a torch. He apologized to no one for being the way he was. He oozed confidence from every pore.
"I think we showed him a thing...or two," he said with a grin as he turned and disappeared.
............................
"Having fun, are we?" Troy said as I stood at the end of the bar.
"What a way to start a vacation," I said. I feel as if I've just run a marathon."
"Get some sleep," he continued. "You're gonna need it for what I have planned for you tomorrow. Tomorrow the building materials get delivered...and we start to work."
I climbed the stairs to the Quarters after checking to see that no one noticed. The lamp on the nightstand was lighted. There was a towel laid-out for me at the foot of the bed...and the lube was on my pillow. The guy thought of everything.
..............................
I awoke to the feeling of something stroking the cleft of my ass softly...warm fingers tracing the microscopic hairs of the globes of my up-turned ass...then the brush of soft hair as his tongue licked my crack. "Wake up, Bud. This ass gets a workout today."
My swelling cock was getting uncomfortable, so I rolled onto my side; his lips traced over my hip. He was already dressed for work...cut-off jeans with frayed edges...a white athletic undershirt...steel-toed boots...and a pencil behind his ear. "No rest for the wicked...and I hear you were really wicked last night," he said, looking up with that special grin. "I plan to get a little of that myself...later...after we get some work done...and before it gets too fucking hot up on the third floor. Roll that ass out of bed. Your breakfast's ready."
I did as he told me...a little more reluctantly when I realized it was only 7:30 and I'd only had five hours of sleep.
"We'll take a nap...later," he continued, giving my ass a pat. "Lord knows I need my beauty-sleep." He chuckled.
........................
As I was finishing my toast I could hear the delivery truck roaring as it backed slowly to the loading platform. I grabbed my shorts and shoes and headed downstairs.
The truck was loaded with two-by-fours and sheets of half-inch plywood...more than I had ever seen in one place outside a lumberyard. I knew we had out work cut out for us. But the cool morning air felt good against my bare skin...and my muscles were ready for a workout. I could never show Troy I was fatigued; the young guy always has to have more stamina.
As the motor idled, then shuddered to silence, the truck's driver's-door opened...and the driver came swinging down to plant his feet on the gravel. When he turned around, I realized it was one of the "brothers" from last night. He looked as groggy as I was. Perhaps he wouldn't remember me or recognize me with clothes on. But he looked at me with that slow expression of recognition...and there was an icy silence before Troy stepped up to thank him and to send him into the bar for some free beer (so early in the morning?) while we unloaded the truck.
"You don't have a fork lift?" I said, although the answer was obvious. He hooked two up-turned fingers under my pec and lifted.
"Just two hands and a strong back...plus yours," he said, stepping onto the truck's lowered tailgate.
We worked steadily for two hours. The sweat was pouring off of me; my shorts were soaked...my hair was plastered to my forehead...my balls were hanging low, almost peeking out below the shorts' pant-legs.
I had learned quickly how to hoist a four-by-eight sheet of plywood over my head and to swing it into place on the growing pile. I had learned that gloves were necessary to prevent the inevitable splinters. I had even learned to judge the quality of a two-by-four stud and to reject those with too much curvature.
Troy worked just as hard as I did. I watched his smooth muscles knotting and relaxing under taut skin like two boys wrestling under a blanket. His blond hair turned dark as it became soaked with sweat...his skin reddened as the sun rose over the roofline and each load of wood took us from the blazing heat of the glaring sun to the cool recesses of the warehouse freight elevator. We made eye contact as we passed...one laden and one standing tall...for a man in his 30s, his body was still muscular and attractive. I kept imagining us in-bed together...then trying to get the image out of my head as my cock began to swell in the confinement of the shorts.
"Hard work makes a man appreciate his leisure," Troy said...and I found it exhilarating...a test of my body and my stamina...and a feeling of accomplishment when the entire load had been moved by just the two of us.
Troy opened the door to the bar and stuck his head in. "We're done," he called. "...at least with this load. This should keep us busy for a few days...and we'll see you again on Wednesday, probably."
The guy had apparently had a few beers because he just nodded sullenly as he lifted his ass into the truck. The motor roared and engulfed us in a cloud of blue exhaust. We both started coughing and laughing simultaneously.
"No time for a break," he said. "It's already getting hot and I want to get started upstairs. We'll just work with the stuff on the elevator," he explained. "No need to go through that whole process again." The elevator groaned into activity, almost as slowly as the driver had gone back to work. We climbed to the third floor.
It was an empty space as large as the entire footprint of the building. Iron girders spanned the width supported by brick columns. The brick walls were surprisingly clean; the floor of thick, wide boards was swept clean and marked with a complicated set of spray-painted marks upon which, I assumed, we would build the walls of the maze.
He showed me how to hold a hammer...how to position the nail for a "toe-nail"...how to use the heavy circular-saw...how to tap a stud into place without splitting it. He knew all kinds of construction stuff...and he taught it to me.
When it got too hot to work, even with the large windows open, he suggested that we stop. It was 1:30 and the heat was radiating from the corrugated metal roof like a broiler. He put his sweaty arm over my equally sweaty shoulder and said "We've done enough...time to eat and rest. Let's grill some polish sausages, take a shower, and then I'll bet your sore shoulder muscles could use a good back-rub." He was right. I wasn't accustomed to working with my arms over my head for long stretches of time, so my trapezius was screaming for relief. The sweat trickled down my sides in dusty streaks and my forearms were covered with caked sawdust. He bent to pick up some tools while I turned to look once more at what we'd accomplished. "Last one into the shower has to cook lunch!" He bolted for the stairs...as I realized that he had tied a loop of the saw's cord around my ankle while I was admiring our handiwork. He heard me trip as he thundered down the stairs.
...........................
There's something about two gay guys eating roasted, curving, skin-splitting polish sausages that looks instantly obscene. Even squirting the mustard onto its phallus-like tip seems like a sex-act. And then the jokes about "spreading your buns" and "pricking the skin" simply added to our silliness.
The shower was surprisingly quick and efficient. We soaped ourselves and each other in a detached, methodical manner, then rinsed quickly and toweled-dry. The shower was just the prelude; his hands on my body were just the promise of what he intended.
I climbed onto the bed from the foot and stretched out in prone position with arms and legs spread wide to take-up the entire bed. He could not lie beside me without giving me that back-rub! I'd make sure of that!
I felt his hand first on the back of my ankle…then the bulge of my calf…and then the expanse of my thigh. The mattress sagged as he knelt between my spread legs. He paused a moment…to oil his hands, I learned later…and then he rested the curves of his palms on the globes of my ass. As he leaned forward, his hands and his weight moved from the small of my back to my shoulders. I felt his semi-rigid cock brush my ass. He was naked, too….not wearing the towel he usually twisted around his waist after a shower. His face descended to my shoulder where he planted a soft kiss.
"As beautiful as you are," he whispered, "I think I love you this way best...face-down with that gorgeous, broad back facing me. I know all the muscles by-name. I could get lost in its soft undulations and muscular contours."
"You sound like a poet," I said softly, relishing his soothing touch.
"Well, I know it's not the 'butch' thing to do," he said, "...but I do write poetry sometimes...only when the urge forces me to. I couldn't write a poem on-demand for anything...but sometimes, when I'm alone, which is most of the time, I can't stop myself from picking up a piece of paper and writing a few lines." He paused. "But you're the only one who knows that," he added quickly.
"Poet, carpenter, bar-tender, masseur...what talent DOESN'T this man have?" I asked the pillow.
His hands began to massage my shoulders...softly, at-first, and then more firmly...kneading each muscle like bread-dough...pressing and lifting...stretching and re-shaping...it was the most pleasant feeling I'd ever experienced...and I include "sex" as second on the list.
"Where did you ever learn to DO this?" I moaned in pleasure.
"In the Navy...hospital corpsman, mostly as a PT's assistant. I got my hands on more of those cute Navy boys...and they never knew how much I enjoyed it, too." He laughed, reminiscing. In the end, it was 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell...just give me one more of those backrubs, corpsman.'"
"You weren't gay then?" I said, somewhat naively.
"Oh, I've known I was gay since I was ten," he said. "The Navy was just my façade."
His hands continued to wander over my body as we talked...stroking here...prodding there...using his thumbs to dig into crevices and his fingers to separate sore muscles. I felt as if he were disassembling me, piece-by-piece. When he was finished, the bed would be empty and pieces of Brian would be strewn about the room like child's-toys.
He fucked me then...so gently that it appeared to be a continuation of the back-rub... using his whole body instead of his hands....his pecs against my shoulders, his chin on the side of my neck, his knees spreading me wide, his abs massaging my lower back. His cock was more like a massage tool than an invader. It seemed so apparently natural to massage my insides as well as my outsides...a simple continuation of what had happened earlier.
"I'm negative," he whispered. "And I haven't been with anyone for over 3 years. If you want, I'll put on a..."
"That's OK, I murmured. "I want to feel you...all of you. I trust you."
He kissed the corner of my eye. "I would never do anything to hurt you," he said.
His body undulated slowly against my back. My cock pressed rhythmically into the sheet below, digging its own furrow. I tried to clutch the upper rim of the mattress, but couldn't quite make a fist. The rocking motion of the bed reminded me of lying in the sun, naked, on the swim-raft in the small pond on John's farm...the raft rocked gently by the small waves and rotated slowly in the warm breeze. Troy's hands on my body felt like the caresses of the sunlight pressing me against the weathered wood. The cry of the loon. The fish, visible through the cracks between the boards, gliding effortlessly through the shadow. The drops of water falling from my hair onto the dry, cracking wood. John sketching my nakedness from the shore....
I was so relaxed, it must have felt as if he were fucking a dead body, except for my occasional moans and sighs. Even when he came inside me, I lay there, floating in-the-moment. He wasn't even breathing hard when he settled back down onto me. His weight was comforting, not oppressive. I felt his cock slowly go soft in my body. There had been no pain, no domination, no athletics...just the use of his body as an instrument of healing. The memory of it lasted for days.
"Now it's your turn," he said, finally rolling off of me. He started to roll me over...and I helped in that loose, rag-doll sort of way as he positioned me....legs spread, arms flung back above my head, my cheek resting against my shoulder. "Just lie back and close your eyes. Imagine that my hands are the hands of any man you've ever desired...I'll do the rest." Suddenly, I couldn't remember the faces of all the guys I'd watched in the gym or that I'd examined from a distance on campus. All I could remember was Troy's smile.
He began at that smooth spot where my thigh met my hip, kissing and licking softly...and carefully avoiding my cock which was already perking-up. He moved up and down my torso from shoulders to thighs, tongue-touching and tasting, nibbling here and there as if he were a stallion randomly grazing in a grassy meadow. His touch was light; his lips were soft. Every nerve ending begged to be discovered.
Then I felt his hand surround me gently...not a desperate grab or a clutching squeeze...but more of a loving fondle. He stroked me slowly as he continued to traverse my body with his lips, never letting any location feel the pleasure too long.
"You are so beautiful..." he began. I inhaled to respond. "No,...don't," he continued. "Just lie there in the dream. I'll keep you there as long as I can...until I get greedy. Just relax and enjoy. I love this." His mouth returned to my nipple, catching the few soft hairs in tender lips...then laving the aureole with soft, circular licks. My nipple hardened to a firm nub.
His hand never gripped tightly...the oily palm slipped over the loose skin of my shaft like old satin. The tip began to tingle. Something began to melt deep in my interior. Up and down effortlessly...all of my attention focused on those few square inches of skin...then jerked-off by some teasing lick elsewhere...then yanked back to the inexorable, unrelenting sensation on my shaft. A madness of pleasure...inflicted upon the willing.
"Now," he said, whispering into my ear. "Now. Give it up...let it go. I want to watch it come out of that gorgeous cock of yours."
No convulsions. No gut-wrenching expulsion. It was almost like urinating...I could feel the flow start somewhere in the recesses of my abdomen...its warmth spread upward and outward until I felt it surging onto my belly...thick and lush and warm, like severing a vein...I moaned as his hand continued to stroke me even to the point of softness.
"Beautiful," he murmured. "Absolutely beautiful." I heard him taste his fingers, then he settled down beside me. I still couldn't move. I felt paralyzed ...but relaxed, not stiff...unable to lift a finger or to turn my head. His lips found the softness of my pit and kissed along my triceps, then jumped the gap to my lips for a concluding kiss. He settled beside me into silence. I opened my eyes and realized that the bed was a-glow with the redness of a setting sun...or was it the glow of something else? I lifted my head slightly with great effort. My stretched torso looked as if it were carved from pink marble and adorned with pearls. My head sank back onto the pillow and my eyes rolled back slowly as the lids closed for sleep.
...........................
"What-in-Hell is the matter with you?"
I sat bolt upright. The memory flashed through my consciousness of being four years old and wetting the bed. My father had lifted me out of bed by the shirt-front of my pajamas...the warm urine dripped across the mattress.
"What? What did I do?" I asked hurriedly.
"Nothing. Sorry, just relax. It was a rhetorical question. I didn't know you were sleeping." Troy rolled onto his side to face me. "In fact, you haven't done anything. That's just it." He brushed the hair out of my eyes and stroked my furrowed brow. "I look for the flaws in guys...reasons not to become attached to them. Sometimes it's immediate...sometimes it takes longer." He lay back and looked at the ceiling. "If you look for the flaws, you can always find them. Some guys are obsessed with their looks...always needing assurance that they're still attractive...high-maintenance. Some guys are filled with self-hatred and need to have their opinions bolstered. Some guys are so dumb they can't muster a creative thought or construct a complex sentence." He sighed. "But you...you're different. You don't have any faults I can identify. You're smart, quick-witted, self-assured, relaxed, friendly...I'm beginning to sound like I'm reciting the Boy Scout Laws here...but I can't find any reason to push you away. You fill my Quarters like an old friend, returned. You fill my life like mist fills the forest after dusk. You round-out my existence just like you finish my sentences." He stretched his arms above his head. "I keep waiting for the warning buzzers to go off...but they don't."
"Why do you do that?" I asked, rolling toward him. "Why do you try to find reasons to dislike someone? That doesn't sound like the friendly guy I know."
"I should tell you about Owen," he said, shaking his head. "You haven't asked... explicitly... but it explains a lot about me."
"We don't open the front door for another hour," I said, looking at my watch. "Tell me." I settled back with my hands behind my neck.
"I told you I was in the Navy," he began. "...a medical corpsman, sometimes on a ship and sometimes in a Navy hospital in San Diego. I was a troubled teen, and the Navy seemed to be the right place for me...even though I was gay. I suppressed it and acted straight...and no one knew. One night I met Owen. He'd been beaten-up pretty bad and he ended up in a bed in my ward. We struck-up a conversation...and it continued for several days as he recuperated. And then, when he was released, we saw each other occasionally shipboard and spent some time together on shore-leave...no sex or anything, just buddies. So, eight months after I got out of the Navy, who shows up here in Altoona but Owen...he knocked on the front door and gave me a big smile. 'It took me this long to find you,' he said. He was gay...that's why he'd been beaten-up in the first place...caught giving a guy a blow-job in the head...and he sensed that I was, too, even though we never discussed it....and he had had no place to go after he got out of the service,...so he came looking for me. We fucked the first night,...and he settled-in....sat at the same place at the bar that you chose...helped me run the place. It was perfect."
"I guess it wasn't as perfect as you thought?" I conjectured.
"I told you about Hammer...and how Nicky ran away. But I didn't finish the story." Troy paused and reached into the side-table drawer to retrieve a joint and some matches. He lit it, took a drag, and passed it to me. "Hammer blamed me for Nicky's departure...I told you that...but I didn't tell you what he did to retaliate. He went after Owen...first plying him with attention and drugs...and later with hard stuff...and over a period of a few months, he'd totally changed his personality. There wasn't much of the original Owen left. First he turned Owen against me...then he used him...and then he threw him away. He left...disillusioned and nursing a drug habit...and I couldn't find him. I looked for a few months and then gave up."
"Why do you let Hammer into Rumors?" I asked. "You own the place. Can't you 'reserve the right to withhold service from our patrons'...or whatever-the-Hell that sign says behind the bar?"
"I could, I suppose....but Hammer and his buddies would retaliate somehow. It's just easier to leave things alone. I serve the drinks. They pay their tab. Everyone gets along."
"Couldn't you show Owen what was happening to him? Talk to him? Was he willing to give up everything?" I knew the answer before I asked the question.
"I told him that I had no strings attached to him...nothing more than my feelings for him...feelings I'd shared with him over and over. If that wasn't enough, there was nothing I could do. He had to want to stay...."
Silence descended. I could have asked more...he could have volunteered more.
"You've shown me one thing," he said, finally. "...that I'm not beyond loving someone again. I thought I'd lost the ability...or, more likely, I'd buried it so deep it could never re-surface again."
"So, you haven't connected with anyone since Owen?" I said. "Surrounded by gay men looking for sex...or more...and you've refrained?"
"Behind the bar is another world," he said. "It's an old psychological technique. If someone loves chocolate, you stuff 'em so full of it, they get sick of it...and then the addiction is broken. It's like the old joke...why do I hit myself on the head with a hammer?...because it feels so good when I stop. When my Daddy caught me smoking my first cigarette, he made me smoke a whole pack. I've never smoked since. I surround myself with gay-sex until I'm immune to it. It's how I cope. Self-denial and a huge amount of self-control."
"You loved him?" A dumb question...I regretted asking it when the words left my lips.
"Well, I never use that word to describe other peoples' feelings...but I think it's a pretty good description of how I felt. And he loved me, too, I think...at least at the beginning."
"Love is a bitch," I volunteered.
"People love you easily. I can tell. It just happens so easily and so often that you're not even aware of it...sorta like a fish is unaware of the water he swims in...or like we're unaware of the ocean of air we breathe. For some guys, it may not be love...just attraction. Love needs some pay-back in return...and you probably don't give them much."
The marijuana was having its effect. I thought about telling him my whole history... about Lee... and John... but it was getting close to 9:00. Time to open the front door...and to resume "the hunt"...although I began to ask myself what I was hunting for. In just a few weeks, I had gone from being a loner... a gay boy in a straight world... to being one of the predators in a jungle of my own kind. The reassurance that there were others like me gave me strength... and courage... and curiosity. The freedom to be myself...to be my gay-self... was uplifting and emancipating. If I could be myself... here...then I could be myself anywhere. And the straight world could fucking deal-with-it.
I rolled closer to him just as he sat up to get dressed. He swatted my ass. "Get dressed," he said. "Your public awaits you." He stepped into his jeans and closed the fly. "Business has picked-up since you arrived. I'm not saying there's any connection...but I've noticed it."
.....................
In the bar, the action had begun. The "leaners" were in their usual spots with looks of disinterest or disdain. The "lookers" were prowling their usual paths.
"Go ahead," Troy said as I slipped behind the bar to fill my pilsner glass. "You can put the collar on. I don't mind. As long as it doesn't mean any more to you than an adornment. And it looks fucking hot, actually." I reached under the bar and found it in its usual place. After stripping off the shirt, I put it on.
"Get that boy to strip down to nuthin'," said one of the patrons, "and you'd have more business than you could handle." They all laughed as I pretended to mount the bar for a strip-tease.
"There's no place to stick the money," said one guy who knew I didn't wear underwear under the jeans.
"I think you could find a place to stick it," I said suggestively.
Hammer came in around 11:30...alone. He looked around, checking out the patrons, then moved to the bar. He touched the guy sitting next to me on the shoulder and he immediately relinquished his seat. Hammer settled into it and leaned toward me. His arm crossed over my shoulder.
"Tonight you come to my place," he said in a voice loud enough for Troy to hear.
I started to reply...not knowing exactly what to say. I wasn't afraid of him...and I found him attractive in an intriguing sort of way. But before I could say anything he continued, shutting off the discussion.
"When I'm finished here," he added, swiveling on the seat and heading for the back room.
Troy looked away, knowing that I would be going with Hammer.