GLB Publishers San Francisco
---------------------
FIRST EDITION
Copyright © 2001 by Richard Dann
All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.
Published in the United States by GLB Publishers
P.O. Box 78212, San Francisco, CA 94107 USA
Cover by GLB Publishers
Cover whip adapted from photo courtesy of Mr. S, San Francisco.
Photo by Richard Hunter
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 1-879194-80-5
Library of Congress Control Number:
2001093408
A GLB Publishers e-Book Division Novel
2001
----------------
At a place that does not exist
In a time there never was
This did not happen
--------------------
Blue Friday
He was not especially big for a college football player. He didn't have to
be. He was the university's golden boy, its latest Heisman candidate, the
best quarterback in its lustrous history of athletic greatness. That, and
his present extraordinary situation--his sweat-drenched 185 pounds of
tight-muscled, lean virility on public display, brilliantly illuminated by
the blaze of a single overhead floodlight--held the small crowd of invited
spectators in a rapt silence. Sitting there in the darkened bleachers of
the small gym normally used by the boxing club, they waited expectantly,
their eyes riveted on the figure of the hard-used young athlete, manacled
and bound and alone in a circle of light, down on all fours on an elevated
platform placed in the center of the ring; he was completely naked--except
that his neck was encircled by a thick dog collar. That had gone on after
they stripped him, and now, nearing the end of this long punishment session,
they had added handcuffs and a blindfold. His white flesh glistened against
the black leather of these accoutrements. The stark contrast heightened his
debased, intense masculinity, seemed to mark him as being ritually worthy
of suffering the pain and humiliation of this drama, come, finally, to its
stunning last act.
They had thrashed him soundly, as they said they would,
thirty-six cuts of increasing intensity, counted out in a searing antiphonal
for two hundred hard, mocking voices responding en masse to his choked-out
numbers. The last acutely stinging dozen had been administered, in measured
intervals, with a martinet soaked in his own piss and then brine-hardened,
because custom demanded it--except for the last six: these had been agony
without letup, delivered too fast to count, full force, to finish him off
smartly. And there had been many more, there had been uncounted penalty lashes,
for he had rebelled.
Now, nearly two hours later, his taut sculpted buttocks
were still burning, and sharply welted. The cleft these punished buttocks
were supposed to shelter and protect had been denuded: because for this ritual
to fulfill itself, to exorcize demons and appease dark gods, a man had to
be violated--the right man: an unequivocally male ass plundered, as his had
been. Its smooth inner curves were wet with the residue of semen touched
with blood that was only the overflow, the outward sign of the violent
penetrations he had had to endure. These incursions, as promised, had indeed
concentrated his attention on his sexuality, concentrated it so powerfully
in his loins that he had lost count of the number of times, of the particular
teammates, one after another, and together, who had been so eager to ram
him long and deep with their hard prods. They had taken him many ways. The
power of repeated, forced ejaculations ("Every ounce," they said, "every
drop fucked out of you") had left him drained and sore now that the floodtide
of sensual afterglow that had engulfed him was receding.
And deprived as he was of seeing--how long had he been
tied there? How many minutes had his aching body been free of probing hands
and hard dicks?--in this silent black isolation he suddenly became aware
of the odors of his own body, of his maleness, an awareness that was of a
purity he had not experienced since he was thirteen, jacking off with his
brother after one of their rough-and-tumbles, wild shooting contests culminating
in the wonder of convulsive explosions over each other's nakedness: he stank
of the pungent mingling of acrid sweat and congealing splotches of his own
semen that coated him from swelling pecs to ridged belly; and just as suddenly,
now that he could not see them, only sense them, acutely conscious of there
being spectators to his degradation. It overwhelmed him. There had to be
more to come. In his loneliness, this state of anomie (though he could not
have known this term, or understood the devastation it signified, without
experiencing it--that surely was why He had been Chosen): in this profound
and radical desolation, near defeat, his head drooped and he sank back on
his haunches, the only movement his bindings allowed him.
He had been fastened so that his viewers could see his
muscular body in full profile. Straps loosely secured his manacled wrists
to two rings set in the covering mat; his knees were tightly secured in two,
more widely spaced rings so placed to maintain a constant tension in his
groin and keep his wide-spread thighs open and vulnerable, inviting violation
in grotesque parody: a bare, featherless forked animal in heat.
"He's rested enough," a voice rasped out of the darkness.
"Strap him."
A cool impersonal hand (whose hand? They were all--or
had been--buddies) touched his smarting buttocks. "Easy, stud," a new voice
breathed in his ear. "It's your balls we want this time, not your ass. Raise
it high and lower your head to the mat."
That hand reached through his legs from behind: the heel
of its hard palm pressured his wet, well-pillaged anus, to remind him it
was still there--and theirs--to command; and knowing fingertips delicately
traced the sensitive skin of his inner thighs, cupped the heavy sac, ran
a tantalizing fingernail down the damp undershaft. "I think you're still
alive, tiger," the voice murmured. "Let's find out." A studded strap was
pulled around the base of his cock and he felt his swollen balls drawn forward
and up and the strap snapped firmly. His gut tightened and his head rose--and
then, to his surprise, life and sensation began to return and his empty cock
began to thicken and fill.
"Kill that and cap him," the outside voice commanded.
"This is one hard-on he's going to earn."
The obliging hand jerked down on his distended testicles
and, heedless of the outcry, slid the long length of the softening organ
and with difficulty forced the foreskin up over the galled, engorged head--and
smacked it: the only half-deflated shaft swung heavily back and forth two
or three times, and hung there, plainly visible to the unslaked eyes of his
watchers, curving down out of his loins like an unsheathed pony cock.
"Now get out. The rest of the show is mine."
A large figure stepped into the circle of light, stripped
but for cutoff jersey, boots, and a black jockstrap. He stood silent for
a moment over the kneeling body; then nudged the shoulders with his knees
and, grasping him by the dog collar, pulled him up and forced him back again
on his haunches. Very deliberately he slapped him sharply across the face,
twice.
"Shut it!" he barked. "You'll have something to howl
about soon enough."
A big oversize hand under the chin raised the stricken
face. "Head up, like a man! Now hear me, cocksucker: you think you've been
fucked every way but Sunday? Not quite. You get to crack those big nuts one
more time. Guess you've noticed where we've put you--with your tail hanging
over the edge? You're bright, and I'll let you figure out why. But," he said
with a mocking chuckle, "I will take your blindfold off for a minute. It's
my turn to ride your red-hot ass, and I want you to see what's going to fill
it."
A booted foot reached out to scratch lightly down the
trembling belly, then across the constricted, waiting genitals.
"Feeling itchy, I see. You're getting hard again, boy!
Looks like you're starting to like it rough. 'Fraid we've neglected the rest
of you tonight, and that's a damn shame. So I'm going to find something for
your mouth to do while I plow your ass."
He removed the blindfold and his hand dropped to cup
the fat bulge in his jock.
"I come slow, kid," he drawled. "You're going to remember
this last half-hour of our little entertainment for the rest of your life."
-----------------
Part One
Forming Thunderclouds
1
The Right Stuff
William Rawson Budd strode thoughtfully through the late-morning Indian summer
sunlight. He was headed for the Men's Gymnasium, and if his stride was less
bouncy than usual, even at half-speed he still moved with the loose, sprung
energy of a supremely graceful young male animal. The Sports Illustrated
account of his first, now legendary, game had reported that he seemed incapable
of an awkward move. It was the same reporter, an overheated female with literary
pretensions, who, the following week, tagged him with the nickname he had
come to hate: "Great Western's Bad Billy Budd--on the field, magnetic freshman
quarterback is cynosure of all eyes." And off the field. For him, a trip
across campus was a Royal Progress.
His dazzling début had brought him national attention;
two years of brilliant victories that followed had made him famous: first
freshman to win the Heisman, the Newsweek cover story, the Tonight Show
appearances (the calendar and centerfold offers he had spurned--No way!--and
Tiger Beat had courted him in vain). He had grown accustomed to being the
target of admiring and curious glances of passing students and faculty--even
dressed as he was this morning, in the usual grunge jocks preferred on weekends.
Except that on him, his total lack of self-consciousness and the absence
of swagger turned fashionable shabbiness into some sort of definitive statement.
He was a natural--born to make that statement: faded practice jersey cut
off above the waist that the least movement stretched tight over rippling
pectorals; old sweat pants, worn low on slim hips, whose oversize bagginess
tried to conceal, but in failing to do so only emphasized all the more, an
outrageous bulge of mounded virility; and the inevitable, mandated gap
between--three or four inches of hard tanned belly, its etched muscles softened
and humanized by a centered, symmetrical column of fine dark-blond hairs
densely rising that, nightly, aroused tactile longings in the fantasies of
his overt admirers, and in hidden watchers, triggered dark and forbidden
wet dreams.
He walked alone this morning, without his usual praetorian
guard of running backs and wide receivers. Preoccupied as he was--his dark
grey eyes were masked in thought--he was unaware of the libidinous turmoil
he left in his wake.
He had reason to be uneasy. He was on his way to a meeting
with the coaching staff, and his ass was on the block. For the first time
in his career as quarterback of what sports columnists were proclaiming the
"dream team of the century" (and referred to in private as "Budd's Bastards"),
he was being called on the carpet--and on Sunday morning, for Christ sake!
He wondered how bad it would be. How in hell could he explain the situation?
He didn't understand it himself. Why had he come unglued? His on-camera
obscenities snarled at those asshole reporters in the bloodletting that
followed--oh yeah, caught and blacked out by the network, but he had looked
like a damn fool. That fucking cunt!
Maybe he wouldn't explain? Just keep his mouth shut.
Play dumb and take his lumps.
To arrive at the office of Great Western's Director of
Athletics was to relive selected moments of the university's history of athletic
glory. The antechamber to the Director's Office was a long gallery, larger
than most college chapels, that bore the title "Court of Honor," carved in
stone, as was appropriate to its late Collegiate Gothic architecture. From
its walls hung portrait-sized enlarged photographs, richly framed, all captioned
and titled, of the university's heroes, mostly from the gridiron, all in
strict chronological order.
There existed, of course, a group of malcontents--students
mostly from the East and younger faculty--who found the idea of a jock Court
of Honor profoundly embarrassing, even for a large private institution more
interested in its clients' wealth than their intellectual qualifications--and
who mockingly derided the gallery itself as the Representative Example of
Midwestern gaucherie. But these detractors didn't count for much in the scheme
of things: at Great Western the Life of the Mind dwelt not in marble courts
but skulked in subterranean vaults, and its adherents had learned to keep
their sentiments to themselves. Some few years back, a pixilated assistant
professor of English, specializing in the Pre-Raphaelites and imported, at
great expense, from Oxford via Yale to raise the tone of the department,
remarked toward the end of an excessively cheery President's Reception that
the Court of Honor lacked only comic relief to be perfect of its kind-- perhaps
the addition of flaming torches? A wall-sized mural in the style of Howard
Pyle--Arthur buggering Lancelot over the Round Table? He was not awarded
tenure.
The quarterback was of course a believer. He paused before
one of the most recently elevated icons. "Winged Victory" it was popularly
called: a flying figure breezing past two enemy defenders to cross the goal
line to victory--and fame: raunchy, rowdy, randy Lansing Budd. His adored
and adoring older brother. Nearly five years his senior, yet he had never
treated him like a kid. NFL Rookie of the Year. Premier running back in the
league. Nonchalant star of an ongoing series of television commercials for
Undergear briefs that small-town stations refused to run. A shoo-in for the
Pro Bowl again. His brother smiled affectionately. "Nice going, Lance."
He paused before one more exhibit. The photograph was
famous--so famous that the figures in it were not identified by name because
they didn't have to be--and despite the passage of thirty years and the fading
sepia tones, it still exerted its magic: two young men posed before an unlikely
palm tree, their leather helmets held by the chin straps down at their sides,
the other arm casually thrown around the other's shoulders. The quaintness
of their skimpy, nondescript uniforms, alien as thirties-style Buck Rogers
space suits, and the hick haircuts--these were simply overpowered by a sense
that the photographer had captured a primal moment of great charm.
The resonant images projected a feeling of deep mutual
trust, an undimmed aura of oaths having been sworn, of being "blood brothers
against the wind," as an important folk-poet has put it--what the Old Testament
called a solemn compact made between young men because each loved the other
as dearly as himself. The modern clinical label would be "Tight male bonding,
All-American style--vanishing."
The identifying label posted beside the picture read
simply "Co-captains of GW's first Rose Bowl championship team." An unwritten
subliminal text murmured, "David and Jonathan." His father, on the right,
his head partly turned toward the other figure, looking incredibly young
and fresh-faced, with a laid-back triumphant grin suffusing his regular features,
but undercut by a slight, wryly-irreverent wrinkling around the nostrils.
His larger companion, on the left: a big-boned youth with patrician good
looks, saved from being conventionally handsome by the raw power of his frame
and deep-set penetrating eyes. Unsmiling, he was staring boldly into the
lens, and even then the gaze was shrewd and appraising. Rawson Collingwood.
His father's college roommate and lifetime best friend. "Uncle Col," to the
young quarterback when he was a boy. His godfather. Chaired Professor of
Civil Engineering. Rhodes Scholar. KCB. Younger brother of the university's
president. And Director of Athletics.
His namesake squared his shoulders, knocked resolutely
on the massive oak door, and went in.
It was a beautiful room, spacious and high-ceilinged,
all warm walnut paneling and soft lighting, a favorite place familiar to
him from childhood. Yet he stopped cold, surprised--in fact, almost unnerved.
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