| Copulating lab rabbits! mused Sammy O'Rourke. A swatch of sailors strutted
past in quick staccato. Caps set at jaunty angles above short haircuts, muscular
arms, tight lean bodies, spit-shined shoes. This is insane, Sammy thought
feverishly, fighting to keep up in the chill, pre-holiday air. He ran at
best a slim chance of scoring. Too much else on their minds, like ‘fish.'
Plenty of that floating around. He kept running into little pockets of cheap
perfume. These emanated from mini-skirted streetwalkers who paced, shivering,
outside go-go joints that had sprung up seemingly not only all over San Diego,
but the known world.
"What would my students think of me cruising lower Broadway," he cogitated,
"when I should be home grading lab reports and planning tomorrow's frog
dissections?"
He dodged into a porn mill. One wall was devoted to nudity, another to
flagellation. Grim amazons in black panties and bras scourged one another
in studiedly erotic positions as ardently as men wage war. Sadomasochism
between women seemed especially strange. Somehow it ran counter to the orderly
flow of Nature, defied Darwin's survival of the fittest, thumbed its nose
at Mom and apple pie. Not only anti-Nature, the forbidden world of S&M
was antisocial and anti-God, which made it so perversely attractive.
He pushed past an old man pouring over a cheap sex novel. On the cover, a
roomful of naked women hovered over a similarly lustful lecher. Was there
a common link between the porno racks and the biology books arranged in neat
rows in his basement apartment? He found himself in a cubbyhole designed
for adult browsing. Acre of Flesh, Jezebel by Night, Homo Hill. Now he was
getting somewhere.
A presence of sea, sand, and air materialized close by—a rosy-cheeked
sailor pouring over a picture of a farmhand, buck-naked save for a holster
and cowboy hat. Sammy imagined biceps bulging against the force of uncoiling
rope, sea wind lashing close-cropped hair. Only the bale of hay was
missing—a prop from his boyhood on a desert farm. The down-thrust cap
cast anonymity across the absorbed face. Self-consciously, the sailor sucked
in the corners of his mouth, squared his cap, stuffed the beefcake porn in
a paper bag, and furtively exited. With a purchase like that, the swabbie
had to be at least bisexual. After a moment of hellish indecision, Sammy
set out in hot pursuit.
The sailor reappeared fifty feet away at a penny arcade. He'd stopped at
a shooting booth to watch the revolving ducks. Without warning he continued
at a fast clip toward the downtown plaza. "Be the vigilante or lose him,"
Sammy prodded himself. The sailor alone not the lust object of this inner
god gone mad: he together with his covert purchase.
A neon sign bathed the sailor a pulsing instant in unearthly blue light.
He vanished through an open door. Sammy peered up a scuffed stairway: the
Greyhound restrooms. Was the sailor after sex in the stalls? Sammy sprinted
to the top landing. The exertion was greeted by a line of derelicts in dangling
suspenders and stained undershirts at the washbasins: a row of grizzled mugs
stared back. The unsavory lineup evoked ragged mendicants performing holy
rites. He scanned the walls, searched every stall. The sailor was nowhere.
Had time somehow telescoped, erased him from existence? There was simply
no other explanation. No choice but to abandon the project.
Egged on by the berserk inward god, Sammy descended to the sidewalk and hustled
toward the plaza. The spacious public square glittered with tinsel wreaths
and Christmas lights. The central fountain, lighted water jets splashing
rhythmically, was ringed with people coaxing pigeons down from the central
dome. Rather than toss in a good-luck penny, Sammy dodged into an underground
stairway. Scribbled with graffiti, it descended, with the dubious help of
a crayon-drawn arrow, down two flights to the ‘catacombs.'
He made a show of washing up. A familiar form lurked in the last stall. He'd
seen this tearoom hanger-on before. Hungry eyes impaled him as moist, tremulous
lips (they might belong to a Vogue model) lured any and all into the shadowy
cubicle where the high fashion martyr-saint would perform his, or her, anonymous
service, divining nothing of the thoughts, whether arrogant or contemptuous,
fleeting through the minds of the towering colossi, and already too jaded
to care.
It was Christopher, better known as Crystal. They'd spent a late afternoon
and early evening together once. The bizarre date started at Looking Glass
Exports and ended at a noisy drive-in restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway.
After a short but eye-opening conversation—whetted by curiosity over
what made a fem tick—Sammy had dropped him off near India Street, never
expecting to see him again.
Now according to the grapevine, Crystal was having an affair with a reclusive
but well-known jetsetter named Bernard Gudinot. The impeccably dressed gentleman
in his upper thirties had appeared on the society page of the Union-Tribune.
He'd been photographed beside a Rolls Royce parked in front of a Victorian
mansion. Among his impressive achievements were commissioning Venetian stained
glass in cathedrals and owning a fleet of vintage European racing cars. Why
someone of his stature would chase after a tearoom queen was, as the Catholic
Church was fond of saying, "one of the mysteries."
Sammy gave his fly an ambiguous stroke. To avoid a repeat encounter, he plotted
a quick exit. At the same time, he required assurance he hadn't fallen lower
than the angels (an ingrained figure of speech from his Catholic past). He
lingered in the exit. Yes, Crystal was watching and remembered: all the
self-confirmation he needed. Substantiation of the wine and host. Yet, intimate
contact with a tearoom habitué was unthinkable. No one had a right
to debase himself like that. Let the shameless hussy wait for the next pair
of legs to crouch in crude contempt.
Back in the plaza, Sammy had an indelible picture of an androgynous, snaky
haired shepherd—his earthly martyrdom haloed in a miasma of spray-on
cologne—transmigrated for some terrible sin in a past life to a public
urinal. Pax Saint Crystal. Leave the martyr-saint to his blatant,
self-destructive devices.
But rather than relieved by the narrow escape, Sammy was even more agitated.
The ubiquitous sailors were maddeningly inaccessible. All that remained in
his monk-like rounds was the YMCA. His students would have to accept a cursory
quick-scan of the lab reports. The infamous Y: last resort of the down-and-out,
or an extremely horny but closeted biology teacher.
At the top landing, a swinging door opened onto a long hall. The salmon-pink
walls with diarrheic brown trim seemed sordid on purpose. The threadbare
carpet had a foul smell from frequent flooding. The urinals were invariably
plugged with cigarette butts and the john bowls with eel-like filaments of
toilet paper that would result in yet another rancid deluge.
The last door on the right was partly open. Sammy slowed his pace, slipped
past, and stole a furtive glance. A drop-dead handsome man, about thirty,
with short, black yet slightly curly hair and a mustache lay sprawled on
the cot. His head and shoulders were propped against the wall to command
a view into the hall. He had on a black vest, studded armband, and crotch-tight
Levi's. A compelling collage formed in Sammy's mind. A real leatherman, not
the sort to wear bikini briefs and lounge on the sundeck filing his nails.
He strode as casually as possible to the end of the hall. He came face-to-face
with a blank wall. Dark penetrating eyes burned in his brain, compelled him
to do their bidding. He stole back to the open door.
The leatherman stared in fierce, lurid invitation. A hint of a grin played
at one corner of his mouth. A motorcycle jacket hung over an efficiency plastic
chair. Engineer boots were evenly aligned at the foot of the cot. Something
about him suggested the Orient, but any feature taken singly was clearly
Caucasian. Sammy felt deeply stirred, as though something inevitable but
not necessarily pleasant were about to happen. Mustering a reckless attitude,
he leaned against the doorjamb.
"Excuse me. Have you the time?"
The leatherman glanced at his watch. "Quarter after eight. Pacific Standard
Time." An arrogant grin only enhanced his steely good looks. Hard cruising
usually didn't start until later, around eleven.
"Thanks. May I come in?" Sammy asked with uncustomary boldness.
"You don't have to be so formal. Haul your butt in here." The mysterious
occupant made no effort to defer to his guest. "Aren't you going to shut
the door? We can't have the whole world looking in." He slapped a space beside
him on the cot.
Sammy got the door, then climbed aboard. The mustached leatherman had a patch
of chest hair and a firm, rippled stomach. A dark mane ran from the navel
to the pubic area, just visible above unbuttoned Levi's. Sammy's pant leg
brushed rough denim. An electric current passed between them. Neither made
a move.
"I'm Ivan."
The name explained the Oriental-Tartar look! "Pleased to meet you. I'm Samuel.
Sammy, if you prefer. My mother secretly wanted a priest," he added
conversationally.
Ivan didn't bother to shake hands. Instead, he gripped Sammy by the calf
so tightly it smarted. "The world has enough priests. Take down those pants."
"Right now?"
"You heard me. On the double."
~ON THE DOUBLE: the Army years flew to mind. The Army had taught Sammy to
adapt to uncomfortable, often humiliating situations. He stood beside the
cot, unlaced his cordovan oxfords, and laid his tweed coat on the chair seat
below the hanging motorcycle jacket. His Ivy League shirt he slung on the
crackling, popping radiator that jutted like prehistoric vertebrae below
the open jaws of an uncurtained window. Nervously he pulled down his pants.
These he draped across the small desk provided for the meager needs of the
down-and-out.
In just jockey shorts, he remounted the cot. Ivan had also shed his pants
in a compact pile against the wall. Sammy took it as a subtle compliment.
He'd heard that leather tops preferred to remain dressed while their slaves
or ‘boys' cowered in naked vulnerability like inmates in a concentration
camp. Bare legs brushed from hips to knee, reactivating the electric current.
Heavy breathing.
"Peel off those shorts."
Hesitantly Sammy removed his last deference to Puritanism. Ivan did likewise;
he displayed an instant hard-on. A sword like stiffness, rather than outsized
endowment, seemed to be his chief calling card. Clamping Sammy's neck, he
forced him onto the throbbing head and held him tightly in place. Unable
to breathe, Sammy finally had to pull free. Being used solely for someone
else's pleasure elicited a secret revolt. He was used to being in charge
of a classroom. This was more than he'd bargained for!
The cold Russian eyes glinted with sadistic cunning. The buddy-buddy phase
was over. Something, Sammy thought hastily, was radically wrong. Yet, something
deep inside wouldn't let him bolt for the door. The Army had taught him to
stand his ground, just as teacher training had instilled a dogged sense of
follow-through. Ivan lurched onto his knees and pinched Sammy's bare nipples.
He applied mounting pressure.
"That hurts! Please stop."
"I love it," Ivan said in a transport of cruel delight.
Sammy nearly broke loose, but a buried, unknown, and stubborn self held him
there taking it. Just when he could take no more, the torture
ceased—accompanied by a slap on the face. He saw wildly darting stars.
He held in a surge of anger. Where was his self-respect? Why didn't he fight
back? Was it punishment for shunting aside the student lab reports?
"You'll do what I tell you," Ivan said in a low, conspiratorial voice.
His taste for violence shocked to the same degree it intrigued. Sammy never
thought such kinkiness went on behind the walls of a Christian institution.
Compared to this, hustling sailors was child's play.
"Er, okay."
"What kind of piss poor answer is that?"
"Yessir!"
"That's more like it." Stimulated by the rough repartee, Ivan jumped off
the creaking cot and crouched beside his victim like a gladiator making ready.
"Up on hands and knees."
Despite dire misgivings, Sammy squirmed into the required position. Although
semi out of the closet, he was still a virgin in regard to being penetrated.
"No one ever did that before. Please go easy."
"Shut up. We do things my way."
A rushing sound: Ivan donning the leather jacket. He set a police cap at
a stern angle over his brow, then pulled on the boots, and buckled the straps.
Cap, jacket, and boots: all leather. He took a gob from a strategically placed
jar of Vaseline. He lubed himself, then his victim, perched in an impossible
position, half falling off the cot. Sammy received a sharp slap on the behind.
Head jammed against the mattress with blood rushing to his temples, he beheld
a blurred, upside-down gladiator poised for attack. With savage abruptness,
Ivan entered the hitherto inviolate vestibule. Sammy yelped with pain. Rape
might be the ultimate thrill for the likes of Crystal, but not a staid biology
teacher!
"Relax," Ivan commanded. "Quit fighting it."
"I'm trying. Oh please, stop."
His attacker ignored the plea and drove home. Sammy imagined himself, maimed
and bleeding, rushed by ambulance to Mercy Hospital. To survive the ordeal,
he must somehow deny pain, either by blotting it from consciousness or
transforming it into pleasure. Just then, pain ebbed and hovered on the brink
of a satisfaction he'd never felt before. But the top man, fed up with all
the mamby-pamby fooling around, withdrew, then thrust again twice as hard.
Obviously, he got his kicks causing the underdog the maximum discomfort and
pain. Thighs held immobile for ramming, Sammy had no choice but to take the
torture the iron-willed top ordained to dish out.
"I'm going to shoot."
At last. Sammy braced for the definitive event. It was like childbirth: the
mother sustained by blind faith the torment will eventually end.
"Oh, oh," Ivan chanted with a rhythmic quiver in his voice.
Sammy nearly passed out before he realized the pain had ebbed, his assaulter's
violence was expended, the threat gone. For a protracted moment Ivan remained
in place like a stonily-amazed Olympic god. Then the moment of retreat, almost
apology: he withdrew. An embarrassing slooping sound. He wiped himself on
a YMCA towel like a warrior returned from battle.
Sammy, for his part, couldn't just lie there like one of the raped Sabine
woman. He was, after all, a male with needs of his own. Brute force was the
only way another male could truly conquer him. The routed male ego instinctively
regroups into a more advantageous position. Suppressed resentment, combined
with pressure in the groin, demanded that he, too, find release.
"I gotta come."
Ivan shrugged: indulging a lowly ‘m' wasn't his concern. The ultimate
humiliation, Sammy thought—next to kneeling in a public toilet—was
the arrogant indifference of the ‘S.' Had he blundered into a Gestapo-like
all-male world that boasted its own rules, that refused to bow to the polite
conventions of a matriarchal society, that might even condone a Captain
Bligh-style flogging? Actual crucifixion or dismemberment? Too awful to think
about.
He lay back to facilitate auto-gratification. To his surprise, rather than
ignore him, Ivan mounted the cot and crudely straddled his face. The hem
of the leather jacket, redolent of sweat and gasoline, brushed Sammy's forehead
while his downy, manly buttocks crushed against his jaw. It was a struggle
to breathe. The sense of degradation to which he reluctantly yielded was
so overwhelming he soon detonated like the plaza fountain. Liberated puritan
or not, he was shocked and more than a little ashamed.
Ivan dismounted the ottoman of his face and threw a towel. Sammy rubbed it
around his stomach, gave his navel a circumspect pat. He imagined the moist
sperm smell, like the beds of incubating mushrooms in the basement apartment,
drifting down the halls to the central office, scandalizing the director.
Just then the scene lost its sinister aspect, the storm clouds of outrage
dispersed. He watched in fascination as the ruthless leatherman pulled off
the boots in order to pull on Levi's and then stamped the boots back on and
rebuckled the straps, a ritual doubtless repeated often.
For a ‘bottom' to gain status or control, Sammy fought for comprehension,
the scene had to be good for the Top. Maxim Number Two went something as
follows: Don't let the sacrifice of primal maleness go unrewarded. Heads-I-win,
tails-you-lose didn't get it; it must be tit for tat. Sudden doubt unraveled
the rebellious score-keeping. Maybe he was too inexperienced and squeamish
to satisfy a hard-core leatherman.
"You're wild," Ivan spoke up.
"Really? You're the wild one!" Sammy swallowed a dry cottony taste of sexual
depletion. "I must say, for my first time you were downright ferocious."
Ivan chuckled at that. A bottom's complaint wasn't something to be taken
seriously.
Sammy tugged on pants, buttoned up, and retrieved the tweed coat. "Is that
what you usually do?"
"I like freaky things."
"I'd call it, well, significant."
"A blast in the ass, buddy." Hardly the sensitive rejoinder Sammy was fishing
for.
"Maybe I liked it without realizing it."
"You'll get hooked," Ivan predicted.
"I hardly think so. At least not on the pain aspect."
"It depends on how accomplished you want to be."
"I can't say that was ever a primary goal."
The aloof Tartar began to lose patience. "Don't underestimate yourself."
To Sammy's surprise and gratification, he intended to accompany his new
‘slave' down to the street. They filed into the hall like conspirators
in a pagan rite. As Ivan shut the door, the room looked unchanged by the
brief violence it had covertly contained, ready for the next anonymous, or
infamous, flop in the hay. What if an eavesdropper had stationed himself
outside the door? They'd made all the salacious sounds of leather sex. Maybe
kink was no big deal at the Y. The regular residents were too jaded to be
shocked; they filed past yawning in boredom. If there was an eavesdropper,
he'd quickly vanished.
As they passed the public restroom, Sammy noticed a street bum, suspenders
dangling below a protruding paunch, "bishopricking" like the derelict holy
men at the Greyhound sinks. He smiled inwardly at the ‘Young' in YMCA.
He was lucky to have met such a handsome heathen as Ivan, even if all he
had to show for it was bruised pride and a smarting rear end.
The metal railing in the stairwell echoed as they slapped it with their hands.
Five floors below they exited through the main lobby. Several lanky Blacks
were trickily dribbling a basketball. The master-slave duo scuffled—at
the same time, seemed to effortlessly levitate—down broad cement steps
to the bustling holiday sidewalk. Somewhere inside, ragtime piano was being
pounded out while a tap dance class that sounded like a herd of runaway
rhinoceroses attempted to keep time.
"My VW's around the corner," Sammy offered.
The glitter of the central plaza, blocked by tall buildings, didn't reach
the curb where they stood, like mounted opalescent beetles in Sammy's insect
collection, between two worlds of light: the wholesome (if they but knew!)
commotion of the Y and the neon of the ever-cruisy plaza.
The VW was wedged between a passenger car and a delivery truck. "There's
old faithful ragtop. Care to join me for a few minutes?"
"I didn't come down here for my health," Ivan replied curtly. Not for a moment
did he relax a top man's penchant for and need to exert iron control. No
telling when camaraderie would change to dominance-submission, polite
conversation revert to S&M.
They boarded the cramped front seat from opposite sides and for a strained
moment stared at the metallic dashboard. Sammy hoped the newly met ‘master'
wouldn't notice the rip in the upholstery or worn-out floor mats. The bug
had been with him through college, student teaching, and the Army, the better
part of a decade. He wasn't used to being apologetic about it.
"I like what we did," Ivan pompously broke the silence. In profile, he resembled
a porcelain bust of Lenin. Either he'd just shaved, all except the mustache,
or it was the Tartar dimension showing through. "I expect a repeat session."
So the novice bottom made an impression after all! The first step in gaining,
Sammy surmised, if not influence or control, a measure of equality. But never
again would he let himself be so ruthlessly assaulted—despite which
he was surprised to hear himself answer, "So would I. Very much." Why soft-pedal
his case after being slapped, tortured, raped, and on top of that, made to
feel guilty, when he should be sticking up for his rights? "Although I can't
take it that rough again."
Ivan frowned at the badly parked delivery truck as though it deserved to
be impounded to Siberia. "You don't know your own limits. I need a slave.
Take me up on it, your life will never be the same."
Slavery even for kicks or as a weekend diversion was a bit much, even repellent,
for a respected high school teacher and faculty member. "I doubt I'd make
a very good one. I'm too independent."
"You have all the makings of an excellent slave," Ivan contradicted.
The cottony taste reinvaded Sammy's throat. "Maybe so—sir."
Ivan took a matchbook from a jacket pocket, tore off the cover, scrawled
a miniature map, and then folded it into a wad. "I'm in the city for tonight
only." He passed over the mystery directions. "I have a place in the country.
The next session will take place there."
Sammy was too taken aback to ask where and what it would consist of. "You
live alone?"
"For the most part. A dyke stays there part-time." He chuckled, then added
with undisguised rancor, "My half brother, Bernie, and his old lady live
in a mansion beyond an avocado grove, but we don't speak."
Sammy's grip on the steering wheel tightened. "You don't mean the Bernard
Gudinot? I was just thinking of him. Talk about a small world!" Something
warned Sammy not to mention the connection with Crystal, the tea room queen.
"He's the one."
"I heard he had a brother (the words 'bastard' and ‘illegitimate' reared
their unspeakable heads). I wouldn't have guessed that was you. Then you're
also a Gudinot."
"Not bad, for a slave."
"I sensed a blue blood quality about you in spite of, pardon the expression,
the biker packaging. So, not just Russian, but French—"
"Part French and part Tartar-mongrel. My mother was a Russian-Chinese
prostitute." Despite the earthy admission, the fierce Russian pride didn't
once leave his voice or slacken his erect bearing.
"I'm Irish-English without any Continental genes I know of thrown in."
Apparently Ivan cared little about a slave's nationality or credentials.
"My father was pure-blood French, a Special Forces Colonel attached to the
U.S. Marine Corps. He commanded the Indo-China war that turned into the present
mess in Vietnam. The old lady humped half the officers, enlisted men, too,
while claiming loyalty to the old man. To avoid a worse mess, he had her
shipped to the States with a promise of marriage, which never happened. That's
how I'm here."
It seemed Sammy was talking to an international adventurer, not a quick trick
at the Y! "Where did you grow up? If I may say so, you seem completely American
in your motorcycle outfit."
"Right here in San Diego. When the old man died, I was placed in a Catholic
boys' school, then a military academy." As though he'd already divulged too
much to a mere slave, he thrust open the door and planted a stoic boot on
the curb. "I'm going up to shower. See you a week from tonight. Seven p.m.
sharp. In the meantime, think over my offer."
"What about her—the dyke?"
"She won't be there."
"I confess to certain misgivings. As a visible public employee, I have to
walk a tightrope between professional and private lives. But if I know myself,
I'll probably do what you say."
"No maybes. Learn to make fast decisions. See you Tuesday night."
"Okay. I mean, yes sir."
Ivan climbed out, rocking the VW on its springs. Without a backward glance,
he marched militarily around a corner of the brick charnel house of
well-intentioned Christianity. And he was gone. Above the bluish-orange penumbra
of tall buildings his corrosive gaze lingered like the Cheshire cat.
Sammy sat spellbound. Something momentous had taken place, something that
could change his life. Would it jeopardize his career? Place him in personal
danger? But hadn't success thus far meant the sacrifice of any real sex or
romantic life? At times, even the eager-to-learn faces of his brightest students,
those destined to become doctors or scientists, weren't enough. At the end
of the school day, he went home alone to a dark and bleak basement apartment.
No wonder Broadway drew him like a moth to a light! It was cold and late.
Thanks to a stranger, his desire for sailors had abated to near zero. Before
falling into bed, he must make a token stab at paper grading. And roughly
lay out tomorrow's lab events. But of what awaited him a week away at an
unknown country destination he had no clearer an intimation than a feather
from a circling hawk fluttering weightlessly, and rather ominously, to earth.
|
