I took a quick shower, threw on my cutest underwear (black N2N square cut with a generous pouch), cargo shorts, a white tank top, and high-top sneakers and grabbed a cab to a nondescript building in the meat packing district by Greenwich Vil age. The building had no sign but those-in-the-know knew it as Sexbar. I was twenty minutes late.
I was stil so strung out on Tony-loving that I felt I could have flown there. Which was probably why I was singing “Oh My Man I Love Him So” to myself the whole cab ride down there and why I tipped the driver ten dol ars.
“Hel o!” Freddy cried as I got out of the car. “Tardy much?” He hoisted his bag of flyers and condoms over his shoulder and walked towards me. “You know how many men have missed out on some quality AIDS education while you were off doing who knows what?”
“Sorry,” I said, trying to keep the sil y smile off my face.
“Aw, don’t worry about it.” Freddy waved his hand.
“This place won’t get busy til about midnight anyway.”
“I wore cute underwear.”
“Thattaboy,” Freddy winked and gave me thumbs up.
Then he cocked his head and squinted his eyes.
“Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Let’s go in.”
He put a hand on my chest. “No, wait a minute.”
He looked me up and down quizzical y. “There’s something different. You seem a little strange.”
I tried to walk past him, but Freddy’s arm was solid like a tree trunk.
“What is it?” he said, more to himself than to me.
“It’s nothing. Come on, you said it yourself, we have work to do.”
“Not so fast, Junior.” He brought his face close enough to mine that I could feel his breath on my cheeks. “You look…” he blinked twice. “You look happy!”
I couldn’t hold it in. “I am happy!” I shouted. I grabbed him in a bear hug and, even though he had fifty pounds of muscle on me, I spun him around. I stepped back and pointed to my face. “Look! This is me! Happy!” I gave a little jump.
Freddy laughed. “I take it you got laid?”
“Royal y.”
Tony?
“Final y.”
Freddy smiled with just a touch of sadness in his eyes. “Good for you,” he said. Then, seriously, “I just hope you’re careful.”
Why was everyone tel ing me that?
“So,” he whispered conspiratorial y, “how was it?”
“It was,” I said, “worth waiting for.”
“You haven’t exactly been waiting.” Freddy grinned.
I smiled back and forgave him for not knowing what I myself hadn’t realized until just hours ago: I real y had been.
And now the waiting was over.
By 1:00 in the morning, my ass had been patted about a hundred times, my nipples pinched half that much, and my crotch groped by a handful of especial y stoned or brazen customers of Sexbar.
Which, by the way, was not a bar at al but a series of hal ways with some large carpeted rooms, a few smal er ones with seating, and about fifty smal cubicles with doors that ended two feet above the floor like the doors of a men’s changing room, where two (or three, if they were smal or limber enough) interested parties could retire for what passed for privacy.
There was also a snack room that served soft drinks but no alcohol, which is where Freddy and I stood in our underwear giving out safer-sex materials. Since we were young and cute and scantily clad, it wasn’t hard to get a guy’s attention.
“We’re almost out of goodies,” Freddy said, handing me the last of his bag’s contents. “After this we can get out of here.” An especial y handsome young man in a jockstrap walked by. “Or not.”
I handed them back. “Can you get this? If I don’t go pee right now, I’m going to wet myself.”
“Naw, that wil just get the golden shower lovers rushing over, and you know how they are-they’l never stop buying us sodas.”
“OK,” I said, “I’l be right back.”
Freddy and I had been doing these volunteer nights once a month for almost a year, so I knew my way around. The bathroom was just past the video lounge, through a row of cubbies, and behind the orgy room. I got there quickly, peed voluminously, shook myself for twice as long as I needed to (when you’re just wearing underwear, you have to watch out for spotting), and headed back to the snack room.
A young guy of about my height stood outside the door. He was dead sexy and built like a swimmer, shaved or natural y hairless (it was hard to tel in the dim light), and wearing the exact pair of underwear I had on. “I’ve been waiting for you to take a break,” he said. He winked one periwinkle blue eye and flashed a kil er smirk.
He was delicious, but I was pretty sexed-out.
“Sorry,” I said. “I have to get back to my friend.”
“Aw, come on.” He pointed to a cubicle two feet away. “Why should they have al the fun?”
I turned to see what he was pointing at and, sure enough, whoever was getting it on in there seemed to be having an exceptional y good time. The groans and grunts of the guy with his dress pants pooled around his Prada shoes were twice as loud as those of every other happy bottom in the place. Combined.
“He does seem like he’s having a good time,” I observed.
“I could make you drown him out,” The Swimmer promised.
“Tempting,” I said. “Maybe another time.”
Only a loser lingers over rejection at a sex club, and this guy was no loser. “I’l keep an eye out for you,” he said, walking away.
I looked one more time at the rocking cubby and thought that it was nice that I wasn’t the only one who had a real y good day. Good for you, lucky stranger, although you probably don’t need luck if you can actual y afford this season’s Prada shoes.
Shoes I’d never even seen outside of a magazine except for… oh, no. It couldn’t be.
I got closer to the cubby. Listened harder. Yes, there was a distinctively nasal whine to the moans.
Impossible, I thought. But stil…
I had to know. I knocked on the door. “Hey, you guys sound hot. Got room for a third in there?”
“Go away,” the guy in back shouted.
“I’m real y good,” I answered.
“Not interested.”
“Um, can I just watch?”
“Get the fuck out of here!”
OK, that wasn’t going to work.
I opened the cubby next door and walked in on two other guys just starting to make out. “Sorry!” I said.
I tried the cubicle on the other side. Empty. I went in and checked out the floor. Seeing no obvious puddles or stains, I grimaced, dropped to my knees, and peered under the partition. No good. From this angle I couldn’t see their faces.
The only way to tel who was inside was to look over the partition, which was about two feet over my head. Not a problem. I jumped up, grabbed hold of the wal, and hauled myself up.
I was grateful for al those pul — ups at gym.
Straightening my arms, I was able to suspend myself over the wal and see… the tops of their heads. That didn’t do any good. I held my position for a few minutes, hoping the guy in the Prada shoes would throw his head back in ecstasy, but it never happened.
“Oh, yeah,” he moaned. “Make it hurt, man!”
Bad dialogue aside, I wanted to get this over with.
Not only were my arms getting tired, but the wal wasn’t feeling too secure. I figured my best bet would be to get down and wait outside until they emerged.
Just then, I felt something slipping and the view started to shift. Was I sliding down?
No, it was the wal of the cubby, giving way under my weight.
As it began to lean down towards the couple next door, the metal objected with a terrible loud groaning. That made the guys look up.
“Holy shit,” Prada shoes said, “the place is fal ing in on us!”
Oh great, I thought, now I got his attention.
Then his eyes met mine. “You!”
Yup, I thought, and I know you, too.
Paul Harrington. Al en’s married son.
I had seen the guy he was with earlier that evening. He was actual y pretty hot. Tal, dark hair, nice body. A couple of tattoos and a nipple ring kept his prep school good looks from being too boring.
Paul had good taste.
The door to their cubby flew open and the guys tumbled out, stil attached at the crotch.
I would have laughed if the bolts holding the wal up didn’t suddenly pul out from their supports, bringing the wal ’s slow control ed descent to a sudden loud col apse.
“Gah!” I yel ed as the floor rushed up to greet me.
And then everything went dark.
Twenty minutes later I was sitting in Sexbar’s office with an icepack on my forehead and Freddy at my side. I had only lost consciousness for a moment, by which time Freddy had already run over.
“Somehow, when I heard the crashing and shouting, I knew you’d be in the middle of it,” he offered by way of support.
I explained to the manager that I was making out with a guy in the room when he got a little rough and playful y pushed me against the wal. “After that, I don’t know what happened,” I told him.
“That must have been some push,” the manager said.
“Wel, I like ‘em big,” I said.
The manager, pleased that I wasn’t going to sue them for a hazardous condition, wasn’t interested in pursuing the matter any further. He left me and Freddy to talk, tel ing me to take al the time I needed.
“Let me guess, Mr. I’m-So-In-Love-with-Tony,”
Freddy said, the moment the manager left. “There was no guy who pushed you against the wal, was there? I bet you… climbed up the wal to get a look at the guys in the next cubby!”
I touched my finger to my nose. “Got it in one.”
“Damn,” Freddy sighed, “they must have been hot if you were scaling wal s to see them!”
“It wasn’t like that.” I explained about the shoes, which I recognized from the reading of Al en’s wil.
“I told you he seemed a little light in the loafers,”
Freddy said.
“Actual y, they were Oxfords.”
“You know what I mean. I guess this makes both brothers suspects.”
“Both?” I asked. “Why? We know that Michael hates gay people and his father was gay. It makes sense that he’d want Al en dead. But Paul turns out to be gay himself-wel, at least we know he has sex with men. What’s his motive?”
“Paul has a secret,” Freddy leaned in.
“Sometimes, people with secrets wil do anything to keep them. Maybe daddy found out about him and threatened to tel his wife. Or his brother.”
“Al en wouldn’t do that.”
“No, probably not. Try this: Paul is gay but he hates himself for it. Marries a woman, talks homophobic shit, the whole works. When al he real y wants is to take it up the butt…”
“You make it sound so lovely.”
“Yeah, yeah. So, when he thinks of his father, it makes him mad. He sees in his father al the parts of himself he wishes he could… wait for it… throw over the railing. But, he decides to throw his father over, instead.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Possible.”
“Paul sounds like one of those poor slobs who went to his brother’s seminar,” Freddy observed.
“Only for him, ‘the cure’ didn’t take.”
“It doesn’t take for most of them,” I told him. “It makes them shameful and self-hating, but you can only keep your true nature suppressed for so long.”
“How’s your head?” Freddy pushed back my bangs.
“Not too bad,” I said. “How does it look?”
“A little black and blue, but your hair mostly covers it. Here, let me give it a little kiss.”
Freddy leaned over, rested his hands on my thighs, and put his incredibly hot and soft lips against my forehead. Even though I’d done nothing but have sex al day, I stil got a little turned on remembering how good those lips had once made certain parts of my anatomy feel.
But those days with Freddy were past, and now I was with Tony.
Wasn’t I?
Freddy leaned back. “Better?”
I stood up. No dizziness, no nausea. “I think I’m fine.”
“OK, but why don’t I cab it home with you and make sure you get there safe and sound?”
“You’re the best,” I said. “Thanks.”