Barry was dancing the first time I saw him. He was also probably high, he tells me now. Jake and I were at the Pleasure Dome after the Folsom Street Fair, and Barry was in the center of the dance floor, moving his whole body in time to the music, arms above his head, eyes closed, oblivious to me and the world. He wore calf-high boots and worn Levi’s undone at the waist. He was shirtless, a thick chain locked around his neck that I didn’t understand the meaning of despite all the boys in collars and on leashes I’d seen that day, not even when Sam (red-bearded and as hairy as me) pulled on that chain and locked Barry in a kiss that lasted uncounted minutes, a kiss I watched with awe and envy.

  “He’s a beauty, all right,” Jake yelled in my ear over the din of the music.

  “What’s with the necklace?” I asked my friend.

  “He’s the other man’s slave.”

  Hearing those words, I was more in wonder than before, more in lust with the lithe, sweaty body, its muscles accentuated by just enough hair (almost as blond as the rest of him) to make him man enough for me. His fair beard, like Sam’s, was full but carefully groomed, his hair buzzed short. I ached (yes, that is the word) to kiss him, to hold him. I wanted my seed in him. I wanted to mark him as mine.

  “Then he’s definitely taken?” I asked Jake, trying to make light of my pain and disappointment.

  Jake laughed, not sensing the storm of lust and frustration raging inside me.

  “Yeah, Joey, I think so. But as usual, we’ve both spotted the perfect shegetz.”

  “I’m a shegetz,” I reminded my friend.

  “You’re Italian, Joe. That doesn’t count.”

  This was (and is) an old joke between us, and we laughed as always.

  Jake and I have been best friends since third grade. He told me he liked guys (and was in love with a waspy beauty he played tennis with) while we were still in high school. Ten years later I told him that I also loved men. Fortunately for us—or maybe unfortunately—we always like the same guys (blond icebergs, Jake calls them), so there was never any question of our being lovers, only of competing for the same guys.

  “You’re sure about this, Joe?” Jake asked me when I told him that my marriage had been a mistake, that I’d fallen in love with another intern, my handsome Nordic Todd. “You’re not just doing this to be fashionable?”

  “Yeah, Jake. I’m just doing it so I can be closer to you, faggot.”

  “Who’re you calling ‘faggot’?”

  “I’m calling me a faggot. And I figure if I’m going to be a faggot, I can at least be a man about it.”

  Which is when Jake hugged me, like I had hugged him ten years before. And we kissed each other on the cheek as we had done then and ever since.

  “You’re such warm people,” my Danish wife once commented when she saw our usual embrace. Her voice had the same tone of disappointment and disapproval it had when she discovered that I was Italian rather than Jewish and why the Jew she was flirting with that night at the student coffee shop would not respond to her. Had I not loved her as much as I did, I suppose I’d have been too hurt to be her second choice, but she was so beautiful that I was flattered to be just that—until I met Todd and he turned my life upside down with a single kiss.

  Jake and I danced together the rest of that night, or until it was time to hit Blow Buddies. As we danced, I watched Barry dancing without stop, his face beatific. I watched while the sweat made tiny rivers down his torso to form a damp spot at his crotch, and down his back to form another one in the ass crack of his Levi’s. I wanted bury my face in his ass, to lick up the sweat and inhale his scent.

  He was like some great cat, a lion basking in the pleasure of the music, in the shifting lights surrounding him, in my admiration, in his Master’s love. Yes, he was the cat, content and lying in the sun: I was a dog, alone in the darkness, howling at the moon and afraid I’d never attain the thing I wanted most to love.

  I shot my load so many times that night at Blow Buddies, each time thinking of the still-nameless beauty dancing half-naked with his Master and never noticing me. Every mouth I kissed I pretended was his. But imagination can take a man only so far.

  I flew back to Boston the next afternoon and life went on as before. Except when I jerked off and fanaticized about him, about his kiss and the feel of my dick in his mouth or butthole. Other than those moments alone, I forgot about him. Instead I searched for love among the men I met at home, always accepting lust when love wasn’t offered.

  “You’re husband material,” Jake—ever the amateur therapist—said a few months after I told him I was gay. “That’s why you got married so young. Some men are lovers and some men are husbands. Most men are one before becoming the other. But you’re a husband by temperament. Like me. We’ll take sex, but we want love.”

  After I got back from San Francisco, I asked him during one of our frequent phone conversations what he thought about Masters and slaves, about Dads and boys.

  “It’s an intense kind of intimacy, Joe. Why? You think you might be into it? After what we saw, I’m not surprised. Leather looks damn hot.”

  “I keep wondering what its appeal is. And, yeah, it turns me on.”

  “Then explore it,” he said. I could almost hear his mischievous smile. “I am.”

  It’s great having a best buddy who gives you permission to be yourself.

  The next summer in Provincetown, I saw Barry again. And again he was dancing, bare-chested and chained, with his Master. Again I watched them kiss, watched in desperate wonder at their shared passion. Again he didn’t notice me.

  After the bars closed I went down to the docks and slapped around a boy who almost reminded me of my nameless beauty, slapped him around and pulled on the chain locked around his neck as I fucked his face. He accepted my cum gratefully, then asked me to fuck his ass. I was happy to comply, but I knew it wasn’t the same as having a boy of my own.

  When we were done, I asked him where he was from.

  “San Francisco.”

  “I should’ve known. All the hot bottoms are from there.” He laughed. “Thanks.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Matt. I’m here with my Owner.”

  I was startled by the carelessness with which he said this.

  “Does he know you’re here?”

  “He’s over there,” Matt said, nodding toward a particularly dark and busy corner, a cluster of moving shadows filled with grunts and groans, with murmured promises that would fade at the first hint of light.

  “You’re so casual about these things out west.”

  Matt shrugged.

  “I guess.”

  Then he kissed me and reached for my cock, already hardening again.

  100

  “Up for another round?” he asked with a crooked smile, handing me another condom.

  How I wanted someone to smile at me like that all the time, to look at me as Barry looked at Sam. As always, I took what I could get. When I shot my third load I looked up at the moon, full and heavy, half hidden in the clouds of a coming storm, and howled.

  I did my best to forget about him. And for a while I did. Then, a few years later, Jake and I headed to London for what had become our annual vacation together, as usual sharing a hotel room but not a bed. Every night Jake and I took a black cab to the leather bars.

  And, yes, there he was again. This time he was being led around the Hoist on a leash by his Master, licking the boots of strangers. I put myself in their way so that my beautiful man, my nameless beauty, would lick my boots. They approached and I met Sam’s eye. We nodded, and there he was: Barry, groveling at my booted feet. I put one boot behind his neck while he licked the other. Eventually he made his way past my boots to my leather pants, and then to the codpiece. I looked at Sam and he nodded, signaling me to unleash my fat cock from the leather codpiece and let it find its home in the deep, warm, wet throat waiting for it.

  I looked back down at Barry, at his eager mouth grasping the codpiece between its teeth, his eyes looking up at me for permission. I nodded and he pulled it loose. My cock burst out of its confines, fast and furious, slapping him across the face. He let out a small cry of surprise to see the size of it, but opened wide without a second’s hesitation. It was even better than I’d imagined, more wonderful than I’d dared hope. His mouth engulfed me. I was swallowed whole and I cried out to know such pleasure, such beauty. I put one hand behind his head and fucked.

  Sam drew closer, caressed my pierced nipples through the thick hair that covers my entire chest and torso, and kissed me. Our beards met before our tongues, igniting the space between us. Even as we kissed, I screamed to the ceiling—and came. Cum shot out of me in thick streams. I could feel it explode from the very base of my balls. Ribbon after ribbon spurted out of me, all greedily swallowed by my nameless beauty, the perfect vehicle for my seed.

  Sam finished kissing me, and I pulled Barry to his feet. Finally, for the first time, I kissed him. After aching for that kiss for so long, it was an even bigger release than cumming down his throat had been. To hold him at last, to feel the softness of his lips and the bristle of his stubble-length beard, was the purest joy I’d known until that moment.

  When our lips parted, Sam was standing there smiling.

  “Hey, thanks, buddy.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Sir.”

  “Sure, pal.” I nodded to his slave. “Boy.”

  “You’re American like us?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Then let me buy you one.”

  Yes, the camaraderie of Americans meeting abroad. We introduced ourselves. I found out that they were from Chicago, that Sam’s work allowed them to travel a lot, and that my beloved boy’s name was Barry. Barry said little, letting his Master speak most of the time. But he smiled a lot, and whenever his eyes met mine I saw pleasure in them, pleasure in his subtle smile, like a cat lying in a patch of sunlight and lifting its face to better enjoy the sensation of the sun’s warmth. I didn’t tell them that I’d seen them in San Francisco and Provincetown, that I’d wanted Barry for years, that I envied what they had. I only exchanged email addresses, knowing I’d never contact them for fear I’d make a fool of myself should I ever see them again, should I ever see Barry again.

  102

  I went back to the hotel before Jake did and jerked off I don’t know how many times thinking of Barry. His mouth was so incredible; I could only wonder how good his fuckhole must feel. I wanted it but didn’t dare hope for it. Once again, I was alone in the night, baying at the distant, unattainable moon. But it was a moon I’d now been to, a moon warm and beautiful and fantastically familiar, a moon that might perhaps be within my reach.

  After that I fucked and flogged men whenever I could: men who said they were boys, boys who thought they were men, hot bottoms who wanted to please me and wear my collar for the weekend but also to live their own lives from Monday to Friday, men who wanted only the one night and no more, men without any sense of self who wanted to immolate themselves in mine, and hungry slaves hoping to hook me as their Master/ husband and so land the plum role of doctor’s wife. This last group disgusted me. I wanted my man to be my boy, yes, and to own him; but I also wanted him to be his own man, capable of self-sufficiency; otherwise, of what value would be the gift of his person to me? I had no real sense yet of what I wanted that man to be, other than my ideal of Barry, but I knew that he would not be a wife. I’d had a wife already, and I didn’t want another one—of either sex.

  I also learned that whatever pleasure and pain might be shared with these men, when there was no heart connection, no sense of mutual regard, affection, or respect, there was no satisfaction either. It didn’t matter how sweet his ass was, how deep he could inhale my cock down his throat, how much pain he could take from a singletail whip, or how I made him scream: If we didn’t care about each other, at least a little, I didn’t care about the sex. How much more wonderful it would be, I imagined, when I found the man/boy of my own, the one I could love forever?

  Fast-forward a few more years: I was in Chicago with (of course) Jake. He had just broken up with another boyfriend, so we headed to the Steamworks. Nothing like plentiful, anonymous sex to ease the pain of lost love, we figured.

  I hadn’t been there but a few minutes, it seemed, when I found myself surrounded by a bevy of big blonde midwesterners, kissing them, feeling my ass being eaten, my pits licked, my nipples chewed, my cock sucked. I gave myself over to the flood of sensation, eyes closed and happier than I’d been in a while. Then I heard a grunt, a groan, and a sigh that told me—what? I don’t know, but I opened my eyes and looked out the door of the room we were in and across the hall into a room with a sling. A man was stepping away from the sling, shaking his spent dick of excess juice, stepping aside to reveal who was in the sling—my angel: Barry. Our eyes met.

  I shook off my cluster of farm boys (as I’d dubbed them) for the one whose fuckhole I’d longed for for so many years, longed for almost as much as I had for his kiss. I shut the door behind me, smiled, and stepped up to the sling, to the sweet hole puckered and ready for me to fuck.

  I reached for a condom.

  “Fuck me raw.”

  “No, I can’t. I won’t.”

  “Yes, you can. The others did. It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not, Barry.”

  At the sound of his name, he looked up at me and, recognizing me for the first time, started to tremble. I saw tears in the corners of his eyes. To quiet him, I leaned over to kiss him, to comfort him. Then I noticed that there was no collar around his neck. Something was very wrong. I pulled him out of the sling, held him close.

  “Come on,” I whispered.

  I laid him down on the mattress and held him close, kissing away the manly tears, caressing the hard, hairy body I wanted to know every inch of, to study for years to come.

  “He’s dead, you know.”

  “Sam?”

  “Yeah. Master died in that plane crash last summer. I was supposed to join him in Paris a few days later. And….”

  “It’s OK, boy. I understand.”

  “Do you? Do you know how I feel? Do you know how it feels not to care if you live or die?”

  “We’ve all lost loved ones, boy,” I said, perhaps too severely. “As much as you hurt, you don’t have a monopoly on pain.”

  He was quiet a moment, looked into my eyes, and reached up with his mouth for a kiss that I was glad to give him. Then his hand reached for my cock.

  “I want you to fuck me.”

  I reached for a condom. He didn’t resist this time. I lifted his legs onto my own strong shoulders, and entered paradise. “Oh, baby….”

  “Sir?”

  “Oh, baby, baby….”

  “You like it, Sir?”

  Not since Matt under the pier in Provincetown had I met a man who could grab my dick with his fuckhole like Barry was doing now. He squeezed on my cock, then relaxed his hold on me, varying the tautness of his hole with the intensity of my strokes. This was not a passive bottom who lay still, expecting to be pleased. This was a man who sought to pleasure his partner with all the skill he could muster, with at least as much skill as most of the men who fucked him must have offered him that night.

  “Baby, baby, it feels so good. It’s so fucking amazing, boy, it’s so fucking incredible.”

  And then he did that thing he does, that thing I have no words for and can’t describe, that sent me over the edge, screaming into the abyss of orgasm. I shouted so loud that there was a sudden pause in the constant chatter of the bathhouse beyond our little room, a stunned silence followed by nervous laughter and knowing guffaws. I collapsed on top of him, our bodies colliding, slick with sweat.

  “Baby.”

  “Sir.”

  I almost said, “I love you” but didn’t dare. Even if it was true.

  We kept fucking, each of us cumming time after time. He was focused on me, and I on him. We were our own little world, an eternal moment that could never be repeated or lost, now that we were together. Or so I told myself, so I hoped he felt as well.

  I bent him over my knee to spank him between fucks, twisted his nipples, then held him down as I raped his hole, spat in his face, but never stopped kissing him.

  At some point I heard Jake calling my name, and realized that we would have to end it sometime.

  “I never want to let you go.”

  “I don’t want you to, either, Sir.”

  “Are you ready for that?”

  “Master has been dead more than a year, Sir. It’s time I decided.”

  I kissed him again, losing myself once more in the softness of his lips, in the bristle of his beard.

  Jake called my name again.

  “Come on, boy. Let me introduce you to my best buddy in the world.”

  Four in the morning found the three of us at a dinner on Halsted eating lousy burgers and trading tales.

  “You don’t remember the first time I saw you, Barry.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You think it was in London, but you’re wrong. It was at the Pleasure Dome in San Francisco, right after the Folsom Street Fair. You were dancing with Sam and I thought you were the handsomest man I’d ever seen. We both did. Ask Jake. He was there.”

  Barry shook his head.

  “I don’t remember seeing you there, but I was probably high. It was years before that, though. You don’t remember? It was in high school.”

  “Not in Wakefield? Wakefield, Massachusetts?”

  “Ayah. You were a year ahead of me. And I had such a crush on you. But I also thought you two were lovers and I used to follow you around hoping to see the two of you kiss, just so I’d know I wasn’t the only queer in town.”

  Jake laughed.

  “You weren’t. Trust me.”

  “One time you were shooting hoops at the park and you caught me watching you through the fence and one of you asked if I wanted to join the game. I was scared shitless and ran. But later I always wished I’d gone in and played ball with you guys.”

  “That was you?”

  Barry nodded.

 

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