his legs a little wider, took a drag from the cigarette, and looked up at the stars in the
clear sky. The guy slipped his small hand into Kadin’s pants, pulled out his penis, then
went down to his knees and started sucking him off. Twenty minutes later, the young guy stood up and reached for his pile of clothes.
He looked at Kadin, smiled, and said, “Thank
you
. I needed that. Do you stop off around
here often?”
“Ah well, sometimes,” Kadin said. “I’ve really got to be going now.” He stepped
back and lit another cigarette. He didn’t want to open the lines of communication and he
had no intention of getting to know him better. The picnic area was just for quick sex.
The young guy smiled and shrugged his shoulders, and Kadin started walking
back to his car. “Then maybe we’ll hook up again sometime,” he said. “You’re the
perfect
stud.” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper, then
jogged up to Kadin in his bare feet and said, “Here’s my phone number in case you ever
want to call. No strings attached, stud. Just fun and our little secret.”
Kadin stopped walking and smiled. This guy’s aggressive, but still innocent,
attitude had an endearing quality he didn’t see often. He took the piece of paper and
shoved it into his pocket. “I’ll hold on to this. Thanks.”
“I’m Eddie,” he said, then he stood on his tiptoes and kissed Kadin on the cheek.
He was still naked, and he didn’t seem to care. When he stepped back, he winked and
said, “And there’s no need to thank me. I should be thanking you for what you did for me
tonight. It’s not easy to find a guy like you in a place like this.”
But that’s not what Kadin’s ex-wife had thought. She’d been killed in a car
accident two years earlier, but she’d divorced him years before that, after their sex life
had dwindled down to once every couple of months. And even then, he’d had trouble
getting it up for her. He’d only married her because it was what he’d thought he was
supposed to do. He’d tried so hard to make it work. They were married for ten years, they’d had three wonderful children, and he’d provided for them all as a successful
attorney. He’d loved her, but he’d never been
in
love with her.
He’d only been truly in love once in his life. It came to him later than most, the
night of his thirtieth birthday. And because of that love, he’d been ruined forever.
Nothing since could compare to it. It had been pure and natural and unexpected, the way
love was meant to be. But it also changed his life in ways he never could have predicted.
When he got back to the car, he started the engine and put the top down. It was
cool, but he liked driving with the stars above his head. He waved his arm at the stranger
who had just blown him and pulled onto the road. As the car picked up speed, he sat back
and spread his legs wider, holding the wheel with his right hand and the cigarette with the
left. A familiar love song from an old film
Take Me Always,
started to play on the radio,
and his thoughts wandered back to the first night he’d heard that song, almost five years
earlier.
* * * *
It was the night of his thirtieth birthday: June 1, 1952, and a new film,
Take Me
Always
, had just opened in town. The line outside the ticket booth was long. Young
couples held hands and laughed, groups of teenage girls in crinolines and saddle shoes
chirped and giggled, and older couples stood side by side, waiting to buy their tickets. It
was a hot, humid night. Kadin could smell the buttered popcorn from the sidewalk, and
the air was so thick and still, he could hear a car horn a few blocks away. Kadin stood
there alone with his hands in his pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet. His divorce had
just become final and he was venturing into the world for the first time in ten years as a
single man. The line moved fast, and when he was finally in front of the ticket booth,
someone tapped his shoulder. He turned quickly to find Miles Rochester, an old friend
from high school, standing there with two strangers. They were handsome young men,
with fair hair and lanky bodies. One was slightly taller than the other. But the thing that
made Kadin’s stomach jump was that the shorter of the two had one blue eye and one
green eye. He stared at Kadin with those magnificent eyes and smiled, then reached
forward to shake his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Gregory Rochester and this is my brother,
Evan. We’re Miles’s nephews from Atlanta.” They didn’t call him Uncle Miles, just
Miles. They were only ten years younger.
It was an accidental meeting, and Kadin wound up sitting with them. But he
didn’t tell anyone it was his birthday.
They sat four across toward the back of the theater. Miles went in first, followed
by Evan and Gregory, and Kadin took the aisle seat. When the lights went down and his
arm brushed against Gregory’s, he felt a tug between his legs. It started under his balls
and traveled to the tip of his penis. The guy smelled like baby powder and spicy pumpkin
pie, an aroma that caused Kadin’s eyes to roll back each time he inhaled. When the film
was over and the theme song,
Take Me Always
, began to play, Kadin took one long, deep
breath just so he could remember the smell until he saw him again.
He knew he’d see him again, because he was already planning ways to get into his
pants.
When they left the theater, the entire summer seemed to fall into place in one
evening. Miles asked Kadin if he was interested in taking on a new intern at his law
practice for a couple of months. Miles said Gregory, Evan, and their parents were spending the summer with him at the family home. Their father, Miles’s brother, was
working on a project that involved a new strip mall near Savannah. Miles had already
found an internship for Evan in an advertising office downtown, but he was still looking
for something for Gregory. Though Gregory never formally accepted the internship, he
smiled so wide when Kadin agreed to hire him that the small dimples on both sides of his
face turned into valleys.
On Saturday morning, Gregory showed up at Kadin’s office at nine o’clock sharp.
He was wearing tan slacks, a white shirt, and a thin blue necktie. When Kadin saw how
Gregory’s ass bubbled out in the tan slacks, he turned away and clenched his fists. He
wanted to reach out and grab it that morning. He wanted to throw him onto the desk and
bend him over. But he also knew Gregory wasn’t like other guys. He was special. He
spoke with a deep, refined voice, and he had proper Southern manners. He didn’t lisp and
his wrists weren’t limp. When he walked, he didn’t wiggle his hips and sashay across a
room. His feet hit the ground, and he tended to lope on his heels because his legs were
slightly bowed.
For the first three weeks, Gregory performed all the tasks Kadin gave him without
missing anything. He answered the phones, took clear and concise messages, and learned
how to make a perfect pot of coffee. When he went to the post office, he returned
immediately without stopping to chat with anyone. When he saw a file out of place, he
re-filed it without thinking twice. He seemed to know what Kadin wanted before he even
asked.
And Kadin watched Gregory without being too obvious. Kadin liked the way he
bent down when he dropped something. He’d hike up his pant legs and squat down with his legs spread wide. All Gregory had to do was accidentally touch his hand when he
brought him coffee and Kadin would get a full erection. He had blue balls every
afternoon. On his way home from work every night, Kadin had to jerk off in the car to
release all the pent-up tension.
Then, one afternoon in the end of June, Kadin asked Gregory if he wanted to take
a ride out to the country after work. He had a piece of property on the outskirts of the city
he wanted him to see. Gregory agreed to go with a huge smile on his face. When they
pulled into the driveway of a huge old plantation house fifteen minutes later, he pressed
his palm to his chest and said, “This property is fantastic. It’s a real Georgia homestead.”
“I’m going to start renovating this fall,” Kadin said. “It’s been abandoned for a
long time, and I want to make it come alive again. It’s livable right now, but it needs
sprucing up. The former owners were very old and hadn’t done much in the past twenty
years.”
The old house was centered on fifty acres that butted up against a wide creek not
far from a warm spring. It was red brick with white columns, white trim, and black
shutters. The minute Gregory heard Kadin was renovating, he stared up at the front of the
house and said, “It’s perfect, except for one thing. A house like this needs white shutters
on the first floor and black on the second. It’s the way it should be. Whoever painted all
the shutters black made a huge error.”
Kadin smiled and said, “I’ll make a note of that.”
While they walked through the rooms, stepping over dusty, loose floorboards,
swatting cobwebs away from their faces, the tone of their conversation skipped from their
usual business talk to more personal, intimate matters. Kadin told him about his divorce and his three children. He said his parents were both dead. He told him he’d married very
young because he’d been pressured into doing it by his family, and he should have waited.
But he also told him his children were the most important part of his life now, and that
every sacrifice he’d made was all worth it because of them. He had no regrets about his
life—except for the fact that he’d never really been in love.
They were on the second floor when he’d said that, in the master suite. Gregory
looked up at him and smiled, then reached out in a cautious, awkward gesture, and held
Kadin’s hand. “I’ve never been in love either,” he said, “until now.” Then he lowered his
eyes again and stared down at his shoes.
The second Gregory touched his hand, Kadin felt a growing sensation between his
legs. He reached out with his other hand, pressed two fingers under Gregory’s chin, and
lifted his head. He stared into his eyes for a moment, then took a deep breath and stepped
forward. When he leaned in closer to his face, Gregory parted his lips and closed his eyes.
Kadin kissed his full, luscious mouth gently, then grabbed the back of his head and
pressed his handsome face to his. His hair was soft and smelled like soap; his body was
firmer than Kadin had imagined. The moment he stuck his tongue into his mouth,
Gregory lifted his arms and wrapped them around Kadin’s broad shoulders. He submitted
completely. His body went limp; he leaned back and held Kadin’s shoulders for support.
And while Kadin was probing with his tongue, and tasting the sweetest mouth he’d ever
known, he slowly walked Gregory toward the bed.
The abandoned bed was bare. But that didn’t stop Kadin from lowering him onto
the silky white mattress with yellowed edges. He dropped him slowly, holding the back
of his head with one hand and the small of his back with the other. When he was flat on the bed, Kadin climbed on top of him and pinned him there with his entire body. He
kissed with more force; his tongue explored the inside of his mouth without leaving a
section untouched. Instinctively, Gregory’s legs went up and he wrapped them around
Kadin’s waist. Kadin reached down, placed his wide palm between his legs, and pushed
him forward so he’d be in the middle of the bed. Gregory’s body was pliable; he never
resisted.
They kissed for a long time, then Kadin reached down and opened his own pants.
When his nine-inch erection fell out, Gregory took it in his palm and rubbed it few times.
Then he said, “I’ve never done this before with a man.” His voice was soft, almost
apologetic.
Kadin stopped kissing and took a deep breath. His balls were ready to erupt and
his heart was racing. “I’m not going to force you into doing anything,” he said. “If you’re
not comfortable with this, I’ll stop. It’s okay.” He
would
have stopped, too, if that’s what
Gregory had wanted.
But Gregory gently pushed him with his fingertips and said, “Lie down on your
back and close your eyes. I want to explore a little.”
When he was flat on his back, Gregory stood up and removed his clothes. He
dropped his pants with slow, calculated movements. He unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall
off his shoulders to the floor. He saw Kadin was watching his every move, and knew he
