by Sean Kerr
Making apple pie can be such messy work.
Ronald feels old, washed up. As a middle-aged gay man on the scene, he cannot help but wonder if his time is over. His frustrations are further exacerbated when he finds himself the victim of a group of thugs who seem to find it funny to torment him in his own home.
Ronald is planning a party, a summer celebration of his middle age, but as he begins the preparations in his hot kitchen, a Policeman turns up to question Ronald about the attacks. Over the course of the interview, Ronald comes to understand that perhaps age is just a number after all.
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The Birthday Present
Copyright © 2017 Sean Kerr
ISBN: 978-1-4874-1102-2
Cover art by Angela Waters
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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The Birthday Present
By
Sean Kerr
Dedication
To two of the most important women in my life, Maggie Lane and Ronni Bee, without whom I would be nothing. Good friends need to be cherished, but family live in your heart forever, and no matter the distance, their love is always felt. Thank you, my girls, for being my family, and for making every day a pure joy.
The Birthday Present
I always bake when I am nervous. My first reaction to any crisis is to stuff my face. I just can’t help myself. Out come the Kitchen Aid and the flour. It’s the most cathartic thing in the world, to feel my fingers kneading dough, the sensual, sticky mass sliding between my digits. Only I could find the act of making pastry so sexual, but considering my current state of mind, I would rather feel horny than sickeningly anxious.
That was it. The thought of cock now lay firmly implanted in my brain. Was that a good thing? It had been a while, so long in fact, that my ass banged shut when I did a number two. I was that tight. Whoever decided to break that impenetrable barrier would need a pick axe. Was there even enough lube left in the world to slick my ring and allow entry?
Eggs. Even looking at them turned me on. That brittle pale shell containing something so soft. So much protein. Damn it, I had an erection.
Stop it! Behave. Get a grip. Cooking. Get back to the bloody cooking.
My kitchen counter, a glistening expanse of black granite with flecks of crushed glass running through it, lay beneath an assortment of eggs, butter and sugar as I battled with my trusted copy of Delia Smith. That poor cookbook had so many of its pages glued together with ancient cake mix and various sauces that I had to peel the pages apart. As for its cover, well that had long since vanished, consigned to the back of the bookshelf, lost to humanity forever. That book had seen better days, just like me.
Was that what happened when you reached your mid-forties? Did you stop being a sexual being? So I was no Hugh Jackman, and maybe I was carrying a few extra pounds that I could do with shedding, but that didn’t mean I was dead. I found that going out these days felt like a trauma, apart from trying to find something to squeeze into that didn’t make me look like a blimp, that was. It was always the coming home on my own bit that got to me the most. Too many young twinks these days, beautiful creatures always on the lookout for the next beautiful creature, or handsome men my age always on the lookout for the next twink. They looked at me as though I resembled some walking fucking corpse. It angered me.
Oh, I did the usual, tried those dating app things, but they just seemed to breed tossers and cock teasers. Surely, if you fancied someone, you fancied them, no matter the age? As it happened, I liked men my age, and older, or younger. Okay, I just liked men, but that is not the point. How many of those assholes said yes, they would meet, only to block me the moment they found out my age? Really? I was desperate to try those things out in the first place, but they left me feeling deeply ashamed and oh so unattractive. Maybe I was past it after all. Maybe my day had come and gone.
Pastry. I hated making pastry. Usually, I would cheat and buy the stuff ready made, but I forgot to add it to my home delivery, and I could not leave the house that morning to buy some in my local shop. I had to wait in for the Police to arrive, hence my nervousness.
Twenty years. For twenty years, I lived in that house without a problem, but for the last few weeks, my home resembled a battlefield, a target for hordes of monstrous school children, laughingly called our next generation who seemed to find it highly amusing to besiege my front door while screaming homophobic abuse. What could I do? As a middle-aged gay man living on my own, I could not very well retaliate, unless I wanted to end up sitting in a prison cell. Having said that, the showers could prove very interesting, all that soap dropped on the floor. Would I get the top bunk or bottom bunk? I could be the local bitch handed around like an Hors D Oeuvre! Or just a whore, I wasn’t that fussy.
The point was, though, I could not go running down the street chasing young boys off my property while shaking a roller pin over my head. I’d thought that if I left well alone, if I didn’t respond in any way, they would get bored with me. I thought the little bastards would give up, move on to the next unfortunate victim, some butch bastard who would kick them up the ass as they so rightly deserved, but no. The attacks increased, and so did the abuse. In the end, I felt that I had no option left but to involve the Police, as much as it embarrassed me.
The doorbell rang. Shit. My hands looked like those of a drug dealer, covered in a layer of fine white powder. I brushed my hands on a towel, and then I removed a saucepan of stewed apples from the stove behind me—it would not do for them to burn—and ran to the front door.
Well, fuck me seven ways to Sunday. I opened the door to a God. He stood there, all six foot of him, and bugger me, he certainly represented a magnificent specimen of the male species. Fuck that, he was bloody stonking! His dark stubbled skin framed an intensely chiselled face upon which his hair lay short and cropped. He looked so stunningly attractive that it hurt my brain to look at him, and I felt my voice freeze in the back of my throat as I gazed into his deep brown eyes. I think a little dribble escaped from the corner of my gaping mouth.
“Ronald Lane?” he said through a smile that dazzled me with perfectly straight white teeth. I think I nodded my head, I’m sure I felt it wobble on my neck. I could not be certain, because the world around me blurred into his beautiful face.
“Yes, though please, call me Ronni.” I reached out a hand to his and he took it, holding my floured limb in a grip that shook my knees. My, did he have strong hands. His fingers wrapped around my own like some lascivious Octopus. It made my cock twitch.
“Come in.” My voice sounded so weak, so pathetic, and I wished—not for the first time—that I could lower it by an oct
ave or two instead of the high pitched, camp whimper that squeezed through my drooling lips.
Shit, he was tall and so big. His black uniform clung to arms that bulged through the fabric, and his chest looked wide enough to do my ironing on. He lowered his impressive head as he entered my hallway sideways. That gave me chills, I can tell you. His short-sleeved yellow hi-vis jacket bulged with cables from his walkie-talkie, and I could see other things lurking there that defied understanding. He looked like a Borg.
He stood in my hallway, his brown eyes taking in my Harlequin wallpaper and my lovely black and white tiled floor, but all I saw was him, a huge chunk of gorgeous man, and a man in uniform at that. Yet there was something else about him too, a sense of familiarity about the towering block of muscle that piqued my interest, almost as much as his mind-altering good looks. It had been a very long time since something that good looking had entered my passage.
I led the muscular beast into the kitchen, acutely aware of him lumbering over me, painfully aware of his powerful brown eyed gaze boring into the back of my head. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end—amongst other things. I remained the victim of cruel delinquent thugs, and yet his indomitable presence made me more nervous than anything those fucktards could throw at me. It was all I could do to stop my hands from trembling as I picked up the kettle.
“Can I get you a coffee?”
“No thanks, but I wouldn’t mind a glass of water—it’s a very hot day out there. Nice kitchen, by the way.”
“Oh, thanks,” I mumbled coyly as I thrust a clean glass into the water dispenser of my black 2001 A Space Odyssey monolith of an American fridge. It was not the only monolith in that room that I wanted to shove something into.
“What are you making?” The officer peered keenly into the saucepan of stewed apples. His perfectly proportioned nose twitched as he inhaled the cinnamon fumes wafting from the apple filling.
“Apple pie. I’m having a party tonight, and because of the date, I’m having an American theme. Apple pie and hot dogs.”
“Jumbo hot dogs, I hope.”
I thought I detected the slightest edge to his comment, a cheekiness that crept around the corners of his plump, kissable lips, or it could have just been wishful thinking on my behalf. All the same, it did not help to steady my trembling legs or the shudder in my hand as I passed him the glass of water.
“So, I have read the notes from the Community Police who have been dealing with this complaint. My job today is to take a statement from you, and then decide what course of action we should take. Is that okay with you?”
“Yes, of course.” He was really quite direct, and as he spoke to me, his gaze never left my face. Those eyes fucked me on the spot, and I could feel my heart pounding inside my chest. Christ, he looked familiar, and I had the overwhelming desire to wipe the corners of my mouth.
“My name is Andy, by the way.” He laid a black folder on the counter and opened it, pulling out a wad of forms in which he began to write. Like the rest of him, his hands seemed massive.
I could not help but risk a quick glance at his feet. You know what they say about feet. Feet and hands. Fuck, they were massive feet, and they looked so wide. I could have taken a bath in one of his boots! I felt my face flush as I looked up and caught him staring at me. Yet again, I saw the glimmer of a smirk crease his lips.
“So, let me start with your date of birth?”
“Fourth of July, 1969.”
“So it’s your birthday today? It’s your party tonight?”
“Yep.” It felt as though he was teasing me, a peculiar sensation that made my stomach churn. A slight smile lifted the corner of his delicious mouth and it lit up his face. I could have sworn I heard the Angels fucking singing like they do in the movies when someone falls in love with just one glance from a gorgeous man. Harps and everything.
“So, you are forty-seven? I had you pegged for early thirties.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, or if I should even reply, not without it sounding trite, or worse, like a come on.
“Is Ronald Lane your full name? No middle name?”
“Gerard. Don’t ask.”
Andy stopped writing and looked at me. “Gerard,” he said, completely deadpan. “Ronald Gerard Lane?”
“Yes,” I squirmed, blushing. Andy tried very hard to suppress his smirk, but it wasn’t very convincing.
For the next twenty minutes or so, Andy wrote his notes as I went through the events leading up to his visit. As I told him my story, I could not help but feel foolish, for the tale of kids hammering on my door seemed to pale into insignificance with him towering before me. The Police had a difficult enough job to do as it was, especially considering their diminishing numbers—yet another act of wisdom from our budget cutting hungry government—and I felt profoundly guilty for involving them in something that now sounded so insignificant.
“I feel bad phoning the Police over this, you have far more important things to deal with than kids harassing me.”
“Don’t ever worry about phoning. You should not have to put up with this kind of crap in your own home, and it’ll be sorted out, believe me. I know the school these kids go to, and the school will not tolerate this kind of behaviour or abuse, and neither do we.”
“I just want it to stop, that’s all.”
Andy looked at me, his gaze unfaltering. “Yes, and so do I, and it will stop, you have my word on that.”
Something about the tone of his voice melted every bone in my body. His words ran like melted chocolate across my flesh, and I felt my skin break out into goose bumps. I heard so much conviction in his voice, so much compassion, and in that single moment of absolute ball crushing clarity, I thought I had it. It was there on the peripheral edges of my failing memory, where I had seen him before, but the moment disappeared as soon as he returned his attention to his notes. The moment vanished into the haze of my middle-aged crisis.
The vision of his hard, rippled body smothered in melted chocolate did not leave me, however, and it made my skin tingle and burn.
With the statement written, Andy showed me where to sign on each page of his detailed notes. He had lovely handwriting, neat and uniform, each word perfectly legible. Good looking and a neat freak.
He stood behind me, his massiveness looming over my shoulder, and I could feel the heat of his breath brushing the back of my neck as his one long arm reached around me to point at the signature box at the bottom of each page. The ball point pen trembled in my sweat-soaked hand, and I prayed to God he did not notice my tremors, even though I knew he could not miss it. The bulk of his jacket pressed against my back, and I found myself pressed against the counter as his weight ploughed into me. My ears burned, and I felt sure they blazed like two beacons of fire on either side of my head, and my cock throbbed out of control. He pressed hard into my back, much harder than he needed. It was bloody heavenly!
“So, this party tonight,” he breathed, “will there be fireworks?”
I thought that a very strange thing to ask, especially as I did have fireworks, a box of Standard left over from Guy Fawkes night the year before. You couldn’t have an American style, Fourth of July birthday party without fireworks.
“Why?” I whispered tentatively as he replaced the bundle of papers into his black folder.
“Well, because you live so close to the road, and it’s illegal to let off fireworks so close to a road like that.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.” It was true, I did not know that little fact.
“No, you didn’t know that last November the fifth either, did you?” he grinned. His smile lit up his face again, a wicked smirk that screamed horniness, and his eyes twinkled with mischief. I swooned. I actually swooned. Anyone would swear that I was staring into the face of Hugh Jackman, I felt so blinded by his Hollywood superstar looks.
“How do you know I let fireworks off then?”
“Because I wa
s the officer dispatched to tell you off.”
The shock must have exploded across my face, because he laughed suddenly.
“It’s okay. You weren’t doing any harm. Those things could hardly get off the floor, never mind cause any harm. I didn’t bother you, I saw no reason. Just giving you a heads up, that’s all. Oh, that was a nice costume you had on, by the way.”
There it was again, that cheekiness, the naughty glint in his outstandingly beautiful eyes. Every bit of his face said I want to fuck you until you can’t walk. At least that’s what I wanted it to say.
Bastard. I felt my cheeks flare bright red. That November party became infamous amongst my friends, not least because I wore a Pocahontas outfit. It was fancy dress, and I can’t begin to say how many times I nearly set my fake leather fringing alight. Lighting fireworks after consuming half a bottle of Blue Label Vodka is no mean feat.
“So, if I let them off tonight, will you come around and arrest me?” It was a bold comment, even for me.
He looked at his watch, and then back at me. His gaze moved down my body, across my flour encrusted shirt, down my baggy grey shorts, and I realised with horror that I was not wearing anything underneath them. My growing erection would, by now, be making itself known. Like a grey tent in the middle of my waist. My face burned all the fiercer.
“Nope, I’m off duty now, that’s my day over. But, you know, I’m not the only officer assigned to this area, so just watch where you let them off okay? And as far as this other shit is concerned, we will stop it, I promise you that.”
“I just appreciate you taking the time to come over and talk to me. I feel so guilty for involving the Police, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You did the right thing. This is your home, and you should feel safe in your own home. You don’t recognise me, do you?”