The Millionaire of Love

by David Leddick

  And listen, what options did I have? I certainly wasn’t going to go back to the United States with my tail between my legs. How was I to know he was going to get so crazy? So obsessed with me.

  Of course, lots of people have wanted to sleep with me. I’m a cute guy. I know that. But usually when you make it clear you’re not having any they clear out.

  It’s not like I’ve never been hurt. That first guy I slept with in Denver I thought was going to be in love with me. And he dropped me like a hot potato. That taught me a lesson. So after that I was going out with both guys and girls. Nothing serious. So they were shocked once in awhile. So some didn’t want to sleep with me anymore. So be it. Who cares?

  Esther hurt me. I was really in love with Esther. But then she wanted to sleep with her old boyfriend and me at the same time. To make a comparison, I suppose. Who fucked the best. Well, she got enough fucking that night. But I was the one who felt like they got fucked. I’m sure not going back to the United States to get into all that again.

  So then I get old Nevis being so helpful and he falls in love with me. Wants to run my life. Tell me what to do. How to dress. I could tell he figured out that I was shtumping Minerva Minot. She used to just lay there like she was dead. No moving for Minerva. I guess she just wanted to be nice to me. But Nevis was smart. He was very friendly to her always. Pretended he didn’t know what was going on. He waited her out and it worked.

  Then when I went to Crete he really got crazed. Calling my folks all the time back home. Calling every hotel on Crete. Until he finally found me. Wild. And always trying to convince me that he was really only interested in my welfare. But really always trying to get into my pants.

  Even now that I came back to Paris and am really treating him like shit he doped out that I was trying to drive him away. He’s smart, real smart. So how in the hell do you get rid of a guy like that? It’s like having a stalker on your case. A charming, helpful, pleasant stalker. It’s like Fatal Attraction.

  And all his friends think he’s so great and that I’m the bad guy who led him on and then turned him down. He’s got everyone on his side. But he’s the spider in the web. I’m the fucking fly.

  I mean, let’s get serious. He’s thirty years older than I am. When I was born he was already thirty years old. He’s old. Seriously old. Nobody is ever going to sleep with him again unless he pays them. And he’s never going to pay anyone. He’s too proud. Thinks too well of himself. Thinks he’s still attractive.

  He has that funny way of straightening his back and lifting his chin all the time. Like he’s fighting off age that’s pulling him toward the grave. Well, he’s not dragging me down there with him.

  Love, love, love. True love. The love of a lifetime. The romance of the century. That’s what it’s got to be like for him. If he really loved me he’d just get the hell out of my hair. But no, he’s just crazy about love. Maybe just crazy.

  ~22~

  The Prison Fantasy

  Do many homosexual men have prison fantasies? I never thought I did, but I surprised myself this morning. I suppose what I have to draw upon as prison fantasy material is very limited. I remember reading something in the Paris Review called, I believe, “Letters from an American Prisoner” by James Blake. I was quite surprised. Not at all what you’d expect the editor, George Plimpton, to publish but then perhaps none of us knew the real George Plimpton.

  These “letters” were purportedly from someone “inside” and devoted to the sexual shenanigans that went on. At one point the author and his boyfriend make a break for it and while hidden in the long grass beside a railroad track the boyfriend feels the need to possess him. And does. Which seemed to both dismay and please the author. Certainly it was dramatic.

  I read another short story somewhere about a young married man whose black cellmate in prison gets excited and masturbates to stories about what the young man and his wife do in bed. Then without warning he pins the man against the bars of the cell and rapes him savagely. Somewhere I heard quoted “Your shit on my dick or your blood on my knife,” which is supposedly prison foreplay.

  On the side of reality, I have seen a number of photo coverages and it is pretty clear that prison looks something like a hospital, all fluorescent lights and linoleum floors and the loving couples are always some tough Hispanic guy and some kid. As with anything to do with men it all boils down to power and property, rather than romance.

  So here is my prison fantasy, just before arising this morning in the half-stupor that seems to be my most imaginative state. Radomir and I are cellmates. He is in a brutal mood and has me pinned against the bars of our cell; his big arms have me crushed against the metal so all breath is squeezed out of me. He is pumping his crotch against my buttocks. He hasn’t figured out how he’s going to get our jeans down, but it’s clear to me he’s going to get his way. What isn’t clear to me is why he thought I wouldn’t want to. He’s a little out of his head with some kind of prison drug, and it’s the middle of the afternoon. My goal is to get through the whole act of intercourse without getting my ass all torn up. His goal is probably to tear it up. Anger and hostility are clearly part of the deal.

  In a reasonable tone of voice I say, “You can fuck me if you want to. I don’t mind.” He loosens his grip a little. If there’s one thing I know about rape, it’s “don’t struggle.” They just love it. “Let’s go get on the bed,” I say. “And let’s take all our clothes off. So you can really get at it.” Suddenly he lets go of me and turns away, starting to lower his pants. I pull the sheet off my bunk, the upper one, and tuck it under the upper mattress so it conceals the lower bunk from view if someone passes in the corridor. They’ll know what we’re doing, but they won’t be able to see it. I lift the sheet and he crawls in. He has a very muscular body and a very large erection. This guy is ready for action. I pull my clothes off and grab the bar of butter that is in our little cell refrigerator. I see where his feet are at the end of the bed and dive in, getting his cock in my mouth before he can start any rough stuff. He starts pushing my head up and down on it and groaning, “Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.” The anticipated stuff. I do know how to suck cock, and he starts crumbling, falling back on his pillow, and spreading his legs. His thighs are massive from all that time he spends in the prison gym. This isn’t exactly the worst way to be spending a long afternoon in prison.

  I butter up my ass with one hand while I’m working him over, and before he really gets what’s going on I’m sitting on him. His eyes fly open. I can see he’s trying to figure out if this is masculine enough for him. But I start pulling at him with my sphincter and riding up and down. He starts pumping in rhythm with my easing up and down. The muscles of his abdomen and thighs are connecting and being held rigid as he lifts himself off the bed and lowers himself again. He’s not going to need as much time in the gym this afternoon. He’s getting quite a workout as it is. He doesn’t touch me with his hands. He puts his hands behind his head and keeps his eyes closed as we really get the big fuck together there behind the curtain. I can handle this without any pain, and I know I can control how deeply he enters me from above. As he pushes up I can lift up to keep him from plunging too far, and once in a while I push down as he goes in so he gets the full treatment. He puts his hands on my thighs to get more control over me. I let him, knowing he can’t hold out much longer. Although he’s been good for quite a long run, his muscles are dripping and his face is contorted. He stops. He’s coming deep inside me. I keep moving slowly and lean forward and put my lips on his. He holds me very closely and opens his mouth. He’s not a good kisser, but I run my tongue over his lips and teeth and push it in to touch his. His mouth is passive, but he is still moving slowly in me and holding me down now so I won’t slip off.

  We lie there for a moment. I haven’t come and he couldn’t care less. “I want to do it again,” he says, in my ear but in a very matter-of-fact tone. This is not a romantic guy.

  “Of course you do,” I say. I put my hands on his
butt and hold him in me as I fall over sideways. This cot is narrow and it isn’t easy, but I pull him on top of me, still in place. I pull the pillow from under my head and say, “Lift up.” He’s obedient and I push my ass up and get the pillow squeezed under me. There is come everywhere. I certainly don’t need any more lubricant.

  I lock my legs behind the small of his back and he starts moving. He puts his arms under me and his face down toward the bed next to mine. I don’t try to kiss him again. He’s too intent on his work. “Let me look at you,” I say, just to see if it will work, and push against his chest. He kneels and sits upright, still moving rhythmically in and out of me. He is soaking wet, his hair is matted, and he smiles at me. “Feels good, doesn’t it?” he says, moving in and out, in and out, in and out. I’m noncommittal. I might have to pay later if I admit I’m enjoying this too much. Which I’m not actually. I start to pull on myself. It’s as though he’s just noticed that I have a penis, too. “Here, let me do that,” he says and starts masturbating me in the same rhythm as his thrusting pelvis. I lock my ankles together and pull him into me with each thrust. He likes that. His action picks up and he is really pounding in and out very rapidly. This is his second orgasm, so it’s taking him longer to get there. But I can tell from his concentration that he’s not far off. I pull him back down on top of me so the whole weight of his body isn’t behind each push. Like a good boy he is still masturbating me from this position. He’s not all bad. There is a grain of consideration for others in there somewhere.

  “Are you ready?” he says in my ear. I jump. Who would have thought? “Yes,” I say and pull his face on top of mine. This time he’s really kissing me when he groans loudly and throws his head back, holding his penis in me. He could tell from the semen all over his hand that I had come at the same time. He stroked me gently as he held himself in me. I reached down and fondled his balls with one hand as his orgasm was draining out. That can feel good. He collapsed on me and we both went to sleep. I wake up before he does and my thighs are killing me from having Mr. Beefcake forcing them apart with his full two hundred some pounds while he slept. Not to mention my bung-hole which does not feel as though it had been on vacation.

  Suddenly he wakes up and jumps up, pulling the sheet off the side of the bunk as he does. He throws it at me and says, “Here, cover up. You look terrible.” Naked he walks around the cell checking out which jeans are his. “I could almost do it again right now,” he says.

  “Come over here.” I grab his thigh and pull him to the side of the bed. His jeans are at half-mast. I slip my mouth over his cock. It remains flaccid. I look up at him. He’s grinning down at me. “No you couldn’t,” I mumble.

  “After supper,” he says. “Get up. We’ll work out some until they let us out of here for chow.” He goes over to the toilet and pees. Looking at the wall he says, “My, my. Who’d have guessed that they shut me up with the best little piece of make-believe pussy in the whole place.” I thought, This guy has the makings of a really first-class fuck, and I’ll bet he’ll be taking it up the butt himself before we get done here.

  ~23~

  Nevis Discusses Things

  with His Ex, Who Is Dead

  As I crossed the sitting room in my Paris apartment the phone rang. It would have to be from beyond the grave for this to be anyone I really would like to speak to, I thought.

  And if it was, the conversation with my lover of many years, Morgan, would be like this:

  ME: When I was twenty-six you told me my body was prematurely senile.

  HE: I did?

  ME: You did. And I hadn’t even had my ten-year affair with Ronny Damico yet. Who just loved to fuck me.

  HE: I never said I didn’t like to fuck you.

  ME: And when I was fifty-five George Voisins marveled that my body was so youthful. And Gary Feldon hated me because I looked so much younger than he did.

  HE: It just goes to show.

  ME: And now I’m nearly sixty and my body still looks great. Probably better than it ever did. And you …

  HE: And me, I’m dead.

  Which he is, and I really wish he wasn’t. He wasn’t the love of my life. That was Ronny Damico. As I always said, “When you got fucked by Ronny Damico you stayed fucked for a while.” I had been in love with Morgan before then. We slept together for thirty years, and I never didn’t feel like it. You can say that for our relationship. At the end, when he died, I loved him, but it was the kind of love you have for someone you crossed the Kalahari Desert with. On foot. Or survived the Black Hole of Calcutta with. Morgan and I had been to hell and back together, but through it all the sexual side of it never waned.

  Strange how sexual affairs advance, mirroring the interior state of the participants. The first time we went to bed together he jauntily flopped onto his stomach and said, “First you pogue me and then I’ll pogue you.” As though we were thirteen years old at boarding school. I demurred. For one, the last thing I wanted was someone pumping away at my behind after I had already had my orgasm. And second, it was far from romantic. I insisted that he lie on top of me and approximate something like intercourse between my legs, which was in no way satisfactory to either of us.

  After several years of desultory cocksucking and masturbating something tapped through to a deeper level during a sex session at another apartment I now had on Sheridan Square. Our first sex encounters had all taken place in a cold-water flat I had in Chelsea while I was a dancer. Sixteen dollars a month, later twenty-five when they put in heat. A great atmosphere for throwaway sex that flat had, but it wasn’t good for much else.

  In my new apartment, which was a real apartment, one evening after the preliminaries had well begun I dragged him over to a wooden chair which had come from my cold-water flat. (I wonder where that chair is now? Someone’s using it surely. It was sturdy.) I had him sit down on the chair and lowered myself onto his very large penis facing him. That penis had to be very deeply inside me when he pulled my body to him and pressed his cheek against my chest, holding me tightly with both arms. This was extremely intimate behavior for him. He was probably surging in me and his body flooding with passion. He picked me up still astride him and carried me to the nearby bed where he finished the act with great abandon. This was true fucking between intimates and led us to a relationship with each other that if it was not more interdependent was certainly more profound.

  At that time no one ever entered his body, but our relationship was to endure year after year to the point where I would be beneath him in Paris and he would lower himself onto my penis, legs bent beneath him. He would rest there impaled while I masturbated him onto my chest, at which point he would twist his face and sink backward into a deep backbend until his head was on the bed. He was much more supple than I was.

  In much later years I would look up from this same position and see that twisted face in orgasm covered in wrinkles—something like a howling oriental sage. Sex had become a kind of spiritual rite for him by that time. He had little else to concentrate upon.

  I can just imagine what he would say to me now. When I fell in love with Ronny Damico he said, “That guy is great-looking, but he is going to be nothing but trouble. Just don’t come to me with your troubles.” And I never did.

  He used to say, “You could fall in love with anyone. You just want to be in love.” Which is what he’d say now about Radomir I’m sure. He’d say things like, “This is the kind of person you pay for, not the kind of person you share your life with.” Or “You laugh at clowns, Nevis, you don’t fall in love with them.” If he knew I wasn’t even sleeping with Radomir he would just shrug and refuse to discuss the subject further. For him, if you weren’t fucking you didn’t have a relationship. And he was right, of course.

  I did say to him once about Ronny Damico, “He’s crazy.” Morgan just looked at me and said, “No, you are.” I’m sure that he would say that to me now. It sobered me up then, and the time to sober up again is heading my way.

  ~24~
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  Radomir Makes a List

  The other night, as I was lying in bed, I was making a list of all the people I had had sex with. I got up to twenty-nine just counting on my fingers. I wonder if I can write it down and get that many again.

  First there was my girlfriend in high school, Cindy LaBreque. Really. I hear all these stories from other guys about all the sex they had with their buddies when they were teenagers. That didn’t happen for me. Even with all my brothers hanging about. Was I too ugly? I don’t think so. Maybe because I started going out with Cindy quite young and we started making out. It was kind of dumb. I kind of liked it because I thought that was what I should be doing. I wonder if Cindy enjoyed it. She seemed to, but I’m not sure she ever had an orgasm. I’m not sure I even knew that was what she was supposed to have.

  I suppose Beverly counts, even though it was a blow job beside the kitchen table. I suppose I should have slept with her to give her a break from all those johns. She was always awfully good to me.

  Herbert the call boy comes in here. That was my first sex with a man, and I have to say it was great. If he had wanted to have an affair with me I’d probably still be there.

  That terrible fat man the one night I worked as a prostitute. The less said about that the better. There’s a joke about, “What do you call a bad blow job?” “Fabulous.” But in his case it wasn’t fabulous; it was a grotesque indignity.

  Beth would be next. She must have been about twenty-eight and I was nineteen. She liked being seen around Denver with her little boy toy. She was kind of like sleeping with a boy anyway. But when she found out I was sleeping with Tim, too, the shit hit the fan and it was all over.