Arena Stage

by habu

  It wasn’t long before Cersenka had made his exit of the room, leaning on his cane in a heartbreaking, slow progression to the door, and stopping beside me and embarrassing and pleasing me deeply by guessing correctly that I was a dancer and by offering me an audition for the play. And then the other two men at the table, oblivious to how momentous it was to me to receive that attention from Cersenka, were rising, scraping their chairs on the polished wood floor. The stage director, Handelsman, scooped together the papers strewn on the table top, and I saw him motioning toward the piano in the shadows.

  My breath stopped and I gasped inwardly as a black giant emerged from the shadows. No wonder I hadn’t been able to see who was lurking back there. He was ebony black and was wearing a black turtleneck and black trousers. He was a hulking muscle man, but he moved gracefully on the balls of his feet as he came over to the table at Handelsman’s summons. He was a handsome man. He could have played a tribal African chief on stage. And all eyes would have gone to him whenever he was there. I wondered if he was a dancer or an actor.

  But then Mr. Masters snapped his fingers at me, and I started gathering up all of that gear he had made me bring over for appearances sake, pushing my selfish dreams of dancing for Cersenka into the back of my brain.

  Handelsman was speaking to the black giant, who was being attentive to him, although I felt by his bearing that the black man saw himself as in no way subservient to the stage director. “I have invited Creigh and his assistant to the yacht, where we can discuss this more comfortably and over drinks and dinner,” Handelsman said. “Show his assistant to the ship, will you, Gil? Creigh and I will be along shortly, after we have broken this momentous news to the theater director.”

  “Sure thing, Lenny,” the black man answered in a breezy tone, which I then got the impression he was using to impress me—to show me the difference between me as Mr. Masters’s dogs body and him—because he introduced himself to me as Gil Johnson, Leonard Handelsman’s assistant.

  Johnson was giving me “that” look—as if he could see straight through me and the relationship I had with Mr. Masters, as if he knew I was nothing better than a sex slave to Mr. Masters. And, disconcertingly, as if he, the big black man, already owned me as well.

  I turned away from him in embarrassment and not wanting to let him see that I was impressed by him, that something at the center of me was showing interest in him. I gathered up the rest of the paraphernalia I’d brought into the room. When I was upright again, he pointed to the doors at the back of the room.

  As we turned to walk out of the room, he laid a hand on the small of my back to guide me in the right direction, which I enjoyed. Then, outside the room, when we turned right to go down a dark flight of stairs that led to an exit out on 6th Street

  , the black giant moved his hand down to cup my buttocks. Just like he knew he’d made me already.

  Out on the street, he turned to me and smiled. “They won’t need us. We can go to the yacht later rather than sooner. You’ve got the keys to this townhouse of Masters’s, don’t you?” He squeezed my butt cheek in his broad hand and was leaning in close to me. I liked the feel of his hand. It burned right into my ass. But I wasn’t free to do what I wanted. Masters demanded exclusivity. He never wanted to wear a condom; he said he did everything on the spur of the moment and condoms disrupted the moment. I wasn’t free to fuck anyone else—no matter how inviting this obvious offer was.

  “Mr. Masters’s will expect me to be there when he arrives,” I said.

  “This Mr. Masters owns you, I take it?” the black giant asked. But he was still smiling and seemed to be amused.

  “Pretty much so, yes,” I answered. There could be no meeting, no relationship. So there was no reason for me to be coy.

  “OK, I’ll take you on over to the yacht. But I don’t think I’ll stay around very long. And I don’t think you will either.”

  I wondered what he meant by that as we walked the two blocks over to the waterfront, but then, when I saw the yacht, I was mesmerized. It was one of those old fan tail yachts from the 1920s, all polished teak superstructure on top of a glistening white hull. Pretty long, but small enough to get into a channel like this. I figured it made a pretty nifty home away from home, though.

  Gil Johnson waited with me, asking me about my background and being guarded about his in return, until Mr. Masters and Handelsman arrived, all animated talk. Once embarked, they walked right by us where we were sitting in the semicircle of cushions at the stern of the ship, entered the salon, and disappeared down a corridor at the far end of that toward the bow of the ship.

  “Have a nice wait,” Gil said, with a smirk on his face, as he rose from the cushions. “When you get tired enough to want to go home, go take a look. I’m outta here until nine. If you want to stay around until I’m back and then want to go do something, the offer’s still open.”

  I thanked him through pursed lips and then watched him saunter off up the dock and onto Water Street

  and over toward the bars near the Gangplank restaurant. He looked mighty fine from the back, moving like he was totally confident, in self-assured strides. I regretted more than somewhat my pledge of constancy to Mr. Masters.

  I sat there for the better part of an hour, on the fan tail of the yacht, Boxoffice. I’m sure many thought that was a funny name for a ship. But it made sense for Leonard Handelsman. He’d probably paid for it from the big box-office returns of his plays on Broadway.

  Then I started thinking about Mr. Masters and Handelsman. Handelsman had been so deferential back there in the meeting room at the Arena Stage, and the longer Mr. Masters had been there, the more self-assured he’d become. There was about a decade and a half between them; I couldn’t imagine when they would have met. Then I noticed an album out on a table near the door into the salon. It was open, as if someone had been reviewing it out here. It wouldn’t be something you’d leave out on the deck of a ship, with all of the salt-water breezes around, even though this area was covered. I got up and picked up the book, and brought it back to the bench seat, and started to scan through the pages.

  It was a scrapbook history of Handelsman’s Broadway productions. And there, in the first few pages, where Handelsman started his rise to acclaim, there were playbills and photos that answered my question. Handelsman’s start was at the height of Mr. Masters’s stage hits. The playbills and photos alike explained it. Mr. Masters had given Handelsman a leg up. So, it stood to reason that Handelsman was giving payback now. Just what a young, rising star would do for his mentor. But the photos were a bit more disturbing. They were group photos, but there, always, were Mr. Masters and Handelsman together, touching. Nothing for sure, of course, if you didn’t know Mr. Masters intimately yourself. I recognized those expressions, the possessiveness of the way Mr. Masters held his arm around the young Handelsman’s shoulders, the way he put his hand on Handelsman’s forearm.

  So, I wasn’t that surprised when I heard the faint, but not unfamiliar sounds wafting up the corridor leading toward the bow on the other side of the salon.

  Slowly, silently, not really wanting to do it, I entered the salon and started working my way down that corridor. Immediately after the salon, there were staterooms on either side. Two on the left. Just one at that depth on the right. No doubt the owner’s stateroom. The sounds were more distinct now. They were coming from the open door beyond the stateroom on the right.

  It was a small cabin. Not much more room available than for the sling suspended from an iron hook in the center of the ceiling. Handelsman was in the sling, his head pointed away from me, toward the outside wall, his legs trussed up in hoops high on the chains nearer to the door that attached the black leather sling to the hook in the ceiling. He was naked—and in great shape for a man in his forties. The soles of his feet were moving back and forth, his head was lolled over the far end of the sling, and he was moaning deeply—the way I’m sure I moaned when Mr. Masters was fucking me.

  Mr. Mast
ers was standing, between Handelsman’s spread and trussed legs. The sight was as mesmerizing as it was horrifying to me. There was a good rhythm going to it. I could see Mr. Masters’s butt cheeks expand and contract in rhythm to the movement of Handelsman’s feet. And with each contraction of Mr. Masters’s butt cheeks, representing the slide of his cock deep inside Handelsman’s channel, Handelsman emitted a moan.

  I turned and retraced my steps, walking smartly, but silently. And I didn’t stop when I got to the fan tail. I moved on to the gangplank and crossed it and walked across the concrete apron on the quay and up a little grassy rise to where there were park benches, set inside the sidewalk on Water Street, pointed toward the yacht basin.

  There were few others around, it having gotten a little nippy out as night had fallen. The lights in the rigging of the boats tied to the piers and view beyond to the Haines Point park, separating the channel from the Potomac River, and the lights of the runways of Reagan Airport across the river should have been cheering. But I wasn’t in a cheerful mood, and the lights were bleary as they reflected off the tears welling up in my eyes.

  It wasn’t just the betrayal. A man of Mr. Masters’s importance and standing doesn’t betray. He just lives, and everyone around him adjusts. And it wasn’t the hypocrisy of demanding constancy from me and not exercising it himself or even the horror of what it could mean when he had unprotected sex with me and was fucking other men. It was more because of my weakness, because of my own irrational connection to him. I wasn’t blinded by Mr. Masters’s self-centeredness or some of the realities behind his “great man” façade. In fact, I loved him all the more for it. He was one of the great men of the theater—and he had let me into the center of his life.

  I realized it was jealousy I felt. The obvious prior relationship with Handelsman. The swift and easy way they just drifted matter-of-factly back into a sexual relationship. Leaving me to cool my heels on the fan tail of that son of a bitch’s yacht. I felt so, so small.

  “You OK?”

  I turned and looked up. It was the black giant, Gil whateverhisnamewas. Gil Johnson, I guess. He plopped down beside me and turned to me.

  “What are you doing up here? Isn’t it warmer down on the ship?”

  “I . . . I couldn’t.” I was having trouble saying anything.

  “They’re fucking, aren’t they?” He asked, obviously not the least bit surprised. “They just walked on by you and went in to Lenny’s special room and started fucking, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.” I tried not to make my answer sound desperate. But there was no way I brought that off.

  “You didn’t know, did you?” He continued. “You didn’t know anything about Masters and Handelsman’s prior history before you came down to Washington, did you?”

  “No,” I squeaked. He put his arm around me then. And I let him. He was warm. And he smelled nice. I could feel the strength in his arms. And apparently something about that conveyed to him, because his next question was directly related.

  “Hey. Firm shoulders and biceps. And I saw you move back in the meeting room. Dancer are you?”

  “Yes, yes I am . . . or was,” I said.

  “Masters make you give it up?”

  I didn’t answer, which gave him the answer. Instead, I tried to redirect. “You move like a dancer too. You a dancer too?”

  He laughed. “No, I’m a kick boxer. Reaches a similar result, but that’s a whole other bag, I can assure you.”

  He was putting me in my place. Just like they did back in Tatesville. Separating the athletes from the pansies. But I’d come a long way since then. I just let it roll over me.

  “But you work for Handelsman,” I said. Trying to get a little of my own back.

  “Yeah, he gives me my paycheck. But it’s not a bit like you workin’ for Masters, I can assure you of that too.”

  Masters was fucking Handelsman. So this big black guy was fucking Handelsman too. I was feeling weak in the knees. My body wanted him. And Mr. Masters had thrown me a curve.

  He might have had me nailed right then and there, but he veered off the subject.

  “You dancin’ in this production?”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t danced in a production for a few years.”

  “Since you started workin’ for Masters then?”

  I didn’t answer. Which, again, was an answer.

  “You’re hard bodied, though,” at which he took the opportunity to give me a good feel here and there, “so you’ve been practicin’.”

  “Just recently,” I answered. “I . . . I’m thinking of going back to it—to dancing on the stage.”

  “Does Masters know?”

  “No.” I said it softly, but he heard me.

  “Do you think he’ll let you go back into it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He turned my face toward his then, and he put his lips to mine. I let him do that, but he became more aggressive and moved to slipping his tongue in past my lips. I broke away from the kiss and turned my head to where I was looking away from him, up the channel, toward where it joined with the mouth of the Anacostia River into the wider Potomac. While he was kissing me, he’d placed one of his big paws on my basket. I didn’t have to tell him that I found him attractive.

  “He fucks you, doesn’t he?” Gil asked softly.

  “Yes,” I answered. But my face was pointed away from him and the answer was caught in the wind.

  “What was that?”

  “Yes,” I said louder and I turned back to him. I’m sure he could see the tears in my eyes.

  “Whenever he wants, right?”

  “Yes,” I answered. But I couldn’t leave it like that. “He’s Creighton Masters. He’s a lion of the theater.”

  “Big cock has he?” Gil asked. He was smiling a sloppy grin. I should have taken that as mocking, but the way he said it encouraged me not to. It was like he was chipping at ice here, trying to get me.

  “No . . . yes.” I was flustered. “I meant that he is a legend in the theater, and my whole life is the theater. He’s big and I’m small. Insignificant. And without him, I’d be even more insignificant. But yes . . . yes, he’s got a cock to match his fame.”

  The smile stayed in place. “I got a big cock too. A legendary cock. I’d like to fuck you.”

  That moment had passed. He’d had me there for a few seconds. But that was way back in the conversation. Maybe it was because he was being so cocky, so sure of himself—although, god knows, how I was reacting to his paw cupping my cock and balls gave him every reason to be sure of himself. Being cocky and sure of himself, and I’d just been brought to the brink of that cockiness by Mr. Masters back there in Handelsman’s “special” cabin.

  I pulled away and stood up from the bench. But my legs weren’t in on the program. They didn’t carry me right away. Maybe I thought Gil required some sort of explanation. Because in other circumstances . . .

  “I can’t. Sorry, I can’t. Mr. Masters requires exclusivity.”

  Gil laughed. Obviously my attempt at an explanation had hit his funny bone.

  “Your Mr. Masters is back there banging the wadding out of my Mr. Handelsman, and you’re worried about him demanding that you be exclusively his?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand,” I said. I was feeling better now. The spell was broken. I was passed whatever I was being tempted to do.

  “What’s to understand?” Gil asked in an incredulous tone.

  “Mr. Masters is Mr. Masters, and I am me. It nice that you have a different arrangement with Handelsman, but that’s between you and him. Now, could you just go on back to the boat? That’s where you sleep, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I sleep wherever I want on the boat. But I usually sleep in the master’s cabin with my dick up Handelsman’s ass. So, who do you think that makes the master?”

  “Who signs the checks?” I asked.

  He stood up now too, and I could see that what I’d said had gotten to hi
m. But he didn’t strike out. He just started walking off in that sexy lope of his, down the grassy embankment, toward the Boxoffice.

  At the bottom of the incline, he turned and looked up at me. He was standing between streetlights, a dark man in the shadows. I couldn’t tell what expression was on his face.

  “After what you’ve seen, you’re going to sit there, waiting for Masters? In the chilly air?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Why?”

  “Because he told me to.”

  I heard a harsh laugh, and he turned and took a step, but then stopped and turned again.

  “That’s a difference. Even if Lenny tells me to wait, I don’t if I don’t want to. But I’ll tell you something else. I’m willing to wait for you. Just don’t take too long.”

  And then he was gone, walking up the gangplank of Handelsman’s yacht.

  I felt relieved when Gil was back aboard the Boxoffice. It was a crazy night. I don’t know what I would have done if he’d walked back up the grassy embankment and told me to follow him—that we were going to fuck.

  Chapter Three: Gil

  The little fucker had turned me down. I knew there wasn’t anything ultimate or final about it, but I also knew he wanted me. What a tease, I thought, as I walked down the gangplank of the Boxoffice and started along the edge of the water on the path leading to the yacht harbors restaurant area to get something to eat and then maybe take a stroll toward the city to add to the old nest egg fund.

  Adding to the escape fund was what I’d programmed for this evening. It’s just that Sean Singleton, Masters’s assistant, was such a nice little piece, I thought I’d just do it for pleasure for a change. But he turned me down. Didn’t make me want him any less, though.

  So off I went to do a little work for myself rather than Handelsman. I wasn’t too happy with Lenny at the moment. I didn’t like the way he looked at that Masters guy. I didn’t have enough escape money shuffled together yet for him to be looking at the Masters guy like that.