Did I sound desperate?
I hurried away from the pair and was glad to find the first bathroom I came to was not occupied. I ducked inside, emptied my bladder, and then—as I washed my hands—looked at my reflection in the mirror.
It was as though Jeffrey’s attention had had an effect on me, making me better looking. My color was high with a blush of rose in my cheeks. My eyes sparkled. His attentions, it seemed, had wiped years off my face and body.
Was this what falling in love felt like?
No, this is what falling in lust feels like. Your body is merely responding to the release of endorphins and added testosterone, hence the rosy cheeks and the twinkling eyes. You are in lust, that’s all. But even Martha Stewart would agree, that’s a good thing.
Someone rattled the doorknob outside, and I decided I had done enough mental talking to myself for one night. It was time for more action and less talk. “Be right out!” I shouted to the person outside. I quickly dried my hands and opened the door.
He was out there, waiting.
No, not Jeffrey, my beautiful angel, but the masked man. We stood face to face, and I started to move away from him. He turned to watch my retreat, the open door to the bathroom behind him.
I stopped, annoyed, and turned back. “I thought you needed to use the bathroom. Wasn’t that why you were rattling the doorknob?”
He chuckled, and again, I felt I had heard that laugh before. It would drive me crazy if I couldn’t place it before night’s end. He stepped in front of me, blocking my path. I could finally make out the color of his eyes through the eyeholes—they were green. His staring at me was giving me the creeps.
“What?” I hissed. “I’d like to get back to the party, if you don’t mind.”
“I was hoping I could talk to you.”
I glanced at the crowd in the living room out of the corner of my eye. I could see another guy, dressed as, I don’t know, Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, was chatting up Jeffrey. Jeffrey had his head thrown back, laughing. I looked at the masked man. You’re ruining everything, you idiot. I wanted to say the words aloud, but again, I was too nice. I couldn’t just say such a thing so bluntly to another person. But I had no trouble hiding my annoyance and my impatience.
“Well, now is not a good time. Don’t you need to go?”
He cocked his head.
“To the john? Take a piss?”
“No. I just wanted to talk to you for a minute, alone.”
A guy dressed as Darth Vader slid into the bathroom behind us, trailed by Tabby, who was shrieking drunkenly, “Remember—you fucker—you promised me a whole basket!” His blonde wig had come askew and his red lipstick was smeared.
I glanced back to where my angel stood. Rooster was treating himself to a healthy grope of Jeffrey’s left bicep. Damn.
“You know what? Find someone else to talk to ‘for a minute, alone.’ I’m not interested.” I strode away. So much for being nice.
I joined Jeffrey and Rooster in the corner of the living room, giving my new competition a good up-and-down stare. I smiled at Jeffrey and immediately regretted saying, “Miss me?” because it was so dumb.
He did me the honor of only smiling at my question and not answering it directly. I felt like an ass.
Jeffrey quickly remedied that situation. “I hate to shatter the angelic illusion, but I need to smoke.” He looked directly at me and not at Rooster. “Wanna step out on the sun porch with me?”
Rooster made a move to come with us, but Jeffrey stopped him by placing a hand on his broad, denim workshirt-clad chest. “We’ll be right back.”
We headed through the crowd, which had grown since I had been absorbed in my new love interest. Or should that be lust interest? Whatever. The crowd had nearly doubled inside, and it was a real labor to wend our way through it.
But once we got to the rear of the condo and the sunroom adjacent to the kitchen, it was blessedly cool. The sunroom had all its windows open and was lit only dimly by candles, flickering in the October breeze.
“Won’t you be cold?” I wondered.
“I’ll be okay.” Jeffrey pulled a pack of Marlboros and a disposable lighter out of his boot, extracted one, lit up, and blew the smoke over my head. I am usually turned off by the idea of smoking, but at that moment, Jeffrey looked so hot, so bad boy, and male that I felt my cock thicken and grow. I wanted to growl.
“Want one?”
I shook my head. I debated whether I should say, “No, I’d rather just watch you” and decided that would sound stupid. I was thinking of a lot of dumb things to say tonight; at least I had the smart judgment to censor most of them before they spilled from my mouth. So I stayed mum, leaning back against the exposed brick wall, and watched him as he smoked. The man was hotter than hell. I didn’t care if his mouth did taste like an ashtray, I wanted to kiss him so bad right then, it brought me close to trembling.
I looked around the sunroom. Jesus, we are actually out here by ourselves. How long is this going to last? I waited for Jeffrey to finish his cigarette, and then I summoned up my courage and wrapped my arms around him.
He pulled back a bit, grinning and staring into my eyes.
“You’re hot,” he mumbled. “When I saw you, I knew immediately you were the one.”
“I just want to kiss you. Bad.”
He nodded. “As soon as we’re alone.”
“But we are.”
“Not really.” He gestured with a nod to the doorway behind me. I turned to look, and the masked man stood there, watching us through those creepy, shadowy eyeholes.
Fuck! What was with this guy, anyway? Why couldn’t he leave us alone?
“I just quit. But I couldn’t help notice you smoking and it looked so good. And the smell was driving me nuts. And hey—it’s a party. Would you mind if I had one?”
“One leads to two, you know.”
“I know, I know. But if I have one of yours, I won’t buy a pack, so that scenario won’t be so likely.”
I wanted to scream. Was this character following us? Following me?
Jeffrey reached down for the bright red-and-white pack and held it out to the masked man. “Don’t come crying to me when your addiction gets reawakened.”
Masked man grabbed a cigarette from the pack, put it between the slit in his mask that was barely big enough to accommodate it, and lit up. Smoke curled from the slit and the two nose holes. It looked weird, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or be afraid.
I turned back to Jeffrey. “You wanna move along?”
“Huh?”
I looked over at masked man, wishing he would go away. But I would have to resign myself that my proposition would have an audience. I had the creepy feeling that if Jeffrey did turn me down, masked man would be only too happy to take his place.
And I was so furious at him right then, there was no chance of that. I hated the way he just stood there like an idiot, smoking and watching us. Couldn’t he take a hint and realize when two guys wanted to be alone?
“You want to maybe get out of here?” I said, my voice tentative.
Jeffrey finished his smoke, looked around for an ashtray, found a tin can set out for the purpose, and dropped the butt into it. “The party’s still in full swing. Let’s go check out what else is going on.”
At least he didn’t flat-out say no. But still, I was bored with the party, irritated with the masked man, and I felt an almost overwhelming need to get Jeffrey alone, to taste him, to feel his body pressed against mine, to see what that leather thong was concealing.
I followed him back into the crowd in the kitchen, grateful to leave the masked man behind with his cigarette. Maybe now he’d leave us alone.
In the kitchen, someone bent over the granite countertop, snorting up a line of white powder I assumed was cocaine while a couple of others waited in line for their turn. There must have been a dozen long, elegant lines awaiting their nasal attention. The guy I had seen earlier in the ankle shackles leaned agains
t the stove, gnawing on a Buffalo chicken wing, a smidgen of Ranch dressing clinging to his chin. Yet another pair crowded into the pantry. It was hard to see them in the shadows, but it looked like one guy was definitely giving the other a blowjob.
In the few minutes we had been outside, the party had gone from raucous to salacious.
This was always the way with Tabby’s gatherings.
I had an idea. I turned to Jeffrey and asked, “Is this your first Tabby party?”
He grinned and nodded.
“Then you don’t know about the playroom, right?”
“The playroom?” He cocked his head.
I grabbed his hand and pulled him along. “Come on. I’m sure the party has started in there by now. Let’s go check it out.”
It was only a short distance to the bedroom at the back of the apartment, but it took a while to get there because of the crowd pressing in. I was certain many of the guys there now were party crashers because a lot of them were dressed in nothing more elaborate than jeans and T-shirts. The playroom might have been in the back, but the sexual fun had spilled well beyond its confines. Groups of guys were gathered in threes and fours, with their pants around their knees or ankles, staring into one another’s drug-fueled eyes while stroking their meat. Some were kissing. Others, like the guys in the pantry, were engaged in more serious oral contact.
We finally made it to the back of the apartment and the black-painted door that led into Tabby’s playroom. From behind the door, we could clearly hear moans, groans, grunts, and lots of heavy breathing. “Fuck yeah!” Someone shouted in a deep, bass voice.
“You ready for this?” I eyed Jeffrey, one hand on the doorknob. There was something different in his expression, and I couldn’t quite discern what it was. Fear? Disgust? Anticipation?
Let’s go with the latter. I wanted to get Jeffrey excited voyeuristically and let him take his passion out on me. Yes, Old Mr. Lust had crept in and shoved away any pretense I had for romance. I wanted to hop on that sling I knew was set up and feel Jeffrey sliding deep inside me.
I could imagine no greater pleasure.
I opened the door, and things were pretty much as I imagined. The room was filled almost to capacity with naked men, of all different ages, and in all different colors and sizes. There were muscle-bound gym rats, skinny tweakers, overweight middle-aged men who looked like they’d be singing in their church choirs tomorrow morning. All of them were engaged in some sort of sexual conduct. Blowjobs were being freely given and received everywhere, and they were all in different stages of progress—from the first tentative licks applied lovingly to an engorged purple head, to the cries of an African-American man as he was showered with the loads of two guys at the same time, the semen looking white, almost phosphorescent, on his cocoa skin.
There was a redhead in the sling, getting pounded mercilessly by a hairy salt-and-pepper daddy, who drew his cock almost all the way out, then slammed it back in so hard it rattled the chains attaching the leather sling to its frame. A line of about six guys waited for their turn with the redhead. All of this had me practically creaming in my jock. I looked down to see its cotton surface stained dark with pre-come. The scene was straight out of Hieronymus Bosch—a gay Garden of Earthly Delights. For just a moment, I nearly forget Jeffrey stood behind me. I turned to look back at him, expecting, and hoping, to see his dark eyes glazed over with lust, his mouth partially open as he panted. I wanted him to pull me into the room, rip my clothes from my body, and push me down on the tacky shag carpeting covering the floor and have his way with me, viciously and over and over again.
But that was not what I saw.
Chapter 5
Jeffrey was looking away from the room, as if it were too bright in there, like what he was seeing hurt his eyes. I realized that, in spite of his costume, Jeffrey was not as jaded as I had assumed. It all came together then—his reticence about kissing me when others were around, the way he drew away from me if there was any chance of someone watching, and his desire to get me alone.
Jeffrey was shy. No. Jeffrey was decent, a good guy, one who preferred his sexual congress to be private, no matter how alluring he had made himself look on this night.
I didn’t know whether to be glad or disappointed. Because, to be honest, I was really hoping to wander into that playroom with him, to put on a true spectacle among spectacles and to have my way with Jeffrey in the wildest and rawest possible way.
Yet another part of me thought differently. Maybe this Jeffrey could be your Mr. Right as opposed to your Mr. Right Now. You’ve had a string of Mr. Right Nows, a longer string than you maybe even care to admit to yourself, so perhaps the time has come to find the one.
Isn’t that what Jeffrey called you earlier—the one?
I grinned up at him. Have I mentioned he was taller than I was? The grin was one part embarrassment for the obvious eagerness I displayed to get in and get down in that playroom, the other was gratitude that Jeffrey was not that kind of guy.
I couldn’t help myself. I took one last, longing look back into the room. Amid the mingled sweat-slicked and tattooed bodies, I saw something that gave me a chill. Not because it was scary—but simply because it was so weird.
And creepy, in an evil clown sort of way.
Tabby sat in a shadowed corner of the room, watching the goings-on with an air of feigned indifference, although his slack jaw and moist lips told a different story. He had removed the blond, pigtailed wig, and his hair was plastered to his head by sweat, which also poured down from his hairline, making his whole face shiny. I wondered how much of that coke I had seen in the kitchen he had consumed. This was not the jovial, out-of-control joker who had greeted me at the door.
He still wore the white chiffon dress, but it was now bunched up around his waist, exposing his fat, hairy belly and a limp dick, which he feverishly worked as he watched the other men sucking and fucking.
With his other hand, he fanned himself lazily, like some Southern belle, with a fan of black feathers.
That’s what really froze me, because simultaneously with the sight of the feathered fan, a few words popped into my consciousness from out of nowhere:
I’ve been inside your house.
All at once, I remembered the card with the feather on it and the disturbance at my place about a month ago.
Could it have been…Tabby?
No.
It wasn’t possible.
The fan was a mere coincidence.
What reason on earth would Tabby have to scare me like that? He was my friend, had been for years.
Yet, the Tabby I saw before me right now was a man I didn’t know. A bug-eyed, drug-addled pervert who, I suddenly realized, held these elaborate parties with their licentious climaxes so that he could get a voyeuristic thrill.
I had never seen Tabby once—not in all the years I had been coming to his wild parties cum orgies—touch another man. Come to think of it, he always watched.
Maybe he hated us all. For touching…
I suddenly felt not only creeped out, but also manipulated, as though all of us there were mere players to Tabby’s fantasy, a real-live porno that he could stroke to.
Did he really think so little of us?
Something else flashed in my mind as well, the newspaper headlines I had seen and paid not enough attention to over the past few months. There was a series of murders in Chicago, all gay men, all alone in either their apartments or secluded public places, like empty public restrooms or back alleys. The press was beginning to call them the “Stranger Danger” murders.
No.
Tabby might be a lot of things. But he was no killer. The thought was laughable.
All of this went through my mind in a matter of seconds. I looked away from Tabby and back at Jeffrey with relief.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t realize just how wild things would be in there.” So what if it was a lie? I was shaken and didn’t want to add to my unease by worrying about what Jeffrey though
t of me. That he thought I was, well, like them. I shut the door partially on the scene.
“It’s okay,” Jeffrey said. “I’m just not much of an exhibitionist. I like getting my guys alone.” He smiled at me, and once again, everything was right with the world.
Until it wasn’t.
The masked man was coming down the corridor, headed straight for us.
Oh Lord, why, why, why? I glared at him, hoping he was headed for the playroom. Maybe once he was inside, I could finally convince Jeffrey to come back to my place.
But I could see he was bearing down on us, no doubt about it.
“Hot scene in there?” he said through his mask once he landed in front of us.
“Yeah. Flaming hot. You should go check it out.”
He peered over my shoulder, then turned his masked face back to us. “My, my! What would their mothers think?” He laughed again, and the familiarity of it sent a stab of annoyance through me. Where had I heard that voice before?
Perhaps, I answered myself, inside your house.
Was this someone I knew? I longed to reach over and pull the mask up, so that it would rest atop his head, so I could see his face and then maybe everything would click into place.
Why don’t you just do it, then? What’s he going to do? Slap you? Or, better, why don’t you simply ask him who he is? Tell him his voice sounds familiar, but you can’t place it.
But something ate at me, and that was: why didn’t he just tell me who he was, if we were, indeed, acquainted enough for me to at least recognize his voice? If I had heard that voice before, then surely the logical end to that scenario was that he had heard mine. Since he could clearly see my face, he must know who I am. So why didn’t he come out and say, “Hello, Stephen. Enjoying the party?”
But he didn’t. And that’s what bothered me.
Suddenly, I was very tired of it all. The party. The masked man and the questions that came along with his dark frame and expressionless, stone-white face. I was sick of wondering who had been inside my house and trying to figure out if it was someone at this very party. I was bored with all the sex going on around me—the drug use, the reveling. Especially when I was not engaged in any of the above.
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