Raise the Red Flag

by Eric Del Carlo

  The system was corrupt as hell. Bribery was the order of the day, every day. There was no office in city hall that didn’t receive illicit funds. Every cop was on the take too, though this system was less organized. Jonny, as a clerk, wasn’t in a position yet to collect any graft, but he saw that he need only climb a rung or two to put himself there.

  For now he was content to gather information. He had already wheedled a few juicy secrets, ones that he could use as currency if he ever got into trouble. He’d gotten his hair barbered and had purchased a decent suit. There wasn’t any help for his white skin, but his Californian colleagues had by now stopped regarding his ethnicity as an amusing curiosity. He’d proven himself with his work, which was always first-rate. He wasn’t lazy, wasn’t a malcontent. They had started to accept him at face value.

  The workday was winding to a close. Most of those who occupied the comfortable offices upstairs had already left by now. The mayor himself spent the least amount of time in the building of anyone employed there, it was said. Jonny was at his own little desk, stamping papers that needed stamping.

  The whole thing had a sort of make-believe feel to it. San Francisco suited him. The Chinese brought in opium. There was good tequila. He’d developed quite a taste for Spanish cuisine. And the tall dusky Spaniards strutting about everywhere were a lot of fun to look at.

  He wondered sometimes what he would have done here if he’d arrived without Hamilton. It wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility that he might have found his way to California on his own. In that reality, the one where he and Hamilton had never met, Jonny might have fled west to escape the fighting. He’d heard things had turned bloody in New Orleans, though the fabled French Quarter was still standing.

  But that wasn’t a reality he had any desire to know. Any life without Hamilton wouldn’t be worth living. Before, Jonny had wondered how things would be between them if and when they settled somewhere, with their adventures behind them, no more perils, no more traveling. He needn’t have worried. If anything, their bond had strengthened. He knew Hamilton now, knew his heart, his brain, his soul. And he loved every part of him.

  Especially his cock. At his desk, Jonny quietly snickered. He glanced up. The department was nearly empty. His stamping was done. He rubbed his eyes, then yawned big enough to make his jaw pop. Enough thinking about other realities. There was only one reality, after all, and here it was. And he was lucky to have Hamilton to share it with.

  It was time to head home, back to the apartment. He liked their place, liked the neighborhood with all the Spanish architecture that, frankly, reminded him of New Orleans with its narrow doors and windows, its gaudy colors.

  As he stood and reached for his coat, someone burst into the long room at the far end. The few other clerks still at their desks stirred, as the newcomer waved something in the air and erupted with some news. Jonny was turning to exit in the opposite direction, too tired to care just now about a football score or whatever bit of gossip was being handed around. But some intuition made him hesitate. As the news bearer finished his announcement—spoken too fast for even Jonny to follow—he spun away, back through the doors, still waving what Jonny now saw was a newspaper.

  “Gaetano,” Jonny called to one of the other clerks. He asked in Spanish what the commotion was about. Gaetano, normally reserved, was visibly dismayed.

  “Americanos,” he said, “…victorioso.”

  Which turned out to be the headline on the evening newspaper.

  THE APARTMENT had come furnished, though they’d added a few touches of their own by now, giving the rooms character. Jonny especially had an eye for inexpensive objets d’art, which provided an aesthetic texture. Jonny spoke often of the corruption of the city, but Hamilton saw it more as an artist’s utopia. There were painters, poets, writers, an international glut of them, in fact. San Francisco seemed to have gathered expatriates from France, from Italy, from the Colonies.

  Well… the Colonies no more, it seemed. Hamilton couldn’t stop looking at the newspaper, which was spread out over the kitchen table off which he and Jonny ate together when they were both home for meals. The table had come with the rooms, and it was a rickety affair, but Hamilton had fixed the legs so it now stood firmly.

  Americanos Victorioso, blared the banner headline. Jonny had read him the text, though Hamilton was surprised by how much of the Spanish he was now able to decipher on his own. There were photographs accompanying the major news story. One depicted a group of men and women, armed and roughly dressed, standing at the foot of a flagpole. These were the grounds of the former American Operations Headquarters in Richmond. The flag proudly on display atop the staff was, of course, the red hand upon the white field. This, then, was evidently going to be the formal ensign of the emergent nation, known to the world as the United American States.

  It boggled the mind. Or it boggled Hamilton’s, anyway. The British had surrendered. Naturally, they weren’t outright admitting to defeat. They had stopped sending in ground forces weeks ago, the paper said. Evacuations of infantry and motorized cavalry had been effected. Then the seaborne navy had withdrawn from the waters. Then, finally, the airships had one day vanished from the skies.

  The British government was calling it a strategic retirement. Those lands formerly referred to as the American Colonies would no longer be subject to British rule. It was trusted, the prime minister said in a statement, that “those people will comport themselves with the same dignity as sovereign citizens do elsewhere in the world.”

  Backhanded and roundabout, to be sure, but in the end this was surrender, Hamilton knew. The Americans had simply made their territory too costly to hold onto.

  “I’m running you a bath,” Jonny said.

  Hamilton glanced up from the paper’s pages, aware of the sound of water hitting the tub. From the street outside their second story windows he heard music, somebody fingering a guitar. There were a lot of musicians in this district, which was nestled in one of the city’s many valleys. San Francisco was built on a dismaying number of prodigious hills, and they made for the snug vales where neighborhoods had sprung up. Hamilton particularly liked this one. It was out of the wind, away from the mercantile flurry of the docks and downtown. Sometimes it was even warm here.

  But more than that, this valley neighborhood was a place where two men could almost—almost—engage openly in a romantic relationship. He and Jonny shared this apartment. They were hardly the only pair of males to cohabitate in the vicinity. Women too lived in twosomes along these snuggling streets, within these quaint houses and cheap apartment buildings. Granted, men didn’t walk about on each other’s arms, though the Spanish culture seemed much more open to physical contact among males in an ordinary social context. Men didn’t kiss other men on the street, and women of the lesbiana persuasion weren’t allowed to hold hands over tables in the cafes.

  Yet there was an acceptance here, and an understanding. Homosexuality fit well with the general free-spirited atmosphere. Artists and queers went hand in hand, so Jonny had put it. This valley kept its open secret. Hamilton and Jonny could live without fear here.

  “Your bath’s ready,” called Jonny.

  Hamilton tore himself away from the newsprint and that mesmerizing photo. He needed a bath. Most days he needed one, considering how much he taxed himself on the docks. He was, however, in a more muscular state than he’d ever been before, which seemed to please Jonny to no end.

  He entered their bathroom, expecting to find it empty and the water-filled tub waiting. The tub was there, trailing steam into the air, but so was Jonny. Jonny stood next to the large claw-footed tub. Jonny was naked. Jonny’s slim, well-toned body was very pleasing to the eye. Jonny’s cock was astir, making him all the more enticing.

  “I thought I’d scrub your back,” he said with a friendly and welcome leer.

  It was so very pleasant to come home to this, Hamilton thought as he got out of his sweaty work clothes. The bath water was perfum
ed, and a scent that might have been lilacs wafted through the tiled room. Hamilton stepped into the tub, wincing with pleasure at the hot sting of the water on his sore feet. He lowered himself in gradually. Jonny slid in behind him, a sleek, slippery shape.

  Apparently he had been literal about the back scrubbing. With a brush and a cloth, he scoured Hamilton’s thickened shoulders and abraded away the dead sweat-soaked tissue from his back. Suds appeared, great clouds of them, and Jonny worked them into Hamilton’s hair, even cleaning behind his ears. Hamilton lay back against Jonny’s knees and gave himself over to the hedonistic pleasures. It felt positively Roman.

  But when Jonny slid his trim legs around Hamilton and reached with his soapy hands around his trunk to lather his chest and stomach, the nationality of the bath shifted from Roman to Greek. Hamilton leaned back and felt Jonny’s erect member pressing him. Excitement skittered over his flesh. The lilac air shivered with erotic promise.

  Jonny moved his hands in circles over his torso, going lower and lower. Leaving trails of soap bubbles, he reached past Hamilton’s navel and brushed the swollen head of his own fiercely erect staff. Hamilton let out a soft cry. It felt so good. It felt so right.

  Water sloshed up the porcelain sides of the tub as Jonny shifted farther forward to take a full grip of Hamilton’s cock. He worked the length of him with his soap-slicked hand as Jonny rested his chin on Hamilton’s clavicle, his breath hot and gasping by Hamilton’s ear.

  Jonny was rubbing himself on the base of Hamilton’s backbone now, raising gooseflesh on Hamilton, even in this luxuriant steamy warmth. He was pumping Hamilton’s cock with considerable skill, knowing all the right pressures, all the proper movements. They had become very familiar lovers, but the act had never grown stale for Hamilton because of that familiarity. He cherished the intimacy they shared.

  “I want this inside me!” Jonny hissed alongside Hamilton’s earlobe. He squeezed Hamilton’s member with obvious need.

  More water sloshed as Hamilton flailed, trying to get himself turned about in the tub, which was foolish. They needed to abandon the tub altogether. Quickly they rinsed themselves, making a game of it, then dried each other’s bodies with thick white towels, making a more bawdy game of that. Before it could get out of hand, Jonny went scampering naked down the hall to the bedroom at the rear of the apartment.

  Hamilton followed, savoring the taut alluring sight of Jonny’s ripe buttocks.

  The bedroom was dominated by the tarnished brass-framed bed. Jonny had found a cheap but colorful quilt to brighten it up. He was moving to climb onto the bed, but Hamilton caught his arm and tugged him about. Jonny’s shortened hair stood up in damp thistlelike tufts. Hamilton pulled him into an embrace. He pressed his lips to Jonny’s, and the kiss was answered immediately, enthusiastically. Despite their weeks here and the frequency of their lovemaking, Jonny’s desires hadn’t waned. It seemed he too enjoyed the familiarity.

  Hamilton felt the probing of his tongue and met it with his own. They ground their mouths together, a searching slurping kiss, utterly without shame or restraint. And the fact that this wasn’t just some arbitrary anonymous mouth filled Hamilton with joy. He had never had a lover like this, had never experienced such a relationship—any relationship, really. He and Jonny were as close as two men could be, connected on every level. They might as well be married for the depth of feeling they shared.

  Jonny broke the kiss. His eyes blazed, and a salacious grin notched a corner of his mouth. He turned and this time hopped onto the bed, settling on hands and knees, facing away. Once again Hamilton was struck by his fine physical lines, the smooth svelte male shape.

  With his cock aching and testicles simmering, he followed his lover up onto the bed. Jonny turned his head to look back over his shoulder. The shoulder blade stood out starkly. His wet mouth hung open. Hamilton took his place behind him, assuming a position that sometimes—like now—felt almost sacramental. He had never felt the call of religion, but he sometimes thought he understood the glowering mysteries of the metaphysical when he and Jonny were together like this. In the joining of the flesh was the key to eternity.

  Or else Jonny Callahan was just a sweet sultry horny buck, and Hamilton couldn’t get enough of his luscious body.

  He didn’t linger over the thoughts. He laid his hands on the sculptural roundnesses of Jonny’s ass. He gently spread the hemispheres and set his cockhead to the offered hole. Enough of the slipperiness of the lilac-scented bath remained to allow easy ingress. Jonny’s netherhole swallowed Hamilton’s crown, then seemed to deliberately and greedily suck in his inches. He drove his vein-lined shaft deeper, feeling the cinching warmth of Jonny’s velvety channel.

  When he was buried fully, with his balls flush against Jonny’s backside, Hamilton allowed himself a savoring moment. He felt and appreciated the vulnerable connectivity of this carnal act. A thrum of erotic energy was activated. It hummed between them. He felt the pulse and excitement of his lover.

  “For Chrissake, Hamilton. Fuck me. Fuck me.”

  A chagrined hiccup of a laugh escaped Hamilton. He set himself into motion. With strong hands, gathering calluses daily, he gripped Jonny’s slim hips. He drove his cock in and out of the succulent ass before him. Jonny grunted with each plunge of Hamilton’s cock, a low grating at first, then building, growing louder and more ragged.

  Jonny reached out a hand and grasped the brass headboard. His head turned from side to side, and Hamilton saw his comely face again and again, in alternating profiles, flushed, the eyes wide, the mouth panting. Hamilton plowed him all the harder, driving deep, relishing the possessive grip of his canal.

  The bliss started to collect over him, lighting up his nerves, bringing light into the bedroom, where only a single candle burned. The illumination seemed to flare redly. He pumped wildly into Jonny’s body. He felt the impacts of their flesh, heard the spank of his balls against Jonny’s firm ass.

  Then the final madness overtook him. Hoarse moans slipped past his lips. He dug his fingers into Jonny’s hips, pressing skin onto bone. He pounded his beloved lover, trying with heat and speed and passion to make the connection between them a permanent bond.

  A shivering radiated through his body. His testicles tightened. The first wrenching spurt brought a sharp cry from him. He felt his liquid warmth spilling. Each spew was its own instant of rapture. Red washed the room wholly now, then slowly receded. The candle threw their sluggish shadows against the wall. The last of his spunk had jetted.

  With a sigh Hamilton withdrew himself. An afterglow of pleasure emanated from deep within. A soothing lethargy was trying to settle onto him, but he pushed it back. Jonny turned to face him, and Hamilton saw the need on his features, the radiant desire. How lovely a man he was. How lucky Hamilton was to have him, to be with him like this.

  Jonny’s cock was still fully erect, straining, twitching. Hamilton smiled. With a soft touch, he pushed Jonny onto his back. He parted the younger man’s legs and slipped down between them, shoulders pressing apart the sleek thighs. His lover awaited his fulfillment. Hamilton wouldn’t let him down. Not now, not ever.

  JONNY FELT the warm breath on his cock, and an anticipatory tickle of pleasure rolled up through him. His ass was still aglow from the thorough reaming Hamilton had just given him. Sometimes Jonny could come from that alone, from having Hamilton’s shaft working in and out of him. Enough sensation arose from the deed that he occasionally shot off his spunk just as Hamilton’s hot love was tearing loose inside him. Those were fine occasions.

  But today he wanted Hamilton’s mouth, and he was about to receive its ministrations. Hamilton had pushed him over onto his back, and Jonny now lifted his head and looked down and saw Hamilton’s face lit with a delicate delight. There was never a doubt that he truly enjoyed these acts they engaged in.

  His lips slid over Jonny’s bloated cockhead. The purplish knob distended Hamilton’s mouth as he engulfed more of Jonny’s cock. Jonny felt the sweet swirl of his ton
gue and sighed his appreciation. The wet circle slipped down his shaft. Jonny’s hips flexed. Hamilton swallowed him until his nose was buried in Jonny’s blond curls.

  Hamilton made a savoring sound. He shifted on the bed, and the discolored brass frame squealed a bit. Hamilton put a hand on Jonny’s balls, and that felt good.

  The auburn head rose and fell. The mouth held him. Jonny let his own head fall backward, skin pulled tight across his Adam’s apple. His eyes rolled into his skull. From the street he heard a guitar’s strings. Closer, he could just detect the guttering of the candle burning on the nightstand. It was dusk outside. The neighborhood was lively, but, as Hamilton had repeatedly and enthusiastically pointed out, it seemed a haven of sorts for homosexuals. Hamilton said he had never imagined such social acceptance. He and Jonny couldn’t exactly walk around hand in hand, but many of their acquaintances knew they were lovers and raised no more objection than if one of them had been a woman.

  Hamilton was right. It was a good place to be. Jonny had a job he was talented at, one that might even have a future. But… could they stay here forever? Jonny pulled his head upright again. He looked around the bedroom. It was a cozy apartment, better than a lot of places where he had laid his head. Yet some distant unnamed disquiet seemed to lurk at the edges of their oasis. Or else it was just the murmuring of his deepest instinct, the one that said he always had the option of running away—if the situation should ever call for it.

  But he could think of no reason to run. He loved Hamilton. Sharing living quarters with him had done nothing to dampen his passion and emotions. If anything, he felt closer to him by the day. Despite their different temperaments and backgrounds, they were surprisingly compatible cohabitants.

  Hamilton was sucking him harder, applying an intense suction. Jonny saw how the man’s cheeks were flattened around his shaft. His mouth kept its seal around his cock. The tongue flashed up and down his throbbing staff. Hamilton cradled his balls with a gentle pressure.