Thursday, February 28, 2019

Good, Strong Hands


dontravis.com blog post #326
  
Courtesy of Pixabay
How about another short story this week? Hope you enjoy.

*****
 GOOD, STRONG HANDS

Who in the hell gets thrown in jail for lipping off to a cop nowadays, particularly a stockbroker not yet thirty who’s busy racking up his third million? Money guarantees a fellow a get-out-of-jail card, doesn’t it? Even in a place like Albuquerqueespecially in a place like the Duke City. Well, not for Parker Welles… that’s me. There was a little more to the ‘incident’ than that, of course. I was rip-roaring drunk after a nasty row over absolutely nothing with my girlfriend when the cop stopped us. Thank god, I wasn’t driving, Nellann was. That relationship had probably come to a nasty end tonight. Funny how epiphanies are often kick-started by inanities. Ever notice that?
Apparently calling one of APD’s finest a ‘son of a bitch’ rates right up there with serial murder. And standing before the bar proclaiming the judge a ‘crotchety old bastard’ apparently compounds the crime exponentially, but what the hell, I was drunk on my ass. The verdict… guilty. The sentence… forty-eight hours in hizzoner’s free downtown hotel.
It takes forever to break into the Duke City jailhouse given all the paperwork and waiting for your name to be called, but I eventually managed it. The city was busy moving most of its provincial felons into a brand-new facility way the hell and gone out on the west side, thus the downtown pokey, where the authorities decided I would accept hizzoner’s kind invitation, was now only semi-occupied when normally it would have been half past full.
Eventually, I was delivered to a small cell fronted with bars like you’ve seen in a thousand jailhouse movies. The sides, however, were solid, except for a gap of perhaps two inches between the side panels and the back wall, probably designed for the circulation of air. Without having to contend with a cellmate, I quickly grew accustomed to the clanging, rumbling, never-quite-silent ambiance of the place and was bored out of my skull within an hour.
My stress, already alarmingly high despite a cool-guy act, went soaring with movie images of mess hall violence when we were called out for dinner. As I marched down the long corridor following the felon ahead and trailed by the one behind, I took note of my next-door neighbor, the guy in front of me. Tall and slender but well-built, he wasn’t Hollywood’s idea of a convict. His skin was a smooth, natural tan, so he was likely Hispanic. As we turned the corner, I caught a glimpse of his face. Classically handsome… young, but already in that stage where young Latinos go from being girl-pretty to Valentino-virile. Nineteen or twenty was my guess.
I saw him again later as we went to clean up in a madhouse of yelling, cursing, rough-looking men in the shower room. Putting on my best tough-guy demeanor, I dived into the melee, and immediately spotted my next-door cellmate. Naked except for a towel around his slender waist, he was busy scraping off invisible whiskers with a safety razor held in long, graceful, and strangely sexy hands. Confused, I turned to my own toilet, trying to keep my eyes off the nameless young man, even as we rotated naked beneath the shower head after the shave. Was it my imagination, or did he give me a quick glance or two?
Later, as I lay in a bunk bolted hard against the side of my cell, I considered my reaction to the anonymous youth. Less than halfway through my sentence of forty-eight hours, I was thinking like a man denied women for the last ten years.
The lights winked off, so I slipped beneath the blanket and turned on my side, realizing as I did that my graceful young man was lying inches away on the other side of that thin steel wall. Expecting the night to be difficult because of the never-ceasing noise, I closed my eyes and sought a comfortable position, my left hand pressed against the wall with my fingers in the narrow opening between the two cells. Surprisingly, I dozed rather quickly…only to be startled awake. Something brushed my fingers. Instinctively, I snatched my hand away from the opening. What was that? Mice? Spiders? No, it had to have been my neighbor. His hand had hit mine, probably as he turned over. Ruing my sudden reaction, I curled my fingers back through the opening, wondering… hoping?... there would be contact again.
I dozed. I woke. I froze. A finger rested against the back of my hand. Slowly, it moved in what could only be described as a caress up and down the length of my curled fist. I opened my eyes. Afraid that if I moved, he would withdraw, I lay still and silent as the handsome youth’s hand played over mine. Eventually, I lifted my index finger. He grasped it. Fingers entwined, we lay quietly while something built within my breast. I stiffened my finger. Immediately, he closed around it, his fist gently moving up and down my digit. Erotic! Fantastically, magnificently sexy! His fingers held me loosely, and the resulting friction sent a jolt of electricity into my groin.
My heart fluttered. My breath came shallowly. I felt as I had not felt since high school when I was in headlong pursuit of my first sexual experience. The same mystery, the same anticipation, the same delicious, soupy feeling seized me. I grasped myself with my other hand and set up a rhythm synced to the invisible fist playing up and down my finger. Either he felt my efforts or sensed them, because he slowly built his tempo. I imagined this was the way he would manipulate himself when he was alone and feeling horny. The mental image of that heightened my excitement. Once or twice, his moving fingers flinched, and I understood he was pursuing the magic of the moment for himself. Was his mental image of me playing in his mind as his was in mine?
Shallow of breath, mouth sagging, my legs trembled with the excitement of a little boy doing something he knows to be naughty but unspeakably pleasurable. My finger remained straight, sheathed by that good, strong hand. A glorious sensation rose within me where it rattled around before carrying me to a delicious ejaculation worthy of those wonder years when sex was fresh and new and truly awesome.
Those fingers gripped me hard as he went from rhythmic to spasmodic, and I knew my secret lover, my lithe, handsome, unnamed youth was experiencing his own cataclysmic orgasm. Listening hard through my ragged breathing, I heard a muffled baritone sigh. That good, brown fist held onto me tightly for a long minute before releasing me and breaking the magic spell.


My young lover was among those prisoners released with me the next afternoon. As our eyes met briefly, his firm mouth curled slightly at the corners. I tried to maneuver my way to his side, but as I succeeded, another con called him by name. Daniel. My lover’s name was Daniel. I tried to hold him with my eyes, but with one quick, knowing glance in my direction, he turned to answer his friend.
It took as long to be thrown out of jail as it did to be cast in, but eventually we were ushered into the lobby where our loved ones waited. Dismayed, I saw Nellann among them, but I understood from her frown that it was truly over. Coming to pick me up was merely her way of saying goodbye. Well, that was okay; probably even desirable, given the advent of last night.
I watched covertly as my young Daniel strode across the reception room with those long, graceful steps right into the welcoming arms of an adoring young woman. “Daddy,” a dark-haired child cried, clasping his slender legs, exciting a moment of jealousy. Experiencing a crushing disappointment as unacknowledged dreams of replaying last night’s passion faded away, I turned on Nellann in frustration.
“Sorry, kid,” I mumbled, awkwardly kissing her dry forehead as she gave me a perfunctory hug, “but it’s over.” With that, I walked away, leaving her to nurse her frustration at not being able to deliver the carefully crafted speech she’d doubtless worked on for the past forty-eight hours.
But I didn’t have time for that. I had to follow up on what I’d learned about myself during the last two days. I might have lost my handsome young Hispanic, but there had to be other good, strong hands out there; in a place the size of Albuquerque…there had to be!

*****
Talk about an epiphany kick-started by an inanity… this seems to be one. I suspect Parker Welles’ life may never be the same after his 48 hours in jail. Ah, well… we learn strange truths in strange places.

Abaddon’s Locusts, the fifth in the BJ Vinson mystery series, received several positive reviews. I hope you’ll consider buying a copy. If you do, please post a review of the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.

Now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say… so say it.

My personal links:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3

Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:


See you next week.

Don

New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.


Thursday, February 21, 2019

Bifurcated man – Part 2 of 2 Parts


dontravis.com blog post #325

Courtesy of PublicDomainPictures.net
TO MY READERS: The “Contact” section has been restored to my Web Site. I can now respond comments. Thanks.

Last week, we met Joseph Hunter, a handsome young banker, and his beautiful wife, Valdy. Happily married, Joe’s eyes occasionally stray… not to another woman, but to a man. Rick Ailman, a contractor customer of Joe’s bank, sends him into a panic whenever he’s around. Last week’s installment ended with Rick announcing that he wasn’t interested in Valdy. He was interested in Rick. As this second installment picks up, they are still on the golf course where Rick made this astounding revelation.

*****
BIFURCATED MAN

“Joe, modesty aside, I’m something of a cocksman, but occasionally I’ll spot a certain kind of a guy and my interest kicks in. Right now, you’re that guy.”
Mental pictures of my curly-headed lieutenant danced before my eyes. “Get over it.”
“Come on, are you telling me you’ve never made it with another guy?”
“That’s none of your business, Ailman, but I’ll answer you anyway. No, I haven’t. I’m happily married and in love with my wife.”
“What’s that got to do with it? I’m not suggesting we fall in love. But I want you, and just thought you ought to know. If you’re going to tense up,” he added, easing the cart down the fairway as the last putter strolled off the green, “then do it for the right reason.”
Rick had been two holes down on our side bet, but after that announcement, I literally felt his eyes on my butt whenever I addressed the ball. I never slice but did an excellent imitation on four of the last six holes. After we settled up on eighteen, I grabbed a quick beer in the clubhouse, it would have been unseemly to refuse, but begged off the customary gin rummy game in the card room and raced home.
Valdy and I usually made love; that night we went at it like animals… with powerful images of Rick spurring me on. And that set the norm… an invisible hunk joined us in bed, except he no longer directed his attention to my wife… he offered it to me!


I tried to keep our relationship on a business basis, but eventually I accepted Rick’s challenge at racquetball, figuring it was a public, manly undertaking. Unfortunately, I forgot about the shower in the locker room afterward. The guy was built like he was sculpted from granite. According to my night visions, he was hung like the proverbial horse, but in the flesh he looked little better equipped than I was.
Later at the bar, he stirred his drink absently and gave me a smile. “I measure up okay?”
“What?” I struggled to keep the alarm out of my voice.
“Hey, it’s natural. Checking out the other guy in the locker room’s a time-honored tradition. By the way, you check out A-okay.”
I’m sure I blushed. “Rick, will you quit this homo bullshit!”
His calm gaze unnerved me. “Not homo. Bi. Bisexual. Bifurcated…one limb with two branches. Every man alive has some female traits, and I’m pretty good at picking up on those with more than their share. You claim you’ve never been with a man, but I’m willing to bet there have been a few who caught your interest. Deny it if you want, but you’re intrigued. Next you’ll turn curious. Then you’ll be interested. And one day, we can enjoy one another. In my candid opinion, that meeting will be cataclysmic.”
Like a certified idiot, I sat in the bar and got so looped he insisted on driving me home. We were silent until he pulled up to the house.
“Thanks,” I mumbled. “I’m not really drunk, but I appreciate you hauling my ass home.”
“I’m going to claim a reward,” he said. “I’m going to touch you, okay?”
He took my stunned silence as acquiescence. His hand landed on my inner thigh and slid over to explore my equipment.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered. “One of the handsomest, sexiest men I’ve ever seen. Golden blond. Great green eyes, sorta cloudy. Not like green eyes usually are. Good build. A real man. Your pheromones talk to my pheromones, Joe. They scream like crazy!”
I pushed his hand away roughly and swallowed hard. My throat was so dry I couldn’t muster an objection.
“Thanks,” he said quietly, “I’ve ached to do that from the first moment I saw you. I gotta confess, I go crazy imagining you with your wife.”
My temper finally flared. “You leave Valdy out of this!” Was the guy psychic? However ephemeral, had he shared our intimacies?
“I intend to, Joe. This is just between you and me. I don’t want anyone else in the bed.”
“Fuck you, Ailman!” I snapped, opening the car door and bailing out, dead sober now.
“You’re beginning to get the idea!” he laughed, driving off and leaving me standing on the sidewalk with my mouth gaping.


Valdy became the most sexually sated woman in New Mexico. We made love at the drop of a hat to reassure myself I was a man capable of satisfying the most attractive woman alive. And then fate intervened. Frigging, son-of-a-bitching fate! William Henry Bannerman, Valdy’s father, had a mild stroke. I accompanied my wife to New York, but Valdy stayed on with her mother when I returned to work.
I avoided Rick for a few days, but on Friday we both ended up at the same reception at the country club.
“How are you holding up, Joe?”
“Ailman, you’re the only person alive who calls me Joe.”
“I know,” he replied with aplomb. “And Valdy? I hear she’s back in New York. Will you give her my best?” I nodded mutely. “Well, if you need me, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks,” I said, grateful that he moved on.
I left as early as I decently could, which was a mistake. Unwilling to return to our big, empty, abode house, I drove around aimlessly, but when I passed the gay cruise section of East Central Avenue for the third time and caught the eye of a cute teen hustler, I came became frightened I fled home to a darkened house. Lord was I bifurcated, just like he said?

I held out until almost midnight Sunday. Before I quite knew what I was doing, I dialed the phone and prayed he wouldn’t answer.
“Hello?” came the smoky voice.
“R-Rick?”
“Joe? Joe, is that you?”
In some dark corner of my mind I recognized I had kicked over the traces to something I could not control. I was right the first time… Rick Ailman was dangerous! My voice box paralyzed with fear, I hung up, hands shaking violently.
I could have simply refused to answer the chimes, but I was standing in the foyer dressed only in my robe when he rang. I opened the door and backed away.
“Joe!” he breathed, crushing me in an embrace.
All resistance collapsed. I wanted to be in those strong arms. I yearned for that full, sensual mouth. I needed his hard body against me. I kissed a man for the first time and was rattled to the core. He laid me on the plush burgundy carpet and opened my robe.

*****
Well there you have it. Is it a one-time thing, or will the two of them find a way to keep the fires burning? Does Joe have the stamina to satisfy both Rick and Valdy? Use your imagination to finish this any way you wish.

Abaddon’s Locusts, the fifth in the BJ Vinson mystery series, came out last month. The book received several positive reviews. I hope you’ll consider buying a copy. If you do, please post a review of the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.

Now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say… so say it.

My personal links:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3

Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:


See you next week.

Don

New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.


Thursday, February 14, 2019

Bifurcated man – Part 1 of 2 Parts


dontravis.com blog post #324

Courtesy of PublicDomainPictures.net
TO MY READERS: The “Contact” section has been restored to my Web Site… until it disappears again as mysteriously as the first time it vanished. At any rate, I can now respond to comments. Thanks.

I appreciate your indulgence over missing a posting deadline over something as trivial as a car wreck and a little internal bleeding. The doctors have arrested that, apparently. I’m feeling okay, but a bit washed out. Sore from being shaken up in the auto wreck, as well.

At any rate, here is the post for this week. One of those two-parter short stories. Hope you enjoy.

*****
 BIFURCATED MAN

Meeting Valdy, my future wife, during intermission at the Metropolitan Opera was a fantastic, unexplainable, gold-plated stroke of luck. Actually, I had been wandering the fringes of the crowd keeping an eye on a handsome young stud who caught my attention. Although I was at a loss to adequately explain it, I was occasionally attracted to some hunk, inevitably an overt heterosexual. I merely speculated and never acted on such impulses. One adorable young second lieutenant at Dix tempted me mightily, but I had sense enough to keep some distance between us. As I stood pondering my confusion in the foyer of the Metropolitan between acts of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman, a stunning vision in a simple, elegant gown of Egyptian linen floated up and handed me a drink, bringing with her the soft aroma of lilacs.
“You look like a bourbon man. I’m Valdessa Bannerman. Valdy for short.”
“Love it!” I lied gallantly. A single malt Scotch was my drink. “Joseph Hunter.”
To make a long story short, five months later, Valdy and I were married in the Fort Dix base chapel where I had traded my banker’s three-piece suit for captain’s bars when I was called to temporary duty. That handsome second lieutenant was my best man.
Valdy fit seamlessly into my life when we came home to Albuquerque a deliriously happy golden couple; me, tall, blond, and slender with manly lumps, and Valdy… Lord the curves she packed into that svelte form! Her eyes were a pale blue that darkened when she was excited. Mine were as green as the patina of a weathered cathedral dome.
I took immense pride in the adoration Valdy inspired among my social set yet was feral enough to recognize danger when it surfaced. And Rick Ailman was dangerous. Even so, the handsome, personable builder of luxury homes was of interest to me as a banker. Five minutes after they were introduced at the Mayor’s Charity Ball, he had Valdy on the dance floor turning heads. Thereafter, it seemed that everywhere we went as a couple, Ailman showed up to sweep Valdy into his hard-muscled arms on some dance floor or the other. I held a tight rein on my temper but did a lot less kibitzing and a lot more dancing at public functions.
“I do believe you’re jealous,” she cooed once, a soft smile stretching those luscious lips.
“Nonsense!” I responded and felt a flush on the nape of my neck.
Despite my denials, later, as I lay panting and exhausted, I realized the truth of it. At the very moment of climax, I held an unwelcome image in my mind of a naked, dark-haired Adonis in bed with my wife… Rick Fucking Ailman!


Vice Presidents are trumped by Executive Vice Presidents, and that is who assigned me the Ailman account. Under such conditions, social encounters are impossible to avoid even though I put things off as long as possible. Eventually, Rick took the initiative and not only invited me to a working lunch, but also a round of golf afterwards. Albuquerque’s persistent spring winds had abandoned us until next year, the true heat of the season had not yet arrived, and the blue sky was blotted with towering, snowy thunderheads far to the west, a perfect day for golf at a mile above sea level.
As we waited for the green ahead of us to clear, Rick parked the cart we shared in the shade of a cottonwood and stretched one foot out on the grass. I dug dirt from my cleats with a tee.
“Glad to see you’re relaxing a little,” he said out of the blue.
I looked at him in surprise. “I thought I was a laid-back sort of guy.”
“You are… except around me. Your defenses always go up when I’m around.”
Since there was no denying it, I might as well get it out in the open. “Gotta admit that’s true. You set off my alarm bells.”
“Why?”
I shrugged and equivocated. “I don’t know. It’s just a personal reaction, I guess.”
I endured the study of his sable-fringed brown eyes for a long moment before he gave a low chuckle. “It’s your wife, isn’t it? You come on like gangbusters when I dance with her.”
“Look, drop it. I’m capable of separating my personal and professional lives.”
His silence lasted thirty seconds; his gaze made me uncomfortable. “You don’t get it, do you? Talk about babes in wonderland. It’s not your wife I’m interested in… it’s you!”
I don’t know why I laughed aloud, probably because I didn’t believe him. After a moment, he joined in. Then some invisible power flipped a cosmic switch, and we sobered.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Dead serious. Look, I like women. Hell, I love women, but occasionally I swing from the other branch of the tree.”
“Not with me, you won’t!” I blurted.


*****
Whoa, what’s going on here? Talk about some cosmic power flipping switches, has Rick Ailman found the key to Joseph Hunter. Next week will tell the tale.

Abaddon’s Locusts, the fifth in the BJ Vinson mystery series, came out last month. The book received several positive reviews. I hope you’ll consider buying a copy. If you do, please post a review of the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.

Now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say… so say it.

My personal links:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3

Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:


See you next week.

Don

New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.



Thursday, February 7, 2019

Apology to My Readers


dontravis.com blog post #323



Courtesy of Wikipedia.com
TO MY READERS: The “Contact” section has disappeared from my Web Site, so I have no way of reading or responding to your comments. I’ve tried all the corrective suggestions by “experts” to no avail. Please make any comments directly to my personal email, dontravis21@gmail.com, until this situation is corrected. Thanks.

Sometimes life gets in the way. Last Friday morning, I was returning home from a meeting with a colleague when I was involved in an automobile accident. First one in over 13 years, if I remember correctly. At any rate, I tried to convince myself that while my car needed a death certificate, I was all right.

By Saturday morning, I knew that I might need such a document, as well. Something wasn’t right. So I called my son to haul me to the VA Medical Center’s Emergency Ward. I anticipated a long wait to be seen, but did not expect to be admitted to the hospital with “internal bleeding.” Okay, I can handle it for one day. Baloney, I didn’t leave the hospital until noon Today, Thursday. Five and one half days in a hospital bed. I had forgotten how hard work it is to lie in a bed all day long.

Two blood transfusions and a endoscopy and a a colonoscopy later, I’m back home to face the fact I didn’t meet my posting schedule this week.

All I can do is beg forgiveness and try to meet next week’s schedule.


*****

Abaddon’s Locusts, the fifth in the BJ Vinson mystery series, came out last month. The book received several positive reviews. I hope you’ll consider buying a copy. If you do, please post a review of the book on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.

Now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say… so say it.

My personal links:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3

Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:


See you next week.

Don

New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

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