Thursday, March 31, 2022

Portrait of Miss Emmalee, A 5-Part Serial – Part 1

 dontravis.com blog post #543

 Image courtesy of Fixthephoto.com

 


Taking the coward's way out these next few weeks. Life keeps getting in the way and I can see disaster looming over the month of March, so am going to do a repost of a five-part story I did just about one year ago. It's an original story I particularly like, partially because it could have taken place in the little Oklahoma town where I grew up, and partially because it sort of marries the two parts of my own life... being gay in a little lumber and farming town and growing out of the limitations placed by that culture. 

 ****

                                                          PORTRAIT OF MISS EMMALEE

The first moment I cast eyes on the painting, I knew I had to have it. Yet, for the life of me, I couldn’t explain why the portrait of Emmalee Vanderport called to me so strongly. While serving in the army, I’d once stood at the Louvre admiring Leonardo DaVinci’s Mona Lisa without suffering such an emotional tug. But like Cornel Wilde in the movie Laura, I was struck dumb by pigments of varicolored oils dabbed on canvas.

After haggling over the price with the estate sale manager, I gritted my teeth and robbed my savings of three thousand dollars to acquire it. Carrying the three by four painting to the car, I stowed it lovingly in the back of my GMC Terrain, giving it one last glance before closing the hatch and crawling behind the steering wheel. All the way home, I chastised myself, asking why, why, why?

But when I hung it over the mantlepiece in the stead of the seascape that had graced that space, I was again made rapt, and the questions fell away… except for what to do with the seascape, really, a very good piece itself. I stowed the usurped painting out of sight, and sat in my recliner to view the new acquisition.

Immediately, the enchantment returned. The portrait, obviously done in the bower at the rear of the Vanderport mansion, showed a slightly pouty young, swan-necked woman with brown hair in a formal coiffure, her green eyes peering from beneath slightly drawn brows. Emmalee Vanderport looked comfortable over my fireplace. And I was comfortable having her there.

That evening, as I sat rereading James Lee Burke’s Creole Belle, Dave Robicheau’s preoccupation with a Cajun girl named Tee Jolie Melton made me vaguely uncomfortable with my obsession over the Vanderport portrait. I dropped the book in my lap and lifted my eyes to meet the emerald orbs of the painting and puzzle once again over the slightly knitted brows. What was bothering that lovely woman as she sat patiently—or perhaps impatiently—for the artist reproducing her features on canvas like a geomancer rendering beauty from ugly oil pots. Was I smitten?

I experienced no lust upon viewing the painting, and I usually equated the two. No, I wasn’t in love with the image of Miss Emmalee—as the whole town knew her—I was puzzled by it. And a puzzle calls for solving.

The next morning, I set about that task by revisiting the Vanderport mansion on the north side of town to find the sale winding down. All the prime pieces were gone, and the few prospective buyers wandering about were simply looking for some small token they could claim once belonged to the town’s most notable family. In some of the tellings, the item would become a gift bestowed in gratitude for some imaginary favor, in others, simply tokens of friendship. I doubted many would admit they picked it up for a song at an estate sale. We humans tend toward hubris and self-delusions, I fear.

A rather jaundiced view for a man only twenty-eight, but it was dictated by my own history. And perhaps that’s why I wanted to know the reason for Miss Emmalee’s shaded look. I’d been on my own since I was seventeen when in a fit of unwarranted honesty with my father, I admitted my attraction to one of my male schoolmates. Dad, a frustrated jock and insincere evangelist, tossed me out without thinking about it twice and thwarted all Mom’s efforts to bring me back into the fold. I still recall one odd exchange from that fateful day.

“You can’t throw the boy out, Henry. It violates the contract,” my mother shouted as it became clear my father was serious about banishing me from home.

“Contract be damned,’ he yelled back at her. “I’ll not have a pansy… a queer contaminating our family.”

As traumatized as I was, I managed to ask my mother what she meant about a contract. I recall her answer, her last words to me on that day. “Contract? Oh, honey, all I meant was that there’s an unwritten contract between parents and child. The parents nurture and protect. The child learns to behave and grow.”

Unable to lash out in any meaningful way at my father, I took it out on her. “So I guess I violated the contract first by turning out queer!” I used the hateful word deliberately. I’ll forever regret my cruelty to the one person fighting for me.

The first few years were difficult. After my secret Adonis yielded to my passionate pursuit, the event left something to be desired, and to make matters worse, he promptly wrote me off as a conquest and moved on. Out of desperation, I sold myself to some men on the street for a meal or a roof over my head for the night, but that always left me feeling unclean.

Rescue came quickly when one of my teachers learned I was homeless and put me up in a one-room apartment—if that’s the proper name for it—over his garage and steered me to an after-school job at a local car parts store. That saw me through graduation without further degrading myself, and after that, I joined the Army, spending some time serving in Germany. I worked like hell earning college credits whenever possible and took my bachelor’s degree within a few months of leaving the service.

And then my old man did me a favor. He died. Finally free to do so, Mom reached out to me, and I moved back into my old room. Beyond that, she used some of Dad’s insurance money to stake me in my own business. I started buying old cars—classics when I could find them—and restoring the vehicles before selling them for a profit. Life was good again. Then Mom died, leaving me the rest of the money and the house. Since then, my shop had prospered enough to move into a proper business site.

But I digress. The estate manager, who turned out to be a Vanderport cousin, took the time to fill me in on some of Miss Emmalee’s background. She’d been born in this house some eighty-odd years ago, graduated from a women’s college back east, and returned to live out her life as an unmarried spinster, living off the family’s wealth and occupying herself by volunteering both time and money to the community.

Aha! Was the fact she was unmarried the source of the sadness I discerned in those painted eyes? Perhaps. As the cousin could contribute nothing more, I thanked her for visiting with me and returned to working on a Porsche I’d found as a near ruin and was on the verge of rendering into a classic. When I sold this one, it alone would make the nut for the next month.

 ****

Sounds like Miss Emmalee’s portrait has grabbed hold of our unnamed protagonist in a serious way. Why? Because it hints at secrets, and there’s nothing—short of sex—that pushes our buttons than learning other people’s secrets. Wonder what happens next? We’ll find out next week.

 Until then.

 Stay safe and stay strong.

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

 A link to The Cutie-Pie Murders:

 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ambxgy7e5ndmimk/CutiePieMurders%5BThe%5D.zip?dl=0

 My personal links:

 Email: don.travis@aol.com.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982

Twitter: @dontravis3

 See you next Thursday.

                                                                                                                           

Don

New Posts every Thursday morning at 6:00 a.m. US Mountain time.

Thursday, March 24, 2022

The Upper Floor (Part 3 of 3 parts)

 dontravis.com blog post #542

 Image courtesy of Dreamstime.com

 


Let’s see, last week, Jackson Marple hired an Oriental geomancer to give his house peace. Tommy Sung sounds more like a hipster than an feng sui expert to me, but what do I know. At any rate, Tommy’s efforts seem to come to naught. Let’s see how they go about solving the problem now.

 

****

                               THE UPPER FLOOR

 

Retired Detective Randy Mosquith, agreed to see us, so Tommy and I hied ourselves across town and knocked on his door. I was certain the tall man who answered the rap had once lived up to his name, but time had taken its toll. But he’d survived his twenty years in the police department with his wit intact.

“You must be Marple and Sung. Sounds like a vaudeville act to me.”

“Sometimes I feel like we are," Tommy shot back at him.

“Come on in. All I got’s beer and tap water.”

“Beer,” Tommy said.

“Tap water,” I rejoined. “With ice.”

Mosquith lived in a row house near the river, but he kept it neat and well cared for. His covered patio made a comfortable place to talk. We were no sooner seated with our refreshments in hand than he gave us the eye.

“So you’re interested in the old Dowd case, huh? How come?”

“I bought the house,” I responded.

“And I got it properly arranged.

Mosquith nodded and said to himself. “Feng sui.”

“Right,” Tommy said. “But it didn’t work.”

“So the rumors are true. Something’s there.”

“Something disturbing,” I added.

“Tell me about it.”

Mosquith had learned to listen while he was on the force. He didn’t interrupt either one of us as we poured out the story of the Dowd House. I’m sure we overloaded him with details since Tommy would fill in something I left out, and visa versa. He didn’t say a word for a full minute after we finally finished talking. Then he sighed and shifted in his seat.

“And you looked up the detective on the Dowd shooting because…?”

“Because the newspaper accounts are lacking something,” I said. “They’re not telling us anything except an old man accidentally shot his son while trying to protect him from an assailant. It doesn’t even name the assailant or tell us what happened to him.”

Randy Mosquith examined each one of us for a moment before speaking. “The newspapers didn’t tell the story. Not the way it happened, at any rate.”

“That’s what we figured,” Tommy said. “So we came to you for the real scoop.”

The detective’s eyes narrowed. “The Dowds are dead now, so I guess it won’t hurt anything. Like they say, the truth will out, even if it is twenty years late.”

He lapsed into silence again before sitting up straight and leaning forward like a kid who’s about to tell secrets. “Elmer Dowd was an influential man back in his day. Rich. Generous… especially with his political donations… and respected. The old man came home that night after attending a political bash. He’d had his share of liquor, probably so he could endure all the bullshit thrown around that evening. Anyway, he heard voices as he came up the stairs. Voices coming from his son’s bedroom.”

Mosquth straightened his back and drew a breath. “Marty—Martin, his son—was born relatively late in Dowd’s life, so he was only about nineteen years old at that time. His mother had died shortly after he was born, so Elmer Dowd raised the kid on his own. But Dowd was a workaholic. Had a very successful architectural firm the kid wanted nothing to do with.

“That’s an old, retired detective’s long way of saying the kid grew up more or less on his own. And he had a few problems. The other kids considered him a softie. A mama’s boy, even though there wasn’t a mama in sight. Anyway, his peers figured he was queer. I guess that’s ‘gay,’ today, but back then that’s what they called it.”

The detective took a swig of his beer. “I figure Marty hadn’t quite figured out who he was yet, but on that fatal night, he was busy figuring it out. He picked up a man a little older than he was at a bar that wasn’t keen on carding youngsters, and because he knew his dad would be out most of the night, he took the man home.

“From what I could piece together, the kid was getting his first taste of sex—of any kind—when the old man came home earlier than expected and caught him at it. Dowd peeked in the kid’s bedroom, saw what was going on, and went straight to his room for a gun. He made a good deal of noise coming through the boy’s door, and the man atop Marty turned just as the old man pulled the trigger.”

“So the bullet intended for the man ended up hitting his son,” Tommy said.

“Exactly.”

“Who was that man?” I asked.

Mosquith shook his head. “He’s not dead.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Tommy said. “What happened to him? Hell, what happened to Dowd?”

Mosquith pursed his lips a moment. “Nothing. The old man went certifiably crazy over killing his only son. Died in an asylum. And no one saw fit to pursue Marty’s lover.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You figure Martin Dowd got shot by his own father before the consummation of his first sexual experience?”

The detective nodded. “You got it.”

“How did you come to that conclusion?” Tommy asked.

“From talking to the other party involved and by grilling the one or two friends Marty had, I came away convinced the kid was shot dead in the act of breaking his cherry.”

“Damn, I’d be mad too,” Tommy muttered.

“So you think it’s the kid haunting the house, not the father,” I asked.

Tommy nodded. “I figure the old man wouldn’t want anything to do with the house where he killed his own son. But Marty, he’s still trying to get it off.”

****

As soon as we got back home, Tommy took off upstairs with me at his heels. He opened the door to the second bedroom across the hall from the master bedroom.

“So this is where it happened,” he mumbled.

“I dunno. Could have been either of the bedrooms on this side.”

Tommy looked around and shook his head. “No this is the one. I can feel it.”

Suddenly chilled, I rubbed my upper arms.

“Did you buy the house furnished?” my geomancer asked.

“Yeah.”

“So this is the bed where it happened.”

I dunno,” I said again. “Hell, Tommy, this house has had a bunch of owners since that night. Your guess is as good as mine as to what was here then and what was left by others.”

He laid his hand on the headboard. “Uh-uh. This is it. He was killed here.”

“I doubt if the mattress—”

“Yeah. Doubtless the bloody mattress was dumped, but this is the bed frame.”

I shrugged. “If you say so.”

“What do you figure he wants?” Tommy asked.

“Like you said, to get it off.”

“Naw. He can’t do that now.”

“So… what?”

Tommy turned and met my eyes. His black orbs bore into me. “He wants someone to finish what he started.”

I felt my eyebrows reach for my hairline. “What?”

“You want to be able to sleep in your own bedroom?”

I nodded.

“Then you gotta recreate the scene.”

I think my eyebrows reached my hairline. “I gotta find two gays to make love in that bed?”

“Yeah, or….”

“Or what?”

“Or we could do it.”

My brows did their thing again. “We? Like in you’n me?”

He nodded, and I noticed he was a good-looking dude. “You’n me, bro.”

“I… I wouldn’t know what to do. You ever done it with another guy?”

Tommy’s grin was wicked. “Thought about it.”

“Then you don’t know what to do, either.”

The grin broadened. “We’ll figure it out.”

Not only did we figure it out, we had a bunch of fun doing it. I’d been right about Tommy Sung, he had a bunch of muscles hiding under those baggy clothes, and he used every one of them that afternoon. Twice.

 ****

Have Jackson and Tommy successfully exorcised the Dowd House, or have they merely discovered they can have fun together? The story doesn’t say, and the author doesn’t know.

 Until then.

 Stay safe and stay strong.

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

 A link to The Cutie-Pie Murders:

 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ambxgy7e5ndmimk/CutiePieMurders%5BThe%5D.zip?dl=0

 My personal links:

 Email: don.travis@aol.com.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982

Twitter: @dontravis3

 See you next Thursday.

                                                                                                                                 

Don

 New Posts every Thursday morning at 6:00 a.m. US Mountain time.

Thursday, March 17, 2022

The Upper Floor (Part 2 of 3 parts)

 dontravis.com blog post #541

 Image courtesy of Dreamstime.com


 Last week, we left Jackson Marple with a problem. A house with a rep. A haunted house? Let’s see how he handles the situation.

 

****

                                   THE UPPER FLOOR

 

Saturday night, I went out with friends and ended up in a bar. Recollections of Julie were too fresh and painful to hook up with a woman, but I spent pleasant hours flirting with a brunette named Roseann from the office. By now they all understood it was merely a diversion for me—at least for the time being—and weren’t disappointed when I went home alone. Feeling no pain, I cleaned up and fell into bed around two a.m. I was no sooner settled and feeling drowsy than a pleasant sensation in my groin semi-roused me. That was odd. I hadn’t been thinking of Roseann in that way… still I’d had no relief in quite some time, so perhaps it wasn’t so odd after all.

I came up off the mattress in a flash when I perceived something… something, well, manipulating me. But there was nothing there except me standing in the middle of the bedroom with an unexplained erection. What the hell was going on. And then I heard something. A muffled, ethereal groan from somewhere. From nowhere. Had it been me? In the grip of something unexplained, I took hold of myself and masturbated. Falling to my knees as a high, keening sound filled the room, I erupted in a tremendous orgasm.

I rested my head on my arms on the edge of the mattress and fought to regain my breath as I tried to understand what had happened. There had been something desperate, I guess you’d say, about my ejaculation. And that sound? Me? I tried to imitate what I’d heard and failed utterly. Shaken to the core, I cleaned up and fled to the Murphy bed in my office downstairs.

A feeling of peace… no, that’s not right. The absence of something disturbing… settled over me as I lay in the pull-down bed in my office. What the hell had happened? Julie? Had I been dreaming of Julie, and the experience had become so powerful, I lost control of myself?

I mentally shook my head. Our lovemaking had been gentle and sweet and fulfilling, not explosive and disturbing. Still weirded out by my experience, the vague rumors about the Dowd House came to mind. The place had changed hands often after the death of its builder and sat unoccupied for long periods of time. Unusual for a house of this quality. Was that because of the rumors about it, or were the rumors about it the cause no one stayed in the place for long?

****

Monday during my lunch hour, I skedaddled over to the local newspaper and started searching for the incident that gave the house its air of mystery. With the help of a clerk in the paper’s morgue, I found what I was looking for. The article was brief, essentially saying that the owner, that selfsame Elmer Dowd who’d built the place, had come home from a business dinner one night to find his son struggling with an assailant in his upstairs bedroom. The old man grabbed a pistol from his room and went to his son’s aid, but in the excitement of the moment, he’d missed the assailant and killed his own son. Oddly, there was no follow-up article explaining the outcome of the incident. Since then, the house had passed through successive owners and periods of vacancy. And now, I was the lucky owner.

Gaining a few facts about the house’s history did not do much for me. I continued to sleep on the bed in my office because every time I ventured upstairs, I experienced unexplained discomfort. And at times, I swore the upper floor of that house whined. In my less rational moments, I wondered who infected the Dowd House, father or son? Nights were worse, but even during the daylight hours, there was something there, although the woman who did my housecleaning once a week didn’t seem to be affected by inexplicable fears, although she did once comment that she far preferred cleaning up downstairs.

Being deprived of the use of half my house wasn’t acceptable, but I had to be careful in seeking help. My friends would never let me forget buying a haunted house. One day, I heard Mary, my boss’s secretary, raving to one of the other women in the office over how much a feng shui consultant had helped her organize her house. Feng shui? Did that expel demons and ghosts? I didn’t know, but that was more appealing than calling in a Catholic exorcist.

Loathe to seek advice from Mary or anyone else in the office, I went online and found—much to my surprise—three “feng shui consultants” in town. Two had European names; one sounded oriental. I called him.

Lee Sung, when he showed upon my doorstep was a total surprise. While he looked oriental, he definitely had Anglo blood. About my own age, he sported a pair of dungarees, an Earth, Fire, and Wind T-shirt, sandals, and a Los Angeles Laker’s cap. I took an immediate personal liking to him, but my faith in him as a healer was shaken when he snatched aviator shades from his pert nose and said,

“Dude, you gotta change your door. It’s not very welcoming.”

“What?”

“Your front door, man. That’s where air and energy enter your home. It’s gotta be welcoming.”

“Uh, all right. I take it you’re Lee Sung.”

“At your service,” he said, extending a slender hand with a strong grip. Slender was the word for him. Not thin, but slender. I had the feeling there were muscles hiding under his baggy outfit.

“Good to meet you,” I said. “I’m Jackson Marple.”

As I ushered him into the house, he asked. “Do you solve murders in your spare time?”

“Nope. No kin. What do I call you? Lee or Mr. Sung?”

“Tommy,” he answered with a mischievous look on his sensitive face.

I’m sure my surprise showed. “Tommy?”

“Nickname. Grew up in LA as Tommy. Why? Hell, I dunno. My buds preferred that to Lee, I guess. And you? What do I call you? Jack?”

“No way," I replied. He’d pushed one of my buttons. “It’s Jackson or Marple, your choice.”

“Marple,” he decided.

He made passing comments as I showed him through the house, room by room. I noticed a change in his jaunty attitude as soon as we went up the stairs, but he held his tongue while we were on the upper floor. I took a vague sense of comfort from his reaction. I wasn’t the only one who felt something wasn’t quite right.

Back in my office downstairs, he relaxed in a chair opposite me at the desk. “Right off the bat, I can tell you, you’ve got some changes to make. You need something representing wind, fire, earth, metal, or water in every room. Creativity, leadership, strength, order and emotion.”

“Won’t my fireplace do? I’ve got one on either floor.”

“I’ve got a flame encased in plastic like one of those snow globes I can let you have for sixty bucks.”

“Fire in plastic?”

“Okay, it’s a representation of fire,” he admitted. “But it does the job.”

I can honestly say that I’d not spent a more pleasant hour than the one Tommy Sung shared with me in my home office. We agreed on a price, and Tommy started to work, beginning with the front door. He affixed a small metal symbol in Chinese calligraphy which he said was the word for welcome and extracted a promise from me to get a welcome mat.

Tommy Sung became a more or less permanent fixture in my home for the next couple of weeks. He made sure all beds in the house—except for the Murphy bed, which was fixed to the wall in my office in a permanent east-west position—were situated so that anyone sleeping in one of them would have his or her head to the south and feet to the north. Frankly, the place became more pleasant, but I didn’t know how much of that to attribute to feng sui—which he explained meant Wind-Fire—and how much to attribute to Tommy Sung. In truth, he was the most companionable individual I’d ever met, and I came to treasure his presence. He must have felt the same because he often came “off the clock” just to socialize.

Of course, we discussed my problem with the house, and was quick to assure me feng sui was Chinese geomancy, not an exorcism ritual. Its purpose was to arrange my home to harmonize with its environment. Even so, he was interested enough in my predicament to spend a night or two in the master bedroom upstairs. After the second night, he made a recommendation.

“I did some more rooting around about the shooting that took place up there.” He pointed a finger toward the ceiling. “My dad knows some cops, and he located the one in charge of the Dowd shooting case. His name is Fleming. He’s retired now, but lives on the west side of town.

“How about that,” I said. “A Marple and a Fleming. A sleuth and a spy. How could that not work out okay?”

“My thoughts exactly. Let’s go see him.”

I agreed.

 ****

Will Jackson Marple and his Chinese geomancer get to the root of the trouble with the Dowd House? Hope you can wait until next week’s conclusion to find out. If not, then puzzle out an ending of your own and let me know.

 Until then.

 Stay safe and stay strong.

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

 A link to The Cutie-Pie Murders:

 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ambxgy7e5ndmimk/CutiePieMurders%5BThe%5D.zip?dl=0

 My personal links:

 Email: don.travis@aol.com.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982

Twitter: @dontravis3

 See you next Thursday.

                                                                                                                                 

Don

 New Posts every Thursday morning at 6:00 a.m. US Mountain time.

Thursday, March 10, 2022

The Upper Floor (Part 1 of 3 parts)

dontravis.com blog post #540

Image courtesy of Dreamstime.com:


This week let's start another three-part story that’s a little different from my usual fare. Let me know how you like it.

 ****

                               THE UPPER FLOOR 

I’d bought the Dowd House despite its reputation. The place was a pleasing two story, red brick Tudor with plenty of yard, both front and back, and I was a modern man unincumbered by belief in witches and goblins and the like. The closing took a month, after which I moved in on the first day of June. Moving is not a pleasant experience even though I had plenty of help from friends and coworkers. Jackson Marple is my name, and developing conceptual designs for an architect is my game. And no, I’m not related in any way, shape, or imagination to Agatha Christie’s intrepid sleuth.

I became interested in the Dowd House while Julie and I were still engaged and planning on a wedding somewhere down the road. Julie was gone now, the victim of a drunken driver who plowed into her and an office mate as they crossed the street on their way to lunch. That was six months ago, and I still suffered from the tragedy today. Relived it in my mind repeatedly.

Even so, the house we’d planned to buy remained foremost on my mind. Friends counseled against it, cautioning that because the purchase was something we planned together, living there might be too painful despite the fact I claimed to be an emancipated man free of shades, even one from my recent past.

Which leads me to the Dowd House reputation I mentioned. The house had been built by a man named Elmer Dowd some fifty years ago. Apparently, he was an accomplished architect because I could find no flaw in its layout or in its construction. I planned on some minor remodeling, mostly installing more outlets to support the electronics, particularly my CAD, which I used constantly to do some of my work at home, as well as some freelance jobs that occasionally came my way.

But I digress. I don’t know the entire story, but it comes down to the fact that someone was murdered in the upstairs master bedroom. Shot to death, I understood. That had been over twenty years ago. I’d been a toddler at the time and have no recollection of the events. I’d heard of the Dowd House and how it was haunted all the time I was growing up, but wasn’t motivated to learn anything about the event sparking the wild tales.  I’d been more interested in admiring the house from afar since my teens, intrigued by its distinctive brick and masonry style with its half-timbered upper floor, its curvilinear gables. Corbels carved into small gargoyles alone set the house apart from its neighbors.

And not long after Julie’s death, the house belonged to me. The June first moving day had turned into a party. Slave labor eased by free-flowing beer and snacks. Even after everything was in its place, the gang remained behind, soothing sore muscles and scraped shins with liberal doses of alcohol. I’m certain the neighbors feared that would be the norm after a young bachelor moved into the immediate vicinity, but that wasn’t the case. That moving party was a singular blip on my rather mundane daily living radar.

Don’t get me wrong. I have plenty of friends, both male and female, and I socialize… to a point. Guys advised me to glom onto a new girlfriend, while gals—at least some of them—let it be known they’d like to try out that role. But it was too soon for me. I needed healing time.

I’d set up the downstairs master bedroom as my home office, complete with desk, worktable, a small conference area, and a Murphy bed for when I worked too late and simply wanted to lay my head upon a pillow. The rest of the downstairs was dedicated to a kitchen, dining room, breakfast nook, a living room, and a couple of bathrooms. Upstairs held the large master bedroom with bath, and two smaller bedrooms across the hallway with a bath between them. More house than a bachelor needs, but someday, I’d get back into the dating groove and end up marrying some nice woman. Then we’d quickly fill up the other rooms with children. At least, that was the hazy dream floating around in the back of my head.

For a week or so, I was totally captivated by my acquisition. I was tired from the move, distracted by rearranging this or that, all while working at my regular job and handling two private tasks. I went to bed exhausted and slept the sleep of the innocent.

But the second week, things began to happen. Things my rational mind couldn’t explain.

*****

I worked late on a private job in my office downstairs one Friday night and was late going to bed. Because of the hour, I was tempted to pull down the Murphy bed, but instead trudged upstairs and took a shower. After drying off, I plopped down on my mattress and covered up. I was nearly asleep when I suddenly jerked awake. What had happened? Something had touched my genitals.

I scrambled out of bed and flipped on the light. No bugs or scorpions on my jocks, and no spiders in the bed. Had it been my imagination? Probably, but it had seemed so real. Breathing a sigh of relief, I turned off the lamp and crawled back in bed, pausing when I heard a rustling noise in the corner. Light on again, I took a careful look around, fearful that a rat or a mouse was loose on the room and had been intent on feeding on my gonads when I woke up.

No. Nothing. Grabbing the flashlight I keep in the drawer of the bedside table, I got on all fours and carefully searched under the bed. Still nothing. Not nearly as sleepy as I had been, I settled in bed again. Sleep was slow to come because I kept waiting for something to happen, but it hadn’t by the time I finally dropped off, somewhere around three a.m., I’d guess.

Fortunately, the next day was Saturday because my tail was dragging. Funny how I could party all night and function the next day, but let something unexpected interrupt my sleep, and I was whacked.

 ****

Has Jackson Marple (no relation) bought a house infected with bedbugs… or something worse? Remember, he’s a no nonsense modern man who doesn’t believe in things that cannot be rationally explained. Wonder what next week will bring.

 Until then.

 Stay safe and stay strong.

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

 A link to The Cutie-Pie Murders:

 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ambxgy7e5ndmimk/CutiePieMurders%5BThe%5D.zip?dl=0

 My personal links:

 Email: don.travis@aol.com.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982

Twitter: @dontravis3

 See you next Thursday.

                                                                                                                                 

Don

 New Posts every Thursday morning at 6:00 a.m. US Mountain time. 

Thursday, March 3, 2022

Raul and Me (Part 3 of 3 parts)

 dontravis.com blog post #539

 Image courtesy of bobbiebach.com

 


It seems these two young men are looking backward into their adolescence to save themselves. Will it work? You’ll find the answer below.

 

****

RAUL AND ME

 

I tensed up after blurting an honest answer to his question. Did I remember jerking off together every week for most of the summer and early fall when we were sixteen? Absolutely. Eagerly. Fondly.

“Me too.” He admitted, taking me off tenterhooks. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my wife and kids. We have a great relationship, and I wouldn’t want to do anything to harm that. But… but….

I breathed a sigh of relief. He’d explained my dilemma. “But sometimes you want something different. Something… forbidden.”

He glanced at me uncertainly. “With someone you like… dammit, love… but who’s safe.”

My whole body reacted. “Exactly. Somebody you love but who’s safe. Who does that describe?”

Raul smiled at me wickedly. “Somebody you love who’s hunky and safe.”

“Somebody you love whose hunky and safe and won’t destroy your marriage.”

He sobered. “Is… is that cheating on your wife?”

I went thoughtful. “Yeah, I guess it is. But you know what? I think it’s the only way I can stay married to a woman I love and respect.”

That quirky smile reappeared. “So you’re saying we’d be getting it on out of respect for our wives.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far. But if I don’t do something it’s gonna be hard for me to hold it together.”

“We’d have to be careful.”

“Yeah, we would. Not too many people would understand.”

His smile died. He leaned forward in the seat. “What are we talking about here?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe just what we did in the tenth grade. I can live with that… for a while, at least.”

“Me too. When?”

“No time like now,” I said.

Raul swigged the last of his beer and plunked the mug down on the table. “I hear that. Where?”

“My office has a couch.”

He was on his feet in a second, reaffirming my own eagerness.

We took separate cars and met at my parking lot. As we made our way through the darkened lobby of the building, His hand grasped for mine. Nothing had felt more comfortable, more natural than holding the hand of my best friend in the world, the man I trusted more than anyone else… the man I loved. That had nothing to do with the woman I loved. Nothing at all.

I closed the blinds and snapped on the reading lamp on my desk and then competed with him to see who could shed his clothes fastest. It was a tie. He moved toward me, but I held up a hand, stopping him. I had to see him. Drink in his macho comeliness. He could have been sixteen again, except his body had filled out in places it needed filling out. He was as beautiful a man as he had been a boy, and that’s rare.

Apparently, he liked what he saw, as well. When we finally moved together, our excitement was apparent… and, man, had that grown. Without asking permission, our lips found one another’s, and the kiss hit me right in the belly. Before either of us lost control, we settled side by side on the couch where we did what we did as kids. He grasped me and set up a rhythm while I let out little gasps and peeps of sheer pleasure. Long before I wanted, I felt the buildup begin. He continued to stroke as I erupted, stopping only when I grabbed his semen-drenched hand.

Once I recovered, I grasped his impressive manhood and found a measured beat that seemed to satisfy him. My eyes feasted on his pecs, on his wide shoulders, his flat belly, narrow waist, solid thighs all the while I manipulated him. And when he reached orgasm, I gloried in his trembling legs, his spastic knee jerks, his moans of pleasure, and the gush of hot sperm over his belly and chest and my hand. It was almost as if I experienced his ejaculation with him.

****

That was a few months ago. We’d been true to our pledge, limiting ourselves to occasional masturbation. Our marriages have prospered. Does one have to do anything with the other? I don’t know about Raul, but I suspect in my case, it’s allowed me to continue to express my love to Karen more fully than ever. Truth? Or an excuse to give myself permission to have sex outside the marriage? Can’t prove it, but it’s settled in my mind. It’s truth.

And so when one or the other of us feels the need, we’ll meet and express our mutual love and respect. He’s the one who called this time… in the middle of the day, yet. As he drew near enough for me to see his great smile, I wondered if he had a safe place to go in mind.

 

****

Truth or rationalization. I don’t imagine there’s an answer that will satisfy everyone, so I’ll leave it to the reader to come up with his or her answer. As for me, it’s clear.

 Until next week.

 Stay safe and stay strong.

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

 A link to The Cutie-Pie Murders:

 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ambxgy7e5ndmimk/CutiePieMurders%5BThe%5D.zip?dl=0

 My personal links:

 Email: don.travis@aol.com.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982

Twitter: @dontravis3

 See you next Thursday.

                                                                                                                                 

Don

 New Posts every Thursday morning at 6:00 a.m. US Mountain time.

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