A week after Gary, the hugely hung and lovely Cambridge professor, and his beautiful wife Carmen had returned to London, Brad picked me outside work on the Friday afternoon as usual, the Ford GT-40 sounding throaty and impatient to be on the freeway and up to what I now termed his "floggery".
Leaning over to give me a chaste kiss on the cheek, the 40-year-old detective story writer looked at my leather jacket, leather jeans and harshly pulled back hair, drawn into a tight bun.
"Heavens, Linda," he exclaimed, "if I didn't know your kinky tastes better I'd have you confused with a dominatrix."
I laughed. "Play your cards right and I might end your confusion," I told him, throwing my overnight bag into the back of the racy big Ford.
"No thanks," Brad grinned, as he gunned the motor and headed off into LA's awful late afternoon traffic, "I'm much more the flogger than the floggee, thank-you very much."
Out on the freeway and crawling along, much to the dark-haired author's frustration, he laid a protective hand on my leather-clad thigh and asked: "Now tell me, are there are more baseball myths which you can dispel to make me wonder if I'm ever going to read anything about my favourite game in future that I can believe?"
I felt mischievous and simply whispered in his ear: "Say it ain't so, Joe!"
"Oh fuck," said Brad, hitting the wheel of the sports car and grimacing. "That's not another urban myth, surely?"
I began to explain, but Brad cut me off. "No, you little minx, this story can wait till I've got a huge bourbon and coke in me. Then you can disillusion me all you like."
Finally, the traffic eased and Brad drove smoothly, but far too fast for my liking, to his hilltop mansion. I went upstairs, stripped off to my usual garb in his home – naked but for my Manolo Blahniks - and walked downstairs.
Brad was sitting naked in a comfy big leather easy chair looking out at the sprawling city way beneath us, its tower blocks glinting in the late afternoon sun. He was nursing a large, dark drink.
"Help yourself to your poison of preference, you witch," he laughed, "then sit in my lap and tell me all about Shoeless Joe Jackson."
I built myself a large Bombay gin and tonic and returned to his seat. I planted myself in his lap and felt his lovely seven-inches of manhood rise to snuggle against my bare crotch.
"All right," he said, taking a sip on his bourbon, then planting a suck on my left nipple, bringing it instantly to erection, "fire away. And don't think I'm going to be very happy about this."
"Well," I said, "I read the book
Eight Men Out
, they based the movie on it, remember?"
Brad nodded, pretending to be highly pissed off, but I knew he loved these baseball stories of mine. "Well, in that, it's said that as Joe Jackson came out of that hearing into the 1919 White Sox World Series scandal a man – not a kid – called out to him 'It ain't true, Joe'. Then, a moment or two later the man repeated 'It ain't true, Joe'."
My author-lover said: "Well, it's almost right."
"Yeah," I said, "but then I read Harvey Frommer's book
Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball
, and Frommer quotes Jackson as saying the 'Say it ain't so, Joe' was never said, but invented by a reporter, Charley Owens, of the
Chicago Daily News.
"In fact, Jackson says the only words thrown at him that afternoon were from a man who yelled 'See, I told you the son of a bitch wore shoes'."
"Say," said Brad, "that's a much better line than 'Say it ain't so, Joe', but carry on you dispeller of dreams, you."
I nuzzled up to my man and chewed on his ear, and felt between my thighs. His cock was still there, but not as hard.
"And anyway," snorted Brad, "Joe Jackson? One of the men who threw the series – how do you know he wasn't lying?"
And then I hit him with my line drive. "Oh, I don't think he was lying about this. See, I spoke to Charley Owens' grandson, he's a lawyer in Chicago," I told him.
Brad's eyes narrowed. He knew I was keeping the best till last.
"And?" he almost snarled.
"Mr Owens told me that his father told him that when old Charley Owens was on his deathbed, he whispered to the son 'You know 'Say it ain't so'? I made that up son, only don't tell a soul, OK?' and then the old man died.
"The Owens son eventually
did
tell someone, and that someone told me. Sorry Brad, there goes another baseball myth."
Brad gulped down his bourbon, took my half-full glass of gin, placed it on the table by his chair, then snapped: "Shit, you've just really, really annoyed me, you luscious little hussy. And for that you're gonna get a spanking. And then a whipping, 'cos a spanking all by itself isn't good enough for you!"
And he forced me over his lap, until my shoes scraped the floor, my hands scrambled for traction on the carpet.
"Thwaaaack". His strong hand smacked down across my left buttock and stung, I mean