There was every indication the Mrytle Beach, South Carolina, oceanfront strip was hopping wild in the summer but it was surprisingly quiet--a veritable ghost town--over the Christmas and New Year's holiday--at least this year. The super of the condo said you just had to know where to go for action, but she couldn't tell me where--at least for the kind of action I needed.
I would have thought that it would have been made a destination for the winter holidays, but it hadn't been as far as I could see. The seemingly empty high rises here, with the wind whipping off the ocean, made me feel like I was in an ominous canyon area. There were some stores and bars open on the land side of the strip, but they were so few that they just added to the forlorn loneliness and solitude of being here during the holidays.
I had come here--been shuffled off to here--on extremely short notice right after Thanksgiving. Before Thanksgiving, I was not long out of graduate school, having landed an entry-level job in the FBI, had acquired a boyfriend--more a sugar daddy, I guess, since he was fifteen years older than I was and paid for my small, but quite adequate townhouse in Fairlington, across the Potomac from the Federal Triangle in Washington, D.C., and near the Pentagon. I was settled and I thought I was happy, but now I could see that I was lonely even then and had been for three years.
I'd been quite active and had a lot of friends at Georgetown University as an undergraduate, being zoned in to working in law enforcement investigation--on the national stage if I could manage it--and being on the nationally ranked Georgetown swim team and actively in dramatics. I had taken piano all my life and had found a small jazz ensemble to play with at college gigs and in a few small jazz clubs in D.C.
Law school at George Washington University had been quite a switch. The studies were demanding and isolated me. The onset of the Covid epidemic isolated me further. The jazz ensemble broke up because people weren't congregating to listen to music. I suddenly found I had been lonely for a very long time and that most of my relationships--primarily the few sexual ones I had with other young male students--had melted away.
I got the job I wanted, an entry-level position at the FBI, and I was a pushover for a man there several ranks above me, Clifford Galworthy, a deputy director, who quickly discerned that I was a submissive gay male and one who had not been in a relationship for some time--a young guy who had had his nose in the books and his body isolating from epidemic for years and who now was in a new career that gave him broader horizons. Clifford had made sure that he fulfilled my needs beyond the office when I suddenly had the free time.
He'd come on strong and he was my superior several layers over. He also was a highly self-confident, handsome devil who spent quite a lot of time at the gym, which is where we met after having been in the same room a couple of times at work, where Clifford signaled his understanding of and interest in me.
We clicked and fucked and he cajoled me out of a shared apartment with two other junior FBI officers in a Roslyn area apartment and into a much nicer small townhouse, where I could live by myself and be available to Clifford when his schedule allowed. Clifford, of course, was married, with children, a dog, and a cat, and lived in a McMansion in Arlington, a ten-minute drive from my digs. He visited me when he pleased. I dared not contact him directly.
I went from rooming with three guys to sitting alone, waiting for Clifford to have time to visit me. They were guys who I was starting to party comfortably with, once they'd gotten over the fact that I was gay and they weren't and that that didn't mean I'd hit on either one of them. We played pickup basketball together and tennis and were developing a circle of mutual friends. I went from there to being wary of anyone knowing I was being fucked by a married FBI director and thus withdrawing into a circle of friends consisting of a single man who dictated everything I could do in life.
Then in November, when the FBI director announced his impending retirement, the shit hit the fan. Clifford Galworthy was one of a handful of men up for the directorship job. His life came under scrutiny. Anything embarrassing to him had to go. Being his gay boyfriend when he was married, with children, a dog, and cat, meant I was an embarrassment and, suddenly, a serious impediment to Galworthy's upward reach.
So, here I was, salted away at somewhere else other than the Washington, D.C., area for who knew how long. I had a studio condo on the eleventh floor of an older high rise called Camelot on Ocean Boulevard near 19th Avenue North. The place was adequate for me and had a balcony overlooking the ocean. Who knew where this was headed, though? I couldn't stay in this limbo forever.
Clifford was paying for the oceanfront condo I was in, but who knew how long that would last? He said he'd take care of me financially. I couldn't continue working at the FBI headquarters building in Washington and would have to consider some other job--once everything had settled and Clifford had gotten the directorship or not. Taking care of me financially, even temporarily, didn't not take care of me physically or emotionally. And the FBI, now denied to me, was what I had been trained to do.
It took wandering the winding canyons of a summer resort in the winter over the Christmas-New Year's holidays for me to realize just out isolated and lonely I'd been for years. And I missed Clifford. I'd gone into our relationship with open eyes--I didn't let him mess with me just because he was way up the ladder from me at FBI and could give me favors. I truly liked him and missed him even realizing that choosing him had isolated me in life. I fully understood why we had to cut it off and why I had to disappear.
But, god, I missed him and felt so lonely without him. I couldn't deny that I had felt lonely even with him, though. He'd had progressively less time to be with me over the past year.
* * * *
"I would think this would serve the purpose better. That looks a bit ambitious."
It was New Year's Eve day afternoon, and I was standing in the produce aisle of the nearest open supermarket to my apartment--the Food Lion on Highway 501--holding up a vegetable that was strange to me. It was purple, oblong, plump, and curving up a bit at one end. The guy who had addressed me, his cheery statement accompanying by a smile and a little laugh, was holding up a much slimmer, but also curved at the end zucchini squash.
The guy appeared to be Hispanic and in his thirties. He was very well built, ruggedly handsome, and quite probably a gay dominant. He was wearing a white apron over a black T-shirt and tight, worn jeans and heavy combat boots, but the apron drooped in front, his T-shirt was form fitting, and there was no trouble seeing that he had rings pierced in his nipples. He had one pierced in his left eyebrow, as well. Topping that off was a sleeve tattoo on his left arm in blues and blacks and a tinge of red that, as it peeked out of the color of his T-shirt promised to cover his left pec as well. He was nothing like the look of a guy I've hooked up with before. He had that construction worker vibe about him that I'd picked up as well from a couple of guys living next to me in the condo building on the beach. I was heat and a rather rough-looking guy in combat boots was turning me on.
I don't know how I could so easily tag a guy as gay and as dominant or submissive, but I guess, having floated in the world of queer, it had become an acquired ability. This guy undoubtedly was a gay dominant--and because he also was a hunk and was smiling at me, I was immediately aroused. I hadn't had any in weeks and I was feeling the lack and the loneliness.
With where our short conversation went, he quite evidently could read me as easily as I did him. I don't know why. I was careful not to reveal my interests in what I wore, how I walked, and how I held myself. I had assiduously studied the stance of being straight even though I had somewhat of an androgynous look and did have the tell of letting my reddish-blond hair with gold highlights fall to my shoulders. I didn't let it down often, but there had been instances, like with Clifford, that the sex was better when I let my hair down, enticed him with my green eyes, and even--especially with Clifford--wore a silky slip.
"Pardon me," I said. "That's a zucchini. I know what that can be used for. This vegetable. This purple one. I don't know what this is."
"Ah, then you do know all that a zucchini like this can be put to use--if the real thing isn't available. But I was just kidding. You look like a player, so I was just checking on that and establishing an interest."
"And did you establish anything?"
"I don't know. You certainly aren't playing yet. I thought I was a good judge of men. But whatever. I don't want to embarrass or harass. That there is an eggplant. It's an acquired taste, but a lot of people like to slice it and bread it and fry, broil, or bake it as a vegetable entry. You should try it. For that, though. For something else, it's really just too plump."
"I'll keep that in mind," I said, putting the eggplant in my shopping cart.
"I hope I didn't offend," he said.
"No, no, not at all," but I turned my cart then and moved over into the wine section. What I needed for tonight--celebrating the change into a new year by myself--was some booze. It should be champagne, but there was just myself to see what I used, so maybe some wine. I had no idea how anyone could obtain the harder liquor around here. The liquor laws in these southern states could get quite tricky.
But what I really needed was company and a man between my legs.
I could kick myself. The produce worker was a real looker. He had a slightly rough edge to him. He aroused me and attracted me. He seemed to be probing me on the possibility of a hookup. It would be very possible, I thought, so why had I gone all naïve on him? Maybe because we were in a nearly deserted grocery store and he worked here. Surely he'd get bounced for hitting on the customers.
But, yes, I fully understood what he meant in saying the zucchini he showed me was so much more useful--and possible--then the eggplant I'd picked up. Not that I'd ever gone to that extreme.
I was thinking of the possible missed opportunity as I drove back to my condo building, the Camelot. When I got to my floor, I could hear that the New Year's Eve party in the unit next to mine was already revving up. I knew that two guys in their early thirties lived there, a white guy and a black one, because we'd brushed past each other a couple of times as we were opening our adjacent unit doors. The way they were dressed in the late afternoon--white T-shirts, worn jeans, and heavy boots and that they usually were together then told me they probably were construction workers working for the same company. The way they were dressed when they left the apartment after dinner indicated to me that they were gay swingers. They also obviously spent extensive time in the gym. There was one in the condo building. I saw them there a lot.
We'd only smiled and exchanged pleasantries outside our respective doors, but I'd gone to sleep several nights already fantasizing being covered by one or both of them. The white guy had introduced himself as Frank and the black guy as DeLay. I thought they'd both given me the interested "Will he?" eye, but I hadn't turned on the "flirt" in the brief times we'd talked. I wasn't sure what their orientation was.
As New Year's Eve progressed, the party next door blossomed. I only heard men's voices, and going on 11:00 p.m. I was sure they had a male stripper over there and that the party had gone sexually raunchy. Only now was I sure that the guys next door were gay--and probably gay dominants, ones who would be demanding and a bit rough.
I went to sleep regretting that I hadn't connected with the guys next door enough to have been invited to their New Year's Eve party.
