At noon Bruce was on duty as Nathan passed the reception desk, carrying the bag of groceries, en route to his room.
"Got locked in a grocery store overnight?" he called out, grinning because he knew from the night clerk that Nathan hadn't used his room that night. Curiosity had moved him to check downstairs to find out if he'd been fucking in one of the Bourbon Street Pub back rooms all night, titillated at the thought that maybe Big Ralph had gotten to him, but he'd drawn a blank. He'd have given his left testicle to know what the hunk had been up to. All night humping on the beach? Maybe over at Saloon 1? The possibilities all were just too delicious.
"Nope," Nathan called back, turning and giving Bruce a glorious smile. "I spent the night humping a father and son and they gave me this nifty bag of groceries in appreciation."
Bruce laughed. "Good one," he called back as Nathan reached his door.
Nathan turned again before going in. "They serve lunch downstairs as well as breakfast?" he asked.
"You had your breakfast later than this yesterday, doll," Bruce said. "So, I'm sure you know you can get somethin' to eat down there now. You don't have lunch in that sack, though?"
"Ralph from downstairs isn't in this sack. I'm gonna let him suck me dry while I'm eating lunch. He's the best, you know."
Bruce kept his grin on his face until Nathan disappeared into his room, and then he let his jaw drop. Well, shit, he thought. I wonder if that's where the kid was last night. Ralph can really ream a wide one. Wonder if he got lucky. Don't think I want to know if he did, though. That back room of his. Bruce shuddered and turned to go through the reservations lists one more time.
Ralph gave a little chuckle when Nathan told him about the unusual coincidence of falling in with a father and son on the same day. "It's a problem, of course, especially with, as you've said, both of them hinting at something longer term. But I must say that you're quite something to get shackled up like this in just one day here."
"I'm writing it up as the mystique of Key West," Nathan said. "If I had something like this happen to me back in New York, I'd be tied in knots. In fact, I was tied in knots coming down here even without these new complications. Now none of it looks worth the worry. I think Key West—and your advice—have me just going with the flow."
"If you trust my advice so much, why don't you go back beyond those beaded curtains over there with me and I'll show you one of the biggest, thickest dicks in the keys, and I'll do work with your body beyond anything you ever dreamed about."
They both laughed, but the look Ralph was giving Nathan gave Nathan some pause for contemplation.
"I think it's because you're such a fox, even down here in the keys," Ralph continued. "I think you could get away with almost anything as long as you were putting out. Still thinking of moving down here?"
"The father said he's planning to sell his house. Says he wants two million, three hundred thousand for it. What do you think? Would that be a good deal?"
"Where is it and how big is it? Does it have a pool and off-street parking?"
"It's on Georgia Street. Not the section here. Over on the southern side. 2,800 square feet he says. Four bedrooms and it looks like it's been in
House Beautiful
. He's a real fussy housekeeper. Nice swimming pool and lotus pond. A single carport, but enough room for another car to park behind it and be off the street."
"If it's got all that, it's probably a steal at that price," Ralph said. "Especially if it comes with the busy maid you've said the father is—and a son with more Kama Sutra moves than a behind-the-scenes Bollywood actress."
"That's certainly something to think about," Nathan said. And then he laughed.
"What?" Ralph asked.
"That's what I told both of them when they hinted that we could live together—that it was something to think about."
"Before you decide on either of them—or both of them," Ralph said, "I suggest you try out what I was telling you about yesterday. What you have said about that first guy, the one who started you off, if you want to consider something like that again, you go on over to Saloon 1. Tonight would be good. It's a good night tonight."
"It's a thought," Nathan said.
"And if that don't scratch your itch, come back over here and go into the back room with me. I'll fuck you good that way. You want a taste of that original guilt you felt so that Key West can help you wipe that away, you come back to Ralph's cave. You needed to talk about all of this and work this out. You'll be fine. If you go over to Saloon 1, just go with the flow. Be open about what you want. This is Key West. This is what the keys can do for you; why you've come here."
"Thanks for the advice and the pancakes, Ralph. Pretty tired now. Think I'll go back upstairs and get some sleep before the band slips in here and starts banging around."
Yep, that's something to think about—going over to Saloon 1, Nathan thought as he climbed the stairs and ran the Bruce gamut again to get to room 21 and the queen-sized bed in the loft. He did his best not to think about the Ralph option—or about that man who had initiated him so many years ago.
* * * *
Nathan had a hard time getting to sleep. Ralph had finally screwed right down to the foundation with him. Guilt. Was that what it was all about? Guilt over thinking too much about himself, his own fears and anger and frustration, that year that Howard was dying and not giving enough attention to Howard? Guilt about Glen dying in that motorcycle accident, which came after he'd left the apartment angry with Nathan? And, deeper than that. Guilt about that first lover and what they had done—what Nathan had let the man do to him? Guilt about what he was willing to do in sex and didn't want to admit to?
Ralph told him that Key West could be the cure for that. And it had been for some of his guilty feelings. He had to admit that just opening up to possibilities, not keeping them bottled up inside him, was helping. Ralph told him to go to Saloon 1 and just let it all hang out. He'd had no intention of doing that, but now . . .
He drifted off into sleep.
The arrival and revving up of the band downstairs, in the Bourbon Street Pub, jolted Nathan awake. It already was dark outside. He padded out on the balcony overlooking Duval Street just in his shorts, and almost immediately the cat calls and offers to join him rose up from the crowd milling around on the street below. He smiled, waved, posed provocatively for them—something he wouldn't have done just two days earlier—and went back into his room.
He could smile now at the bantering and the bald talk. He was in Key West, not in a sound studio in New York, where every move was observed and assessed and where the paparazzi were in overdrive in trying to find out what starlet he was dating that week—and, if none, why not? The photographers that had kept him away from both Howard's and Glen's funerals on the simple fear that they would find out who he really was.
Just let it flow, Ralph had said. Face the guilty feelings and let Key West wash them away.
He'd already done some of that. He'd just gone with the flow with Gene on the beach that first night and later up here in his room. Giving and taking and accepting the full enjoyment of the other man's body and of the resilience of his spirit. And he'd done so with Gene's father, Gordon, as well. So much like Howard. Being tender and giving with him. Showing that he could do that with an older man who was completely open and giving with him. Being sensitive to Gordon's needs and sharing grief with him. Touching him lightly on the nipples, the two kissing, and Gordon rubbing the backs of his calves with his feet while Nathan slow fucked him, all the time Gordon telling him how so much it was like his lost lover fucking him. That's what he'd thought he hadn't done with Howard—shared the grief with him. He'd come to think of himself as callous in that way. But Howard had never upbraided him for that. Perhaps those were guilty feelings he need not own. Maybe Howard's death was just what happens in life; shit happens.
So, maybe Key West was helping.
But what about Glen? His Glen, back in New York. He'd been angry because Nathan had held back. They'd both known that Nathan wanted what Glen wanted to do to him, and the way Glen gave it to him, dominated him, bordering on what that first man had done to him. But it sometimes got too close to the edge of that first lover—and thus Nathan's guilty feelings from that.
Was Ralph serious? Did he really have a room, a "cave," where he could do what that first lover did and could help Nathan both come to grips with it and walk away from it? Ralph was such a big bruiser. Could he be the challenge that that first man, Chuck . . . Chuck Unger . . . one of Nathan's neighbors when Nathan turned eighteen, had been? Could he do what the man had done with Nathan and caused such a feeling of guilt? And if he let Ralph give him what Chuck Unger had given him—take from him what Chuck Unger had taken—could he just walk away from it? Was he fooling himself on what his body really wanted?
Perhaps the only way to get there was through the feelings, the feelings of guilt, about Glen and his biker persona. Ralph had said the path through that in Key West was Saloon 1.
So be it, Nathan thought. He changed into jeans, no briefs; a navy blue mesh athletic T-shirt; and sandals, no socks, and left the hotel, waving his hand at Bruce's cheery "Happy hunting" greeting as he passed the reception desk. He crossed Duval and found the entrance to Saloon 1.
The place was dimly lit and full of cigarette smoke. It was hard picking anyone out until his eyes became adjusted to the dark, as they all were in black leather. There had been motorcycles out front. Ralph hadn't told him it was a leather night at the bar, but he would have guessed it was anyway.
He went to the bar and ordered a beer, giving tentative smiles to the leather-clad men gathered there, all of whom stopped their conversations and various forms of fondling each other and turned to ogle and greet the blond hunk who hadn't been seen in the bar before. Some made suggestive comments and more than one reached out to touch him as he turned from the bar and moved toward where he could see some tables in the swirl of the smoke. Everyone at the bar had been coupled up. He was looking for someone who would focus only on him.
He realized there was too much smoke for a haze of cigarettes. A smoke machine had been doing its thing. Lights were strobing around high on the walls; there was a small platform stage, with a band playing loud, if not all that well; and a dance floor must have been designated in front of the stage, because a square area was packed with gyrating bodies. All were men, and all were leather men, pierced, tattooed, predominantly hairy—mounds of muscles. Many drinking as they danced; all loud and raucous; filled with testosterone; the crowd spilling out toward nearby tables, where they were gesturing with big hand movements, laughing and talking, fondling, coupling, and, in the corners of the room, sucking and copulating.
Nathan found an unoccupied table where he could sit and look out over the action. No sooner had he planted his butt in a chair than men began to circle around him and start to close in. But then they were pulling back and from out of the haze appeared a single figure, standing on the other side of the table from Nathan. Apparently someone of authority and standing here, able to cry off the rest with a flick of his wrists.
He was exactly what Nathan had expected. So like Glen that they could have been brothers.
Taller than Nathan and bulkier too. Heavily muscled and tattooed. Wearing tight black leather pants and vest over hairy barrel chest. A biker's hat. Nathan couldn't see, but he was sure there were black boots too. Leather arm bands, an earring and a nipple ring, and one in an eyebrow as well. He was olive-skinned. His hair was black and curly, but he had shaved his head. A Fu-Man-Chu mustache. Incongruously, his eyes were a watery blue.
He looked mean, capable, and completely comfortable here and in his skin.
"You lost, Blondie? In case you noticed, this ain't where the collegiate crowd hangs out. A pretty boy entering here don't leave as pretty."
