It was a mistake to have come to Central Virginia, but not, I think a mistake to have stayed. Stuart had seemed so right when we found ourselves in New York as we both were completing our English doctorates at Colombia, but in the four months between when he had taken a position in the English department at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and when he had enticed me to come down to occupy another opening, he had changed.
In New York, Stuart, hailing from a small town in Indiana, had been all "oh my gosh" awed by the big city and enthusiastic about everything—especially by our love making. He had been completely submissive to me, and I loved to hear him moan and sigh as I covered him and he moved his hips in rhythm with me. Everything in New York was new and "terrific" with him, and I enjoyed opening him up to new discoveries and sensations—and to new, increasingly exotic forms of love making.
But Virginia changed Stuart. I don't know, maybe it was the smaller environment combined with his "position" at the University. But he suddenly was more urbane—or wanted to come across that way—and assertive and snotty. I shouldn't have just moved into the apartment with him that he had picked out and where he had established himself before I got there. I should have established my own ground and made him come to me.
He suddenly wanted to lecture me rather than learn from me—although I'd been out in the world and experienced life for several years before going back to graduate school, and he'd merely plowed on in school, chewing his way through his family's small fortune fed by a Coca-Cola distributor franchise.
It was the same way in bed. No longer did he take my lead, let me call the shots, and move slowly and deliberately toward a mutual climax. He now wanted everything at once—and forceful and rough. And he wanted me to take him in other places than on the bed. And I got the distinct impression that what I was doing to adjust just didn't completely satisfy him. I wondered what he'd been doing for the four months he'd been in Charlottesville before I arrived.
I think I found out at a Winter Wonderland charity dinner sponsored at the Boar's Head Inn in February by the Whitehall Hunt Club.
When the invitation came, it had taken me by complete surprise. The charity was a worthy one—the county SPCA—but I couldn't fathom how and why two new University assistant English professors had been invited. Stuart told me, however, that the University was so entrenched in Central Virginia society that all events built in a smattering of faculty representation and that we could expect such one-off invitations from time to time. He also said we should snap this one up, as the Boar's Head was nearly the ritziest venue in the region.
Stuart was beyond anxious to rub shoulders with the First Families of Virginia and to become "in" with them.
I found that the invitation wasn't all that random, though, when Stuart took me over to meet the master of the Whitehall Hunt, who Stuart already obvious knew.
Dabney Belcastle was a striking man. Tall and slim and what I would call distinguished gray. I gauged him to be in his mid fifties, and he quite obviously was in his element here.
As Stuart introduced me to him, I felt that his sparkling blue-gray eyes penetrated deep into me and that he understood all that I was and had ever been. His smile was captivating, and when he said he was delighted to meet me, I felt that the declaration was totally genuine.
"I'm so glad to meet you at last, Paul," he said. "Stuart has told us quite a bit about you. A scholar of Southeast Asian literature, are you not? I admit that I was surprised that the field was deep enough to study as a separate discipline."
"You would be surprised," I answered. "The cultures in that region go much deeper than ours do. They have a rich heritage of literature. I'm finding the field fascinating."
"And I find that, in itself, fascinating, in return," Belcastle said in a rich baritone with a light British accent that sent chills of interest up my spine. I gave him an intense stare to try to discern whether he was mocking me ever so lightly, but his smile wasn't mocking at all, and his returned stare screamed of interest that went beyond literature.
I would have liked to talk to him at greater length, but Stuart was already turning my attention to the hulking, dark-complexioned man at Belcastle's side, who he was introducing as a painter, Hank Hemings, and with whom he was sharing a knowing look that explained so much to me about the strain and stiffness in my relationship with Stuart since I had arrived at the University.
Hemings was even taller than Belcastle was, but he had the same look of authority and domination about him. The look he gave Stuart as we were being introduced was one of possession, and the look Stuart returned was of the possessed.
Hemings was built large but perfectly proportioned. His light chocolate skin spoke of early New Orleans society, where the beautiful people mixed and matched frequently and without hesitation, but Hemings's features weren't the least bit negroid. He had the same patrician visage and carriage as the man standing beside him, Belcastle, did, and, if anything, the two, juxtaposed like that, almost looked like they were cut from the same cloth.
But whereas Belcastle was willowy elegance and high culture, Hemings was all muscular power barely sheathed, barely tamed or civilized. It looked like he could turn animal very quickly and no one could stand between him and what he wanted. Just the way he and Stuart exchanged looks, I knew where Stuart's sudden taste in rough and al fresco sex was coming from.
Hemings was certainly not anyone I could compete with for the affections of any man susceptible to what Hemings could give—and I certainly had no interest in competing with him that way. When I had mastered Stuart, it was with a concern for mutual enjoyment and fulfillment. With Hemings, I could tell that it always would be all about Hemings's needs and wants—and a deep, seething anger.
Although we continued living together—and even making love—for a couple of months after that, life and sex with Stuart was never again as free and natural and fulfilling as it had been in New York when we were struggling graduate students and I was showing Stuart the ropes of living and loving in the Big Apple.
That doesn't mean that we stopped encountering Dabney and Hank. After the Boar's Head dinner, we found ourselves on the guest list of whatever event Belcastle was involved in, and he soon had both of us pulled into his Hunt Club. I was from Long Island and had played polo and Stuart was a farm boy from Indiana, so we had no trouble with the horse riding, although the vagaries of riding the fox hunt in Central Virginia took quite some adjustment and a steep learning curve. I took to it well, but Stuart wasn't competitive, which meant he lost interest almost immediately.
Hank never rode. He spent his time working on the winery that Belcastle was establishing at his family estate, Castleton, in Whitehall. And, increasingly, Stuart decided to spend the time with him while Dabney and I were riding the hunt. I could tell that Stuart's eyes were swimming in Hank's cum when we returned from hunting the rolling meadows at the base of the Blue Ridge, but that was OK with me now. Because now Dab and I had something going as well, and quite often the hunt had ended with me fucking Dab in the backseat of his Bentley convertible before we returned to Castleton.
I don't know whose idea it was in the beginning. Part of the beauty of it was its spontaneity and the natural "rightness" of the feel of it. The fox had been lazy that early spring day and had been quickly found twice when storm clouds started to roll in from the west over the Blue Ridge, and Dab called an early close to the hunt. I'd left my car back at the winery at Castleton and so was riding with Dab in the Bentley. I sat in the car while he talked with the groomsmen loading our horses in the Castleton horse van. When he climbed into the car, I turned my head to him. I was in a joyous mood. I had ridden well, and the trees were blossoming forth with their spring color. The world was gorgeous—and even the thunderheads rolling in over the mountains spoke of majesty and God's gift to the world. My mind was spinning a short story and I was itching to get home and to my study so that I could begin to let it free in the computer.
But Dab had other ideas. No doubt playing off my jubilant expression as I turned my head to him, Dab leaned over and kissed me—the first such intimacy we'd ever shared. The kiss deepened as I, at first, opened to him, and then took command. He had a hand on my throat and he worked it down my riding shirt, unfastening buttons as he went, and ended with his hand on my basket, receiving the assurance he sought that I wanted him.
"Is there someplace we can go?" I croaked as we came up for air and both guiltily looked over to the horse trailer to assure ourselves that the groomsmen were fully occupied with loading the horse.
He didn't answer, but he turned back in his seat and put the Bentley in gear. The convertible purred as he backed out and drove out onto the county road. He drove toward Castleton, but when we got to the drive up to the manor house, he drove on—as he did when we got to the entry drive to the winery. I remember being thankful that he hadn't turned in there. I had no doubt what we would find Hank and Stuart doing there.
He drove on, along the white-painted cross-slatted fencing that marked the boundaries of Castleton, and came almost to the foot of the Blue Ridge, where he turned right into what he cursorily told me was the "back forty," and rolled slowly down a dirt track road almost into the mouth of a deep ravine cutting into the towering mountains. We crossed a stream coming down from the ravine, with the Bentley's wheels making a rumbling noise as we bumped over a small bridge's loose boards, and then we were in the grassed yard of a pristine white-painted old farm house that only appeared small because of the scale of the mountains it was set against.
"Used to be an overseers' cottage," Dab muttered.
He drove around the side of the house and parked next to a well-tended flower garden undulating around a small pond.
Dab stopped the car and got out and started taking his clothes off. Without comment, I did the same on the passenger side. Both of us neatly folded our clothes when we were naked and placed them on our respective seats.
