Role Playing Into Reality

I sat in a table as close to the shadows of the bar as I could and turned the business card over and over in my hands. What the fuck did I have to do with a lawyer named James Gleason? Or, rather, what did he have to do with me?

Sitting in the shadows in this sort of bar proved not to be a good idea. Before Gleason showed up, I had to turn away—politely, I hoped—approaches from four different guys. I'd never been in a gay bar in L.A. before. I'd been very careful about that. That didn't mean I didn't know how either to express interest or to turn it away—most of the time—in a nonthreatening way. It's just that I'd been very careful not to reveal any interests like this in my own backyard. And it hadn't been easy. I was under close scrutiny on that. So close that I'd had a succession of girlfriends in the industry and had made sure that they could attest to my interest in and expertise with them if the media insisted on knowing—which they often did. I had a reputation, patiently and painfully acquired, to maintain in this town.

I can't say I was unrecognized in this bar, though. A couple of guys who approached me did a double take and said, "Aren't you . . .?"

I answered "Not likely" to both of them. But I probably was. This Gleason guy couldn't come too soon for my liking. I was entirely too exposed here. And I'd worked so hard to avoid exposure.

I'd almost hung up on the lawyer the previous day, even after he'd said the call referred to an inheritance—a very sizable inheritance. But then he'd gone on to explain why it was in my best interests to see him—and in a venue like this.

"I know about the ranch outside Reno and about I-81 through Pennsylvania and Virginia." He said no more than that, but he hadn't needed too.

He recognized me immediately after his eyes had swept the room. He looked more like a thug than a lawyer. Big boned, probably in his early forties, bald on top but the shadow of a hairy chest seen through the white dress shirt. He was expensively dressed in a lawyer's suit, tailored to a muscular body, which made me wonder why he didn't wear an undershirt to hide the hairiness. I especially wondered that, because I found him a bit arousing, even in the resentment of having to meet him, of him knowing what he knew. Dangerous and arousing. He couldn't have known that, I reasoned, in my naiveté, but that was my weakness: thuggish, dangerous, and, yes, hirsute.

I was disturbed that he so readily recognized me. Hell, I already had been disturbed that two guys seemed to have recognized me here, which should have been thought as a totally alien environment for me. For camouflage, I hadn't shaved this morning and I'd gone to the barbers for a buzz cut. Even had worn my brown contacts and dressed down, all of which I did when I went back East to have my needs scratched and all quite counter to my silver screen persona as the movie supporting-actor heartthrob—the guy who would have gotten the girl if she were motivated by looks alone and didn't have that special something extra the leading man had.

"Raul Raines?" he asked as he sat down, across the table from me, showing that he didn't have to ask—that he jolly well knew who I was. "Or should I address you as Ted Renales?"

I did a double take, as he knew I would, by addressing me by that second name. It wasn't my stage name. I wasn't my given name either. It was another name, a name that gave him an immediate advantage over me and deflating me from the beginning of the meeting I didn't want to be a part of.

"What is it you want, Mr. Gleason?" I asked coldly. "I don't see what this can be about."

"It's primarily about $20 million, young man," the lawyer said.

"Well, I don't have anything close to $20 million," I said, "so we can stop this right here."

He laughed. "It's about $20 million

you've

inherited," he said. "But it's about a bit beyond that too. Something I'm sure you're willing to do to get to the twenty million. Something you're willing to do, I think, to keep your cushy movie career."

He had staggered me with the mention of twenty million, so I started there. "$20 million? How could that possibly involve me?"

"Have you ever heard of Harvey Biddleman?"

"The financier and movie producer who recently died? Yes, I've heard of him, but I never met him. What about him?"

"He's left you $20 million in his will."

"That couldn't be me," I said, almost relieved that it wasn't me, as this thug, this arousing, hirsute thug was disturbing me. "As, I said I don't know him."

"Apparently you do. You know him as Pitcherstud, I think."

I froze.

"And he knew you as Catcherkid, or did so after you started your cyber role playing with him and changed your e-mail name connection to him."

"I don't know what to say," I answered, stunned. Gleason reached across the table and took my hand in one of his. The back of his beefy hand, even the backs of the fingers, were hairy. In spite of my shock, I didn't take my hand away and felt a charge of electricity go through me that stirred my cock.

I'd had half a decade of a torrid role-playing relationship with someone I didn't know as anything more than Pitcherstud on a local gay male hookup site. Neither one of us had pressed for a face-to-face meeting. It had been a release for me in my startup years in Hollywood, something I hadn't been able to give up as I quickly rose in feature parts, an almost "star is born" rise. It had continued to cover those long stretches of time before I could make a short trip back East.

But I had had no idea who Pitcherstud was all that time. I hadn't even asked for a photo. The daily connection in cyberspace had been enough for me. And he, if it had been a he, hadn't asked me either. We had just picked out personas—he as a thuggish power top and me as a needy bottom released of guilt by being taken, nearly daily in cyberspace, against my stated will. And our building relationship had played out from there. And, of course, over time the emphasis of sex, although the element always was there, had given away to more intimate sharing with each other. Both of us were reserved to the outside world and obviously could only be open—if open could include keeping ourselves totally unknown in real life to the other—with each other.

And several weeks ago the conversation had just stopped from Pitcherstud's end. I was still mourning the loss of that, not realizing how much he had meant to me, how he carried me through the day. We had e-mailed each other at least once a day for five years.

Could it be? Could it be that Pitcherstud was the financier and movie producer Harvey Biddleman? Why, he'd been ancient and, if I recalled, as dumpy as dumpy could be. Could he ever be Pitcherstud for me? I didn't . . .

"You're wondering if you could ever reconcile your Pitcherstud cyber lover with Harvey Biddleman, aren't you?" Gleason asked from across the table. Damn, was the man a mind reader? If so, he must also know I found him arousing.

As if to confirm that, he put out his other hand to mine, bunching my hand into a loose fist with one of his hands and inserting a plump finger of his other hand into my palm between my thumb and index finger. Again I didn't pull away, although I shuddered. I told myself I was shuddering from how he repelled me, but I knew underneath it all that I shuddered because he attracted me.

"For twenty million I'm willing to bet that you can reconcile that and can admit to being Catcherkid, as well. You must have made quite an impression on Biddleman, must have satisfied him deeply, for him to leave you such a large amount. Of course we can bury the connection between you two, with no one needing to know the connection or even the bequest—for a good cut of the amount, of course. It's something my firm does quite well. It's why Biddleman came to us. You aren't the only such bequest he made—but you're certainly the largest one. Larger than he's left to his estranged wife. We're doing everything we can to keep her from knowing exactly what he was worth when he died—or who he remembered more fondly than he regarded her."

"I can't really help you, Mr. Gleason. I don't really know anything about these cyber names."

"Come, come, Raul," he said. "This has all been well researched. We didn't have to do it. Biddleman researched you soon after the two of you started your role playing. He's known you all of this time. He laughed about it when he told me, saying you seemed to be clueless about it. Hadn't even wondered to him why he hadn't asked for a photo of you. It wasn't just because he knew you'd send a fake one; it was because he had all of the photos of you he needed. Intimate photos. He knew about the ranch outside Reno—the male brothel where you got your start—and that porn film you made. I have a copy of the video here in my briefcase. You want to see that I have it?"

"No," I said, it coming out in a whisper.

"Your name, Raul Raines, a flip of your porn name, Ted Renales. The first one with an Hispanic first name, the second with an Hispanic surname. Both marking the half of you that is Hispanic, the dusky skin that contrasts so sensually on screen with the blond hair and blue eyes of the other half of you. Which is it? Hispanic mother and white father or Hispanic father and white mother?"

"My mother's German and my father's Brazilian," I answered in a murmur.

"Ah, Brazilian. Sexy. I can see why Biddleman couldn't get over the allure of you. I know about your visits East too—and Biddleman knew about them. Your drives down the I-81 corridor and haunting of the rest stops. Searching for macho truck drivers who would do you roughly in their semi cabs, not knowing of your screen persona. Not caring."

That made me whimper—that and how the finger inserted in my palm was suggestive moving, in and out, rubbing on the tender skin of my palm, unmistakably mimicking the dance of the fuck.

"He worried about you, you know. To the extent that for the last two years, he's had PIs running behind you during these visits, protecting your back."

"He couldn't have done all that," I blurted out, not wanting to hear this—how closely I'd been monitored these past few years when I thought this had been contained within the shielding Internet.

"Yes, he did that and more. He dabbled in being a movie producer. How do you think you rose this fast in Hollywood? Who do you think your backer was? You thought you'd done all of this on your own?"

"Stop. Just stop," I whimpered, defeated. What I had thought was just the harmless release of cyber role playing. turned into a comfortable fantasy world of sharing deepest thoughts in a protected environment, was turning into hard reality.

He lifted my hand to his face, his mouth sucking in my thumb. My other fingers spanned out on his cheek, feeling the scratchiness of his five o-clock shadow. I gave an involuntary low moan, but I didn't extract the hand. He took my other hand and ran into the opening of his shirt between two of the buttons, pressing my fingers to his hairy chest.

"The reports I read, of the truck drivers you sought out on I-81. Big men, hairy bodies. You have a fetish for it, don't you? for big, hairy men."

"Yes," I answered in a small voice.

"For hairy, hung men, who will treat you rough."

"Yes."

"You're going to accept the $20 million bequest and on my terms, aren't you?"

I didn't say yes, but I didn't say no. He could feel the trembling of my hands.

"And you understand that my terms—for doing the paperwork out of the public eye and for keeping your secrets—include that I'm going to fuck you, that I'm going to dip my dick in the ass of a hunky Hollywood star."

"Yes," I answered. I'd unbuttoned one of the buttons on his shirt front and moved my entire hand in to cover one of his hairy pecs. My thumb was on a puffed-up nipple.

"We can do a role play of our own. I can be a truck driver on I-81 and you can be the boy-toy hitchhiker I pick up at a rest stop and work over in the cab of my semi."

"Yes."

"Except that we won't do it in cyberspace. You showed you could go beyond that when you started driving the truck routes on I-81. we'll do it right here, now. I've paid for a room upstairs."

He fucked me cruelly and roughly, and I loved every stroke of it. Just like I sought out when I went looking for those truckers on I-81, taking myself entirely out of my Hollywood persona. Pitcherstud had prepared me for the real thing through the fantasy of our cybering it. And it very well could be that $20 million wasn't Biddleman's only bequest to me—that he was giving me the reality of James Gleason too, so that I didn't have to make those pilgrimages to the East.

Gleason bent me over the bed and held me tight in his bear-like arms, the pelting of his chest scratching my back, making me feel alive and overpowered, while he pistoned my ass with a thick cock bursting forth from a forest of curly pubic hair. He had pushed all the way in me, until the sensitive flesh in the curve of my ass itched from the feel of his hair pubes, and held there, buried deep and full inside me, until I begged for the fuck to start. And then, as he took me hard, I alternated between begging him to stop or slow down or, yes, rub the cock head there again, or fuck me harder, with no indication that he gave a shit what I wanted from moment to moment. It was just the way l liked being taken, just the way that Pitcherstud always verbally took me in our exchanges.

It hit me that Gleason had even read through my e-mail history with Pitcherstud and was doing everything to me that I loved so much from the e-mail exchanges.

Or had Biddleman carefully coached him in what to do. Was Biddleman fucking me through a another man?

Just as if he could read my thoughts, Gleason murmured, "This is how Harvey wanted to take you but never had the courage to identify himself to you. He asked me to be his surrogate. Am I doing it right?"

"Oh, yes, you're doing it perfectly," I whimpered.

He even remembered to pull me up on the bed, on top of him as he lay on his back. I was stretched on top of him, his hairy arms embracing my chest and holding me close in to his back, while my thighs were bent on my calves on either side of his thighs and I raised and lowered my passage on his cock until I wasn't going fast enough for him, and then he pressed his hand down on my belly and finished me off with short, sharp jabs up into my channel.

After we were spent, but hadn't moved from that position, he spoke. "Every Tuesday afternoon at two, here, like this, until I don't want it anymore."

"I can't promise," I murmured. "I work."

"You still work thanks to Harvey Biddleman," he answered, "And, as his lawyer, I've been controlling your scheduling for two years. I haven't heard that that's stopping. Every Tuesday afternoon, here, like this, until I don't want it anymore. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"And I just may be bringing some friends who want to dick around inside a movie star too. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."