Luke drove into Oak Grove with his hands sweating on the wheel. Marcie didn't expect him home for another day. The job in Colorado went well, and Luke had an extra grand in his pocket -- an extra grand and a card for a place in Oak Grove.
You've gone too far this time, Luke. Still can turn back. Hit the brake, get on the off ramp, and turn this fucking car around. Go back to your wife and forget this nonsense.
He'd given himself the same talk a dozen times in the past hour. Each of which sounded more and more like his father.
Luke's father got him into the business of selling industrial chemical contracts at eighteen. The old man wanted a son who knew how to take care of a family. No high minded jobs of fancy, but a brass tacks life of putting bread on the table.
Yeah, well you're fucking dead, dad, and I'm ten times better at this than you ever were.
They'd spent years in the car together driving from one end of the country to the other. All the while, dear old dad kept his hand on the scruff of Luke's neck. Get a house, get a wife, make a kid. Live like a real man. Ol' Dad never said what the last bits meant, of course, but Luke guessed it was the reason his mother dipped out. Dad kept a woman in at least three cities, putting bread on plenty of tables.
I'm no fucking better now, am I?
The card laid on the passenger's seat. Cherry red with a few black stripes, it only had a phone number on it in the lower right corner. A man at the conference gave it to Luke. The guy said Luke had a look about him that the card would fix. He'd said it with a wink and a slight pat on Luke's bottom. If Ol' Dad had been around, Luke would have clocked the guy. With Dad cold in the ground, Luke found himself repressing the urge to pat the guy right back. A few drinks later, he sat in a phone booth with the card in his hand. A couple of hours after that he slugged down two coffees at the hotel bar and hopped in the car for a drive to an address in Oak Grove.
He didn't feel like he could stop. From the moment the card hit his hand, Luke felt like a massive set of gears clicked into motion. The only way to stop them would be to throw himself into the spokes, and he couldn't do that.
What if Marcie finds out? What if someone sees me and blackmails me? What if I get to the place and absolutely lose it?
Nothing about it felt right. Not the massive turning of gears toward a final, unknown action. Not the poison in his thoughts poured there by his father for years. Not even his own skin. He didn't trust himself, and that was why he didn't turn the car around. Luke no longer believed he knew up from down or left from right. He only knew that something a long time coming was finally about to happen, and he would be a fool to try and stop it.
Oak Grove looked like any of the other cities he visited on a weekly basis, if a little smaller. Being a man of the road, Luke heard things about the city, weird things. He ignored the weirder stories, but being handed a card for an escort service wasn't the first time he'd heard about the town's peculiar past times. Sex clubs, swinger parties, office orgies. It sounded ludicrous to a small town boy like Luke who'd only ever had two sexual partners in his life -- Marcie and the mistake.
Luke and Marcie went to school together, the regular American dream story. Luke captained the high school football team while Marcie shook pom-poms on the sideline. Marcie lettered in debate while Luke cheered her on from the stands. They were good friends. It made sense for them to go together. They looked good together. Marcie with her blonde bob, petite figure, and cherry lips. Luke with his broad shoulders, towering height, and sharp jawline. Every girl envied Marcie, and every guy begrudged Luke. Most guys -- perhaps all but one. Luke and Marcie didn't waste time. Her parents wanted them to get married as quickly as possible because they saw Luke as the golden goose. Marcie didn't come from money by any stretch of the idea, but Luke already had enough to buy a house at eighteen.
Ol' Dad wanted his son to lock down some "trim pussy" before someone else did. Luke's father knew a good mother hen in the making when he saw one. He bet the farm on Marcie not batting an eye at her husband being gone weeks at a time. Cause that's what real men did. His son looked respectable with a pretty little wife while still staying on the road to bring in the money. Which left only one real problem. Luke, the all-American, couldn't get it up for his wife, at least not at first. She told him it was nerves or stress, but they both knew better. Luke knew Marcie had all the things most guys would break their legs just to have a chance at once. Big, round tits, a flat tummy, and an ass that could inspire a new round of Hellenic wars. For Luke, he could have been looking at a pile of used laundry. In the end, he figured it out. He even managed to enjoy himself from time to time. Too often, he managed it by thinking about the mistake.
It happened a week before his wedding. He'd been out on the town with some friends blowing off steam. They wound up in a bar on the far side of town, and Luke slipped away from the pack. A blonde guy a few years older than Luke offered to buy him a drink. Luke accepted and half an hour later, they ditched to the bathroom. Within minutes, Luke's pants fell around his ankles, and his cock slipped in the stranger's throat. For that brief moment, the grand gears of his life seemed to stop, as though thousands of invisible technicians suddenly doubted their design. By the next morning, the gears turned again, oiled and tuned with the shame of waking up to the vague memory of a stranger's lips on his dick.
Since then, he did his best to ignore the mistake. No one knew. Or maybe everyone knew, and no one was brave enough to say. No one except for a new stranger who handed Luke a card.
The number on the card put him on the phone with a man who gave him an address and a name, Tanner. The address led to a small apartment building covered in balconies lit by different colored lights. Music filled the air alongside the cheerful conversations of a few people in the small park in front of the building. Luke locked up his car, wiped the sweat off his palms, and headed inside. He passed a few people in the hall, most of whom dressed in a way that made him blush. The man on the phone had given him a number, so Luke made his way to the second floor room 204. Thankfully, only the quiet hum of music filled the hallway, giving him a moment in private. He stopped in front of the door with his hand raised.
This is it, Luke. If you go through with it, you'll never be able to deny what you are again. You can go home and have a long happy life. What's a little discontent? What's a little not knowing? Would it really hurt that much?
A door opened down the hall. A young man stepped out and looked both ways before facing Luke. "You lost?" he asked, eyes looking up and down Luke's form. "I'm free," he said.
Luke swallowed down the lump in his throat. "No, I'm here for 204."
"Ah, you gotta knock, hon. Tanner's a good guy. He'll take care of you." The other guy went back into his room and shut the door.
