Chapter 30: Magic Words at Chippendales
I watched Thursday being born. Unable to sleep, I lay in my bed through the dawn hours sifting through the events of the past few days and watching myself slowly appear in the mirror on the desk across from my bed.
The boys were going stir-crazy from the rain. Dan had signed onto the poker game the night before, which left me little time with him alone. Just enough to ask if I had figured out the cumming question.
"Because you're the master of my domain?" I had asked in his room as he prepared for the game by going through the pockets of shorts he found on the floor looking for bills.
"Sorry, Kramer," he said, "keep trying." He became frustrated by his search for cash. "And you can clean up in here, if you want. Adam's right.
I can't find shit either."
He left me empty in the empty room.
Was he mad at me, I wondered as I began to gather clothes into piles? Was he mad because of the answer I had given when he asked if he were hotter than Adam? I hadn't really given an answer, actually. I had just laughed delightedly at the question. Had that pissed him off? Had he wanted me to say he was?
Was he?
Who was hotter, Adam or Dan? Which is hotter, a blast furnace or an incinerator? Which is hotter, a star or a thermonuclear device? Adam's sere had been imposed, instant. Dan's was learned, acquired. Each left me fried to a crisp. Adam's body was perfection. Dan's was flawless. At this point, Dan could get me to cum merely by giving me permission to do so. Adam had already done it three times without even touching me. How could I possibly answer that question - who was hotter?
Was it intended to be serious? We compete, he had said, but the good kind.
Was this the good kind? Was he asking me because he was afraid he had competition for me? Did he have competition for me? Lord knows, Adam had had ample opportunity to take me, but never had. Was he making fun of my demonstrated weakness for Adam? Was he just playing with my mind?
This would have to be one I would have to figure out for myself. I surely could not ask him if he were serious. If he weren't, it would raise questions I didn't want to raise, and if he were, it would require me to give answers I couldn't possibly give. And I surely couldn't ask Adam about it.
And could I ask about what Eric had been talking about? Dan had said...what had he said? He transferred here to work with Johnston, right? It was clearly something the entire team knew about. How bad could it be? But if I asked about it, Eric would win. Dan would tell me, I decided. If it were important, Dan would tell me.
The sun was up somewhere behind the low cover of gray, but there were still two hours to breakfast. The time I spent alone in Dan and Adam's room the night before played itself out before my eyes as if a movie projected onto the ceiling. There was Mark bending to pick up clothes. There was Mark making piles - this piece Dan's, that piece Adam's. There was Mark left alone to ponder his revelation - the Great Revelation of the day - that Dan was, in his way, every bit the Alpha Adam was. There was Mark unable to determine to which of the two this particular pair of boxers belonged. There was Mark bringing the boxers to his nose, inhaling, imbibing. Dan. That was Dan. Those were Dan's. And that pair? There was Mark burying his nose in them. That was Adam. This shirt? Mark had seen Adam wear it. Mark could picture Adam in it. Still the underarm seam came to his nose.
There was Mark sitting, legs akimbo, in the center of the floor. A crane shot. He is small in the picture, surrounded as fully by smells as Scarlet was by the wounded on the streets of Atlanta. There was Mark, swooning. Did he even know he was unzipping the fly of his shorts? Could he feel himself wrap the boxers he held in his hand around his furious erection and begin to stroke? Was he even aware? He must have been. See how he stopped himself and lay back onto the floor? See the tears?
By the time Adam came into the room, this time with Evan, Mark had reclaimed himself. The floor was tidy, the clothes in baskets ready to be washed, the CDs arranged on a shelf, the magazines stacked in a corner, the sheets changed, the beds made. Fin, read the frame of the movie on the ceiling. A Rankin/Bass Production.
So Dan was an Alpha. What did this mean for his and Adam's relationship? Could a pack have two? This one clearly could. Yet another way in which we are different than the other primates. But wasn't it uncomfortable for them to be together? Was there a pecking order among Alphas themselves? Was one aleph nought, the other aleph one? Had I stumbled upon my own Continuum Hypothesis? It was that final thought that got me out of bed and into the shower, sure that I was going nuts.
The morning practice, like the afternoon one, reinforced my revelation. >From interaction to interaction, each of the two's catalogue of interpersonal, non-verbal moves matched the other's. This was no mere mimicry on Dan's part, as I had suspected at the beginning of the summer. Adam's repertoire of power might have had a chemical aspect to it, but from a purely observational viewpoint, the two were interchangeable. I watched as they rotated together, late in the afternoon, to the p-bars. After stretching, they mounted the apparatus together from opposite ends. Shoulders down, arms long, they hung above the bars and slowly brought their legs up so that they formed two perfect right angles. Their pointed toes almost touched in the middle. At a word from one of them, they began, in unison, to rotate out, pressing to handstands. The two of them, happiest when demonstrating perfect strength and perfect control. Physical and emotional bookends, parallel lives on the parallel bars.
During dinner, it began to pour again and the wind resumed howling. It was the kind of rain where the drops were so large that they drowned turkeys. The kind of rain you don't endure, the kind of rain that can't last, the kind of rain you run to get out of. Finishing my meal early, I sprinted back to the dorm. Turning right before my door, I went into Dan and Adam's room, not bothering to knock as I had just left the two of them in the dining room. There was already shit on the floor. I laughed and put it back into the piles I had created the night before.
How tired can a person get? It wasn't just physical exhaustion, either. Aside from the inability to sleep came the necessity of getting through each day minus the use of a pint of blood. How did priests do it, I wondered? Sitting down on Adam's bed, I chuckled to myself. Fuck, I thought. I must be exhausted. The answer to that one was, of course, that most of them didn't.
Adam's bed. I ran my hand over the sheets. Fucking lucky linen. Would Adam ever find love? Could he possibly? To be loved by Adam? What could one give to him that he needed? What could one give to him that he didn't already have? How intensely lonely he must be! I had thought that before, once. I could not even begin to picture the woman or man who would cause Adam to fall in love. It was a good thing, probably. If I suspected someone could do it, I'd be tempted to kill them.
I got up and walked over to the other side of the room. Lying down on Dan's bed, I buried my face in the pillow and conjured him through smell. How close smell is to our souls! Smelling him, I could feel his dick press against my thigh. I could feel his finger trace the lines of cum on my face. I could feel his arms around me as I trembled next to the trampoline.
His touch had awoken something in me. It was fierce and demanding and insatiable. It was quenched only by his presence and attention. When would he let me cum?
I could see the fine stubble on his chin at midnight. I could see the way his stretched foreskin pinched together just under the labia of his ample piss-slit. I could see the ten freckles he had on his shoulders. Can a person be an opiate? Of course he can. And I had been trained to consider that unhealthy. We are considered unhealthy if not independent in this society. Individualism to the extreme. We must be complete in and unto ourselves. What a curiously modern concept. For fifty thousand years of our evolutionary history, we died as individuals. Without the clan, we were at the mercy of the capricious gods of starvation and saber-toothed tigers. I exist because my distant ancestors were smart enough to follow their Alphas. Would following my Alpha be as rewarding? And why wouldn't he let me cum?
I could hear his baritone. I could hear him frighten, reassure, scare, soothe. I could hear...I could hear...I could hear Papa Bear.
"Somebody's been sleeping in my bed," Adam was saying.
"Somebody's been sleeping in my bed too," Dan responded. "And he's still there."
I rolled over and drowsily opened my eyes, only slowly becoming aware that I had fallen asleep. The boys were standing over the bed looking down at me with curiosity.
"You think our porridge is safe?" Adam asked.
"Hey," I said, rubbing my eyes. "How long was I out for?"
"Couple of hours," Dan said. "We've been hanging out in the commons."
"Sorry."
"Next you'll be wanting me to join you," Dan said, smiling.
"Yes, please."
"Jesus," he said to Adam, rolling his eyes in mock annoyance, "give 'em an inch and they take a fucking mile."
"What are we going to do with the boy?" Adam returned, shaking his head and tisking.
"Cum, please. I'm steely, Dan."
"You're Steely Dan?" asked Adam.
"Do Aja," said Dan.
I laughed.
"Should we make him cum, Dan? Whaddya think? What say we two fuck in front of him? That'd do it, huh?"
"That wouldn't make him cum, bud, that'd make him fucking explode." They were standing there next to the bed, each with arms folded, looking down at me as if I were a specimen in a museum, or, perhaps, a lobster in a tank. They grinned as they talked, taking clear pleasure in baiting me.
"'Spose you're right. There'd be brains everywhere."
"And he just did such a good job of cleaning the room."
"Yeah. Be a shame to ruin it."
"Besides," Dan said, "he hasn't said the magic words yet."
My humor fell. The magic words. I was at the end of my tether, and the grand experiment was about to fail before it even began because I couldn't find the "magic words" that Dan wanted to hear. It wasn't funny anymore.
"Fuck, Dan, what the hell do you want me to do?" I asked plaintively. "You want me to beg? I'll beg. I'll fucking grovel at your feet."
"Well," he said, still smiling, "yes, in fact. I do want you to beg. You want to see him beg?"
"Oh! Indubitably." They were doing fucking Chip and Dale.
"Yes, little man. We would like to see you beg."
Adam made no move to retreat as I launched into it. The two of them just stood there, shoulder to shoulder, and watched me squirm.
"Please, Dan. Please."
"That's not begging," Dan said to Adam. "You think that's begging? I don't think that's begging."
"Naw," he replied, "that was hardly even asking. What would you call that, champ? Entreating? Was that more entreating or appealing?"
"Bordered on a beseech at best," Dan said.
Adam nodded. "That's it. A beseech. But not a beg."
"No, definitely not a beg."
I lost my temper. "You want me to beg? I'll fucking beg. Dan, I can't sleep, I can't concentrate, I'm going fucking nuts! I haven't had a good meal in days. All I want to do is cum."
"Then why don't you just cum?" Dan asked simply.
"Because you told me fucking not to. That's why I don't just cum! You told me not to, and I want to be with you."
"Why not just do it and lie?"
"Fuck me, you know exactly why. Because you'd know and then that'd be it. Please, Dan. I'm begging you. Please. What's the fucking test here? What are the rules? What do you want me to do? I'll do it. You want to publicly humiliate me? I'll be publicly humiliated. You want me not to be humiliated by being in public? I'll fucking be proud. Walk me around on a fucking leash. I'll bark like a dog and smile while I tell strangers I'm your property. Tell me what to do. I'll do it. Just please let me cum."
"That was fucking hot," Dan said. "Wasn't that hot?"
"That was surely hot," Adam echoed.
"I am so boned right now."
"I sprung a woodie myself."
"You going to tell me that wasn't it?" I exclaimed in disbelief.
"Naw," Dan said, "that wasn't it. But it was fucking hot."
I snapped. I screamed. The frustration, the exhaustion, the heat, the constantly being off balance had finally taken their toll. I could feel the tears begin to form.
"I fucking give up," I shouted. "I have no fucking idea, Dan. I've thought it through, I've analyzed, I've considered, I've reasoned. I've done everything I know how to do. You say I'm wrong? I think it through again. I come up with another idea. You say that's wrong? I analyze it again. I try another angle. Well I can't think it through anymore, Dan. I have no God-damned mother-fucking clue. I GIVE UP."
I was yelling at the top of my lungs, and the end of the sentence brought an emotional collapse I hadn't felt since a particularly painful breakthrough in therapy many years before. Dan and Adam looked at each other while tears fell uncontrollably from my eyes.
"Wow," Dan said.
"Wow," Adam agreed.
"Congratulations," Dan said, turning back to look at me. "That's the right answer."