Craigslist 24
WARNING
This story details explicit gay sex between men, teens and boys. If you find this kind of thing distasteful, or if you are underage where ever you live, then stop reading this now, and delete this file. The story is completely fictional, the author does not condone or encourage any of the acts contained herein.
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Chapter 24
It's the quarter break for Jason and Kenny, and report card time for Ian and Alejandro. Grades are due, and they all come in in the course of one week, and it is a fucking jackpot. Jason has As in Comp. Sci., English, Math, Philosophy, and Russian History. Kenny has A's in Math, English 220 (a graduate course that his advisor got him into -- Dickens and Hawthorne), Biology, Physics, and Western Civ. Ian has As in Math, English, Film Studies, Latin, and Spanish. And Alejandro has As in Biology, Math, Advanced Mandarin, and Journalism. He has one A- in English (not his first language), for which he earns himself four extra strokes of the razor strop, sixteen extra kisses, and one of the best blow jobs I've ever given, his forth orgasm of the day he brought me his report card. He screams as he cums, pretty amazing for someone who's usually stoic when he cums. I am so proud of them, I can almost not contain myself. So proud.
Dinner is absolutely weird. We have Mole Negro, a Mexican dish made with pork, chilis and chocolate by Alejandro, fiercely hot, lovely; rosemary chicken, a western thing that has, uncharacteristically, become one of Jason's signature dishes; and stir-fried snap peas from Ian, of all people. Ian does not cook, has no flair for it, or at least hasn't in the past. It's a strange combination, but delicious, nonetheless.
I can almost not keep my hands off of them. I am just so excited.
"Where are we going? What are we doing? What's the reward? Actually, you have several rewards built into this, but what's the first?" I scream, just elated. And so are they, all beaming. And then they start to giggle, or at least Jason and Kenny do, and then Alejandro, and then Ian. Who's going to tell me?
Kenny is the bravest. I can almost imagine them drawing straws. "Umm...Tim...it's sort of been a while...since we...umm...went to..." And then my cell phone rings. I motion him to hold on a second, and answer the phone. It's Gary.
"So, Nathan tells me that your boys want to go to N'Touch. The usual...scene. Have you figured out what night, yet?"
I've been sort of gazing absently at Kenny as I've received this news, and my eyes narrow as I smile. I become suddenly "focused," which causes the boys some anxiety. But, I think Kenny knows instantly who's on the phone and what's being said. "Not yet," I respond. "They were just about to spring this on me. Let me get back to you in an hour or so."
"Cool," he responds, and we hang up.
Kenny hangs his head, but has the biggest shit-eating grin on his face that I've ever seen. "Sorry," he says. "You weren't supposed to find out that way." Jason is just beside himself, trying desperately to swallow the last bite of food while laughing hysterically. Ian and Alejandro look confused.
"Have these boys told you what an N'Touch evening is," I ask Ian and Alejandro?
"Yeah," Ian replies. "We get to dance. It's a gay club. Maybe we can make out a little."
Kenny is at a total loss. He just can't contain it, and is causing the two newest boys major confusion.
"Okay. Well, I guess I'll introduce you to N'Touch the same way I did them," I giggle.
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Two hours later, I call Brian and propose an evening. I haven't seen him, and we haven't been back, since Andrew's death. He hasn't wanted to intrude, but is clearly beside himself at the idea of our returning. I tell him I have five boys, and he tells me that he has five go-go cages. He begs me to make the night a weekend, and go give him at least five days to publicize the event, and we agree on the following weekend, just six days hence. He is just ecstatic. "One of the boys is Hispanic, and one Caucasian," I confide, "not exactly your usual fare." He doesn't care.
"Are they cute," he asks?
"Deeply."
"I know your tastes, Tim. The crowd will love them."
"Same time, same place," I say, and remind him to let the bouncer know. We're in. This should be very interesting.
Three days before the event, Ian asks me what he should wear. I'm nonchalant. "Doesn't really matter. Something comfortable. We'll be dancing for a long time."
The day before the event, Alejandro asks me the same thing. "I am concerned that I will be...improperly dressed."
"No," I assure him, "you'll be dressed just right."
"I will ask Jason what to wear."
I'm suddenly nervous. I don't know that Jason will be able to keep a straight face for this question. "Okay," I say, "but he usually just wears jeans and a t. You'll get the same answer from him." He looks a little surprised, but goes back to his homework, and doesn't contact Jason, I think.
The evening arrives, a Saturday, and we all load ourselves into the Westfalia, and go to pick up Gary and Nathan, who aren't all that familiar with Alejandro, but very friendly, nonetheless. The boys chatter away in the back (in a mixture of Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Spanish) while Gary and I chat in the front -- about work, about the general business environment, about the boys, about the recent death of his mother, at 89, very sad. When we finally arrive, we find parking right on Polk, unheard-of on a Saturday night. We all pile out of the van, and the boys get in line at N'Touch, but I motion them to the front of the line, introduce us to the bouncer, and we're immediately ushered inside. The minute Brian sees us, he motions us to the side of the bar, and greets us warmly, kissing the boys, and shaking hands with Gary and me. He almost instantly has a Martini for Gary and me, a Seven-Up for Kenny, who's allergic to alcohol, and asks Jason, Ian, and Alejandro what they'd like. "I can't serve you liquor unless you can prove you're of age. That'd get me more busted than what you're going to do here. But anything else."
Ian and Alejandro give me a quizzical look. Brian's comments have confused them, and then I take them aside and break it to them as they watch Jason, Kenny and Nathan strip, piling their clothes onto the far end of the bar.
"I hope you boys are well groomed tonight. When we come to N'Touch, the boys like to get naked and dance in the go-go cages. It's mostly a gay Asian bar, but there are so many potato queens here (Asians who date Caucasians exclusively), that you'll be an instant hit, Ian, and Hispanics are also very popular here. I won't make you do this, but this is a very supportive audience, and, being in the cages, six feet above the crowd, you're very well protected. This is optional, but given our kiss-in recently, I suspect you'll enjoy it." Jason, Kenny and Nathan are already in their cages, and dancing. Ian and Alejandro stare at each other for maybe fifteen seconds, wink, and then strip, piling their clothes with the others. They are absolutely flushed, crimson, especially Ian, but go to the go-go cages that Brian points to, and after five or so minutes, are absolutely out of control, dancing with abandon, their erections bobbing chaotically. And, after an hour or so of this, Alejandro looks over at me with a plaintive and submissive look in his eyes. I nod, and he leaves his cage, and moves into Ian's, where they start to make out -- passionately. The room is momentarily silent as the revelers watch, rapt, and then explode as Gwen Stefani hits the turntable. After half-an-hour of the longest kiss that I've ever seen, Ian and Alejandro part again, Alejandro returning to his own cage, and they dance for the next hour-and-a-half, until they're spent, exhausted. Emerging from their cages, they collect their clothes, Brian kissing each of them, and then Gary and me, and we drive back to San Jose, arriving at around 1am, delivering Gary and Nathan, and piling into bed at around 2:20am.
"That was a blast," Ian proclaims, and Kenny and Jason begin to giggle uncontrollably.
"We weren't sure you'd like that," Jason confides.
"We thought you might be pissed at us for not telling you," Kenny adds.
Ian hugs Kenny and Jason together, and Alejandro hugs the huddle, too wide by now to wrap himself around everyone. "Fucking awesome," they say in absolute unison, causing me a serious case of the giggles, which dominoes to the rest of the tribe. Yeah, fucking awesome!
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The grades are just too good to stop at N'Touch, and we discuss endlessly how to celebrate. I'm big on Paris, and haven't been there in a while. I rented a flat for a week once in the Fifteenth Arrondissement with a birds-eye view of the Tour Eiffel. Each day, we'd leave the flat in the morning and go visit different parts of the city, returning at dusk, stopping in at the wine merchant, the butcher, the green grocer, the cheese shop, and the bakery, collecting the ingredients for dinner. I was there with a Canadian guy I didn't know very well, but got to know VERY well in the course of those seven days. Dark hair and piercing blue eyes, very beautiful, but a little too...independent to last. I just love Paris. I love the architecture, I love the people, I love the values that the city clearly embodies, I love everything about it. I lobbied long and hard for Paris. But we aren't celebrating my success; we're celebrating the boys'. And, the boys want to go to New York. None of them has ever been there, which I find amazing. I love New York, and know it very well. For me it's Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Berlin, London and Copenhagen, in that order of preference. Zurich is nice, and there are countless cities in Germany that are very pleasant, but they don't quite make it onto the list because they're just too damned small. Don't ever let a German make hotel reservations for you, because he'll put you in the middle of nowhere, in some quaint little, picturesque village with no interest. I've been stranded in Gosslar, in Friedrichshaffen, in Böblingen, in more goddamn tiny little villages that I can count. Always make your own reservations.
So, New York is the destination, which means this is going to be a dead-cheap vacation. I've travelled a great deal in the last twelve years, mostly for business. Before striking out on my own, I worked for a number of large software companies, and was a popular speaker at trade shows and conferences. I racked up 1.6 million miles in that time, and when you do that, the last thing you want to do for fun is to travel. Consequently, I have a lot of frequent-flyer miles that we're going to cash in for this trip. I also have a very good friend who has a...what do you call it here...a pension on the upper west side of Manhattan -- 81st and Broadway -- that she rents to her friends for cheap. We'll stay there. I have to admit, I'm very excited. I just can't believe that none of these boys have been there. This is going to be a blast.
A couple of years ago, the last time I was in New York, I was there with a guy I was dating. We went to see a play, off-off-off-Broadway -- Naked Boys Singing. It has since been made into a movie which, if you haven't seen it, you really should; it's very funny. But, the movie can't compare with the play. We had pretty good tickets, third row, right-hand side. But, as we got closer and closer to curtain time, the first two rows hadn't filled in, and so we moved forward, into the first row. This was supposed to be a gay play, a musical, but the entire center section of the orchestra seats were filled with straight women, women carrying beer glasses, women who were clearly...inebriated...and giggling...and hooting, women who had, we discovered, listening to their conversations, been imported from New Jersey on tour busses. Just before curtain time, the theater admits un-ticketed people, and they filled the rest of the theater, including our ticketed seats. It's a full house.
Finally, the lights dim, and the curtain rises, and there is a line of 12 very attractive naked boys, probably no more than three feet from us, waving their dicks in our face as they dance, sing, and tell us their stories. If I had leaned forward, I could have sucked them off. It was absolutely hysterical. We found ourselves leaning further and further back in our seats. I'd never been this close to a dick I didn't know. (Yeah...yeah...yeah... As I said before, I've been pretty monogamous. I'm not big on the bar scene and tend to date someone for months before having any kind of sexual contact, which limits my pool of friends, I have to admit.) The straight women were beside themselves, but, probably because they were safely thirty feet from these boys. Julian and I were practically part of the chorus line, and we hadn't auditioned for this.
New York is quite a wonderful place, and we're going to have great fun.
The most excited about the trip, I discover to my surprise is Jason, the quietest of the boys, the most conservative. "Did you know that Julliard gives free concerts?" he asks, one evening, as we're in the local mall looking to buy him a new pair of shoes for the trip. He's already scoped out a performance of Shostakovich's Quintet in A, one of my favorite pieces. "I played this once," he confides, and as I turn to face him, my face quizzical and confused, he realized the magnitude of the mistake he's just made.
"You did what," I ask, very, very `focused'?"
"Umm...I...sort of...played it once."
"You sort of played it once." This is not a question, but a restatement of what he's just said. My voice is absolutely flat. No inflection. You don't `sort of' play Shostakovich, especially not the Quintet. It borders on a-tonal. It's a motherfucker.
"Umm...yeah."
He knows all the signs. He reads me very, very well. My eyes must be very narrow now, my voice flat. I'm frighteningly calm. I just stand staring at him, and he examines his feet, very, very carefully.
Waste irritates me...greatly. Kenny, for example, speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin, but he can't read or write Chinese. Well, he couldn't. We fixed that. I made clear that he would either learn to do that, or have no skin left on his ass. It infuriates me when you have a skill that you don't use, that you don't strive to improve. I can't speak tonal languages, can't learn them. I've tried. He can; yet he was squandering that talent by not learning to read.
"And, what did you play it on," I ask?
"Umm...on a...on a...violin."
Long, long pause. "You play the violin?" He is so fucked, and knows it. He's going to be walking the aisles of the plane when we fly to New York. There's no way he'll be able to sit down.
"Yeah," he whines.
I lift his chin so that he's looking me in the eyes, a gesture that draws some attention from passersby. "And, why is it that this is the first I've heard about this?"
He starts to stammer. "Umm...because I don't have a violin. We...umm...couldn't afford one. We rented...one." He knows how lame this sounds, knows how angry I am.
"You play the violin."
Again, looking at his feet. "Yeah."
I am very angry. Fuck the shoes. I drag him to the car and we drive to Swain's House of Music in Palo Alto where we look for a violin, and are shown several. Handing him one, I tell him to play the first violin part to the Shostakovich Quintet. He looks totally embarrassed, shamefaced, and starts to play, and it is so incredibly beautiful that I start to tear up. I should probably just admit here and now that really beautiful music makes me cry, sob. I can't go to concerts with other people, because if the performance is good, I'm drenched by the time it's done. I went to a performance of Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra once at the San Francisco Symphony, Edo de Waart, with a group of friends, and totally embarrassed myself and them. I don't do that anymore. I either go alone, or don't go at all. It's not something I can control. Music is cathartic for me, like a spanking is for Jason, and I guarantee, he will reach catharsis tonight.
"You play the violin," I finally say, as he stops playing. And then I realize that I've missed an obvious question. "Do you play any other instruments?"
His fascination with his shoes tells me that this was the right question. "Umm...yeah...I play the...piano...and sort of...the oboe."
I guide him to a piano, sit him down, and choose something a little obscure. "Play Chopin's Nocturne Number 3 in G minor."
He pauses a beat or two, thinks, and then begins to play, and I begin to sob, to weep, which unnerves him, but he continues. After maybe five minutes of an interpretation that draws every customer and sales guy in the store to the piano, he concludes, and looks up at me, a long teary look. I'm gritting my teeth, as much to stop crying as to control my anger.
"I'm fucked, aren't I," he asks, sheepishly, drawing a few gasps from his audience.
"Yup. I think you could say that. Your ass is going to be very rosy, very sore tomorrow." The audience disperses quickly. This is way more intimate than they want to be.
We buy the violin for $1560. It's the best they have, they tell me. It has a very nice timbre, and Jason likes the sound and the way it rests under his chin. He fondles it all the way home. It's seen some wear, apparently belonging to a concert violinist from the now-defunct San Jose Symphony, but the patina of the wood is really stunning. The wear has actually made it more beautiful. I watch him out of the corner of my eye make love to this instrument, and then ask the inevitable. "So, when did you start studying the violin?"
He looks embarrassed. "When I was four."
"And the piano?"
"When I was five."
"And, when did you stop?"
Long pause. "When I came to live with you."
"Why?"
He's flushed now. He knows there's no way out of this. He knows where this will lead. He knows just how angry I am. He also knows that his previous answer, that he didn't have instruments, didn't work then, and won't work now. He's got to take another approach to survive this. "Because I became interested in other things."
"What things?"
"Programming?"
"So, you're telling me that your fascination with programming, something you didn't start to do until more than a year after we met, replaced your interest in the violin and the piano, something you'd been studying for more than 14 years."
He's silent, unduly interested, once again, in his feet, caressing his violin fondly, stroking the back of it, running his fingers along the frets. Finally, he looks up at me. "There's no way out of this, is there?"
"I don't think so, but maybe you have something up your sleeve, something I haven't thought of. If not, when we get home, you'll need to put the violin back in its case, stow it in your room, and meet me in the basement, because I will be really pissed that you've wasted an enormous talent for lack of a fucking instrument that I would have bought you in a heartbeat had I known of your interest and skill."
He nods, still caressing the violin, but finally packs it back in its case, clutching it to his chest. "You're right. I love music more than anything, love playing this," he says, clutching his new violin. "It's my favorite thing, followed by the piano. I love them both, and have been wasting my time, not because I've been studying programming, but because I haven't been studying music. I deserve whatever punishment you decide to deliver."
I nod. If I were honest and above board, I would probably admit that much of my disappointment and anger is more about me than about Jason. When I was in elementary school, we actually had a music program and could choose to study any instrument we wanted to. My first choice was the violin. But the violin was a "girl's" instrument where I went to school, and I didn't have the confidence to buck that image. I would have been considered a sissy, and there was nothing worse than a sissy. (Nowadays, the operative phrase is "so gay," but we didn't have any notion of what gay was back in those days.) So, I studied the clarinet, a boy's instrument that I hated, for about three months, finally giving up on it and on music. So, my question is what gave Jason the confidence to study the violin. Several possible answers present themselves. (1) He might have been so young when he started that the sexual stereotypes didn't factor into the equation, or (2) he might have been pushed into it by his parents, or (3) the sexual stereotypes that curtailed my love of the violin might have vanished by the time he began studying, or (4) most interesting of all, race might have played a part in the perceptions of others about the instrument he chose. This latter option really fascinates me. Do our expectations of Asian boys differ from our expectations of white boys? Can an Asian boy do something that would brand a white boy as a sissy, and get away with it because we attribute the choice to cultural differences rather than faggotry. I think the answer is `yes,' and, ironically, that answer suggests that while racism certainly exists in our culture against any but the dominant race, that there is a level of freedom that minorities enjoy just by virtue of not being understood, by virtue of being `foreign'.
Sadly, however, none of these possible answers is going to help Jason tonight. I am not honest and above board; I will not admit to my own baggage in this issue; and I plan to spank him very, very thoroughly to ensure that I hear violin music in the house from now on, violin music and piano music -- after I've gone out and found a good piano. And, as I think about how I'm going to find a good piano, I arrive at my next question.
"If I'd asked you to play Chopin's Nocturne Number 1 in b-flat minor, could you have done it."
Long pause. "Yes."
"What about Beethoven's Piano Sonata Number 5 in F-major?"
Pause. "Yes."
"What about Mozart's Piano Sonata in c-minor?"
He's tearing up, now. "Yes."
"Bach's Goldberg Variation Number 1?"
Sniffing back tears. "Yes."
"All from memory?"
Crying now. "Yes."
"What about the first violin part of Shubert's `Death and the Maiden'?"
Choking. "Yes."
I look askance at him, trying to keep my eyes on the road, while giving him the most toxic look I can muster. "Jason, my love, if you have any skin on your ass by the time I'm done with you this afternoon it will be a fucking miracle. Waste...what unconscionable waste. From what I heard less than an hour ago, you are really gifted, and squandering your talent. I know my music. I know talent when I hear it. Leave the violin in your room as soon as we get home, and meet me in the basement. We have some serious attitude adjustment to accomplish this afternoon. I am very, very angry."
And Jason is very, very frightened. "Focus," is what the boys call it, and I am now very focused. When we get home, I leave the car in the driveway, and we both enter the house. Kenny, Ian, and Alejandro are all sitting in the living room, chatting, and Jason begins to sprint to his room, his violin in tow. "Stop," I command, and he freezes. The other boys, surprised, stare at me. "Take out the violin, Jason. I think we should hear something. Do you know the violin part to Franck's Sonata for Violin and Piano in A?"
He hangs his head, tearing up again. "Yes."
"Play it for us."
He walks slowly to the dining room table, opens the case, and takes out the violin and bow. Pausing a beat or two to think, he begins to play, and I almost instantly tear up. It's such a languid, lyrical piece, and he doesn't rush it. His interpretation is lush and contemplative. It reminds me of David Oistakh's 1968 recording with Sviatoslav Richter on piano, so beautiful, so leisurely, unhurried. His eyes are closed, and you can tell that he's hearing the piano part in his head, even though we can't. It takes him nearly six minutes to complete the first movement, and then he stops, and opens his eyes. The boys are absolutely rapt, stunned, amazed, not necessarily because they understand or love the music, but because it was so impeccably played, so impeccably that even classical music neophytes, like these boys, can appreciate the purity of the performance. I'm in tears, and it takes me several seconds to get control of myself.
"Did any of you know he could do that?"
They all shake their head in absolute astonishment.
"Did any of you know he can do the same thing on the piano?" I look at Jason. "Could you have played the piano part instead of the violin part?"
He nods.
Looking back at the rest of the boys. "We need to have a talk later about skills that you either haven't acknowledged or are hiding, because when I find them, when I discover you've been squandering them, I'm going to do to you what I'm about to do to Jason, which is beat him nearly to death. Life is about maximizing and amplifying everything you've got, every talent, every skill, every interest. It's about learning to read and write in Chinese," I say, looking at Kenny, "or leaning a tonal language if you can," I say to Alejandro, whose Mandarin is improving. "Jason has been a laggard, ignoring an extraordinary gift. He's going to pay for that now. Pack up the violin, Jason, take it to your room, and meet me in the basement."
We spend a grand total of four hours in the basement, most of it, thankfully, talking -- well, and crying. I am very disappointed in Jason, and no amount of punishment is going to change that. I'm not really looking for retribution. I'm looking for an opportunity to express my disappointment. The fact that I refuse to spank him makes him utterly despondent. He likes to cry, but not like this. What spankings do is let you expiate your sins; they're a form of secular penance -- well, not always secular. But, penance without penitence is usually not productive, often gratifying to the inquisitor, but usually not psychologically useful to the miscreant. What I'm looking for today is penitence -- guilt. Why on earth would someone who plays the violin and the piano at concert level be wasting his time on computer games? That's the message I'm looking to instill, and getting that message across takes a lot of talking, a lot of questioning. I will give him the comfort of a spanking at the end of this ordeal, but not until he is penitent; not until his guilt has been absorbed, internalized. At the end of three-and-a-half hours of weeping, he's finally gotten it, and it's now time for the spanking. He lies on the punishment tables, but I don't attach the restraints, and I tell him that if he moves, that's his choice. No doubling of punishment today. "I want your buy-in, Jason. I want you to do what's right. I want you to follow your passion, which is clearly music. This spanking is for you, because I sense that you want it. If you don't want it, and move, that's fine. It's time to take some responsibility."
He is absolutely sobbing before I ever touch him with the razor strop. Sobbing, wailing, and apologizing -- to whom? Probably mostly to himself. And then I lay into him, but I want this to be light. These are sins I don't want to expiate. I give him six medium strokes, and then stop. "Please, Tim, please...go on." Three more and I hang up the strop. He's sobbing, but he's been sobbing for hours. I lift him off the table and take him to the leather chair in the corner, and hold him, hugging him. "I can deal with insubordination, Jason," I whisper in his ear. "If you misbehave, I can punish you. Or, if you really piss me off, I can punish you for the sheer gratification of seeing you suffer. But, I can't motivate you to follow your passions with punishment. I can't make you do what you love, what you're good at, what you know is right, by beating you. Only you can do that. I don't know what you were thinking, but if I had your talent, I wouldn't be wasting my time learning Java. Get on with what's important, which is making beauty rather than silly games." He's holding me so tightly I can barely breathe. "Tomorrow, we'll start looking for a baby grand, and you'll start researching violin teachers. There have to be plenty in this area. It's probably time to move from San Jose State to somewhere else -- Stanford, Julliard, somewhere. I don't know shit about music schools."
Suddenly, he clamps onto me like a vise. "I'm not going to Julliard. Julliard's in New York."
I'm confused. "Yeah, that's one of the reason that it's among the best music schools in the world."
"Fuck that." Profanity for little Jason is a major event, and causes me to giggle.
"Umm...yeah. You don't want to go to one of the best music schools in the world?"
And then, as he starts to cry, I get it. "Not without you," he chokes, locking me in a grip so firm, so final, that I realize this is not going to be a discussion item. I hug him back, and we stay locked together for another half hour.
He really and truly is adorable.
Published first at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nemo-stories/