The Reunion Show – part 16
Constructive criticisms are
welcome also at: mlogan6969@hotmail.com. If you would like
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at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/logans_lit/.
Who’s yo’ daddy!
* *
* * *
* * *
* * * *
We got onto the elevator,
again, alone, and the doors shut. Stepping back I grabbed his ass
and rubbed it a bit. “You got a great ass!”
“Yeah, but ease up, Captain Kirk,” he
smirked. I smiled back remembering my comment to him the first
night we were on the deck at the studio. “My galaxy is still a
bit sore.”
I grinned as the elevator dropped
down to the lobby.
* *
* * *
* * *
* *
I looked over to the east and my
breath was taken away. All of my life I had wanted to do this;
had dreamed of it. Never would I have thought it could be this
beautiful. The air was cool and crisp as it whipped past
us. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, enjoying the
feelings that were going through me at that very moment. No
matter how many times I experienced it, those feelings would never
change, would never go away. I closed my eyes and lay my head on
my arms which were folded across the railing. The rhythm was slow
and sensuous, almost maddening. I felt the soft vibrations in the
railing and opened my eyes to see the snow capped mountains slowly
gliding by as we slid through the Gulf of Alaska. I looked down
and the water looked so cold as it frothed and foamed along the sides
of the Dawn Princess, just one of the beautiful ships in the Princess
fleet.
I felt two hands reach beneath my
chest and suddenly I was standing again, this time being pushed a
little closer to the railing. My nipples were poking through my
shirt, not because of the chilly October air in the Gulf, but because
Scott had such a rhythm going in my ass and he kept washing his hands
under my shirt and over my chest, taking a moment or two to slowly jack
me in time to the great fuck he was hittin’ me with. We were both
standing, me with a raging hardon poking through the railing of the
ship, Scott with his thick eight sliding in and out of my ass. I
tilted my head a little to give him access to my neck,
which he always loved chewing on.
We’d been going at it for only
fifteen minutes or so when I felt that familiar tingling at the back of
my thighs, signaling that my orgasm was near. “I’m about to cum,”
I said to him. He said nothing, just held me closer to him and
kept the same slow rhythm. In…..out……in…..out….
”Fuckkkk,” I groaned as my cum
started to shoot from my swollen dick, coating his ever- pistoning
hands. His fist coated my dick with my own milky sauce as he
slowly jabbed at my prostate with his dick helmet. God, this is
what men were made for! I thought.
After I finished blowing my load all
over his hand and the railing, and had a second to calm down a bit, I
pulled myself off of Scott, turned around and kissed him. I
pushed him back into one of the chairs on our private deck, knelt down
beside him, and took his cock all the way into my mouth and down my
throat. I held it in for a bit once my lips were pressed against
his balls. “God, Logan, how do you do that…” I hummed
around it as best as I could and pulled back off. Then I started
licking and sucking the head and top of his shaft. After a minute
or two of this teasing, with his hands
pushing on my head I swooped down and deep throated him again.
“Fuck! I’m not gonna last!” I kept the rhythm up; bob, bob,
bob…swoop, over and over until he held the back of my head and neck and
thrust up into my hungry mouth.
Three years of doing this and I never
lost my appetite for the taste and feel of my man Scott. By now I
was an old pro at handling his thick, hard girth. I pulled my
head back one last time and rubbed his balls as they started churning
their batter into my mouth. I swallowed every last drop.
Then I tightened my lips around his head
and pistonned my head really fast on it. This drove him
completely insane. “God. Shit. Fuck. Stop. Please,
Logan…” Then I dove back down on him one last time and milked the
last bit out of him.
Sitting up I asked him, “How’s your
sea sickness now?”
Scott lasted an exhausted laugh and
said, “What sea sickness!”
I smiled and said, “See! I
think you fucked it right out of yourself.”
“God, I love you so much,” he said
rubbing my back, smiling.
“I love you, too. Hang
on. Be right back,” I said and pulled my pants back up, then went
inside our suite to grab a blanket. I came back out onto our deck
and wrapped it around us. Perfect fuckin’ afterglow, I
thought. Our suite was on the starboard side of the ship and we
were heading north. The sun was setting on the port side of the
ship and was casting an orange glow on the mountains in western
Canada. I wrapped my arms around Scott, lay my head on his
shoulder and watched the coast gliding by in the distance.
Closing my eyes I thought about everything that had brought Scott and I
to this point….
* *
* *
When we got back to the studio from
the Plaza we were inundated with questions from Deanna. Where
we’d been, what we’d done. I don’t think she wanted details, like
serious details, but
nonetheless we divulged nothing. Frankly it
was none of her business. Since it was the day that was
originally supposed to be the end of the show we all sat around just
hanging out, waiting to hear word from the producers what the big
“twist” was supposed to be. It turned out that they wanted to
shuffle some of us out of the studio and replace us with four other
people. It seems as though they wanted to see how the people
who’d bonded in the first five weeks would get together with other
classmates in the last three weeks.
We all thought it sounded kinda
dopey, but, okay. We had to draw from a hat the names of the
people who’d leave the apartment and go home. None of us wanted
to do that. We’d all spent the last 840 hours of our lives around
each other and hated to part. Even worse, half of us would be
staying. But what could we do? We didn’t really have any
say in the matter, except for playing Lady Luck.
Part of me hoped that Scott and I
could stay there in la-la land. Let’s face it, reality shows
aren’t real. People are put into places and positions that they’d
never be in in the first place, only with dozens of video cameras
recording every move and utterance. They should change the name
to “reaction shows,” because basically all that’s being recorded are
the reactions to people who are placed within certain guidelines for
whatever number of weeks. Take Fear Factor. On what planet
would I ever eat cow brains and a pig uterus? None that I know
of. That’s not reality, that’s gross-out television.
The other part of me wanted us to
stay inside the studio was because I was a bit concerned about what our
lives would be like once reality hit. I lived in Marietta; he
lived in eastern Atlanta in Inman Park. Not exactly a close
proximity to each other. I was a teacher in a small private
school. He was a builder. No big shit, there. Maybe I
was trying to invent things to keep us on an uneven level once our Love
Boat episode was over, if indeed it was over. I guess I needed to
quit thinking so fuckin’ much, since 27 years of thinking had gotten me
bobkes.
Okay, shut up Logan. Tell ‘em
what happened…
A box was passed around and the first
four names pulled were the four people who were going home.
Shit. Deanna pulled the first name. It was her own.
Her face fell and you could see that she was really disappointed.
Next came Charlie. He pulled my name out of the box.
Fuck! I walked over and put my arm around Deanna’s
shoulders. She laid her head on my shoulder and kept sniffing as
the tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. Next up, Jessica.
She reached in and I started getting nervous. Only two more
names. If one of them was Scott’s…hell, I don’t know what I’d
do. If neither was Scott’s, I still didn’t know what I was going
to do. Agan, I was backsliding into my old habit of keeping
people out
and away from me.
Jessica pulled out Freddie’s
name. He looked sort of sad too. “Well, Vidalia here I
come.” I saw him purse his lips and thought I saw his eyes
moisten a little bit. He really was a sweet, good guy.
Scott came over and stood next to me, putting his arm across my
shoulders and holding me close to his body. Oh God, once again I
felt safe and all of my backsliding went out the window. Maybe
this would work out after all. I sensed that my breathing was
quickening along with my heart beat. Samantha took the box and
Scott squeezed me to him a little bit. I looked up at him.
He looked back and I saw concern in his eyes.
She pulled her hand out. With a
bit of relieved smile she looked up at me. She turned the piece
of paper toward us. “Scott Dell,” she said. I put my face
in my hands for a second. God is good, is all I thought.
Scott put his hands on my shoulders and started playfully shaking me
back and forth.
“Yes!” he said. “Ha-HAAA!
We’re both going home!” I couldn’t help it; I just started
laughing.
“Oh shit!” I said.
He wrapped his arms around me and
pulled my back into his chest, hugging me tight. “Is that good
‘shit’ or bad ‘shit.’?”
“What do you think, ramrod,” I
snickered at him.
“Ramrod!” Deanna said. “So
y’all…” she pointed between the two of us.
“Shut up ho’. I’m tellin’
ya. You’re gonna get that nasty women’s disease if you keep
thinking like that.” I smiled and reached out to hug her.
“I’m gonna miss you, broad.”
“Miss me! Hell, it’s not like
we’re a thousand miles away!” she said.
It became a hug-fest. We were
all farklempt but at the same time happy. Those of us going home
were happy to get back to normalcy, while those who were staying were
glad to have more time to spend together, and get new roommates.
“Well, I’d better start packing,”
Deanna said.
I took a deep breath. “Me too.”
All the gals headed into their room
and the guys into ours. Charlie lay on his bed tossing his pillow
back and forth between his hands. “Shit, guys,” he said, “this is
worse than having sex with your biology teacher.”
The three of us turned to look at
him. “No fucking way!” Scott said. I just started laughing
and Freddie made an Ellen Degeneres face.
“Way.”
“Ewwwww!” I said, faking a case of
the shivers. Freddie just laughed.
“Crazy damn thing.” He looked
down and away. We were standing next to each other between our
beds, filling our suitcases.
“You okay, hoss?” I asked. His
mouth twitched a bit and he rocked his head back and forth as if to say
‘so-so’. “Alright baby! C’mere!” I opened my arms to
him. “Give daddy some sugar!” I grabbed him up in a bear
hug and started twisting back and forth with him in my arms, just being
goofy. I lost my footing and fell forward, pushing him backwards
onto the bed. I landed on him but braced my hands on his
chest. “Damn son.”
“What?” he asked, laughing.
I playfully squeezed his chest and
said, “You’ve got those farmer’s muscles goin’ for ya.
Hmmm” Charlie busted out laughing as I felt two arms slide around
my chest and arms.
“Don’t even think about it,” Scott
said playfully, pulling me away from Freddie, who was now laughing.
“But I love a corn-fed boy!” I
hollered.
Charlie kept laughing. “Oh
man. What am I gonna do without you guys around?”
“Switch hands,” I told him.
Laughing out loud Freddie said,
“Ladies and gentlemen, Mike’s back!”
“Come on guys,” Scott said. “We
don’t have to lose touch with each other again. High school’s
different. We’re grown ups now. Right?”
“Supposedly,” I said smiling.
“Alright y’all, here,” Scott said
passing out papers and pens. “Everyone write down their contact
information. Personally, I want to keep up with y’all. This
has been a great time and…” he looked up at the ceiling for a
second. Clearing his voice he continued, “I hate to see it end
like this. I’m here in Atlanta and I’d love to see y’all again.”
“Uhm. Vidalia’s quite a ways
away from Atlanta, Scott,” Freddie said.
Scott walked up to him and gave him a
big hug. “It’s not that far, pal.”
I turned and smacked Scott on his
ass. “No farm boy for you, either!”
“Hey,” Scott said, “sore back porch,
dude.”
“Aww fuck! I didn’t hear
that! La la la la…” from Charlie, putting his pillow over his
head. Freddie just shook his head laughing.
We all exchanged addresses but when
Scott came up to me I just shook my head. He looked confused and
I smiled really big at him. “What?” he asked.
“I’ll give it to ya downstairs,” I
said.
“You already gave it to him, Logan,”
Charlie said.
I busted out laughing at him, then
ran and jumped onto him on the bed. “No, no, no!” he laughed,
turning away.
“Your ass is next, stud!” I
shouted.
“Scott! Get him offa me!” he
laughed as I grabbed his shoulders and started dry humping him.
We were just goofing off and Scott knew it.
“Actually, I’m enjoying the show,”
Scott stood back. I died laughing at that.
I turned to him and smiled, “Fuck
you, Scotty.”
He smiled back. “You already
did, Logan.”
“Oh shit, oh no, stop it!!”
Freddie and Charlie said. I turned to face Charlie, grabbed his
head and kissed him loud and sloppy on the cheek.
“You know you want it,” I told
him. He playfully pushed me off of him and got up to head to the
bathroom.
“Yeah, that’s him walking off to take
a cold shower,” Freddie laughed.
“More like a jitter piss,” Charlie
retorted.
Scott and I changed out of our
tuxedos and we all goofed off a little bit more before the three of us
guys
grabbed our bags to head out. I was doing alright until I saw
Deanna in the kitchen. She was crying and telling the other girls
goodbye. They all had tears in their eyes and were hugging each
other. I felt the lump in my throat and the tears pooling up in
my own eyes. Deanna looked up and saw me, then walked over and
gave me a big hug.
“Hey there gal, it’s gonna be okay,”
I said quietly. “We’ll all keep in touch.”
“Yeah,” she sniffed, “just like after
graduation.”
“Hey, we’re all older now. I
actually think it’ll be easier to keep caught up.”
She stood back and wiped her
eyes. “You take care, Mike Logan.”
“I will, baby. I’m gonna miss
bein’ around you everyday.”
“Actually I was talking about you
taking care of Scotty,” she winked, her eyes still puffy from crying.
“Oh,” Scott said, “he’s already taken
care of me—“
“Enough! Enough!” I said,
holding my hand up to stop him talking. “You’re worse than a
goddamned yente” I laughed.
Everyone hugged and said goodbye,
then the four of us headed out to the elevators. Deanna got on
first, then Freddie, then myself. Scott stood by with is arm on
the elevator door as I passed him. He had a smoldering look on
his face.
“What?” I asked. He just shook
his head a bit. I was puzzled a little bit.
We exited the building and looked
around. There were only two camera guys that had tagged along
with us. It was an absolutely beautiful early August day.
The humidity was down so the heat was tolerable.
“Well guys, this is it,” Freddie said
turning to us. He looked so damned forlorn.
Putting his bags down Scott gave
Freddie a big hug. He started mimicking “Someday we’ll be
together” from the Supremes. That got a laugh out of Freddie.
“Hey man,” I said, “you’ve got
everyone’s number and address. We’re all just a phone call away.”
“I know. I’m just really gonna
miss all of this…all y’all.” Taking a deep breath he continued,
“But it was a great experience and I won’t forget any of you.”
“We won’t let you, man,” Scott
said. What a fuckin’ sweetheart. He really was
concerned. Uggg! I was a lucky man. Freddie hugged the rest
of us and we walked him over to his truck. He got in, started it
up and drove off towards Ponce, where he stopped and then headed west
towards the Connector which would ultimately take him down into south
Georgia.
“C’mere guys!” Deanna said, hugging
us both at the same time. “You bastards better keep in touch.”
I laughed. “We will, gal!”
“Don’t worry about that,” Scott said.
“So what about you two. What’s
gonna happen with y’all?”
I looked at Scott and said, “Well, we
got a few things to talk about but,” turning back to Deanna, “we’ll be
cool.”
She gave us both really big final
hugs and then got into her Beemer. I was really going to miss
her. Not a lot of people have the personality to give as much
shit as I like to give, and she was certainly one who could.
Tough as nails—on the inside she was as soft as a marshmallow.
Scott and I watched her pull out of
the parking lot. When she was gone he turned and looked at
me. Without a facial expression he said, “So we got lots to talk
about?”
“No. Just a few things.”
“You didn’t give me your address and
number.”
“That’s ‘cause I can’t decide if I
wanna head east or if I want you to head west.” He looked
somewhat puzzled. “Inman park is east of here, Marietta is
northwest,” I reminded him.
“Ohhhh,” he said, finally getting it.
“You see, Scotty, if you give me a
tour of your old house then I won’t need you to write down your
address, right?”
He smiled real big, grabbed the front
of my shirt and leaned over to give me a big kiss on the cheek.
“Yes!” he said. We walked over and loaded up our luggage into our
trucks which were parked next to each other. We looked at each
other and he smiled and shook his head a bit. “Here we go!” he
said. “Euclid Avenue here we come!”
“Yassuh!” I replied with a
laugh. We pulled out of the parking lot, Scott ahead of me,
leaving The Reunion Show behind. Some of our new friends were
still in the building and a couple were on their way back home.
No more cameramen, no more mikes, no more cameras. From now on
we’d be going back to our own private lives. I could sense that a
major change would soon be taking place in my life. And I always
looked forward to change.
* *
* *
Fifteen minutes later we were pulled
into Inman Park on Edgewood Ave. Then we zigzagged and were on
Euclid. I recognized the street, or at least the houses on the
street. The house that I really liked was on the left.
Scott parked his truck on the right side, across from it, and I pulled
in behind him and turned off the Jimmy.
As we were getting out of our trucks
I said, “That’s the house I was telling you about.”
“I was pretty sure that was the one
you meant.”
It was a gem that needed
polishing. The paint was flaking off on all of the siding and
there was scaffolding up on one side. On that side of the upper
floor you could tell that all of the loose paint had been scraped
off. The first floor of the house was red brick and the siding
above was a mix of horizontal boards and patterned shingles. It
was a lady waiting to be painted. At one corner of the house was
a round tower with the bell-shaped roof above terminating into a
decorative finial.
Scott started crossing the street
towards it. “Where ya goin’?” I asked.
He flashed one of his gorgeous smiles
and said, “I know the owner.”
“Cool! You think he’ll mind?”
“Oh, something tells me it’ll be ok.”
We climbed the steps to the front
porch and crossed over to the doors. Scott still had his keys in
his hand and was flipping through them. “What are you doing?” I
asked.
“I have the key.”
“Ahh. So you’re the g.c. on
this house then?”
“You could say that,” he grinned,
putting the key into the lock. He opened the door and we stepped
in. Wow! It wasn’t often I got to see the inside of one of
these Victorians. This one was still in rough shape but you could
see that when it was finished it’d be a real beauty. We
stepped into a large foyer, or more accurately a reception hall.
The stairs were on the left and went up to a landing where a huge
stained glass window was covered on the outside to protect it from the
work going on with the paint scraping, then they switched back to
continue upstairs. The railing was incredible but had been
painted who-knows how many times. There was actually a fireplace
to the left of the stairs on the side wall of the house. To the
front of the fireplace was a rounded area that was the base of the
tower. To the right of
the reception hall
was a really large living room or parlor with a bay window on the front
and another fireplace on the outside side wall. There were two
oval-shaped windows, one on each side of the fireplace.
“Check this out,” Scott said as he
went over and opened one of the front bay windows. “It’s a triple
hung
window. All of the sashes slide up and into the cavity above, and
it’s a full opening that you can step out onto the porch.” He
showed me how it worked.
“That is just way too cool.”
I turned
around and slowly scanned the woodwork throughout the room. The
baseboards and casings had also all been painted and looked worn and
scuffed. “You got your work cut out for you, hoss.”
“And then back here’s the dining
room,” he said crossing through the living room and through a wide
cased opening into the dining room. It’s walls had wainscoting up
about eight feet tall or so. This room also had a fireplace which
was on the rear wall. Here in the dining room the outside window
bowed out into a gentle curve and had a stained glass transom window in
the center which was flanked by two regular sized windows. These
were just double hung, as were all windows in houses of this
era. The mantelpiece was different from the ones in the living
room and reception hall. Actually, they were all different.
I looked up and around the
room. “How tall are the ceilings down here?”
“Twelve feet.”
“Wow. This is really
awesome.” Scott just stood there beaming. I chuckled a bit,
“You nut, show me the rest of the house.
He took me through another cased
opening that took us back to the staircase which was at the rear of the
reception hall. There was a pair of double pocket doors that slid
back to reveal a study or library behind the stairs. Above the
doors was a double transom window. I’d noticed that all of the
openings were across from each other and in line with the house’s
windows. Obviously the Victorians didn’t have air conditioning
and had to vent their houses any way that they could. On the
front wall of the room, which backed up to the stairs, were floor to
ceiling bookshelves. The outside wall was also a bay window and
the rear wall had it’s own fireplace.
“Plenty of fireplaces,” I said.
“Yep. Some of them needed
repair, but most had been maintained, luckily.”
“How many total?”
“Eight.”
“Well hellfire!”
He laughed, “No kidding.” We
continued down the hall towards the rear of the house, through another
doorway into a room that looked like it had been used in later years as
a den. There was a door on the right that opened into the
kitchen. All of the cabinetry was late 40’s style and needed to
go.
“Is this metal?” I asked, touching
one of the doors.
“Yep. This is all headed to the
trash bin.”
I stood and looked around the
kitchen. On the side wall were two large windows with cabinets
between them, and the rear wall had the back door and another window
which overlooked the house’s rear porch. I started studying the
room, thinking.
“What?” Scott asked.
“That’s the back of the dining room
fireplace, right?” I asked, pointing to a section of the wall that was
exposed brick from the floor to the ceiling.
“Uh-huh.”
“If I owned this house I’d get one of
those old-fashioned looking, gas stoves and hook up the vent pipe to
the flue. Then I’d take down this wall,” pointing to the wall
between the kitchen and the den, “and case the opening to match the
other openings in the front rooms. That way the kitchen and den
would be open and inviting, since those are the two rooms where people
and their company live anyway. I’d probably put some vintage
looking cabinets in here with granite countertops or something.
Anyway, champagne taste,” I said.
He just stood there nodding with a
big smile on his face.
“What are you smiling at?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Ya kook!”
“Wanna see upstairs?”
“Yeah! Let’s check it out.”
We walked back to the front of the
house and then up the stairs. The room over the stairs was
surprisingly an open space that had a doorway to the second floor porch
and also a rounded area inside the tower. I say ‘surprisingly’
because I didn’t realize that there’d be such a large open area on the
second floor like you’d typically find on the first.
“Dude, this is totally frickin’
awesome.”
“Idn’t it.”
The bedroom at the front of the
house, over the living room, also had a fireplace which lined up with
the one below. The size of the room matched the living
room. Two huge trees in the front yard shaded this side of the
house, which faced south. I opened the door and stepped out onto
the upper porch. “Dang, it feels like I’m in a tree house.”
“I know.”
“Dude, what the hell are you smiling
at.”
“Nothing, nothing.” He walked
up to me and kissed me. “I’m just glad that you’re here and not
still on your way to Marietta.”
I smiled. “Me too.”
He showed me two more bedrooms as
well as another one that had been diced up into two bathrooms.
Each bedroom had it’s own fireplace.
“Hmm. This could be
interesting,” I said.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
I thought about it for a
minute. “I’ll have to think about it some more,” I told him.
We walked up to the last door.
“Here are his master’s quarters.”
“Oh brother,” I rolled my eyes.
We went into the room where there was a king-sized bed, a dresser and a
couple of chairs. This room had a few pictures around whereas the
rest of the house did not. “I assumed that the owner would be
gone during the renovation.”
“Nope,” was all he said.
Suddenly he turned and pushed me onto the bed and started kissing me
and chewing on my neck.
“Dude! What the fuck you doin’!”
“I’m a little hungry,” he mumbled
into my neck.
I tried sitting up but he just pushed
me down. “Scott! We can’t do this here. This is
someone’s house! Someone’s bed!”
He stopped kissing me, leaned up to
look at me and sighed. Then he rolled off.
“Well don’t get all pissed,” I said
as he reached for one of the pictures. He handed it to me.
It took me a second but the guy in it with the two older people looked
like a younger version of Scott. “Hey,” I laughed “this dude
looks like you.” Scott’s mouth dropped open a bit. He
rolled his eyes and shook his head, reaching for another picture.
This one was a more recent picture. “Dude, is this you?” I
squinted. “It sure looks like you.” I looked over and Scott
put his face in his hands and shook his head.
He snorted and said, “Logan, do you
remember the cd’s I made for you?”
“Oh, hell yeah.”
“Do you remember that at first you
thought that Freddie had made the first one.”
I laughed. “Yeah. What a
dope I was. But why does this dude have pictures…” Suddenly
it all clicked! “Wait a fuckin’ minute! These are your
grandparents!”
He laughed again and shook his
head. “Logan, these pictures were taken in this house. My
grandparents’ house. My
house.”
“Get OUT!” and I shoved him back,
again like Elaine on Seinfeld. Only he rolled backwards and off
of the bed. “Oh shit, are you okay.”
He stood up laughing
hysterically. “I love you man, but sometimes you’re such a
maroon!”
I couldn’t believe it. I was
completely surprised! “You mean to tell me that all these weeks
you knew what house I was talking about and you didn’t tell me that you
owned it! You are such a shit!” I said good-naturedly, grabbing
his head and giving him noogies.
“Stop! Stop!” he laughed.
“I didn’t know for sure that this was the one you were talking about
until we pulled up.”
“Oh man, you are so damned lucky!”
“It’s a great house, isn’t it.”
You could tell how proud he was. “It’s gonna be great when it’s
finished.”
“Oh, I’ll bet.”
He sat back down on the bed.
“You wanna help me out?”
I smiled really big and sat down next
to him. Then I reached over and started rubbing his package in
his shorts. “Okay,” I said.
He laughed. “No, I mean on the
house. Wanna help me fix it up?” I took my hand off of him
but he grabbed it and put it back. “No, no, that too.”
I smiled as I felt his bulge growing
in my hand. “Scotty, I’ll help you with anything.”
“Yes!” he said.
I pushed him back on the bed and
said, “But right now you gotta help me out.”
“How’s that?” he said in a real sexy
voice.
“I’m feeling a bit…empty right now,”
I said with a smile.
He grinned back and rubbed my
back. “Ride a cowboy, save a horse.” I leaned in to kiss
him….
* *
* *
The weeks went by and I barely spent
any time at my apartment. Surprise! Neither of us wanted me
to go back there. What was the point? Scott and I were
always together and I was spending a lot of time helping him work on
his house. Like I’ve said before I’d always wanted to renovate a
Victorian and I was lucky enough to be working on the one house that I
saw absolute potential in. And not to sell it. Hell, I
don’t think that Scott would have ever done that, and it never entered
my mind to ask him to.
I gained a ton of experience working
on the cosmetics of the house. There was a lot that I didn’t know
and Scott was right there with me…well, most of the time. He
still had to make money with his own company so there were times I’d be
working on the house by myself. My first major project was to
begin stripping all of the old paint from the stair railing.
Christ! what a job that was. I could’ve been environmentally
friendly and sanded and scraped it but there was probably eighty years
of paint on those spindles, so I used lots of chemicals instead.
And besides, I’m not a green freak. I wanted to get that shit
done, and fast!
Then the time came for me to start
back at school. For the first time I had no interest in going
back. Don’t get me wrong I loved teaching, I loved American
History, politics and social studies, but I really wasn’t interested in
spending that much time away from Scott—plain and simple. But
then I couldn’t just quit working, either. Scott appreciated my
dilemma and asked me if I wanted to work with him and help him grow his
company. That was fine with me but stripping the paint off of a
railing was a helluva lot different from growing a company. We
finally figured out a plan that I’d work side by side with him, almost
like an intern, so I could pick up as much knowledge as possible.
I made the move and quit my job at
the school. I think five minutes after that I turned in my notice
to end the lease at my apartment. I didn’t have tons of stuff but
Scott and I hired a few of his subs to move my things to the his
house. By now we had known each other for three months and on one
hand I was concerned that we were rushing things. On the other
hand, we didn’t want to lose
any precious time with me being gone!
During the week we’d work on various
construction jobs that he’d gotten and on the weekend we’d work on his
house. I say ‘his’ because technically it was, and we were still
in our own honeymoon stage of our relationship. Finally the day
came where we had the exterior of the house caulked and primed and
ready to be painted. The previous year he’d had the house
leveled, so structurally it was ok. When he inspected the roof,
again before I was in the picture, he discovered that there were two
layers of roofing material on the house. He stripped all of that
off and completely re-shingled the house with the exception of the bell
roof, which he hired his subs to do. The shingles were new but
laid in a really cool horizontal and diamond pattern. Apparently
Scott had located a picture of Euclid Avenue in the 1890’s that showed
his house, so any details that may have been missing he was able to at
least investigate and try to restore.
When it came to choosing the actual
paint, well, that wasn’t exactly easy. We had purchased around
fifteen quarts of various colors to see how they’d look on the
house. The first floor was brick so we climbed onto the
scaffolding to paint swatches using different blends of colors across
the side of the house in strips. If you’ve ever renovated and
painted an older house you know what I’m talking about. There was
siding, window trim, decorative trim, you name it! We wanted a
really cool painted lady and had chosen colors from a Victorian home
paint book. After we decided on one paint combination we began
the task of painting! Working only on the weekends was hard but
by Thanksgiving the exterior was complete. We finally had our
“Painted Lady.” There were so many neighbors who had offered us
support and compliments. Many of these people had renovated,
restored or were in the process renovating their own homes.
That Thanksgiving we invited Scott’s
sister, Jackie, and her family over to the house for dinner, along with
my parents and grandmother. Scott and his sister mainly kept in
touch on the telephone but were still somewhat close, regardless of the
age difference. Jackie and John, her husband, loved the progress
that was being made on the house. She remembered times there
growing up before their parents split up and hadn’t been back to see it
in several years. Since I’m such a retard when it comes to sports
I hung out with her in the kitchen and we both worked on making dinner
with my mother. While the inside of the house was clean it still
needed some major updating. The only thing inside that was really
complete was the staircase, thanks to me. I couldn’t wait until
the day we could really start tackling the rooms but we had decided to
wait until after Christmas and take a break from it for a while.
During dinner Scott and I made a
major announcement. I was pregnant! Just kidding. We
told everybody of our plans to combine our efforts officially and start
a company together called The Renovators. Our main intent was to
purchase houses that were rundown or somewhat dilapidated, fix them up
and then try to sell them for a profit. Everyone congratulated us
and we all ate and drank merrily. Especially Grandma. She’s
such a hoot!
After our Thanksgiving meal I
transferred a tradition from my parents’ house to ours (Scott’s and
now mine) where we opened up the Christmas Season by playing Christmas
music for the first time. Obviously you could go into any
shopping mall as early as Labor Day practically, and see the Christmas
decorations. But dammit! Let Thanksgiving have it’s
day! I had a
shitload of Christmas cd’s and put them into the player. Most of
us helped clean up the dishes and Scott asked if I minded offering our
house to the families every year for Thanksgiving. I reminded him
that it was his house. He shook his head and said with all the
hard physical work I’d been putting into it, now that I was living
there too, I needed to consider it our home. Talk about! I
was grinning from ear to ear!
“Sounds like a proposal,” I said.
He thought about that for a second
and laughed. “Well, we can’t get married, but you can have my
house!” Sounded like he’d had a bit too much wine.
“I accept,” I said, then I kissed him
on the cheek.
Just before Christmas we closed on
the loan for our first house purchase together. It was a small
bungalow north of us, but still in Inman Park. Mostly what needed
to be done was cosmetic, with the exception of replacing the bathroom
fixtures in the two bathrooms. We finished it in about four
weeks, just after the New Year. At the same time we had our
other, or Scott’s other, g.c. business going. Brother, were we
busier than one-armed paper hangers!
Our sex life continued to be
phenomenal. So many times that horny bastard would walk by and
rub my ass if he thought nobody was looking, or he’d grind his package
into my ass as I’d bend over for something and say “Oops! Fell
down!”, then he’d walk off. There’s no telling how many mornings
I’d wake up with his mouth exploring my body. I think that we
christened every room in our house. We absolutely
couldn’t get enough of each other. I think we would’ve crawled
into each others’ skin if we could.
We sold our first house and made
around twenty-five grand in profit, which we sunk into the next
house. All the while we were fixing up our home one room at a
time. We ended up opening the kitchen up to the den like I had
suggested the previous summer and actually added a bay window on the
back of the house in the den. The kitchen took a while longer,
and more money, to renovate. We gutted it and replaced all of the
cabinets and appliances.
Several months had gone by and it was
time for the annual Inman Park Tour of Homes. Every year anywhere
from twelve to twenty homeowners open their homes for people to check
out during the walking tour. Over near Springvale Park there’s a
great big tent with tables, food, etc. There are different food
booths and the whole place takes on the look of a carnival for the
weekend. Usually different homes are opened each year and you can
see restored or renovated houses in various stages of completion.
It’s great because people can get ideas from other homeowners for their
own projects. Scott and I opened our house. We got lots of
compliments on the outside paint selections as well as the den and
kitchen renovation. The rest of the house was still not finished
but that’s not unheard of. The bungalow that we’d renovated and
sold was also on the tour and we actually gained some business from
that referral.
I really must say that life was going
fantastic for Scott and I. Sure we’d have some squabbles or
disagreements here and there, but we always made it a point never to go
to bed without solving an argument.
We bought another house and flipped
it. This went on for a couple of years, then we bought two
houses. That was interesting. Trying to fix up two houses
at once. It’s different when you hold the note on the house as
opposed to someone hiring you to fix up their house. After we
sold those two houses we pooled all of our savings together, along with
the profits from the house sales, and bought a fairly big house in
Druid Hills.
If you’ve ever seen the movie
“Driving Miss Daisy,” it was filmed in Druid Hills, which is and area
on Ponce De Leon east of where The Reunion Show was taped. Druid
Hills was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the man who, along with
Calvert Vaux, designed Central Park in New York City. Ponce de
Leon gently winds through Druid Hills and there is a beautiful median
park lined with huge trees. In the early part of the 20th century
lots of upper middle class families built their homes there, setting
back on large lots. Our house wasn’t on Ponce itself, but around
the corner. This one
had to have major work done on it which took around eight months to
renovate. When we sold it we'd made a little over one hundred
grand in profit.
We took that money and just kept
rolling it into houses and in time we had made a lot of money, and had
put a lot of money in the bank. It was time to take a vacation...
* *
* *
And that’s how we wound up snuggling
on our own private deck on the ship.
Everything was really going
well. After our cruise we decided to travel around the country a
bit and see some sights. Some places we flew, some places we
actually took Amtrak. I’d always loved the idea of train
travel. We got to see Mount Rushmore, the Adirondacks, we hiked
the Appalachians (or at least a couple of mountains), we saw the desert
and I got to take Scott to the Grand Canyon. I hadn’t seen it
since I was ten and he’d never
seen it. We stayed at an
incredible ranch in West Texas and took a paddle boat ride up the
Mississippi. We had sex like two horny college guys. His
appetite was never ending and mine was just about the same.
But then we got bored with
traveling. We got
tired of not being home, in our house. We didn’t go from one
place to another. Sometimes we’d see one or two things, go home,
then head out a month later. We were both ready to be home for
good though, so after the paddle boat trip we flew back to Atlanta and
decided to keep doing what we did best. We got the ‘new money
syndrome’ out of our system
and headed back to work, buying houses and fixing them. Together.
Since we had met in 1997 we had done
everything together. When Freddie called us to be in his wedding,
we did it
together. Same thing with Charlie a few months after that.
Together. Everything was done together. That is until
2001. We didn’t know it but that would turn out to be a nightmare
year. For the both of us.
* *
* * *
* * *
* *
Mark
mlogan6969@hotmail.com