Author’s Note: Nathan has funny trap story too. Adrian continues to assert his subtle, but effective magic. Is he weaving a spell?

A Bigger Box than Gay

They were silent then, lost in their internal musings. At the same time, the traffic became even more congested than it had been before. Nathan had a lot of places he wanted to show Adrian, but in order to do that, they would add hours to the trip. So he asked Adrian, “I was thinking of getting a hotel, Adrian, and driving the rest of the way in the morning.”

Adrian shrugged. “I was looking forward to sleeping in the woods tonight, Nathan.”

Nathan took his shrug to mean he did not like the idea at all, but he did not wish to appear disagreeable.

So Nathan told him, “Well, the problem with our timing is that we will be passing through the most beautiful part of the drive, but to make to camp before dark, we won’t be able to stop anywhere at all, and there are a lot of nice places to stop along the way, and I won’t be able to show you. Further, it’s never really fun to set up camp in the dark. I will be tired and really wanting a shower, and this place we are going has no bathroom. You have to dig a hole to crap.”

Adrian nodded, “Well, speaking of ‘timing,’ I synched your watch to to the World Clock. It’s to the exact second!”

Nathan had seen Adrian doing that, checking with some standard clock on his phone, and pressing the winder of his watch at the exact instant. Quietly, Adrian asked him. “Will you wear it?”

“Sure.” Nathan reached over with his left arm and let Adrian slip it over his semi-mangled hand and onto his wrist. There was something touching in this gesture. It was subtle. Nathan liked the feeling. However, he continued with his previous thought, “So about a hotel?”

“I was also really looking forward to our first time being outside, Nathan.”

“Me too! But if we decide to get a motel then I could slow down and show you stuff; for example, there’s a place in the river park I wanted to show you. We could do that, have a nice dinner, and then get a motel. We don’t have to fool around.”

Adrian made him laugh when he said, “I just don’t see us together in a private place with a bath and nothing happening, do you?”

“No. I don’t see that either.”

Adrian smiled. He said, “My gut says we should just keep going, Nathan. Even if it’s dark when we camp, well, we could just throw down our ground-cloths and sleeping bags and let the stars be our tent. I’m fine with that. We could take our time and set up a nice camp in the morning. Let’s stay outside. I’m an outside kinda guy. OK?”

Nathan nodded. He was forming the opinion that Adrian had a certain magic to him. He would follow that trail. He liked the way Adrian used his charm, willingness to cooperate, and reason to persuade. He smiled and said, “OK Adrian. We’ll go with your gut.”

Adrian then looked really sweet. He tipped back his head and leaned it on the head rest, staring at Nathan.

As they passed through Sacramento, the freeway followed the river for many miles. The river was quite wide through the city, and along either side there was a long, narrow park. It was one of the nicer features of Sacramento, and the river park was where Nathan and his friends had spent much time. He told Adrian, “You see that park?”

“Yeah. It’s nice.”

“Yes! Well, you were talking about dressing in drag with your girlfriend?”

“Yeah. Let me guess! You did something like that?”

“Indeed. I was thirteen. It was Halloween. I wanted to dress as a girl. It was probably the last year I could pull it off because my voice was still high and my hair then, almost as blond as yours is now, was long. My mom actually helped!”

“You’re kidding!”

“No. Even my dad thought it was funny. She put makeup on me. I wore a bra stuffed with a couple pairs of underwear, a pretty white and yellow dress with a sweater and stockings. I wore my Converse basketball shoes, and I went ‘trick-or-treating’ with my little sisters! It was kind of a ‘nice girl, Happy Days’ look. Really retro. No one was the wiser! But i did have a chiffon colored girly mask that covered my eyes. There were even some friends from the junior high school who saw me and didn’t recognize me, and that gave me some ideas!”

“Ha. This is funny.”

“Well, I had a boyfriend. That was Coco. His name was Cordero, but everyone called him that because his dad had the same name. He was a Latino. Very beautiful and slender, and, like me, gay as fuck. He went to a different school then because my family had upgraded neighborhoods. He had his own circle of friends. I’d known him since I was five, when we met in kindergarten at our first school together. We had been getting naked together from the first instant, and we started fooling around in earnest when we were ten. We decided to compare erections at a sleepover, and then I had this idea to rub ’em together. The first time, we just giggled about that, but bit by bit, we ramped it up, usually at my instigation. By the time we were thirteen, we were sucking and fucking each other. No kissing though. He was not into that. At that time, he thought that if we kissed, that meant we were gay. Guys just get these ideas, you know?”

“Yeah. I can sort of see that, but anyway?”

“But anyway, we had a plan to meet up after I took my sisters home. I told my mom that Coco, who was dressed as a skeleton in black tights and and tight top with a skull mask, was going to go with me to another friend’s house where there was a party. Fuck, did Coco look hot to me! Anyway, there were lots of Latinos in both our neighborhoods, and boy, they know how to party! On Halloween, a lot of Latinos mix in Dia de los Muertos parties. It’s a way to include people who have passed in celebrations with the living. Really cool, if you ask me.”

“Totally cool! I actually do know about The Day of the Dead. Diane did a paper on it, and I helped her. It’s incredibly ancient. Did you learn Spanish as a kid?”

“More or less. I understand more than I can speak, and I read it pretty well. But anyway, you talk about a second home? That was his family. Anyhow, he had already told some friends of his he was meeting a girl named, ‘Natalie,’ Kind of like my name, which is ‘Nathanial,’ by the way.”

“Does anyone ever call you ‘Nate?’”

“Sure. My sisters still do, but I liked the way ‘Nathan Greene’ sounded over the loudspeakers at wrestling events, so I started preferring that in junior high school. Also, my dad called me ‘Nato,’ or ‘Nato Bomb.’”

“That’s cute.”

“Yeah. But anyway, we met in that park we just drove by. It was darker then at night. They had not installed all the lights then, and I met him with one of his new friends, ‘Frank,’ who was very cute, and Coco introduced me as his girlfriend, and buddy, I kissed him then!”

They were nearing the big bridge that crossed the Sacramento River, and the traffic slowed to a crawl, for the freeway lost a lane each way.

Nathan laughed at the memory. “So he totally let me kiss him. He was showing off to his new friend, of course. Now, I did not tell you I was wearing a jock strap and a garter belt. I was bare assed under the dress, and I had a more or less permanent erection, but I got really stiff then! And when I ground into him, I could feel he was equally hard. Each of us with our little three inch dicks! Well, his was longer, actually.

“Anyway, I said to his friend, Frank, ‘Did Coco tell you I was a slut?’”

“Oh fuck, Nathan! You are making my dick hard!” Adrian had to adjust it in his shorts then. “What did Frank look like?”

Nathan laughed at Adrian’s discomfit. His own penis was stiffening up at the memory.

“He was a butch and tough little dude with long, dirty blond hair, and to him, I said, ‘Can you keep a lookout while I suck his dick?’ Coco was into it! See, he’d get a reputation at school. A good one, but I surprised him. He wasn’t expecting that! Anyway, he leaned against the edge of the picnic table, and I pulled down the front of his sexy black tights and black underwear he had on underneath. His cock sprang out and I sucked it down! I gave him best ‘whore nasty’ BJ! Sloppy wet, twisting my head around, making whimpering noises. His buddy kept glancing over, and I kept glancing at him – madly turned on to give him a sex show! I think he thought he was not supposed to watch. But when I felt Coco about to come – his cute balls riding up and hard on my chin – which was like two minutes, I stopped and said, ‘Fuck my pussy!’ He got off the bench to get behind me, and I asked Frank if he wanted to get his dick sucked too! Well, he did! So he took Coco’s place, and I unzipped his pants, and whipped out his dick from his boxers – he had more hair than Coco and a nice fucking little rack – and I blew him while Coco lifted my dress and fucked me in the ass! I got creamed from both ends! My cock was so hard it hurt!”

Adrian laughed. “You said you were a slut. You were a slut, huh?”

Nathan chuckled. “I still am a slut. Kinda.” Nathan chuckled again. “I felt Coco’s come dripping down the insides of my thighs, and my mouth was all semen flavored. My ass felt all wet and squishy. I wiped it off with my hands and rinsed ’em in the fountain where I also rinsed my mouth. I did, indeed, feel very faggy, and I liked it! Frank took off for somewhere else while Coco and I went to the party, but at the party, we slipped out into the backyard and found a dark, quiet, secret spot behind some bushes near the fence, and we dragged a lounge chair over there, only that time I fucked him! We did it face to face. I made him get completely naked, but I kept my dress on, and we kissed the fuck out of each other. It was always like that with him. We took turns on each other; also, after that, Coco wasn’t so diffident about kissing. We broke through something that night with each other.”

“Wow! Did anyone recognize you? Did you get away with it?”

“No one recognized me. I totally got away with it. Coco and I are still friends, and we are still in touch. He got married, had a bunch of kids, and started feeling guilty about his wild side and for some years avoided contact with me because I’d bring it out every time. Finally, I told him I needed him as a friend more than I needed his cock, and honor was – is! – an important thing with him, so we found a way to keep loving each other without him having to break his marriage vows. Great guy. Truly a great guy. But that was my one and only experiment with cross-dressing. I’m not even sure it counts as transvestitism. I have never thought of myself as female. Have you?”

Adrian nodded at all that. He answered Nathan’s last question with, “No. Not at all. But it was fun to pretend.”

“Exactly. It was acting, but, anyway, my mom always knew I was gay. She said I was always going on and on about how much I liked some boy and how I wanted to kiss him and how I thought he was handsome. My dad? If he thought so? He never said, and I doubt my mom told him. Chicks are cool that way. They can keep secrets.”

“I’ve found that too. I came out to Diane first, and then, finally, my sister, Tanya, but not my mom or dad. But I have decided I will tell them. It’s time, you know?”

“Yes. I’ll bet your mom already knows, though.” Nathan observed.

“That would not surprise me.”

When they crossed the bridge, Nathan said to him, “You said you had been with ‘several’ girls. In ‘guyspeak,’ ‘several’ means at least three, but less that five or six. ‘Six’ would be ‘a bunch,’ right?”

Adrian grinned. “Yeah, that girl in Van Nuys?”

“Uh huh. I was going to ask about her.”

“Well, I was tweeting a lot on my trip, and I had people following my journey, and she somehow found me on Twitter and followed me and we became Facebook friends. She’s pretty. Tall and blond. A swede, like me. It turned out our families were related, distantly. My last name is ‘Bergstrom.’ That means ‘mountain stream.’ It’s spelled with an umlaut on the ‘O’ in traditional Swedish, but we don’t spell it that way anymore, but anyhow, when I got to LA, she said to hit her up, so I did. Her dad has a carpet cleaning business, and she talked him into picking me up in his van. We had arranged it long before. You know, there are, like, no places to camp in Southern California unless you are far, far from cities, but it’s city, city, everywhere! Most places, when you get into town, you can call a police station and ask if there are legal places to camp for free, and they’ll help you, but LA? Shit. They are like, well… You can hear them laughing in the background! Without a doubt, I can tell you that LA is the most hostile, unwelcoming city in the entirety of the United States. Even New York is better! But in LA, they think they are just so fucking cool! At least in New York, they know they are assholes. On the other hand, the homeless people in Venice and Santa Monica? Very helpful and sharing!

“Man, Nathan, I sure have a changed attitude about people from this trip. Always the poor people are the ones who share the most; er, and then there is you. You don’t fit the generalization. I almost didn’t talk to you because you looked too rich.”

“Well I’m glad you did, and, truly, I agree with every word you said; except, I know some really cool one-percenters. A lot of people in the arts and entertainment industry are truly great people with strong social consciousnesses.”

“Well, I’ll take your word for it, but I remember talking with this young man in Venice on the promenade by the beach. He kinda hit on me. I’m not sure, but we were talking about my trip, and I told him that same thing. He was a pre-med student at Claremont College, and he said that was because ‘affluent people have more to lose,’ and I said, ‘If you think that, you are so fucking out of touch with the world, I can’t even hang with you!’ See, what chaffed my ass was the subtext: In his heart, he thought his life was more valuable because he had more shit!”

Nathan noted Adrian’s sophisticated use of the word “subtext.” He said, “I’ll bet you rang his bell, though, Adrian. I’ll bet he’ll think about that a lot!”

The freeway opened up again to farms and fields once more. They were near Davis. Nathan had once considered going to the university there, but he said nothing about that. It was irrelevant to the conversation.

“Yeah,” Adrian agreed. “I hope so! But you know? I grew up in an exclusive neighborhood with the best schools around lots of other rich kids, and so I know how out of touch they are. They have purposely walled themselves off, and from what I have seen, they are all fear driven! They are scared of blacks. They are scared of Latinos. They are scared of homeless people. Really, they are scared of anything that’s not like them, but they are scared of each other too! Me and my dad are going to have a long, long chat. He’s not quite like that. Like I said, he was poor as a kid. The army kind of gave him a chance at an education he would not have had. He’s not a coward, so when I tell him he’s taken on a pussy bitch attitude, he’ll get mad, but he will listen.”

Adrian, Nathan noted, mentioned his father frequently. The kid definitely had some stuff to work out with his father. Nathan did not comment on that. He knew that his young friend had to work through that on his own. If Adrian asked for advice on the subject, Nathan would give it, but he would not presume to “know best.”

Thus, he merely nodded,

Nathan was then feeling that his “copdar” was safely in the green zone. The traffic consisted mainly of trucks. The freeway opened up. He loosened the reins of his steed and let the big truck go the speed she liked – about ninety.

Feeling fine and happy with the new burst of roaring velocity, he said to Adrian, “So you were going to tell me about your girlfriend in Van Nuys?”

“Yeah. So. Hmmm… OK. So, like, on Facebook, where in your profile? Where you say you are interested in men or women? I just clicked, ‘women.’ See, I studied other profiles, and gay guys seem to have this thing where they build their entire life around being gay, and all their friends are gay, and all their posts are gay, and that’s just not a big enough box for me!”

Nathan laughed at that. “Yeah. I get you. Brian told me one time that my sexuality was merely a singe facet of the jewel I was.”

“That was a nice thing to say! You will tell me about him, won’t you? You said you would.”

“Yes, Adrian,” Nathan said as he passed through a pack of cars like they were standing still. He did pick up a tail though. It was a guy in yellow Camaro.

You wanna race? Try THIS, you chump!

In a few seconds, they were doing a hundred and twenty. That was where the trick suspension, tires, and wheels shined.

“Fuuuck, dude! Are you going fast enough?”

Nathan immediately caught up to another pack of cars. He slowed down so as to not frighten the drivers, but he swerved through that pack quickly. He then resumed his earlier, merely extremely fast pace. He explained, “I picked up a Camaro who thought he wanted to drive fast too. It’ll take him a while to catch up now. Most people are scared to go past ninety-five.”

Adrian commented, “I’ll bet you have a sports car and or a motorcycle, Huh Nathan?”

“Yeah. I have a stable. I have an old Jag, a ’63 XKE, a ’roadster’ they called it, what we call a ’convertible.’ I put in a chevy motor and narrowed the rear end for fat tires. It looks all classic, but it’s a hot rod. A lot of guys consider it a sacrilege to hop one up, but fuck them. Those British motors are fucking tinker toys. Was thinking of having body parts made of carbon fiber to get a bit more acceleration, but then, that would be a sacrilege! Not quite as fast as a Shelby 454 in the straights, but better handling in the twisty stuff. Into Porsches for a while. They really are the Kings of Curves, but too finicky and delicate for me. Always having to fuck with them. Tried one of the new Vettes and fucking loved it. Almost bought one, but, you know, too ‘new money?’ Damn good ride, though, and half the price of similar performance cars. Yeah, you betcha. Love them cars man! Recently bought a ’68 Ferrari Dino. Having it worked on right now. Gorgeous, just gorgeous! All aluminum, like the classic Shelby. I bought it to distract me from Brian’s decline. It’s a funky machine, and a money pit. Thinking of offloading it. Not that fast, compared to others, but that car is all about ‘cool.’ Not really into crotch rockets though. Had a couple Harleys. I like the old British bikes from the sixties. Made a bunch of money restoring them. Got good at Triumphs and Nortons. That was one of my first money making things, but, this girl?”

“OK. Yeah, so I was saying that in social media, I decided to play it straight, and I knew this girl – her name is Karen – was into me, and I didn’t want her to get her hopes up, right? So when I got into Riverside, I called her on the phone, and I told her I was gay, and she was all, ‘Dude, that’s awesome! I haven’t had a gay friend since high school, and I really miss him!’ So she was down. She told me she’d even be my ‘beard’ if I wanted, and I did the same for her, you know, allowing her to go out without being pestered by guys.”

“But you did hook up?”

“Yeah. We fucked a lot, actually. Funny, huh? Really wild monkey sex! See, the thing is, uh…” Adrian looked down shyly then quickly back up. He was almost apologetic when he said, “I, uh, have a pretty long cock? And it was getting big even when I was sixteen; uh, at the end of that year, really. I had a huge growth spurt, but, anyway, it was too long for Diane. I’d bottom out. I couldn’t stick it in all the way, and I was just talking with Karen about that, you know, in general, the art of turning girls on, and she knew about that. She told me that to give girl a vaginal orgasm, you have to press against what she called the ‘Venus area’ where the clitoris is, and I couldn’t do that with Diane, and my fingers were too big and strong, or, I never figured it out, and I didn’t like eating her out. So she asked me if I wanted to try it, and I did! Well, she could take it! She really liked getting slammed! I made her come and come. She gave good head too! Usually, she’d blow me, and then, after I had come once, I’d last a long time and fuck her and fuck her, making her come over and over. Also, she knew I wanted to fuck her ass bad, and she let me! Whoo hoo!. I came so hard I thought the back of my head would blow off, slamming her in her big ass from behind, and then, I was definitely imagining I was fucking a dude, and she knew it. She did it as a favor. But I made sure she came after that. I fucked her again. I really like that, Nathan. I really like making my partner come!”

“Me too, Adrian. I’ve fucked a lot of chicks too. In high school, I always had a boyfriend and a girlfriend. I just enjoyed the guys more. But I would have one girl I was fucking, and six guys I was fucking. Lots of jocks are closet cases, but there really are lots of athletes who are into guys. We just do it with each other, and each other only. It’s the biggest secret of the gay scene.”

“Well, I sure did not see that in high school!”

“You have to crack the network, is all. You have to get into the club. It’s all on the down low. I’m sure that there were guys you knew who were pretty active that way, but no one but the inner circle knew.”

“I’ll take your word for it. But, anyway, Karen was a kick for a couple weeks. They had a grandma cottage at their house and usually had a renter, but I was the renter for a while, so we had a great place to do it to it. I guess I’m pretty bi for a gay guy. Except, there were times when we were doing it, and I’d be bored, so I’d close my eyes and pretend she was a guy, and then I’d get all excited. In the end, I told her that, and she said she kinda sensed that because I would seem to ‘go away’ from her. But the thing is, the girls? They really just confirmed it for me. I like guys. I want to do it with a guy.”

Nathan chuckled. Adrian would be getting his wish in a few hours. But he only said, “Yeah, I get it! I tapered off on the women in college. There have always been exceptions, and I’d never rule it out.”

Nathan had a sudden sense of danger, so he slowed down to eight miles an hour above the speed limit and kept a lookout behind him in his mirror. Sure enough, the Camaro he’d seen caught up to him and passed him, doing about ninety, and then, taking a wicked delight, he saw another car catching up. As it passed, he saw it was a highway patrol car!

He laughed as the CHP hit his lights and pulled the Camaro over! He could see the driver angrily gesticulating at him as he cruised past. Nathan had to resist the urge to flip him off. The highway patrolman did not even look at him as he passed. When they were far to the rear, Nathan sped up again. The whole time, he kept a running patter of explanation for Adrian about his highway trickery. “I learned from the best – my dad, who drove fast as fuck and never got tickets.”

“You ever get any speeding tickets, Nathan?”

“Not so far, knock on wood! I have a sixth sense. I trust it. But also, I do know how to drive, so I’m not endangering others, you know?”

“Well, I think back there was the fastest I’ve ever been in a car!”

“Aww, that was nothing! The fastest car I ever had in terms of top speed was a ’99 Impala. I bought her already tricked. She was supercharged. Had a roll cage, racing seats, shoulder harnesses, all that. That girl would do two hundred! A lot of that is gearing, anyway. At those speeds, you feel like you are dodging other cars in a parking lot! Your big problem is sticking to the road. You tend to get airborne. You want a heavy car and aerodynamics that kill lift. I’d only really open her up out in the desert though. Fun! I miss that car, and that Dino is turning out to be a money pit, like I said. I should have stuck with big, Detroit iron.”

Adrian nodded. “Ok, Nathan. That reminds me of something. You keep hinting at all these ways you make money or have made money, so let’s change the subject. I’m feeling a lot of ‘sexual tension,’ as you say, so speaking of ‘investment,’ How about you talk about money? That’ll make me lose a hard-on! Teach this innocent, naïve, child your wisdom!”

They were passing one of the many rice silos in the area. The region was famous for rice. Nathan did not tell Adrian that more rice was produced in this part of the Sacramento Valley than the entire nation of Japan. It was trivia, and besides, he did want to tell Adrian about his enterprises. These days, they were a much bigger part of his life than sex.

However, it did not take his “sixth sense” to know that was changing.