Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:04:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Ted M Subject: Taking Mark's Virginity: Remember The King: Part 5 "Arise, my king. It's time." I'm waking the slumbering figure before me and despite being asleep for only 35 minutes, he's completely, deeply zonked. His spicy green eyes are sleepy and angry, hazy, unfocused. "Time?" he slurs, "What fucking time?" "It's time." I tell him. "I can't let you be late." He groans and flips away from me. "That was it? We're done sleeping?" "That was it." I grin and slap his absurdly pale butt. It ripples. He growls and puts his head down. I wipe a finger gently through my sperm pooling along Fitch's ass crack, that which has leaked out. This wakes him and it awakens me too. Grrrr. I had better wait in the living room away from temptation. When he emerges from the bedroom, he's stumbling and bracing himself against the door frame. He's in his jeans, still unbuttoned, and barefoot, shirtless. I'm instantly hard and my jaw drops. I have no idea why that image is hardwired in me but it is: shirtless man, jeans, barefoot, leaning against a doorframe. Some formative Marlboro Man or Irish Spring commercial has apparently wormed its way into my unconscious mind and now I'm Pavlov's tail-wagging woofer. That's my kryptonite. It's the moment when I am most vulnerable to saying, `fuck it,' to whatever plan I have and just giving in. Fitch is only frozen in this position for three or four seconds, but if while standing there he asks me,` Could we just go back to bed?' I will nod in silence and follow him back. Luckily Fitch doesn't think to ask this and he stumbles to the center of the candles to join me. I lit a few of them while he was slowly putting on his jeans, so there are about 15 or 20 actually lit. Those flickering flames and a stained glass lamp are the only illumination. Wordlessly (because I'm still hard and a little shaken by the sexy doorway moment), I hand him a purple wrapped box. The bow and ribbon is purple as well. This color scheme is all the rage -- that Millionaire Host on TV made it popular. Sometimes I know a thing or two about fashion. Fitch takes the box and shreds the paper slowly. He doesn't know what's inside...but he does. And he doesn't want to see it...it's... He opens the box and the emerald silk spills into his hands. He won't look at me, he's just staring at it, staring at the small, obsidian buttons as if unfamiliar with how to work them. Perhaps the lamp light fracturing off this silken shirt is blinding him in spots. Despite being a solid color -- an iridescent green -- in his hands and the flicker of flames, forty shaded sparks of green leap to the eye. It's a shirt for a king. And it's Fitch-sized. "Dress, my king." I say to him gently. "It's time to greet the dawn." I drive us in silence to the best place to catch the sunrise. It's a on hill near University Avenue, a lovers' lane that seems specifically built for autumn, for falling golden leaves and jack-o-lanterns on front porches of cheerful nearby homes. Perhaps the Halloween air is lent by the abandoned, stone water tower atop the hill. Everyone calls it "The Witch's Hat" for its pointy black roof. It's beautiful, archaic, and well maintained, and despite the fact that it's June and not autumn, I think this will do perfectly for a sunrise ritual. When we arrive, the east is deeply purple and still bruised from nightfall. "There's a bench at the top of the hill." I tell him. "Walk to that bench and wait for the dawn. If you're truly a king, you will know." Fitch stares at the hill. His green shirt is glowing from the dashboard lights. "Come with me." He says casually. "Just go sit there. It's cool; we don't have to talk." "Find out the truth, Fitch." Fitch turns to face me with a smirk. "This king thing is fun and all - really fuckin' hot role play, really awesome. But do you really think anything's going to happen on that stupid hill? I mean, dude. It's just a stupid sunrise." He pauses. "You take this shit way too seriously." I nod at him because, really, he's probably right. I do take it too seriously. And then I speak. "Did you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you hadn't been so inflexible?" I ask him softly. "Would you still be with him?" The words from my napkin note. His face scrunches up involuntarily and his eyes get wide, like a ten-year-old who just skinned his knee: old enough to resist bawling, but young enough to want to. His teeth are clicking together rapidly and he wants to go home. "But what if nothing happens?" Fitch's voice has the slightest quiver. I let him see my eyes, loving and firm. "Then you'll finally know." He pleads with me one more time, this time silently. "I'll be here when you come back." I tell him and shut off the engine. An hour later, he returns: King Fitch, Finder of Beauty. The sun has been up for a while, golden and scouring every flat surface, scrubbing it June clean. On this crisp and yellow morning there are birds twittering, happy in their paradise and the world is stretching awake, one of those glorious mornings where you forget about bad things in the world. King Fitch eventually emerges on the path, and I have been watching for him, eager to see his initial descent. His torso indistinguishable from the green leaves for a moment, but his bouncing step distinguishes him and each footstep clomps heavily, claiming with confidence this path as his own. Just before he gets to the door, I can see his eyes are a little red, from lack of sleep or newly fallen tears, I cannot tell. But he hops into my car and turns to me, radiating light -- light that was not in him when he nervously slammed the passenger door an hour ago. His eyes match the shirt, and Fitch has never looked this beautiful, even when he was just physically attractive. Not like this. Not like this. We stare at each other a moment. It's hard to look away from a newly awakened king. "So what happened?" I ask him innocently. "Tell me." His eyes beam at me and he grins broadly. "Good answer." I push in the clutch and flip the ignition. "The answer of a king." My Subaru roars to life. Inside the threshold of my bungalow home, I clear my throat to verbalize the next event, but he takes my hand and pauses me with a gesture. King Fitch has a different agenda. "I want to tell you," he begins and his eyes can't stop beaming light at me. "This was --" "No." I interrupt him quietly but firmly. Hand on his chest, so he knows it's love, not discipline. "No words. Show me what you mean without words. With just you. Let it radiate out of you." King Fitch hears me, he hears me, and understands this is not a command, not an order. It's an invitation, a firm and kingly invitation from a man like himself. He stares into my eyes, breathing and filling himself up with that which was found, the morning gold, the king within. With a slow and strong motion, he puts his hand on the back of my neck and pulls my lips into his, kissing me with strength and confidence, with new vigor and maybe even a sense of purpose. Oh man, it's that good of a kiss. King Fitch is glowing now, and it's not coming from the shirt. Pretty as it is, it's still just a shirt. Nope. This is power. And it's coming from inside him swirling, eager to get out and touch the world. That kiss transformed his potential power to actual power. He radiates now, it's radiating off him. Why do you suppose that people think love is more powerful than hate, stronger than violence and misery? It's moments like this when you see a person glowing, radiating this gift, suddenly `of the kingdom.' And you see this kingly power, and you think, `Of course this trumps it all. Of course it does.' King Fitch is illuminated in powerful energy coursing through his softball biceps and swirling around the tips of his fingers. He guides me backwards, arm around my waist and his knee between mine, moving me confidently across the candle-circled living room and yet with such tender footsteps that we might be slow dancing. His forehead is on mine and he's breathing into me. It's fun to meet a man already good at sex. So while I had other plans for us, it's more important to honor this New King, to give him his reign, to usher in his newfound power and let it unfold. Which is my way of saying, I think I'm about to get fucked. In my bedroom, King Fitch removes my royal blue King shirt with one swoop over my head. He's not smiling, just studying my face, its planes and curves, wrinkles and dents. My pants are shorn from me with practiced moves and King Fitch stands when I am naked and clasps both sides of my face and sucks on my tongue, each suckle whispering words right from his heart. He's happy with this unexpected joy, this freedom, the movement. Suddenly, almost magically, he's naked now himself, clothed in more comfortable attire than he ever knew he owned. He bobs his cock under my nuts, an early announcement of his intention, his insistence to show me how he feels. The King is kissing me, my neck, integrating some moves he learned last night from me and some of his own patented Fitchness, good moves unique to his love making abilities. He kneels on the green satin sheets and extends a hand to me, invites me into his arms. His manner is regal and he owns this, boy does he own this. His face is generous and compassionate even though he is not smiling. In fact, all those bunched face muscles in grinning sometimes inhibits love passing more directly through. So he's serious and blazing intention instead, pulling me into him, the minty satin zipping around us, caressing us, teasing us, and he's kissing me again. This continues a while until I'm breathing heavy. King Fitch has some good moves. He pins me down with his bulging thick arms and licks my neck with long, loving strokes. He chews on my nipples with an unfamiliar rhythm that means something to him and I arch my back, as he has found a hot spot of mine. His fingers intertwine mine regularly during our loving gyrations and his heartbeat sends a message via each pulse that says in twin beats: myking myking. Myking myking. Myking myking. It's so easy to spill from front to back on these slippery sheets and suddenly Fitch has maneuvered me onto my stomach and himself to hover over my back. I can't see him but I can feel his energy, his power radiating into me, hotter than body heat, pressing deeper than skin. He kisses my skull, my shoulders, and traces the Celtic tattoo down my left shoulder with his tongue. The whole time his mighty Fitch Dick is rubbing my ass crack with serious determination. Wasn't quite expecting this. He massages my back with his chin, tracing my spine and his tongue slips out and down the crack of my beefy butt. He's down there for a while. Each time I push back into his mouth, he greedily leaps forward, tongue waggling and fingers gripping into my spread cheeks. He's alternating lapping strokes with tongue probing, warming me, warming me the way he remembers me easing him open. His dick head is suddenly right there, right there and pressing with an eagerness to go further. King Fitch's hands massage my lower back right at the spot even with the base of my spine, thumbs rippling me and helping relax for the assault that will follow. Kings are not pushovers just because they are loving. And King Fitch is determined to get his way on this particular point. So it's not long before the mighty, spongy Fitch Dick pops inside and Fitch stops to see how I respond. King Fitch is an accomplished top. He knows there are a dozen ways to enter a man's ass, each creating a different style of rippling sensations. Some men actually crave the full entry at once, feeling the entire dick slammed into the colon and the electric high of being taken so forcefully. Others prefer the slow and steady massaging open, while other men need short rounds of ass play, gradually increasing in duration. Tops who can read their bottoms' preference can then choose whether to acknowledge that preference or to try something new. Today, King Fitch is a pleaser. He watches me take an inch, then an inch more, and from my squirming figures the pace to drive his fat dick all the way home. Yeah, it hurts. I haven't been fucked in more than two and a half years or has it been longer? But this man is a king! You don't say `no thanks' to something like this. You embrace it, you revel in it...it's not every day a king offers to knock you up. I rise to my knees and arch my back and shoulders, wanting to feel this from a different perspective. Hell, if I'm gonna get fucked, I'm makin' it worth remembering. Although usually bottoming is not my particular favorite, Fitch is good at what he knows, and the beautiful sensations of a king's pulsating cock buried inside me is hard to deny. It's not Fitch from the bar, who `doesn't fuck bears,' it's King Fitch the Finder of Beauty and he's using his cock to find me slowly. The energy he radiates influences the fucking, easing between us and through us like energetic lube. Now -- in this moment -- we have known each other for years. It defies logic. Our bodies grow in greater sync and increase my capacity to take him deeper. It increases his desire to get deeper too, and pretty soon he's on his toes coaxing the last milli-inch deeper, prodding further, brave new explorer. Damn. He pulls back, raking his finger pads down both flanks of my back and I know he's giving me his best fuck, the A-list fuck he reserves for the few he finds to be absolutely exquisite except this fuck is enhanced by king energy, a powerful warrior, and the instincts of a newly awakened lover. King Fitch is now what pornos imitate so poorly: raw masculine energy, muscles ripe with power and stamina, face given over to ecstacy that truly lives on a hard-to-reach plane. His breath is a growl and his eyes glow with a loving fierceness that I think he'll access more easily after today. We are meeting on the ancestral field. He pumps me this way, varying his position by degrees so that each time he whooooooooshes into me I grunt with newness and surprised sensations. We're both rutting, writhing, moaning into a growl when the sound emerges on its own, and we're gonna be here a while. While I bet he can get his nut within 5 or 10 if he's forced to be quick, the man does love his cock inside ass and I bet the love is usually mutual. To list the positions would be pointless and remove the artistry, the skill in transition. From spread eagle in languished flesh rending strokes, King Fitch fucks me easily to the floor, where he pummels me further and not with the kind of force one reserves for an enemy, but a strong and resonant thrust that is reserved for an equal, a man you respect and you can only throw him this fuck because you believe in his ability to handle it. This becomes an `uplifting' fuck as his cock is guiding my ass movements and I'm kneeling and then standing suddenly feeling the weight of his fat pecs on my own freckled, pale back. Yeah, Fitch fucks me like that, but with less words. All the while he's growing his power, enjoying the flow of ancient masculine king energy buzzing his fingertips and swimming in colors before his green-glinting view. His body is fluid and fucks in one motion, and I respond by worshipping this king best I can, through supplication and squeezing his cock with whatever muscles I can wrap around him. I find out later that it was about two hours of naked entanglement. This from the man who enjoyed 34 minutes of sleep last night. But it's energy not of this world, energy from the tribe of lost kings, so you don't just ignore it. Pretend that it's not there. I am pounded into submission, the dull repetitive power he represents right now, his every thrust drilling the same question. "I'm telling you that I love you...do you get it? Do you get it now? How about now? Do you get that this is love? How about now?" This day is the only time Fitch and I will fuck. We both know it. Not because it was outlined as only 30 hours together; we're not bound by legal contract. But honestly, we probably just aren't suited to be best friends and dating seems even less likely. But that's cool with both of us because we can meet on the field of kings at anytime to greet the dawn. We're in the ancient field right now, me on my back legs wrapped around his narrow waist. He's fucking me with his eyes, pounding that steel green into me, coached by the Sacred Warrior, who can never stay far away from the sounds of two men fucking. "Harder." grunts the Sacred Warrior but only because he's insatiable. I am stunned and then occasionally grinning, loving how much power my buddy has coursing through him. And then he fucks a bit deeper -- how about now? Do you feel my love now? -- and my grin turns to an expression of surprise as he gets even deeper still. The ancient warrior is looming in Fitch's heads, the one where he stores his brain and the fat one on the Fitch Dick, with the same message, chanting the only words he knows: Do it. Do it. C'mon...do it. Breed him. Do it. "Show me your love." I say to him, loudly, as a command. "Show me all your love." Fitch's eyes burn me then, and his bares his teeth like a savage wolf. The noise that emerges next is a tree trunk of sound emerging from the depths of his pelvis. It's howling in perfect pitch and with a clarity that could wake the neighbors three homes away. Fitch has crossed over. The Fitch Dick explodes without remorse, coating itself and everything inside me, juicing me more than the last four guys who fucked me. (And to remember when those occurred would take quite a few years of calculation.) The cum can't be contained and while he's still jack rabbiting my ass, my pale Irish butt is slicked with his cum, just not enough space inside to contain his flood. King Fitch is holding my neck and pushing his hot breath into mine as he stares at me to make sure I understand what's happening. I'm getting bred by a king. I join the party and nut into his stomach, a soft punch of opaque liquid, then another soft punch, and a third. His cock is still hard and still pulsing in me with short erratic strokes. I don't think either of us want it to happen, but the motion isn't so easy to stop. So, his ass flexes involuntarily and pushes him into me and my butt clenches back involuntarily and the cycle repeats itself. It's got to be a full minute before he collapses over me, owning me, the power still sparking around his body, through his spine, and he's owning me each second, powering over me. I massage his neck lazily, and my heart is responding with his energetic chant from earlier: myKing, myKing, myKing... King Fitch's ragged breath is in my ear, his gasping, the sweat from his face spilling over my shoulder, little rivers of him and me, pooling in little lakes at every flaw in our construction. "Beautiful," He gasps, raspy and strong. "You're beautiful." There are few moments that are perfect in life. This is one. Sometime after that we doze. It's hard to fall asleep in that position, it only happens if you're both so unbelievably spent that nothing else matters. And then we wake with his cock head still in my butt and the trapped sperm all over our interlocked bodies. And so we fuck. And then there's cock sucking. Followed by a fantastic nap. Then he wakes up when I'm eating his ass and King Fitch pushes into me, stretching his glorious body across the front, owning the bed all of it, everything, everyone in it, and King Fitch is spread eagle on his throne, getting his ass chewed vigorously because he's about to get fucked again and then get my pulsating seed blasting liquid heat all over his insides. We spend the rest of the morning and afternoon hours loving each other this way with longer and longer bouts of cuddling and sleeping. It's exhausting work, this work of kings. And not a lot of more orgasms are left in either one of us because a) we're really fucking spent and b) after a few on each side, this isn't about cumming any longer, it's about loving. We emerge from the bed late in the afternoon (sometime between 5 and 6 pm) goofy and sore, snickering at our ill-used, scratchy throats, stiff legs, sore arms. King Fitch is giggling and laughing outright, happy to be bleary-eyed and free. Freer. Who knew there were such wonderful degrees of freedom? We emerge and I tell him that we're going to order in dinner. I've arranged for a private courier to go anywhere in the twin cities to please us. He laughs when I tell him `anything you want and I mean it' and he teases me about how voracious he's feeling right now. "Anything." I tell him simply and with a quiet seriousness. "Anything." His grin breaks in half and is face is sad/happy. "We're not going to date, are we." He says as a statement. "No." I tell him. He looks into my eyes and sees that there is love in me as I say this and this `no,' is nothing more than a `no.' He nods to me, very serious. "Okay, then I can say this without it being totally weird." King Fitch pauses. "I love you." He says bluntly and he blushes. And he means it. "I love you, too." I tell him. I mean it too. He nods again and his eyes are shining. "Good." He didn't know the words weren't a trap. He didn't know true and beautiful love doesn't have to mean forever, nor was it automatically a lie when he said it aloud in a heartfelt tone. We shower while waiting for the feast, an hour-long shower with honoring of spirit through Irish Spring soap, and silent communication. We are saying goodbye to each others' bodies and the proud beating hearts within each one. Fitch kisses my forehead towards the end, and holds me in his powerful arms, cradling me, rocking me, just letting me know how he feels. It's a good thing we took a long shower because the food takes a while. We explore my house completely naked, touching easily, freely but it's less sexual. We're becoming buddies. And then the food arrives. We're eating shrimp Pad Thai and spicy green curry from Chang Mai Tai, a California rolls platter ordered from Origami, and garlic mashed potatoes from King Fitch's favorite downtown restaurant. I'm glad he ordered this -- I'm a total sucker for all things Italian. We ordered the best spinach and artichoke salad in Minneapolis and this is good since we're both ravenous. The courier assures me that he had indeed picked up the tiramisu from Rosetti's in St. Paul earlier today, where they make it fresh every Saturday. Secretly, I had tacked corn dogs onto our food order, and King Fitch is delighted, chomping the end of the first one he grabs. He's chewing happily, mouth open and laughing and it feels like being at a kid's birthday party. I pop some champagne because it's already 7 pm, and we toast in silence staring at each other, the best kind of toast. As we eat happily, I rag at him for drinking Miller Lite and tell him to drink a real fucking beer! His face lights up and he launches a counter attack involving the phrase, `use a fucking comb' and we're giggling and eating naked, laughing and loving each other that feels completely natural. Then, the talk gradually drifts to a slightly more serious, autobiographical nature. King Fitch is feeding himself and me small bites of tiramisu. It's so good we can't stop eating it. We're sharing little tidbits of life stories. Forgotten details that emerge, small and wonderful things that shyly emerge when your body is at peace and your heart is singing. He wants to know if I was serious about not having a Mom or a Dad and I tell him yes. He probably wants to ask more about that, but he sees my face and declines for now. He wants to know about the candle wax and why that was necessary. I tell him about teasing out emotions and how they need to be honored before letting go. How the body opens up, the heart opens up. He nods and he gets it. A shadow of last night's feeling comes over him. But he's a king now and embraces these things, who he was, and all the parts of him, so he just nods a little, his powerful jaw slightly clenched. "Do you do this all the time?" he says with forced casualness. "Seduce guys over this 30 hour marathon?" He laughs a little too loudly. "No." I tell him seriously. I won't let this be a joke. I want him to know he is special. "Maybe 2-4 times a year, if that. Depends on how often I run into a lost king I think I can reach." He nods casually, pretending to not care about the answer. But this pleases him. A slight blush and downward glance lets me know he's cool with that answer. He asks freely about Tim, the black guy from Los Angeles, and is surprised to find that I didn't know him until the Saturday night I introduced the two of them briefly at the bar. "You're kidding." He says in disbelief. "But he was so..." "I needed someone to show you." I explain. "Show you what could be done. So I picked out a guy ogling you from afar. Watched him for about 20 minutes to see if he was ever going to approach you, which he was not. Tim was a good man, nice guy. Visiting from out of town. He needed a little adrenaline to loosen up a bit and was hoping to get it through alcohol." "I thought you just arrived when I ran into you?" he challenges me, his eyebrows arched in skepticism. "Fitch, you passed me twice earlier that night, right next to me. I just chose to be ignored. You never saw me half the times I was out chasing you." "Wow." He says sadly and with appreciation. "Thank you." I cock my head and grin. Fitch laughs suddenly. "You really are a crazy fucker. Seriously, buddy, you're fucked up. Good way, a good way...but you're crazy." I explain to King Fitch what sealed the deal for Tim. "What if," I had told Tim, "I could help you articulate exactly what you wanted to that big bruiser, what you wanted to do to Fitch, so powerfully, so evocatively unleashed that it almost would feel like an orgasm?" Tim was eager to give it a shot. King Fitch nodded. "You nailed him with King energy." "King energy." I repeat back to him. He nods. He knows what it can do. We spend our last hour together naked in each others' arms. Not kissing, not getting hard. Just breathing. Together. "So it's 10:00 p.m. on Saturday night." We're standing on my front stoop and this new man is looking across the street because, I think, it's away from me. He doesn't want to see me right now. His faded red ball cap is in his hands and there's a great June breeze rippling the emerald silk clinging to his chest. From the yard I smell what must be the very last of the lingering lilacs. "It's early enough," I prod him gently, "that you can go home, change, and hit the clubs by 11pm. You can make it easily. That's one path open to you." We're silent for a moment. "And now, there are other paths." I inform him. "What other paths?" He grumbles. He won't look at me but he's loud enough so I can hear. "I don't know. Can't answer that for you." There's silence for a moment. "We could rent movies." King Fitch turns to me and his face is stony serious. "No sex, that's cool. I get it. Just hang out and watch something." I shake my head no and he knows it. "Fine." His growl is tired, but I suspect he knows the best break is a clean one. He takes a step down the cement stairs, away. He hesitates. Then he then hops back up to face me. His face is not nervous exactly, but it's vibrating a little bit with leftover nervous energy. He's just letting it leak out. "Most guys just see me as this collection of body parts. And yeah, I know...I encourage that. But, I --. I don't entirely get why you picked me, but...I'm glad. I'm really glad. Your beauty is that you can see men for who they are." He's very earnest, and I am surprised to feel how deep this blessing has already struck me. "People think you're weird." King Fitch says eagerly, the words spontaneously finding themselves in his mouth. "I asked about you around the bars and most nobody knew you except for one or two. And they thought you were weird. So do I. You are. But that's what makes you special. Beautiful. Someday, some dude is gonna fall in love with that weirdness and it's all gonna be okay." I can't speak. I have no counter to this. Most of the time I'm okay with being labeled weird. And yet it still hurts sometimes because it seems like I am never going to meet someone who gets me, who doesn't think I'm too freaky. I don't really make it easy for anyone to know me. And he has nailed me. But at the same time, King Fitch has made it alright. He has blessed my weirdness with his love. He really is the Finder of Beauty. "My real name is Kevin." He says firmly. "It's Kevin." I nod, solemnly. I swallow. "Kevin. Good to meet you. I was hoping I would." I am surprised to hear my own voice. My brain is still spinning. A slim tear spills out of Kevin and a flash of his old self emerges because he grimaces a little bit, ashamed again to cry. But why bother hiding a single tear after what we just went through together for the last 30 hours? What could it possibly matter? Now, now he doesn't care what I think of him because he knows that I actually love him. Rather deeply. In fact, I suspect that Kevin won't care much what anybody thinks of him anymore, because kings are often like that, and so all his tears come racing out. Gripping my hand in both of us, he' staring at me the whole time, everything leaking out. When he clearly can't stand it anymore, this happy heartache, I decide to shift the mood. I tell him my name, my true name. The name I tell almost no one. Kevin laughs and wipes his face. "You're shitting me." He says and chuckles. After he drives off slowly, I go back inside to ponder something. Kevin fucked me as his bottom this morning, after returning from the Witches Hat. I don't do that -- rarely, actually. Closer to never. It was a message to me, indirectly, about getting stuck, getting too rigid in a defined role. I'm still gonna be a top 99% of the time but he got me to thinking. I don't think he necessarily meant to start this chain of reflections, but what if I am more closed off than I think? It's one thing to be channeling ancient king energy and it's quite another to use it to make an impenetrable fortress. What if I'm getting too rigid? I think of my napkin note to Kevin the night I met him, back when he was still Fitch. DID YOU EVER WONDER HOW YOUR LIFE WOULD BE DIFFERENT IF YOU HADN'T BEEN SO INFLEXIBLE? WOULD YOU STILL BE WITH HIM? I wonder how inflexible I have become. How many rules cut me off from my own king, the glowing dawn fire that feeds me, radiates me, and warms me on cold and lonely nights of the soul? I wander over to my email and scrub through the Deleted folder until I find the one from a guy named Mark, the 19 year old in New Jersey. `What would you do? What would you risk?' I ask myself, the same question I asked Kevin when he crossed my thresh hold yesterday afternoon, ready and resistant. I pause for only a second. HELLO MARK, I begin my reply. DO YOU IM? I THINK WE SHOULD TALK... *** It's a full year later before I run into Kevin. We are both at the giant, wooded dog park near the Mississippi river. My new lover insisted we needed a canine to complete the family, so we rescued this goofy golden lab/mutt who has this quirky habit of - upon hearing or seeing us kiss - trotting for several laps around the house clutching one of my gym shoes. We're worried he's homophobic. I am engaged in the oh-so-dignified task of picking up Romero's shit in my plastic-bread-bag-covered hand when I notice Kevin. Actually, I noticed his boyfriend first: a man laughing and chasing his own dog. It's hard not to notice a man who loves his dog. This guy is in his 30s, mostly bald, and he laughs heartily and makes ridiculous faces at his pup. His shirt has a muddy paw print on it. I like him instantly. Kevin jumps into the scene a second later, pretending to corner their dog who gleefully flees and then turns around to make sure they are still chasing him. I watch for a while, grinning, until the two men hunch over, out of breath. Kevin straightens up and spots me. I nod to him, smiling but serious. His face acquires this strange expression. His boyfriend seems to notice as well and follows the gaze over to me. The two of them cross the 30 yards distance, Kevin leading without talking, their black terrier dancing around their legs. Romero has run off, sniffing some other dog's ass. When they get close, Kevin hesitates for only a fraction of a second and then without words comes right to me, standing close in my space. He takes my free hand in both of his and turns it palm up. He raises my hand to his lips and kisses the meaty part just under my thumb. "My king." says Kevin softly. "My king." "Hey." Says his boyfriend with some surprise. "Who is this guy?" "Someone I knew once." Kevin responds quietly without breaking our eye contact. "That's so weird," his boyfriend says with forced casualness, possibly alarmed because he doesn't understand this connection. "Kev did that to me on the night we decided to move in together. He kissed me like that on that part of the hand." I nod solemnly while staring at Kevin. "Of course he did. He would. He is of the kingdom." "Uh oh." Says the boyfriend, pretending to laugh. "Should I be jealous? Are you guys old lovers or something?" There's a brief pause, probably uncomfortable for the boyfriend, while Kevin and I stare deeply into each others' eyes. "What if he's jealous?" I say curiously to Kevin. "Then I will show him love." Says Kevin, his emerald eyes are unflinching. "I will show him all my love." I get home from the dog park a while later, Romero crowding my every step, eager for his `good walk' treat. Our noisy arrival alerts my lover who hovers over a thick textbook on the dining room table. "Hey." He says glumly as we come into view. "I took astronomy because I thought the stars were cool. Well, now I hate the stars. Stupid stars. Who decided they all had to get their own stupid numeric names?" I grin at him. He comes around the table to welcome me home. "Anyone interesting at the dog park? Any of our regulars?" "An old student of mine." I say to him, slipping my arm behind him to rub his lower back. "And he was a teacher as well." He looks at me quizzically and knows there is an untold story here. But he also knows I will tell him all my stories over time. We have time. I take his right hand and kiss the area under the thumb, the king's kiss. "Someday," says Marky, stretching his free arm up and around my neck, "you're going to have to tell me why you do that." I am in love with a king. My king. My king. I kiss him deeply until he forgets astronomy. Romero grabs a gym shoe and trots away. *** Thank you all who patiently endured a full five chapters before finding out whether Mark and the narrator ever get together after their three weeks. And greater thanks for the wonderful emails of love and support. I met many kings (and one fabulous Queen!) during this story arc. I have partially written the next adventure during which we finally discover the narrator's name. And what happened during those three weeks of separation? Feedback welcome and appreciated. mpls_ted@yahoo.com