Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2017 00:29:49 -0400
From: Milford Slabaugh <tommyhawk1@aol.com>
Subject: An 80-Year-Old Love Affair

                    AN 80-YEAR-OLD LOVE AFFAIR
                      By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
                  WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM

     "He's in Room 304." the nurse told me at the nurse's station in front
of the hospice. "We expected you earlier, we had a birthday party for
him. Too bad you missed it. The photographer was here, though."
     "That's all right." I assured her. "Jim's a great photog, he'll turn
the photos over to me. I really just wanted a chance to talk alone with
Mr. Harker, do a bit of an in-depth interview. Get his perspective on
life."
     The nurse cocked her head on one side. "I'm not sure you'll get a lot
of that. He's a hundred years old today, after all. And between you and me,
I don't think he's going to live a whole lot longer."
     "All the more reason for me to talk to him now." I agreed. "I can come
back if need be, make it a follow-up article instead of putting it with the
birthday picture."
     "Then come with me." she said.
     We walked down the corridor of the hospice. It was a nice place, no
bad smells like you get in some places, where the odor of death and relaxed
bowels has worked its way into the woodwork and you can't get rid of it
with any amount of ammonia and alcohol. Only solution is to tear the
building down.
     But none of that was here, thank God! The residents were all wearing
robes and slippers and pajamas and most were in their beds or watching
their televisions in the small chair that stood next to every bed. None of
the rooms had doors on them, nor even complete walls, they were more like
alcoves, none of them more than eight feet by ten feet, but I guess that's
why they didn't have the doors or walls. Though everyone seemed relaxed and
kind, I would have hated to live like this. Maybe when you get that old, it
doesn't bother you any longer.
     Mr. Harker was a small, thin figure in the bed, wearing light blue
pajamas and a white thin sheet over him. The television was going, but he
wasn't looking at it. He looked tired, in a way that no amount of rest or
sleep would remove. Tired of living.
     He turned an eye over to me and I introduced myself. He perked up when
he learned who I was, a reporter here to do an article about him. "My
article is to be about you, Mr. Harker, a bit about your life. It can be as
short or long as you want to make it. Start wherever you feel like, tell
what you want and we'll stop whenever you want."
     Mr. Harker looked over at me and for the first time, a spark of light
grew in his eyes. "You know, you're the first one who's sat in that chair
that said that and really meant that."
     I smiled. "It's my job. I want to sell the paper an article about
you. Whatever you give me, I can work with it."
     "All right, wherever I want to start. Let's start in March 1930."
     Six months after the start of the Depression. "That would make you
what, nineteen years old at that time?"
     "Eighteen and a half." He said it like it was a figure he'd remembered
for a long time. "I'd graduated from high school two months before and set
out to build a life on my own. I knew times were tough, but I figured an
honest, hard-working man wouldn't have any trouble.
     "I was wrong." he paused for a while. "You got to remember that we
hadn't never had times like that before. Bad times now and then, but even
the bad times hadn't been that bad. Not for a honest, hard-working man."
     By March of that year, I was living in a Hooverville in a tent and
standing in line for soup at the Christ's Army Mission a couple blocks down
the street. They'd feed you for free every night, but for breakfast and
lunch, you were on your own. Most days, that soup was the only food I'd get
all day long. I'd get an odd job now and then, a few dimes here and there,
but a man's got to eat, don't he? And then the money would be gone again
and I'd be right back in that line. You get there, pick up a bowl and a
spoon and shuffle on down to where they fill it with whatever they've been
able to cook for you that day. Sometimes there'd be meat in it, most
usually not. You stopped caring, it was hot and it would stop your stomach
rumbling. I'd take three notches in my belt and my ribs were just beginning
to show. They'd never shown before not even as a kid, but I could see them
now.
     "Then in through the door came three men. And you could tell the
minute they came in that they weren't living on Christ's Army Mission
soup."
     "They looked us over like we were a bunch of puppies in a litter that
they were thinking of adopting. They got to me and one of them said, 'How
about this one? He's a big one, and good looking, too.' He came up to me
and grabbed me by the chin and turned me around. 'And look at those pretty
blue eyes he has. They'll look good up on the big screen.'
     "'Sure, we'll take him.' a second one agreed. He seemed to be the one
in charge. 'For the other, pick us one with a darker look to him.'
     "'How about this one?' came the call from near the front of the
line. He pulled the guy out of the line, still clutching his bowl and spoon
(I wasn't far enough front to even pick up the bowl and spoon yet), and I
got a look at him. Where my hair was a pale, sandy brown, his was black as
it could be. We weighed about the same, I guess, but he looked somehow
broader and more compact than me. I had about three inches height over
him...of course, I didn't spot that right then, but later."
     Mr. Harker shifted on his bed and said, "Anyway, we went over to one
of the tables and I looked back at the line, worried, if this took too
long, I'd have to get into the back of the line again and sometimes they'd
run out of food before they served everyone.
     "But they had an interesting offer to make. They wanted me and this
other guy, name of Robert Pullman, to help them make a short film. Bob told
them he didn't know anything about how to be an actor, and I agreed, but
they said that wouldn't matter, that it was a silent film and all we had to
do was what they said and let them film us. The film was being specially
made for a small audience, filming would last only one day, and for our
work, they'd pay us each twenty dollars."
     "And to top it all off, they'd take us out to dinner to the best
restaurant in town. I tell you, there may have been happier people in the
world than me and Bob that night, but I wouldn't know who or where they
were." Mr. Harker's withered, wrinkled face wore a beatific smile in the
memory of that. His voice trickled on after that, slow but steady, the
tones of his words like that of water through a small mountain stream.
     "Sounds like a terrific offer, all right." I agreed. Twenty dollars in
1930 would have been like two hundred dollars today. For a man on the
tramp, it was wonderful. "So what happened next?"
     "They took me and Bob to a place called Marcon's, where we each ate
one of the biggest steaks I'd ever seen. I hadn't had beef in so long, I'd
nearly forgotten what it tasted like. And a baked potato and corn and soft,
fluffy biscuits and...." Mr. Harker yawned. "It was great, all right. Then
they took us to a hotel and checked us into a room for the night. I worried
some that my stuff waiting back in the Hooverville might get taken by
someone, but with that much money coming, I could buy it all over again if
I had to. I got to talking with Bob that night and turns out we had a lot
in common. We stayed up pretty darned late, telling stories and memories
and jokes and hopes and dreams. By the next morning, he and I were as good
friends as you would find anywhere. I know I woke up the next morning all
wrapped around him like I would with my brother when I was a youngster back
in Ohio. We had breakfast and then set out for the address they'd given us
the night before, had to ride three trolley cars to get there. It took the
last coins we had on us and I had to loan Bob my last nickel for us to do
that.
     "I don't know what I expected for that film. Movies in those days were
kind of mixed up, you had a few color movies, more black and white movies,
and even some silent films now and then. We ended up in a house out on the
outskirts of town, and the house had been empty for some time, it had a
'For Sale' sign out front. But inside, they'd gotten one room fixed up, a
bedroom, just like in a regular house, all the way up to wallpaper on the
walls and sheets on the bed and pictures on the wall. The men we'd seen the
night before were the only ones there, and while the other two set things
up to film the bed, the one in charge explained to Bob and me what we had
to do to earn that twenty dollars.
     "These days they make those movies all the time. But this was possibly
the very first one they'd ever made like this. The first gay porno."
     "You were the first gay porn star?" I asked, unbelieving.
     Mr. Harker looked at me, and chuckled. "Well, we'll never know. The
men were creating the movie for some rich guy with more money than good
sense. Only he and his friends would ever see it, or that's what they told
Bob and me. And if we'd do that, they'd pay us the twenty dollars each
they'd agreed on. If not, well, there was the door. We could go, no hard
feelings."
     "They knew they had us. You can't sleep in a tent in a dirty
Hooverville, live on bread lines and soup kitchens and then get a taste of
real food and a real bed and just walk away from it. That twenty dollars
would let the two of us live like real men for nearly a month. And in that
time, maybe we'd find a real job and get out of the Hooverville for
good. Even in those days, men were finding jobs. You'd hear about it, now
and then. But you had to stay alive until it was your turn to be lucky.
     "So I looked over at Bob with a look like you can only imagine. How do
you ask a person who's just barely become a new friend to do something like
that? In front of a camera, no less? I tried to talk, couldn't, gulped real
hard and before I could say a word, Bob said, 'I know what you mean. I
guess we have to.'
     "'Yeah, that's how I figure it.' I said and turned to the man, Howard
his name was, they didn't never give us anything more'n first names. 'Okay,
Howard, we'll do it.'"
     "There wasn't any plotline to this film of theirs. So the first order
was to get naked. I never felt nakeder than I did that morning, even though
I'd stripped down to my boxers to get in bed with Bob the night
before. This was only removing one more piece of clothing than I did then,
I kept telling myself as I fought with the buttons on my shirt."
     Mr. Harker's fingers moved up to the buttons on his pajamas as he
spoke, like he was about to try to take his pajama top open. I got a brief
flash of the man he had been back over eighty years before, young and
fumbling, forced by circumstances into being a sexual performer. "So how
did you manage after that?" I asked, for he'd stopped talking.
     "What saved me was looking over at Bob. He was looking at me and he
was smiling. Just like he'd done the night before, soft, warm, welcoming. A
big, good-looking man, Bob was, and he and I were about to make love. His
smile grew bigger as he saw me looking at him and I grinned back at him and
suddenly it didn't seem like such a bad thing after all.
     "That let me get my shoes, socks and pants off, and then Bob was
completely naked. 'Get into bed, Bob.' Howard instructed. 'Lie back on top
of it. Jeff, you'll crawl in on top of him when we start the camera
rolling.'
     "I had my hands on my boxers as he said that and I looked at him then
over at Bob. He was lying on the bed, completely nude and then at his
johnson that was lying across his leg. 'Come on in.'" he said to me. 'I'm
waiting for you.' And his johnson kind of jerked and began to stand up.
     "'Cameras rolling.' Howard told me. Whenever you're ready.'
     "I slid my boxers down my legs, with some trouble, because I had
thrown a woody. Bob just gave a small laugh when he saw it and his own rod
began to rise up from off his leg.
     "'All right, looking good. You're two good friends about to have some
fun.' Howard told us. 'You crawl in on top of him and just hug and kiss on
him.'
     "I crawled in and Bob's arms came up and wrapped around me and they
were warm and soft and while I'd been feeling really funny about kissing
another man, when I did, it felt like the most natural and normal thing in
the world. Howard kept giving us instructions and we'd have to listen to
him and change things as we moved, but I kissed him a long time, then began
to work my way over his face and down his neck, nibbling as I went--that
was Howard's instructions again--and then I was kissing and fondling one of
his nipples on his chest. I'd never even thought about doing such a thing
and Howard had to tell me what to do but my kissing and rolling my tongue
around on it and pinching it with my teeth all made Bob moan and groan and
his cock was a hard piece of hot steel on my stomach at that time.
     "And then I was doing the same kind of things to his navel, digging my
tongue into it.
     "'Now you're ready to suck on his cock.'" Howard told me and my heart
went into my throat. "And turn around on the bed, get your own cock up
there where Bob can suck on you at the same time." Howard went on.
     "The thought of Bob's warm mouth that I'd been so recently kissing
being wrapped around my prick made me practically faint. So I scooted
around and I had no more than done that than Bob caught hold of my cock and
had crammed it into his mouth. I was suddenly surrounded by warm moisture,
and then the feel of velvet on my shaft and then the tongue came up and
flicked at the bottom of my cockhead and it was just the most wonderful
thing I'd ever felt in my life."
     "I had to shift myself around and get my own cock into a more
comfortable position. I hadn't expected to be turned on by the story of a
hundred-year-old man lying on a bed, his voice getting softer and hoarser
as he talked on and on. But he didn't falter, didn't slur over any of the
words, it was like this was something he was living through all over again
as he told it to me, his voice strong and dreamy and beginning to weaken
from the labor of speaking.
     "With Bob sucking on my cock for me, it was easy for me to do it for
him, too. The hot flavor of his precome was salty and stinging to my lips
and then the cockhead's taste, kind of spongy and kind of musky and kind of
sweet all at once. I didn't have any trouble getting it all the way inside
my mouth. Howard told me to work up some saliva and watch my teeth and all
that, but hell, any person knows that stuff, just from imagining what it'd
be like to have it happen to you. So we were soon bobbing up and down on
each other and Howard was talking nonstop and getting kind of excited. He
had me and Bob move into different positions, me on bottom, then on our
sides, and they'd make us stop for a while, so they could move their
cameras, and the first time I let Bob go and he held onto my own cock, and
after that, I held on, too.
     "I was getting pretty worked up after a half hour or so of this, and
then Howard said, "Okay, now one of you needs to fuck the other. Which one
should it be, who gets fucked?"
     "I looked at Bob and he looked at me and at the same time, we both
said, 'It can be me.'"
     "Howard laughed at that, and said, 'Okay, we'll let you two take turns
here. Who should be first?' Before either of us could answer, he went on,
'Bob, you fuck Jeff first.'"
     "I gulped hard at that and Bob said to be softly, 'It's all right,
Jeff. I'll take it easy on you.'"
     "So I rolled onto my back with my legs up and Bob got in between them
and one hand guided his cock into my ass. It was already slicked up with a
lot of my saliva, and Bob pressed it against my hole and said, 'Okay, here
it comes. Brace yourself, it's going to hurt no matter what I do.'"
     "He pushed into me and it did hurt, and I saw Bob's face crinkling up
as he winced at how he was hurting me. But he got it into me after a while
and then the cameras were turned back on and then he began to move on
me. As the pain went away, I felt a pleasure unlike anything I'd ever felt
before. To have a man's cock inside your ass is about the greatest joy a
man can feel, and it's a damned shame that most men will never experience
it. Worried about their masculinity. Pfaugh! Like that would make a man
less of a man, giving his best buddy pleasure while getting some for
himself!" Mr. Harker's voice which had been wavering, grew stronger for a
moment. He paused to breathe hard for a while, then he started talking
again.
     "I began to pant hard and Howard saw that and warned me, 'Don't get
too turned on, Jeff, you have to keep yours back to use when you fuck
Bob!'" So I just clutched and held on while Bob kept driving that dong in
and out of me and it was hard, so very hard, not to join him when he began
to moan in pleasure and when he shot his load into me, it was so, so
sweet. His face flushed red and his eyes closed and his mouth opened and
his whole face got so soft, like a child's, for just a moment there, and
then he was done and he slumped onto me, breathing hard.
     "'Okay, Jeff, it's your turn. Hurry up, you don't want to wait too
long here, fuck him while you're still all worked up from him fucking
you.'"
     "So I rolled Bob over, still breathing hard and he rolled onto his
stomach, nearly going off the bed in the process and I got on top of him
and his legs spread and let me in between him. I stuck my cock into him
with him lying down flat on the bed, and I was right on top of him. We had
to hold that position while they moved the cameras around, one on our faces
and one up between our legs, so they could see me fucking Bob.
     "I lasted longer doing that than I thought I would, I fucked him for
some time, and Bob raised up and we got up with him on all fours and me
kneeling behind him and I humped at him and that was how I reached my
completion. I felt at peace for the first time since I'd left home as I
squirted my jizz into Bob's ass and then we slumped onto the bed and those
cameras came in close on our faces, the two of us, tired and satisfied."
     Mr. Harker was quiet for a time and I said, "And what happened after
that?"
     "Howard paid us our money and we were allowed to leave. With that much
money in my pocket, I was able to keep myself better for a couple months
after that and by then, I'd found a job in a factory, which was making
machinery, only a dozen hours per week, but it let me live through the
Depression."
     Mr. Harker's voice had softened down to a whisper. "And now, young
fellow, I'm mighty tired."
     "May I come back tomorrow and talk to you some more?" I asked as I got
up. It was a hell of a story, but you can't put a story like that in a
public newspaper. I left Mr. Harker there and it looked like he was asleep
when I looked last at him.
     Turns out he died sometime in the next hour, because when the nurse
checked on him, he had been dead for some time. I asked the nurse I'd
spoken with the day before about him, what she knew.
     "Did he tell you about Robert Pullman?" she asked me in turn.
     "Yes, some." I nodded.
     "Those two were some characters." she said. "He talked about Bob all
the time after Bob died."
     "He told me how they met."
     "Really?" she looked at me. "All I knew was it was back in the
Depression."
     "Can you fill in what happened after that?"
     "Oh, those two were inseparable. They lived together during the
Depression after they met, went to war together in France during the Second
World War, came home and started their own business."
     "Stayed together all that time?" I asked.
     "Up until the very day they died." she agreed. "Mr. Pullman passed
away a week or so ago and after that, it was like he didn't want to live
any longer. Hard to keep a man alive when he doesn't want to live."
     "Yeah." I put away my notes. "Thank you very much."
     "Did you get your story out of this?" she asked.
     "Yeah, I got my story." I said as I was leaving. I didn't know where
I'd sell the story but I knew this much. It was a love story, more than
eighty years old. And somewhere, somehow, I was going to tell it.

                             THE END
               Comments, complaints or suggestions?
             E-mail the Author at Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
                  WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM