Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 01:09:15 -0500 From: Lawrence Prichard Subject: Tuesday Evening-Wednesday Morning 5 Disclaimer and all that. If you are under age to read male-male romance and sex, Begone. (Until you're of age.) Names, locations, and trademarks are fictitious or used fictiously. Reposting on any site other than Nifty.org is forbidden. "De-Lovely" is a nice "date night" dvd! So is the 2003 version of "Kiss Me, Kate." Nancy Anderson does a great job of "Always True to You in My Fashion." Thank you to: RimPig, George Gardner, Tim Mead, and MickeyS. Special thanks to a "Bear in Texas!' Also to all who have read this story and sent email. May your New Year be healthy, happy, and prosperous. All parts copyright 2005-2006 by Lawrence Prichard. ______ Wednesday morning, around 10:30, early winter. Denys's turn. I am really glad that Christmas is winding down. I love the better aspects, but am familiar with some of the worst ones. It will be nice to have Jerome back for a while (at least until mid February!), and to finally put a different spindle of wrapping paper on the dispenser. We don't have a major crush of returns on December 26th, for which we are all grateful. Jerome and I spent a quiet Christmas day together...after church. We had a lovely small meal of pears, and cheese, home made bread, and chocolate, and spent the evening kissing on the sofa. When you have unlimited flowers at wholesale, and really great things around you, gifts mutate in nature. Good gift giving involves careful noticing and memory. Therefore, Jerome's gift to me of two pounds of highest quality cashews and the latest "alphabet" mystery meant so much. I "cheated," and got him a certificate for a massage when he gets his next haircut, and some of his favourite underwear, and a grooming certificate for Wolf. I'm home right now, the housework is current, Mr Smith's cat box is scooped, Wolf is at the groomer, my email is answered. I am sitting at the kitchen table, just content, with a cup of herbal tea. The show we had for Martin and his "Manhattan Tease" teapots? HUGE success. People still love Keith Haring. People love limited edition functional art. Martin sold all the pots he had made that evening, and we begged him to bring whatever signed stock he had on hand the next day. That sold fast, too. Something Beautiful Flowers and Gifts has always had profitable Decembers, after our first one (and even that one broke even,) but this one exceeded my (admittedly dismal) expectations. We would have done well without the show, but the pots, the publicity, and the food, pushed us over the top. We had more than a block of cheese and cheap wine. We didn't have the wine, and the cheese was in my cheese straw pastries. Martin came in yesterday, when I was covering for Bobby. He had called me Monday, and was distressed. Bobby's niece was in a piano recital, and she refused to go on, if Unka Bobby wasn't there. Martin looked a bit like a stunned rabbit. I sat him at the table in the store's kitchen, and poured him a cup of the cocoa I had made, and passed him a small plate of the cinnamon toasties I had made earlier. (Slightly stale sliced bread, butter, a little sugar, a lot of cinnamon. Bake in a low temperature oven till very crunchy.) "Denys, my dammed phone is ringing, people want to commission whole dinnerware services...I don't know if I can do this!" "Martin, you can. You will. Hasn't Kevyn offered to manage all your business details? Didn't you buy a new, bigger kiln this year?" "Yes, and yes. I just am a little nervous about this level of success. I want Kevyn to quit that dammed job at the nursing home, but I am afraid that if he's home every day, we'll just go at it all the day." "Won't happen like that, Martin. Kevyn is very practical and focussed, and he'll help you with that, too. Whether he'll stand over your wheel with a riding crop is entirely up to the two of you." "Heh. Okay. You win." "No, Martin, we all do. You were born to be a potter, Kevyn wants to work with you, and we'll all make lots of money. With lots of money, you have choices. You won't have to decide between choosing clay or gas for your van. You won't have to worry about being financially dependent on Kevyn, not that he minds. You can go back to Vienna and see the Wiener Werkstatte porcelains again. Kevyn will stop coming home screaming with frustration from his job. Jerome and I will be able to support our charities in ways we have wanted to for a long time." Martin finally smiled, and gave me a buddy hug. He's a "negative" of Bobby. Bobby is short, muscular, and blond. Martin is short, muscular (particularly in the shoulders and arms!) and dark. His mother is a stunning Italian-American woman. She was more upset about Martin's career choice than his choice of a partner. However, after Martin started selling his work through Something Beautiful, Lina Zamorella Appleton started to cheer up. My guess is that she thinks we have Martin on salary. Martin left several pitchers and candle lamps, and I cut him a generous, well deserved, check. Jerome came back soon. He had been making deliveries. I was delighted to see him, and he wanted us to go back into the office, and close the door. That was just fine with me. Maria was in the shop. When we got the desk for the office, I think we gave the salesman some fapping material. We saw this big mahogany desk, second hand, and I looked at Jerome. He looked at me. I asked Jerome to sit down at the desk. I then asked the salesman to scram for a few minutes. We took turns under the desk. We both fit in the knee space, one at a time! Why not? We're two bears in love! _____ Feedback welcome. OhioBear330@webtv.net