<disclaimer>
The various nations of the world have varying ideas about who may touch whom in various ways on various parts of their bodies. In the United States, contact considered "sexual" is generally limited to those who are eighteen years of age or older. Throughout much of Europe, that age is often sixteen, though some nations consider fourteen to be an acceptable limit; in fact, there are still yet a few societies in which twelve is an acceptable age of consent.

In this realistic treatment of the topic, which takes place in the US, US rules apply. "Eighteen or older" is the rule. However, as in the author's youth, the people in this story are not ones to be much concerned about such rules. But it might be illegal for you to even READ about such things. Meanwhile, here, a youth and an adult have quite the dashingly gay affair.

As always, this author has no interest in telling pure JO stories. As always, there IS a story, and, hopefully, you will find the people interesting and their challenges exciting. There are, however, many sexy parts because sex is fun, and fun is good.
</disclaimer>


Author’s note: By the time you get to the end of this chapter, you will understand why I made you wait so long before getting to the really sexy parts. That begins in the next chapter, by the way, and thank you for your patience.

The Art of Pickup: The Close

Nathan was feeling protective of Adrian. It was likely that Adrian would explode into the gay scene, and he would likely be overwhelmed by the guys who wanted to savagely fuck him and laugh – whether cruelly or sadly – when he wanted a “relationship.” His problem, Nathan knew, would be not how to hit on guys, but how to fend them off. Nathan wanted to help insure he did not have horrible experiences, and he wanted to give him some hints about how to protect his reputation while at the same time encouraging him to be more agressive. Adrian was the prize. In Nathan’s opinion, Adrian could be and should be picky. Adrian could also find the prizes, and those kinds were likely to be as shy as he. It was a delicate and subtle art. Adrian needed to be the one choosing, not the other way around. In Nathan’s opinion, a good offense was the best defense.

Adrian said, “So I notice he gave you a nice compliment when he admitted he was hitting on you. So that made it clear, but was that the moment you told him you were gay too, and indicated you found him attractive, like I did when you came out to me?”

“Yes, Adrian. Like that. Only you were slicker. You also suggested your action, which was a ‘top,’ indicating that your interest had qualifiers, and you were not a bitch.”

Adrian grinned. “I do want to fuck you, Nathan. I want to fuck you good! Is that a problem?”

“Only if that’s all you want.”

“That’s not ‘all’ I want.”

“Good then. I like your self-confidence in this matter. It’s a huge turn on for me. I like my guys saucy. But as far as who is fucking who, well, we are going to have to negotiate. I’m a top myself, so I hear.”

Adrian chuckled, pleased with himself. “We can having a pissing contest. I bet I can piss more than you!”

“Not fair! I already acknowledge your superiority! But you say you have ‘long dick?’”

“Yeah. Like eight inches!”

“Hot! So that means you got me beat. A little. Well then… Hmmm… OK. We’ll work that out!”

Adrian asked, “You’re not afraid of anyone or anything, are you?” He asked it casually, but it was an intense question.

“Nope,” Nathan answered back with the same casualness. It was almost true. “But do you want to hear my comeback to Brian?”

“Yeah, Nathan, I do.”

Seeing a break, Nathan broke free from the trucks, and cresting the next rise, they had their first view of Lake Shasta, the largest artificial lake in California. The “damn” dam had remained a controversial topic in California water politics since it was proposed, and it had recently hit the news again over the proposed height addition due to an enduring drought. Nathan told Adrian none of that. The lake, still full, was an impressive sight. The freeway would bring many views of its vast expanse in and out of sight for many miles.

He told Adrian, “Since he indicated his interest, and notice how he did it, like he wouldn’t be offended if I turned him down, but suggesting that he was also interested in more than my pretty young body, see? There was friendship there? A genuine connection? But anyway, he gave me an opening. I took it. I simply said, ‘Well that makes it easy for me to say that I think you are one elegant and handsome man!’

“He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, but he gave me the old ‘up and down,’ really checking me out. I just kept looking at him. In sales, we have a saying, ‘The guy who speaks next, loses.’”

Adrian grinned his “Light Up the World” grin. “So who lost?”

Nathan laughed, enjoying the triumph of the memory, and noticing then again how Adrian had drawn him out so well, getting him to talk about his beloved Brian, and rekindling the deep bond he had felt. “He did! He lost!

“He said, ‘I guess the next step is where we negotiate over the action, huh?’

“I was in the zone then. We had established that I was the prize, so he had to earn! I said, ‘No. No negotiation. The next part is where I find out whether you are a good kisser, and if you won’t kiss me, I’m not showing you my work!’

“See? It was on! One hundred percent gay. We were fully out. He laughed. Brian had a great laugh. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I like a challenge. I have a great camping spot, Nathan. It’s shady and cool in the day. You can’t haul much in a Jeep, you know, so it’s pretty basic, but I hope you like my camp. Will you join me for a dinner of wild trout? I have service for two. One never knows when a splendid young man might drop by.’ That was Brian. Classy dude.

“‘I’d be delighted, Brian,’ I told him.”

Adrian sighed. “This story is so romantic, Nathan! I love this! You two were an item, like, within minutes!”

“Pretty much. We really hit it off.”

Adrian sighed again. “Like you and me, huh?”

“There are some eerie parallels, are there not, Adrian?”

“Yeah. I was thinking that. Kinda cool, really.”

Past the last views of the lake then, the freeway climbed higher into the mountains, which were taking on an aspect not unlike the cragginess of the Rockies. The mountains would not remain so rugged, for they were passing over a spur of the Sierra Nevadas. Once on the other side, they would drop in elevation again and the landscape would be gentler with mixed forests of deciduous and evergreens, much like the Appalachians, though the slopes of the mountains were generally steeper.

Both remained silent, lost in the magnificent beauty of the land. Finally, as the freeway followed to the side of the river, Adrian asked, “Is that still the Sacramento River?”

“It is. Different now, huh? Fun for riding a kayak in!”

“Yeah! Lots of whitewater!”

“Some of the best trout fishing in the world, right there, but I know even better spots. The McCloud, one canyon over, is the stuff of legends. You never told me if you fished.”

“Not much, no. I’ve gone ocean fishing with my dad in boats. I thought it was kinda boring, mainly. Are you disappointed?”

“No one is perfect, Adrian,” Nathan kidded. “You might like small stream fishing though. It’s very active. No waiting, always moving, wading upstream. I find lake fishing to be boring myself. Never fished in the ocean though.”

Adrian said, “You can show me. But I liked driving the boat!”

“You ever do any sailing?”

“No. Have you?”

“A little. Always wanted to have a sailboat. The idea of living aboard always appealed to me, but it never suited my need to have a place to work on cars or make furniture and such. I think I’d need to moor my boat at a boatyard to satisfy my need to make things all the time.”

“Either that or a big boat!”

“Well, it would have to be a ship!”

“Why not, Nathan? Aren’t you rich enough for that?”

“Yeah. Now that you mention it. I am.”

Nathan said casually, but it was true.

Ignoring that, Adrian asked, “So how did it go with Brian that first night?”

“It went different in an unexpected way, Adrian. The thing about us old guys is we are used to being in command. We will tend to take control without even meaning to, even though we are trying to keep things equal, and that happened with Brian and me.”

“How so, exactly?”

“Well, he took me to his camp. I do not know if you and I will get the same spot. It depends on how crowded the place is, but his camp was the furthest back and the most private and shady. There’s another that’s more open and sunny, but it has the best view. We’ll see, but I did like his camp. It’s right next to a spring, and though it’s private, all the locals will need to walk through to get to that water. It’s understood. But he had a tent in which one could stand, not large, but not too small. He had a table and chairs of aluminum, quite light and elegant that folded to a small size. His gear was all of European manufacture. Very beautiful in the details, and all designed to fit in the back of a Jeep. The table and chairs were luxury items. For years, I did not even carry them, yet Brian had an appreciation for minimalism nonetheless. You ever notice how so many Jeeps have extra cargo racks attached to the back?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, basically, a big ice chest and two fat sleeping bags will almost fill the back area behind the seats. When he was loaded up, his gear, as Spartan as it was, filled the whole space behind the seats all the way to the roll cage. Even so, he had accommodations for two. He liked those young men, my Brian did, and he was fond of ‘picking up strays,’ as he called them, so he came prepared.”

“Like you?”

“Like me, yes, so it was as he said, he had ‘service for two.’ After the briefest of tours, I felt the moment was right, so I moved to him, very close, but not quite touching, and with one hand, I touched the scar on his cheek. That was my left hand, you know, also scarred. He had not asked me about that yet. People are chary of that, right? I do understand. It is considered anti-social to confront potentially painful topics until one is closer with a new person. I asked him, ‘How did you get this scar on your cheek?’

Nathan laughed. “However, as is sometimes the case with strong, confident people, they blow right through that shit, like you did with me. He told me, ‘In a sword fight. How did you get yours?’ I told him, ‘In a gun fight.’ We were both telling the truth, more or less; me less, him more.”

Adrian asked, “How old were you when that happened? You never said.”

“Fourteen. That was the end of dressing in drag. I was way too butch for that to work any more, which, I came to see, was a blessing, for I had a streak of vanity that was burned away, I do confess it. But the story is not romantic. It was dumb. I was out quail hunting with Coco and a kid named Mike. We were sitting on this old capped off well at the edge of an orchard. The field next to us had recently been cleared of an aged orchard, and there were all these piled limbs and branches. Quail love that kind of thing for their nests. I was leaning back on my arms with my hands flat. It was a gray day, in the fall, but the sun had just peeked out through a break in the cloud cover. I had my head up and was simply enjoying the warmth on my cheeks. Coco and I were using 22 rifles. We’d shoot the birds in the head so there would be clean meat, but Mike had a 410. You know what that is?

“Yeah, it’s a light gauge shotgun for small birds.”

“Yes. I never liked the way you always ended up with pellets in the meat, but anyway, he had been opening and closing it – it was a single shot – putting a shell in and taking it out. It was the first time I’d hunted with him. He was hectic and a bit manic. He was always shooting random shit too. I did not like him much. He’d steal our kills too, suddenly blasting, usually missing, often maiming the birds – which he thought was funny – while we were aiming. I had decided I was going to announce I was done hunting and walk home. I absolutely detested him!

“And then, suddenly, BOOM!

“He fucking shot me!

“And here’s the weird, creepy thing. For an instant, just a split instant, he giggled!

“Fuuuuck, dude!”

“I know, right? And what’s funny is that it did not hurt all that much. Not at first. I looked at my hand, puzzled, like, ‘What the fuck?’

“I didn’t know what I was seeing, and then it hit me, even as he was shouting, not an apology, but, ‘I didn’t know it was loaded! It was an accident!’

“My hand was not squirting blood. It had not started to bleed really badly. But I had heard that giggle through my ringing ears, and I picked up my rifle by the barrel, stood up, and swung it at his head!

“It connected with an interesting sound, halfway between a crack and a thump, and he fell over with a low groan.

“I reared back for another swing, fully intending to dash his fucking brains right out of his fucking head, but Coco grabbed me, saying, ‘We gotta get you to a hospital, Nato!’

“I looked at him dazed.

“I was feeling really weird and spinny.

“It took me a second to even recognize him. He was hanging on to me, and then the first wave of pain did hit me.

“I plonked down on the wooden boards of that well cover and held my hand. I looked around for my fingers, but they were just broken chunks of meat, skin, and bone. Bones are really white! A lot of bloody skin was hanging in shreds.

“Coco tore off his jacket and ripped off his shirt, He ripped it in half and half again and he made a bandage. He held me with one of my arms over his shoulders, and I was out of it! I was not sure what had happened!”

“And that kid, ‘Mike?’”

“We left him. He was out cold. Anyhow, the nearest house was about a half mile away. Coco had our guns, by the way. Cool customer, that guy. Good presence of mind. I told you he was a great guy. He’s the guy you want around when shit gets crazy…”

“My dad calls that a ‘clutch situation.’ He says the same thing. You find out about people then, but only then.”

“Yeah, exactly, but, anyway, at the farmhouse the woman was all calm. She called the ambulance – actually she called 911, and the sheriff’s deputies showed up before the ambulance. The woman redressed the wound. She sprayed some disinfectant on it. Coco explained what happened. It was all I could do to keep from puking. Later, Coco said I was growling like ‘junkyard dog.’ And the deputies were trying to get me to explain, but I was in a state! I remember saying, ‘Fuck you! I’m not telling you shit!’ And one of them actually laughed at that, saying, ‘Oh, don’t be such an asshole! We are trying to help!’

“And then, I could feel the tears starting to come, but I was not going to cry, so I just said, ‘I was just sitting there, and he fucking shot me! Why did he shoot me?’ And the other deputy was saying, ‘I’m going to go find the other kid.’ He said something about grabbing a camera too. Then the ambulance came, and my mom was already at the hospital when we got there. Coco stayed behind. The cops wanted him there, and there was nothing he could do anyway. They had to trim back a bit of bone in all the fingers to makes it so there was enough skin to cover the stumps in the first, emergency operation. I had a second, later, to sort of clean it all up.”

Adrian observed, “It doesn’t look bad, Nathan. It’s hardly noticeable.”

Nathan snorted. “I’ve heard that, yes. I’m not quite persuaded, but thanks for saying so.

“Anyway, the final part of the story was I had a visit from a sheriff’s deputy in the hospital on the last day, when I was off the painkillers except for some weak pills, and I told him the whole story as best I could remember. He wouldn’t tell me anything. He said nothing about the other kid, but I already knew from Coco that Mike had come to, ran home, and said I had attacked him! He had ‘defended’ himself! His parents were trying to press charges! Can you believe that? But the sheriff’s department never bought that story; instead, they arrested that kid and the DA took the parents to court, but in the end, it all just went away. It was kind of a ‘shit happens’ thing. My dad was pissed! Not at my ‘aggravated assault,’ but at that family. I remember him saying, ‘This will be over when they are either dead, or gone.’ Well, as it turned out, they were gone. They left town, whereabouts unknown. Neither the kid or the parents ever did apologize. That’s all they would have had to do, you know?”

“Wow, man. But you called it a ‘gunfight.’ I’d say it was! Only you didn’t use your gun to shoot.”

“Awww… You got me all riled up now. I fucking hate telling that story, even after all these years.”

Adrian looked at Nathan quizzically. “It’s a cool story, Nathan. I’m glad you told me. It tells a lot about you. It makes me like you more.”

Nathan took a long, shuddering breath. “Well, when you put it that way, great. Thanks for listening, but anyway, Brian also wanted to hear the story, and I liked telling it even less then, so I said, ‘Would you like to hear about blood and bones or would you like to kiss a beautiful boy? Your choice!’

“Well, you know what he picked, and we kissed. God how I loved the feel of his hard body in my arms. The guy had, like, nine percent body fat. It was like holding forged steel! That first kiss was nothing special though. He always needed a warm up, Brian did. Me too. But we felt great in each others arms together, and I felt myself relax. He said, ‘I’d really like to see your drawings before we go further. I’d rather wait until evening. Is that all right, Nathan?’

“That was all right. I had been stressed about food; he had food. I had been lonely; he was good company. He had some wine, he said. Soon, I was pleasantly buzzed and showing him my sketchpad. We stayed touching though. Our bodies always close, and he would lay a hand on my shoulder or rest a forearm on my knee. He was affectionate to me. It was sweet. My work was all pencils then. Not ink, watercolors, markers, and not charcoal.

“What did he think?”

“Well, that’s the funny thing. He was all, ‘This is good. This sucks!’ He was brutal! He did not mince words! One drawing – I think it was one of my pathetic attempts to draw people – he even ripped out of the sketchbook and said, ‘Shit. Absolute shit!’ He threw it into the fire pit, all crumpled up!”

Nathan laughed loudly at the memory of it.

“I never had an art teacher talk like that! They were always ‘nice.’ Even when they didn’t like it. Not Brian. He had no tolerance for crap. I was pretty flabbergasted, but I wasn’t upset. Mainly, I agreed with him. Not perfectly, but mainly. His assessment of my work mainly agreed with my own. Plus, the wine helped. It was excellent wine! Red wine, ‘like drinking the blood of Jesus,’ he said! Man, he was a kick!”

They had then their first view of mighty Mount Shasta, rising up above the surrounding terrain some ten thousand feet, like Mount Fuji. There are taller mountains, but few, if any, more beautiful. Though they were driving in the shadow of the range to their east and some cars had turned their headlights on, Shasta was still in brilliant sunlight, and, at that time of early June, still with much snow. Adrian was so delighted by the sight, he clapped his hands.

“That mountain is really something, huh, Adrian?”

“I’ll say! Wow!”

“We will be camping in sight of it.”

“I notice you say, ‘it,’ Nathan, but I was thinking, ‘him.’ Doesn’t Mount Shasta feel like a boy mountain?”

“Now that you mention it, yes! Hmmm… interesting question! Shasta is an active volcano. He is capable of having eruptions…”

Adrian interrupted with, “Like ejaculations!”

“Yes! When we get there, and we meet campers, let’s survey them and see what others feel!”

“Yeah! But anyway, you were going somewhere with Brian’s art critique. You mentioned he was a collector.”

“Adrian, your conversational skills are remarkable! How did you get to be so old for one so young?”

Adrian grinned. “I think that is due, if it is even true, to my high society mother. My sister and I talk and talk with her. She is always asking questions, and she has many times given me social instructions. Our house is a party house for all the ‘Who’s Who’ in Portland financial circles. As children, we participated. It was expected. I much enjoyed it.”

Nathan nodded. “Brian would adore you!”

“So? Hint hint?”

Nathan laughed again. He had forgotten how depressed he was at the start of the trip. But at that moment, he was full of joy. He would tell Adrian this, but as was his way, he saved the praise for later. “Yes. Well, I asked him, ‘So what makes you such a fucking expert?’ He just said, ‘I am an expert.’ I said, ‘Art is just a matter of opinion,’ and he said, ‘If you believe that, I have some nice green real estate you might be interested in. Don’t be sophomoric. Some opinions are informed, others are worse than ignorant for their vanity. Tell me that’s not true!’

“He had me there. So I said, ‘Well, how did you get to be so “informed,” if that is what you are, which has by no means been established.’

“‘Fair question,’ he answered, flipping a page and coming on one of my favorite drawings where I simply drew some water swirling around a rock. He looked at it and said, ‘You see this? Very good! When you shine, you shine brilliantly, but to answer your question, I spent my youth in the atelier of a great Italian artist in a little village near Florence. As his apprentice, I assisted in painting and restoring many frescos throughout Italy. Art is my favorite of human endeavors. I have been to every great museum in the world. I have read thousands of books. I have been a collector of art my whole life. I know art. I know what is good, and I know what sucks. I also know what kind of art sells itself and what kind of art needs a song and dance to get people to even look at it. Now, I must say, I find such braggadocio tiresome, and I am amused that you instigated this rant, but if you listen to me, I can help you. They do not teach art in school! It is a sacred torch to be passed from one hand to another on an individual basis, not in factoria! You have not yet studied art, and your opinion that you have studied art, and that you know, will forever prevent you from learning.’

“‘I,’ he said, ‘have studied art, and now young man, I will show you my power!’

“I, Adrian, was in love. Right then. That was the moment.”

“I am feeling it, Nathan. The way you talk when you imitate him. The tone your voice takes. Wow!”

Nathan laughed again. “It was, just then, at that time, still midday. Brian said, ‘This is the most difficult light of all. One does well to find subjects in full sunlight or deep shadow, but let us go on an adventure! Grab your pencils and paper!’

“He did not wait. He was up and going, walking down the little dirt road out of camp towards the one that led to the river, and I hopped up to join him, grabbing my one sheaf of fresh paper and my little pack of pencils and running to catch up, barefoot then, by the way.

“Now, over the years, I heard Brian discuss many theories of art and art criticism. He was, for me, graduate school. I had some basics. I had a fairly well rounded education, but I was to learn that he considered my college degree hardy more than AP high school, and he had me read, many, many books, and he much enjoyed discussing these with me. I do not wish to short change this education, but at that time, on that walk, he talked about the ‘classic, romantic’ dichotomy, and he cited the popular author, Robert Pirsig, who wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Kenneth Clarke, a British art critic and art historian, and Friedrich Nietzsche, of whom you have no doubt heard of and may have studied?”

“We had some essays of his we analyzed in one of classes I took at the community college while I was still in high school, Nathan. And my mother has Pirsig’s book in her library. I have not read it, but I love the title! But Clarke, I have not heard of.”

“OK. Good, so you are on the same page I was at that time. Nietzsche, I had found to be a mixed bag of brilliant and ridiculous, but college had broken me of the habit of simple sayings to encompass complex things. Pirsig, he told me, was ‘rather seventies’ but did popularize interesting philosophic notions about people’s relationships with technology, while Clarke, he found, ‘intellectually balanced,’ and ‘eminently readable,’ and the whole thrust of this was to introduce me to the idea that one way of looking at art was to see that ‘Romantics’ tend to view the world as ‘awesome’ in the original sense of the word – awe inspiring, but in a terrifying way, like a storm or an explosion, while ‘Classicists’ are analytical, and prefer the ‘calm and grand’ in art, seeing life as something that can be understood and mastered. He placed me in the latter category, and I agreed with him completely. He said this showed in my work. It was all about ‘structure and relationships’ and my fascination with this led me to use beautiful lines to describe the shapes of things, but I had little appreciation for outward appearances as revealed by ‘fleeting effects of light and shade,’ which, ‘to their credit,’ the Romantics tended to ‘grasp intuitively,’ and he posed all these things not as eternal truths, but ways of seeing that a free spirit could ‘essay.’ In the end, he used his teacher’s words to tell me that I was in love with the ‘felt object’ like a sculptor, not the ‘seen object’ like a painter, and he would then show the latter.”

“I think I might be a Romantic, Nathan.”

Nathan smiled. “Do not think that by ‘Romantic’ we mean a lover of beauty and romance. Romantics in this sense fear progress, change, and technology. They are overwhelmed by forces beyond their control. They will tend to embrace naïve religion that worships authority figures or thin, hipster philosophy, and this describes the majority of humans, but you are not like that, I do not think.”

“No, I am not like that. But who would admit they were? But, anyway, OK, so he is using these terms in a specialized way.”

“Yes, exactly! God, I love smart people! Thank you! OK. Now, to continue, as we walked – and I won’t ruin your surprise by describing this place because, in about a half an hour, I will show you, he was talking about all this, and we came to this beautiful little pool, about chest deep, ten feet wide, and twenty feet long, hidden in a little hollow on one of the many separate strands of the South Fork as it made its way through a broad valley. I will take you to this very pool, even if it is dark! Oh, I am so excited, Adrian! My feet know the way!

“So, anyway, when we arrived, he grabbed my sketchbook and began drawing, saying, ‘This is how you do it.’ He totally imitated my style. He did a little drawing of some rocks on the far shore with some young willows growing. I saw he was left-handed then. Left-handers have always seemed magic to me…”

“I am left-handed, Nathan.”

“So you prove my point! But, anyway, he carefully set up the composition, and he did a line drawing that looked like I would have done, had I a better touch. It was me, improved! Bam. He whipped it out, just like that! BOOM! Such speed! It was a level of skill and confidence I had never seen. He was a virtuoso! Amazing! He made a drawing that looked like I had done it, so right then, I knew. I knew he was WAY past a real artist, he was a master!

“I looked at that sketch, stunned, and he nodded, seeing that I was then realizing that I was in the presence of a genius. He saw that I got it! I must have looked all wide-eyed! And he grinned, knowingly, I see that now, and took the sketchpad back and said, ‘This is what you need to learn.’ And then, he took my hardest pencil and sort of scribbled out the composition, loose and sloppy, but with lines so faint one could hardly see them, his hand just blazing with speed, and then he asked for my softest pencil, saying, ‘Charcoal is best, but it smudges so easily, and I understand you have to carry these in your backpack, so pencil was a good choice, and do you have a kneaded rubber eraser?’

“I did not, and he looked at me and snorted, ‘Your teachers failed you, my beautiful young friend. Please tell me you have something better than a pink pearl eraser?’

“I did not. He shook his head in scorn, but he sighed, ‘Tis a poor workman who blames his tools. Shit paper. Shit pencils, and shit erasers, but it is what we have, and what must serve.’ Then he took my soft pencil and held it sideways in his hand a just went brrrrrrt, filling in the darkest darks and working to the light parts, over and over the whole drawing, and the image emerged rather like an image will emerge in developing solution in a photographer’s tray. It took him only a few minutes. It was a loose drawing. It did not ‘look just like a photo,’ but it looked real! It had depth! It was better than a photo. He used the eraser to pick out a few spots, actually using the eraser to draw light touches, giving it sparkle! One had a sense of motion then, as happens when a breeze makes the leaves shimmer or the water dance. ‘There!’ he announced. ‘You see?’ He held the two drawings side by side and said, ‘“the felt object” and the “seen object!“’

“I saw! He made me fucking cry Adrian! I was powned! I fucking cried! That was my Brian! Such POWER!

“He said, ‘I can teach you that.’

I told him, ‘Actually, you just did!’

“He laughed and told me that he would believe it when he saw it, but I had no mind to draw just then. I said, ‘I need to pay for my lesson!’ And then, I basically raped him!”

“Ha HAH!”

“Of course, I did not ‘rape’ him. I whipped off my shirt and began ripping off his clothes. I wrestled around with him, making him laugh. He played along, letting me lead. I got naked, stiff as an axe handle and got him naked with his lean, strong, brown, Italian body and his lovely, hairy legs and chest, and I threw him into the water with a splash, joining him and thrashing around until we were against a boulder at the head of that pool, and I showed him I could suck cock as well as he could draw. He had no monster dick. It was a man’s cock, big enough, and nicely shaped. Uncut, which I’ve always liked, ever since Coco, and I licked it all over, sucked his hairy balls, and dripping spit all down my chin, I swallowed it whole and got him the fuck off!

“I was so excited that I came myself, just rubbing against his shin, though he did, in fact, move his leg there purposely and skillfully himself. I swallowed that come. Every delicious drop, and I spit some in his mouth, and kissed him again with ‘come tongue!’”

“You are making my dick hard again, Nathan!

“But, wait! You said he was a ‘financial analyst,’ but this guy you describe is an artist! Huh?”

They were at the turn off to Mount Shasta City. This would take them to the road that led them east, into the next range, the Trinity Alps. They were about five miles from their destination.

The winding road required that Nathan slow down to about thirty-five miles and hour. With all the various stop signs in the first part, a broad valley beneath the mountain with cattle and horse ranches, it would take about fifteen minutes. It was not yet dark, but they were in full dusk. They rolled the windows down to enjoy the scents and the warm breeze. It had been a sunny day, and the evening chill to come had not yet set in.

Nathan explained, “Brian was a trust funder. He studied art in Europe out of passion, not any need for a ‘job.’ It was an ‘affectation his parents indulged,’ as he described it. Then, when they died in a car crash, he came early into his inheritance. He always painted. He occasionally exhibited. He liked portraiture in particular, and he gave these as gifts. I told you was always taking pictures too. Usually black and white, and he developed the film and prints himself, but what happened was that he grew curious about the management of his trust, and little by little, he took control of that, finding it interesting, and he became very good at making money grow through investments, and soon enough, he was managing other people’s money and taking the profits and investing in real estate – high end real estate – in Santa Monica and Beverly hills mainly, but also Westwood and West Hollywood. He saw the bubble bursting before it burst in the early eighties. He had connections in DC and heard the murmurs of the new tax structure that caused it, and he sold off almost everything just before the collapse and multiplied a ‘modest fortune’ by five times in as many years. He had the touch, he did, and he was my teacher.”

“I see. So he was a ‘Renaissance Man,’ huh?”

“Exactly. And he would agree with that description. He ate shit in the crash of 2008, though. He did not see that coming. I did. Not because of any insight into the frauds that made it happen, but following another instinct I had which was mainly a moral objection, but, that my lad, is another story! We near our camp!”

“Yes! But Brian? Did he also have an older lover?”

“He did, Adrian. The Italian artist with whom he worked in Italy. Indeed yes.”

“And now I am to become your lover.”

Nathan, ever the “classic,” did not believe in determinism. He believed in free will and personal responsibility. He was not accustomed to being driven by powers beyond his control. All he said was, “The choice, Adrian, is yours.”

Adrian said nothing. His look said everything.


Questions? Comments? Critiques? In a business class, I once heard that single letter, honestly written, should be considered "the voice of ten thousand people." That was back in the days before social media, but I figure that anyone who has taken the time and effort to select, copy, and paste my email address into the address bar and then write something up is no fool. Speak freely. I will listen. I'll even answer. In fact, I've made a lot a great friends this way. My readers rock.

Cheers, Dorian Swift
(dorianswift@tutanota.com)

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