Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2021 05:27:37 +0000 From: Simon Mohr Subject: Rejoining Schuyler - Chapter 6 REJOINING SCHUYLER - Chapter 6 Jack Jr. and Sam Gay Erotic Fiction by Simon Mohr Nothing intended to resemble any person, living or otherwise, exists in this work of fiction. It is for adults. If this material is illegal where you live or you are a minor, please do not read it. All Rights Reserved. Please donate to the Nifty Archive using the donor information on this site. As the beneficiary of the Schuyler Trust, the inheritance of some billions plus dollars, the Trust had informed me about a limitation. Precisely put, I would not be able to spend all of the principal had I shopped twenty-four hours each day continuously every day of every year for a lifetime. However, I could put a severe dent in the income from that amount of shopping. I had learned that principal, a chunk of money and stocks that one inherits, is a different thing than income, the money made from having money. As a child, I wasn't interested in income, just principal. If dad gave me ten dollars, I could buy something with the gift and the seller would have my ten dollars. If I took dad's ten dollars and put it in a savings account, I might have a dollar and six cents from the interest at the end of a year, a long time to wait for a kid and besides, the six cents didn't seem important. Now, as an adult, I learned the power of principal, time and interest. If I took $1 million at ten percent interest in a fund, I would have earned $100K by the end of the year to add to my original $1 million. I thought that was wildly better than six cents. The original principal invested made a lot of difference in the income, one reason why the rich get richer while the interest rates are the roughly the same. Another limitation in my case, though minor, was that someone else invested the funds and managed the equities (stocks). That game wasn't my strong suit. As the owner, I could sell art objects and jewels, but the fund manager worked the proceeds initially. I made all the decisions to spend money, the other half of the fun. The inheritance generated money; it spurted massive fortunes of new funds to join what was already there. Four sources formed that income: dividends from stock equities, increased stock values over long periods, and rental income from those who used our properties, not to forget, yes, interest from cash not yet invested in funds or objects. Our net worth also increased in another critical way: the value of the vast collection of European art and important gems increased every day. This was not easy to quantitate. A good deal of our art holdings and gems were priceless, meaning they hadn't been priced by a sale recently. We had gems that had provenance back a long way with no recorded sale other than the price we paid for it at some point perhaps decades earlier in time. As the world's population of wealthy persons was increasing, we were seeing increased demand for expensive objects of art for them to collect and brag about. We had cornered much of the market for objets d'art. As every major museum in the world knew, 'cornered' was a relative term that implied that the Schuyler family through its vast wealth and enormous collection of art objects was able to dictate prices. We managed to accomplish that by legal contracts with museums and by our decisions about when and if to sell items from our collection and for what price. We left digital art and art related to non-fungible tokens. Too many variables existed in this market, I decided. Born to privilege, white privilege at that, I'd lived in the White House, far away from New York, the museum, the collection, but not the money. When the voters elected my mom the first women President of the United States of America, my dad, Jack Darnell and mom, Barbara Schuyler-Darnell, my two sisters, and I lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C for eight years. We flew in Air Force One; some Air Force guy was always close to the nuclear football (which he never threw to anyone, let alone me). She came into the world a Schuyler, so she had access to the Schuyler fortune and the jet fleet from the moment of birth. After she became President, the Air Force took over her transportation needs and the family traveled with her, but her right to use the Schuyler fleet still remained after she finished her final term in office. As her child, I also did. At the time, I was pretty sure everyone had a major Rembrandt and a major Picasso on their bedroom wall. One could have fairly said that my worldview was a couple layers insulated from the realities of life for millions of Americans. Living in the semi-gilded cage, I did as all kids do and took life as it came. For example, I figured it was natural to live in a giant white house with a fence around it; it was de rigeur, though rarely boring, to ride in a limousine surrounded by big burly people with guns and earbuds while they talked on lapel microphones every day. How perfectly normal was that? It was my usual during those eight years. We lived at the Colorado museum after the White House years. Assassins had gone after my mom in North Africa but missed, and the explosion in Morocco hurt my dad instead. He was away in Oregon for a long time at Grandma Carol's house near Hillsboro, and the injury to his mind healed. I remember that he was happier on his return than I ever saw him. There was no way, ordinarily, for me to know that other kids lived differently. I was always puzzled why people wanted to see my house. Visitors, some my age, would tour the White House and seem in awe of the place. Some visitors couldn't wait to get through it and eat or something. One kid I remember was about my age, about eight or so, maybe less. He came in with a group of other school kids and a teacher, I think. He wasn't in a hurry to leave. As an adult now, his dark red curly hair, his brown eyes, piercing curious gaze, gorgeous brown chocolate skin, and a friendly smile form a clear image in my memory. The Secret Service, my parents, and the Ushers in the White House all had Rules, all carved in stone. It was forbidden to talk to the visitors or even get near them without an agent right there. One of them might hurt me. Sturdy and well-nourished, I took some self-defense classes, and like many children, felt invulnerable. Rules were there to test, a challenge to nudge, but not necessarily a line to step over. When the kid looked at me across the decorative yellow rope and smiled, I beckoned to him with my head as if to invite him off the beaten track. He ducked under the rope and followed me to the East Room. If an agent caught up to me, I thought I'd tell him that I was finding a bathroom for the kid. As soon as we got there, I became excited for some reason. Contacting a normal kid to talk was a new experience, challenging, kind of 'out there' in my bag of skills. I felt I needed to talk to someone like me, maybe to see if they even liked me. "What's your name," I asked. "Where do you live?" "I'm Sam. I live in Baltimore." His eyes looked right into mine. "Do you live here in the White House?" "Yeah, my mom's the President." "Is she nice?" Sam asked. "She's my mom." "What do you like on TV?" I couldn't think of anything else to ask. "Nothing." "What's your favorite word?" I kicked myself. It wasn't my best effort on a conversation scale of 1-10, I thought. "Nubian." "What's your favorite color?" Sam asked. "Yellow." For me, there was no other color in the running. "Where do you go to school?" I asked. "Parks Elementary in Baltimore." Sam asked me if I had brothers or sisters. Sharing personal information may have exposed the family to harm. Still, at age eight, I not only ignored the downside of telling him, but I also felt good doing something uncommon in my universe. After a few minutes, my 'minder' found us in normal kid conversation—not doing dope or drinking or smoking at age eight. Since this infraction was minor on the list of my sins against my family and the House, my agent just rolled his eyes and noted nothing amiss. The agent frisked the kid and marched him back to the line. "Stay in line, or next time, I will need to speak with your teacher." To me, my agent just tilted his head to one side, raised an eyebrow, and gave me 'the look.' I saw that look on his face a lot. It meant 'Really? Are we going to play this game? How am I going to protect you if you break the Rules?' I was pretty sure that he could tell my Dad anytime he wanted. Even though I stretched the limit sometimes, I wasn't eager for Dad to weigh in. Number one, I loved my dad, worshipped him, didn't see him as often as I wanted—and I wasn't ready for the desired attention to be negative just yet. Jumping forward two decades, my older sister Hannah had renounced 'the Schuyler Club', as she called the family business. Fiercely independent sometimes, her sole ambition was to be a writer of fiction. Lord knows she had the material. She wasn't a romantic, didn't date, and wasn't remotely interested in marriage, her access to the family fortune, or the jet fleet. Unless she needed to go somewhere with a friend or unless she needed a couple of million dollars to give away or pay her mortgage—then we'd hear from her. Art was not her schtick—nor money and investing. The previous Beneficiary chose me to assume the position of beneficiary of the Schuyler Trust. Which meant I owned it. My secretary, Jenna, reconnected (literally) with a guy she had known and liked in high school. Bill had been a jock then, took her to the prom, moved away with his family a state or two, then moved back to their hometown to be a real estate star. Bill, the stereotypical stud, looked at every pretty woman around, and some of them (all genders) looked right back. He appeared to be handsome, tall, mildly successful, and possessed a particular hungry look in his eye and bulge in his pants. Reports from Jenna, revealed to me in snippets, revealed she thought he'd best stick to Jenna. She had experienced that look and more in high school from Bill and had appreciated his, shall we say, input. Jenna didn't dish that on one plate to me, but bits and pieces floated my way like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. That puzzle was so hot it should have just melted. I digress. Bill's potency could not be denied. She came into the office one day, feeling waves of nausea, didn't even look at the morning coffee and pastries, and at that point, even I knew the diagnosis. Before she did. I wasn't stupid about everything. I asked Jenna point-blank if she'd had the ultrasound yet; she looked shocked, a real 'come to Jesus' look sprang to her face, and a red color suffused her throat and face. "Oh God, that explains it! I should get a test." Jenna told me she'd noticed breast tenderness, nausea (usually in the morning, and she had missed a period, strange for her because she could 'set her watch' by her periods, or so she said. She had successfully denied, read 'ignored' those symptoms until I opened my big mouth. Within the week, Jenna gave her notice and began to bunker in at home, her boyfriend inexplicably happy for the financial burden he'd just taken on with the potential human's cost, sight unseen. He would never have bought a car without seeing or driving it first; lo and behold, he had signed on for a project that could easily cost him three times a Maserati's cost over a lifetime of selling houses. He had no way of knowing that I would, as a 'job well done' bonus, give Jenna a check to pay for her child's full education at the university of his or her choice. I knew then, and still do, that everyone has a mother. Fat, skinny, bi, gay, straight, trans, asexual, tall, short, ugly, good-looking, all skin shades, races, nationalities, present, absent, for five minutes, for a lifetime—everybody has or had a mother. Fathers, too, in some sense. But Jenna, however, in my little world, wasn't slated to be a mother, for Pete's sake. She was my secretary, damn it, and knew everything about me. I needed and depended on her. My narcissism kicked right in. Everything was about me after all—sometimes. Babies have this way of taking control, however. The mountain came to Mohammed. Jenna said she would stay long enough to help me interview and train the next person. Bill, happy as fuck, had begged Jenna not only to be his 'baby momma,' but his 'lawfully wedded' also, citing their long history, his apparent love for her, etc. In some weak or strong moment, to be determined, she flew into Bill's arms and assented. Little did he know that the same qualities that I valued in Jenna, namely her control over my schedule, would come to control his wings, doomed to be clipped. I wasn't broken-hearted, but imagined I was just that and probably wouldn't recover, now an honest-to-God victim. Being a control freak means that if some major event takes place, it was willed to happen, not by some random hookup of an egg and a sperm. To be so terminally inconvenienced by a hetero fuck was my 'last straw' for a while. For five minutes, I considered various forms of fun revenge on Bill but abandoned that line of thought after realizing his fantastic taste in people. Also, I just happened to remember one of dad's old sayings along the lines: 'it takes two to tango.' I may or may not have imagined that coupling, at least half of it from her perspective. It might have made me feel better about things. Then I told myself to lift my thoughts toward reality, to grow up, and to invent new straws so they could be 'last straws' someday. That just happened too. It was akin to grief, which a friend told me was a process. Jenna looked through her contacts and found two people who might replace her, knowing full well no one could or would. Her attitude was if he or she functioned like herself, the potential applicant would be nestled in a job that valued them highly. The chances of scraping that luscious barnacle off the hull of super-generous salary and benefits that shielded their current employer from talent loss, Jenna felt, were probably slim. Short of a romantic pregnancy like hers, of course. Sure enough, the two wouldn't even consider an interview. Jenna didn't know, so didn't consider, the pull I had with the guy who didn't have a story, the guy that I hadn't given a thought for years, a forgotten kid. I didn't consider it either. Not at all. Fate blindsided both of us. For the first time, the museum advertised, fearing an onslaught of gold-diggers and ne'er-do-wells, not able to promote salaries or benefits, just a level of responsibility relatively easy to convey. Like "you will be in charge" or "people will bow to you" or "you can recommend hiring and firing"—that might be hyperbole, but we needed help and came up with a masterpiece, I thought. My Madison Avenue idea: "You may invent your job." Jenna sniffed. "Sounds a little desperate." The ad in the Times online edition brought eleven responses for an interview. We had expected several hundred out of the thousands of secretaries in Manhattan. Perhaps they hadn't time to read the online version—no way to know, of course. Three passed security screens. The others received letters thanking them for applying. "We have determined that the security screen that you authorized us to perform will not allow us to hire you at this time." That, I thought, was a marginally better response than "We cannot hire you because you have no talent and besides your upper right front tooth juts out past your upper lip." "We're talking about you," I told Jenna one morning. "You're perfect, and you know it." Jenna suggested to me that I might have to settle for less than perfect. Jenna was perfectly pregnant with Bill's undeniably potent seed having begun a tsunami of hormones flowing, that is. She was probably thinking of being at home, cooking up dessert for Bill when he got home each night. I shuddered, my mind shifting gears. "OK, Jenna." I wanted to take a break for a day, then begin again with new ideas. "I'll be out of the building for the next few hours." Inspiration had struck. Inspiration always does. It never 'slithers.' It rarely just moves or arrives or sleeps or crawls or speaks. Inspiration is rather fortunate; nothing ever strikes it. It is the aggressor. Jenna squirmed a little in her chair, leaned back carefully, and called a pregnant girlfriend over at Schuyler Bank for a chat, picking up a bottle of the new odorless fingernail polish and settled in for a friendly, long pregnant phone call. I left the museum and glided out in the limousine with bodyguards and chauffeur headed for the New York Public Library. Downtown. With lions out front. The sun had come out. Dad bought sunglasses for me in Rome. They gave me a 'rakish' look. The truth? The look was closer to that of a 1920's gangster. The near-exotic glasses might have gotten me a part in one of the Prohibition-era movies had I but acting talent. Once out of the limo, my detail and I headed for the magazine and periodicals rooms. It didn't take long to find the New Yorker issue naming the magazine's choices for the best "X" of the year in all kinds of categories from janitor to neurosurgeon, secretary to the chauffeur. In the secretary section, I found the top ten of the year. I screened out the women. I felt I had supported the distaff side for years and wanted to see a stud in the anteroom for a change of pace. There were ten secretaries in all, four of whom were men; two appeared to be white, one black-American, and one Hispanic. The New Yorker listed their star qualities and where they worked. I looked at all the pictures. My eyes landed on a man with fabulous brown eyes and chocolate-colored skin. My eyes idly flickered to that photo a second time after reading the paragraphs that described a multilingual secretary with universally stellar reviews for loyalty, long hours, cheerful disposition, efficiency beyond the average, and organization. I didn't recognize his last name. His first name was Sam, familiar enough. His handsome face, dark red hair, clear brown eyes, and pleasant smile rang a bell. I couldn't quite place his face until it hit me. Hard. Baseball bat hard. I knew this guy. I had the feeling he was the kid at the White House, only older now. I sat with a look on my face, I guess, because a library employee, the ones that generally ignore patrons, came over to ask if I was feeling well. I looked up, grinned, and told him I thought so but could get back to him if it was necessary. He flounced away, probably thinking that this guy's elevator didn't stop on the top floor. I walked out of the building, entourage in tow, and pulled out my cell. I asked a museum operator to connect me to this guy. Two minutes later, a phone rang, was answered by a deep, confident voice, "Dewey, Cheatham & Howe. How may I direct your call?" I asked for the guy whose name was in the article. A moment passed. "I'll connect you." A pleasant voice answered. "Mr. Howe's office. May I be of assistance?" His voice sounded like an older version, all right. I waited a fraction of a second and replied softly, "Nubian? My favorite color is yellow." "Jack Schuyler, East Room! You told me your mom was the President, and I believed you. That day I would have believed the sky was purple if you'd said so." "Sam, may I assume you graduated from Parks Elementary school in Baltimore?" "One and the same, Jack. What can Mr. Howe or I do for you?" I told him I wanted him to come work for me at the museum, name his salary, fantastic benefits, power in the form of access to anyone, the jets, the limousines. "You are my oldest friend, Sam. My least known friend, surely, but a brother. Can we meet?" Two days later, we met again for the first time since both of us were eight years old at the museum. Sam told me he had promised his services to Mr. Howe until May of the current year and would not break that promise. "After that article in the New Yorker, I received dozens of calls about employment. They became monotonous and one day I decided enough was enough." Sam told me that he wouldn't take another one of those calls—unless the caller was Jack Schuyler, of course. "Then I would smile inside and rethink my meeting with First Boy at age eight in the White House. It was like meeting Tarzan's kid on a vine somewhere in the jungle or my version of it," Sam laughed. We talked about some personal things. Sam was single, gay, non-partnered, not looking for a relationship, and had a mom and two sisters in Brooklyn. "My mom is an RN at Cornell-Weill, and the sibs Cissy and Ruth are both taking accounting in their first and third years of college, respectively." He had wanted to be an executive assistant forever and graduated in the top ten percent at his program. I filled him in about Eric and Joe, Ben, Rafael, Julio, and Raul—about the thicket of relations. I may have briefly glanced at his groin about then to gauge his reaction. He smiled but didn't bat an eyelash. He asked to see the tech on his desk. He asked about the nature of our business, the assistant's ordinary tasks, and about the flow of visitors to my office. Sam asked about access to my office, and what authority he might or might not have. He asked about computer backup, the IT department's services, security services, access to meals, what information he lacked access to, exactly who had authority over him, and since Jenna was at that meal as well, he asked her about the joys and sorrows of the job, the best and worst parts of it. He wondered about breaks and transportation. I told him about the Schuyler museum's work and traditions. Jenna told him about previous beneficiaries and their secretaries. She told him about Henri, who took the job right out of school and was the first to update the tech with an in-house cloud with an optical fiber cable to the supercomputer in Pennsylvania. A new IBM supercomputer had replaced the older Dell supercomputer first used by the family, one of several Dell machines that we loved. The in-house cloud we used was still in-house, but much larger. The new IBM supercomputer wasn't the largest or fastest globally but ranked in the top fifteen globally. Its footprint was smaller than previous IBM supercomputers; its processing power, output, and impact was exponentially higher. Optical cables in fortified monitored tunnels built at colossal expense, connected the mainland head offices of the Schuyler enterprises: Schuyler Bank, Schuyler Traders, Schuyler Air, the Trust Offices, Schuyler Real Estate, and my office as secure as any government agency links. These tunnels had sensors every few feet measuring temperature, microwave activity, and air pressure changes to detect tunnel intruders around the clock. Thousands of camera's outputs were fed to motion sensors and computers that made sense of the data. A team of information technologists with security backgrounds was divided into three and all shifts were covered. They got paid very well to monitor tunnel sensor's data around the clock. Sam called me a week later. "I would like to take the job. I ran it past Mr. Howe. He has hired a replacement for me and has released me. My last day at work here is two weeks from now after I train my replacement. May I begin the next day for Jenna to bring me up to speed? I shall require a two-week overlap with Jenna at least." "Yes. I'm delighted, Sam. Will you move into the museum here or stay at your apartment?" "I'll stay in my apartment for now to minimize turmoil. Later, if you have a suite available, we could reconsider that issue. How should I address you in private?" "Jack. Definitely. Anything you call me, old friend, is fine with me." "And in front of others?" "None of the employees perform obeisance—none kiss the carpet or my shoes. Most say, Mr. Schuyler. It depends on who the others are and how formal the occasion is, I think. I've heard a variety of things from Mr. Schuyler to Sir to Your Eminence . . . Just kidding." I continued my answer for Sam. "How you address me will be determined by the situation. Fortunately, this isn't a seraglio, and we don't behead those who err, like the stereotypical beys, emirs, sultans and/or caliphs of the Ottoman empire between 1300 and 1453 CE." Sam smiled and just listened. "Most historians cite 1299 CE as the beginning of the Ottoman empire. Osman's history starts with a description of his sultanate written a hundred years or so after he died. Still, in the absence of any reference to him during his life in any library or on any object, historians date his reign from the death of his father, the bey of Rum, who reigned before him." Sam was on a roll. "Problem is, no one knows whether the Bey died in 1299 or early 1300," I replied. Sam looked at me like I had lost my mind. "Of course, we do, Jack. The written evidence available is as close to the actual event, nearly, as the disciples of Christ that wrote about His life and far more people seem to accept that as believable history, as divine word even." That critical detail now solved for all time, Sam and I continued to discuss my vision of what Sam might regard as a summary of his responsibilities in the anteroom. "Most important of all," I told him, taking his message, "you now control access to me. Our connections and business dealings are so vast that I couldn't possibly deal with everyone or everything. One of your functions is to funnel important issues and important decision-makers to me and ensure that those interactions last for an appropriate time." "I cannot get bogged down, or the whole enterprise might suffer. I'm a bottleneck in this company. You and I replace the legions of vice-presidents and their staffs in terms of workload." Another kind of enterprise would have changed its organizational structure long ago to meet the challenges of scale, competition, and marketplace. We didn't have that luxury. We didn't compete. There was no market unless we decided there was one, the sole exception being our equities in markets, many of which we could make or break in a day given our cash positions. Scale? One owns one share of stock. One holds a thousand shares. The same degree of attention, the exact investing infrastructure costs. Scale meant nothing to us. "Fortunately," Sam was still all ears, "the IBM supercomputer, the Schuyler Bank personnel, the Schuyler Traders, the newly organized Schuyler Air team, the Schuyler Trust organization, and the local museum staff are at hand to shoulder some of the burdens. Some outside decision-makers require direct access to me, such as politicians, museum curators, art auction officials, and organizations that depend on our philanthropy. The latter usually applies to the department here in the building that handles philanthropy, however." I told Sam that another priority was privacy. "There is any number of people who would like to use the Schuyler name to build their own business or status. Unlike some in this city, we don't rent out our name to enterprises for fake glamour. Our name doesn't appear on much in public and on nothing we don't own outright." "It is fundamentally a matter of honesty, in my opinion. One rents to another entity a name or an image to associate themselves, not a reality. The consumer comes to believe, erroneously, that the renting entity is the rented name, a practice both legal and at the same time, perilously close to 'bait and switch." "To that end, all of our business is private. None of our computers connect to both our business data and the Internet to maximize privacy and frustrate hackers." I went on. "I believe, as my predecessors did, that integrity means something. Now, if I just knew what." "We have a separate physical computer system that queries the Internet for information. It doesn't connect wirelessly or physically to any Trust or Schuyler-owned organization. That system, by the way, needs a name. If you don't object, I'd like to name it Nubian." "I'd be honored," Sam said. I asked Sam if he was available to come to an informal, casual dress lunch on Saturday. I could hear him typing on a computer, presumably looking at a calendar. "Sure, what time should I be there, Jack?" "Is noon a good time? I can have a limousine in front of your door at 11:30 a.m. if you give me the address." "Sure. Thanks. See you Saturday, Jack." On Saturday, we talked about how our lives had progressed after age eight. Sam told me he had known at age sixteen that his interest in some things in the gym shower was different than others of his fellow teens. He'd kept his mouth shut until his eighteenth birthday, the day he and a friend, Modee Bishop, had a sleepover at Modee's house. Sometime during the night, both had wakened, their cocks in an erect state, both men interested in how good it felt to rub those organs against each other, then how good kissing felt, and then how wonderfully soft the other's booty was. It seemed natural for Sam's cock to want to enter Modee, who liked both the thought and deed. Both Sam and Modee thought coming inside the other was the best thing since sliced cheese and were predisposed to want to try it again. They did for a couple of years until Sam, and his family moved to New York, bringing that play to an end. Sam wasn't likely to forget, however. He thought about the fare to Baltimore on the train and bus. He knew some people had the funds. His family did not. He did not, so he decided to prepare himself for a great job that provided income for whatever his needs might be. He had spelling skills and keyboard skills from high school. Sam liked the thought of working indoors. He read somewhere that secretaries get average salaries and company benefits; the latter could be beneficial. Sam wasn't as worried about salary. If employers sought after him because of his skill and work, he figured the salary might just go up quickly. He qualified for assistance at an excellent school and learned every bit he could. His professor, Alan Troop, told Sam he could tutor him in the finer points of getting a great job. Sam had jumped on that, and on the first visit to the professor's house, Sam ended up topping Mr. Troop and receiving tips of various kinds. Sam's financial affairs eased between the pleasure of it all, the extra funds, and some wise stock tips. Sam told me that he'd arrived at Mr. Troop's house one night to find Mr. Troop pacing back and forth, a little distressed. "Sam," said Mr. Troop, "I took the liberty of asking some friends over for supper tonight to join us. Forgive me. I didn't ask you first." "These guys are hot and horny and rich. They have different needs, but all of them are in a little club of mine and are generous. If you agree, you can play with any or all of them or none of them, as you wish. I think I can guarantee you at least a thousand dollars in 'tips' from the club members, and I'll make up any difference to two thousand if I get to play too. I enjoy watching. It's worth it to me." I must have looked startled. Sam explained, "You have to remember that money had never been easy for me, and I'd put up with the lack of funds for all my life. A thousand was a fortune; two thousand paid all my bills." "That night, I fucked and got fucked by ten hunky guys, one at a time, and sometimes doubly. I hadn't ever had so much fun. I had almost three thousand dollars in my coat pocket when I left. I didn't walk home. I couldn't. But I could, finally, afford a taxi." "One of the guys was a Mr. Howe, younger then, at age twenty-two, with an unbelievable cock, tongue, and ass, and energy behind all that. His stamina almost matched mine: he adored my bits and pieces." "A couple of years later, he found me a job as his new secretary and our relationship, born at Mr. Troop's house, matured on Mr. Howe's waiting room sofa, later at his home. He and his wife carried on a side business for years at his estate, a kind of gentlemen's club. To join, the group required a referral and a decent bank balance." "In addition to the fees, there were payments for entertainment in the various suites with visiting firemen, so to speak, calendar quality, corn fed, All-American types of all colors and sizes. The mayor and chief of police, the sheriff, a few deputies, one local doctor (general practice), a pharmacist, a grocer all floated through." "One of my jobs was to make sure that the inventory of food and drink was present, locked up, and adequately dispensed. Since Mr. Howe trusted me, he and his wife allowed me to manage the time intervals and collect for visits at the door, kind of a bouncer lite." Sam smiled. "They knew I could juggle a bunch of balls in the air all at the same time, a knack they valued." "A neurologist diagnosed Mr. Howe a year ago. His Parkinson's disease is early, he's still active in the law for now, but he knows his end is coming, enjoys his family, and somewhere in the back of his head, he's been thinking about retiring early to enjoy what remains." "He's paid off my family's debts, including my sister's education loans. He bought me a townhouse this last week." Mr. Howe, Sam told me, was delighted Sam found a great job. In some ways, it removed the burden of replacing his longtime lover, even if it meant a short time with a replacement secretary. Sam smiled. He told me that if Mr. Howe called him for tea, he would accept. The early tremors of Parkinson's disease can be unbelievably erotic for any partner, Sam said. Mr. Howe enjoyed being filled with Sam's assets now, even if his decreased energy truncated his efforts to top well. I told Sam about Ben Dewey's relationship with the Schuyler family. Sam stared at me for a minute and raised an eyebrow. "Ben's dad had a long-term affair with his secretary; neither worked very hard, and the firm suffered for it. Mr. Howe's father was an original partner, and he filled my ears about Ben's dad. Ben was a wonderful, hardworking man who, along with an ancestor Howe, had brought the firm back to life after Ben's dad nearly managed to wreck it." "Ben was part of a Schuyler throuple for a short time before he died, or so the story went. At the time, I became aware that the kid I met at the White House long ago was also part of the family, and I determined to keep track of that guy," Sam mused. After lunch, I took Sam down to the museum pool, a historical site for footmen, beneficiaries, and others to exercise. "This pool's walls can't speak. Probably a good thing. They would melt." I locked the door after we entered. Sam and I took our clothes off and dived in. He was built like a Greek god everywhere I looked. He liked what he saw, and I couldn't conceal how I felt either. I swam over to him and dunked him under the water, and he returned the favor. We played like eight-year-olds that day. After our shower, we dried off. I perved all that time on Sam's flawless, chocolate-colored skin and his swinging equipment. We dressed and returned to my office. I gave him the tour, and he analyzed his workspace, carefully asking questions. I then knew that I would have to up my game to keep up with his organizational skills. That first day with Jenna, I saw little of either of them. At noon they walked into the office, Jenna a little dizzy, an odd look for her, Sam composed and alert carrying an iPad. He'd used the Notes app to pose about six hundred questions from the morning session alone. We all ate together in my office; each of us had ordered from the menu. My footman, Raul, wheeled in the table with the order. His eyes locked with Sam. Each of them gasped. Finally, Raul lowered his gaze, his package swollen and twitching. Sam said something to him in Spanish, and as Raul nodded, a deep red color spread over Raul's face and neck as if he'd been face painted suddenly. I introduced the two of them, expressing my hope they would have a productive relationship, working closely together. Sam choked a little. Raul couldn't wait to get out of there; the gasp and swelling had embarrassed him. The two had never met. Raul knew that on some level he had behaved poorly. Someone had to maintain decorum. Jenna was coughing into her drink by then. What little Spanish I knew allowed me to loosely translate what Sam had said to Raul, though I kept it to myself, "Hey, I want your ass." Raul and Sam would meet again privately, elsewhere, somehow. I didn't think it would be long, either. The pool would have more to tell . . . or not, the anteroom and the little room off it, sometimes used to segregate two visitors that hated each other or for whom the sight of the other wasn't right for the business, might now be the backdrop for another sort of interaction. That night I told Joe and Raf about Sam and the interaction that day between Raul and Sam. "When can we meet this stud?" "Anytime you wish. Sam will be in on Monday morning to resume his indoctrination from Jenna." It was amusing to sit in my office watching the anteroom camera Monday morning early and observe the traffic. Sam arrived first, not breaking a sweat, breathing as he'd just strolled in from a picnic in the sunshine. Jenna arrived on time, and they began their work. The outer door opened and in walked Joe and Raf to see me, of course. They spoke to Jenna and Sam. Sam had to call Raul to admit them to my office since he was my footman. We had not appointed a footman for full-time anteroom duty yet. Raul entered, took one look at Sam, his head swiveled to keep meeting Sam's gaze, and his body kept moving into a tall plant. Raul nearly scratched an eye out. Joe and Raf remained as solemn as the tomb, remarkably, but they hadn't missed a thing. Raul recovered, then announced them. "Mr. Joseph Boles and Mr. Rafael Leon-Ordonez to see you, Mr. Schuyler."; he spoke into a wall-mounted speaker then touched the device on the wall that sniffed his hand, instantly sampled something, unlocked the two-ton, floor-to-ceiling hardwood double doors filled with titanium. The massive doors had mechanized systems to help the footman swing the doors open, making it look so easy that a child might have opened them. Dunno if the testosterone and estrogen and progesterone levels in the room contributed to that idea, but I experienced an idea floating through my head for the first time. What if Joe and Raf and I made a baby? All of us would make terrific fathers. That afternoon, Sam researched the Schuyler history to find out more about Chris, son of a throuple (This One Might be Different), and Ryan (David's Contribution), both of whom were beloved children of throuples. By the end of the day, Sam told me that the lab in Ireland was still open to private contracts and handed me a cell contact number. That night in bed, I asked Joe and Raf to snuggle up because I had a question and a proposal to make. Raf's ears pricked up. 'Proposal' might have been his middle name. Joe, a little more cautious, just took his clothes off, his balls and cock swinging, and advanced toward us on the other side of me. It might have been that he thought sex was on the agenda. It was, but the proposal came first. "Since you two are my life, my lovers, I want to pass something by you." "You want a child," said Raf, grinning. "We knew you were working up to it," Joe added. "Can we practice now?" Raf's hormones were average for his age, perhaps elevated, and I loved him for it. So did Joe. I told them that two Schuyler-related men in the not-so-recent past had been made in a lab in an Irish lab using sperm only, no ova involved. Raf gasped. Joe just listened. The two men were both normal in every way, had inherited their splendid equipment. I told them that in a throuple of men, all three donating, each had a 66% chance of contributing their chromosomes to the new baby each time. The more children, the more likely each man would father a genetic child. Then I remembered that John and Jayden had also made some children in the same lab. None became beneficiary. Still, one daughter had taken over the investments of the Trust and managed them brilliantly. Having come to a consensus, Raf, the most aggressive of my lovers, took my mouth and one hand took my balls. Joe homed in on my ass. Raul walked in the door about then, momentarily forgot Sam, and attacked Raf, who pivoted to Raul, by now naked. Within two minutes, we played side by side on the bed. Raf sunk balls deep inside Raul, and Joe had me pinned to the bed like a butterfly in a science collection. The aromas, the sensations, and the sounds were enough, but when I leaned over and took Raul's mouth while we were both getting well and truly fucked, we both saw and heard Joe and Raf kissing over us. Reaching down to slap our asses every few minutes, Raf and Joe led all of us to come as a volcano erupts, spurting hot stuff with a lot of noise. Sam moved into the museum after renting out his new townhouse. He told me that he still visited Mr. Howe twice weekly when asked, giving himself to his boss. Sam said to me that pity fucks weren't his thing. I believed him. Sam told me that he loved the guy on some level. "I'm not in love with him, but I love him as a person who needs what I have to give, so much so that Mrs. Howe not only approves but thanks me for being there for her husband and sometimes watches." That surprised me initially, but then I had some idea of what true friendship can do for other people. Sam was serving his former boss, not for money now, but meeting a human need, one that Mr. Howe gratefully accepted as the most pleasure he could take in the later stages of his disease from a trusted friend, one that Sam was happy to provide. The day Mr. Howe died, Sam withdrew and stayed in his room for a weekend. He came back to work on Monday and never looked back. Raul disappeared into Sam's suite on Monday night. The look on Sam's face Tuesday morning was like he'd seen a vision. Neither discussed the events of that night, but they both were satisfied with each other and in love. Within a week, Raul had moved into Sam's suite. They never parted. Joe and Raf flew on Mango with me to Ireland to donate. Eric could have come, but things were still awkward between us. It worked out to everyone's advantage for him to remain in New York. Schuyler Air now included the pilots, Gulfstream liaison personnel, flight attendants, the chefs on the ground and on the jet, the maintenance operations people, the fueling operations employees, and the flight schedulers. I arranged for Schuyler Air to oversee and host the people who coordinated the emergency evacuation of principals in emergent situations for the larger jet fleets worldwide. Schuyler Air employed the flight security operations people and all of the employees who guarded the jets around the clock in some countries and some situations. A central billing office unit in Schuyler Air hosted supervisors as well. That office, an administrative division of the Schuyler Trust, forwarded accounts receivable and accounts payable data to the Trust for payment. After a sedate trip with no monkey business, we landed in Ireland since we were all forbidden to emit our seed (an Irish euphemism for 'no nookie' or self-abuse) for a week before the visit to the lab. After a tour and payment in cash (lots of it), all three of us ejaculated into sterile containers without touching those containers (point and shoot but don't touch the glass container with your cock or fingers, sir). We signed the contract, which outlined the procedures, gave our permission for the tests and insemination of a single fetus, and noted that we all understood a news blackout about the lab's work. All that was fine with us; we left, playing and eating and perhaps drinking a little—in Mango, back to New York. As in previous successful lab children, the lab only communicated with us a few times, using a pre-arranged code to signal progress. They didn't need publicity in Ireland. Their work was legal but highly controversial, and prominent Irish politicians would take public positions to hinder the lab's work. The lab's Board of Directors was well aware the nail that raises its head is the one that gets hammered down. The lab did their magic and produced a zygote (a fertilized ovum equivalent) containing an X chromosome from one of our sperm and a Y chromosome from another of us and provided the machine with the proper nutritional environment, the precise hormonal environment, and the gas exchange requirements through an artificial placenta. The lab had a 90% success rate through the years producing healthy children. Computers sampled and monitored, and speakers played our voices and music through that long nine months of gestation. At the end of the first trimester, the emailed message was 'AA' which in our notebook meant 'single healthy male child.' Similar messages in the next few months reassured us. 'Here1Week' was received at ten a.m. on a Thursday, and one could have been forgiven for thinking the Second Coming was in the offing. The housekeeper went into high gear supervising a top-to-bottom spring cleaning, the maintenance crews painting and readying the nursery with the decorating team, telling Paul, the newly-hired manny the date of probable need of his services. Paul was a kind, sensitive, slightly obsessive, natural caregiver. The message from Ireland triggered a host of 'Sam-planned' protocol events. The footmen immediately packed a week's worth of clothing and necessities, and Mango turned U-Haul and flew all that to Ireland, complete with nursery and baby clothes. A separate flight on Apricot for the five of us would leave Saturday morning for Shannon, then on to the lab, located in a smaller city, so the travel office made the hotel, car and security arrangements for those places. Joe and Raf, along with Raul, Sam, and I, took the electric VTOL helicopter from the museum to Teterboro to meet up with Apricot, fueled and provisioned by our arrival. We took off within fifteen minutes after we arrived. Just as the table was being set for lunch at 43,000 feet, we began to discuss what we might name our baby. Sam groaned out loud. His organizational mind was astonished that we had not nailed this subject yet, and worse, in his scheme of things, he had failed to remind anyone to pick up the hammer. We decided to wait for more information before naming our baby. For starters we needed to know which two of us were the fathers, information that affected the baby's surname. We drank beer for the next six days in two different pubs, sampling everything available, some more than once. We ate colcannon, boxty, soda bread, drank more beer, ate Shepard's pie and lamb loin, drank more beer . . . downed bangers and green mash, drank more beer. . . By weeks-end, we had done with that, had been there and were quite ready to meet the little guy. We asked to be at the lab at 0800 to sign in, do paperwork, then watch the delivery. I called the pilots and relayed our need for Italian and Chinese entrees on the way back home. The technology to take the active baby boy out of the fluid he was in and detach him from the 'cord' that had nourished him and provided entrance of oxygen and egress of carbon dioxide and passed his blood past the filters to rid him of excessive nitrogen and toxins, sampled and provided needed hormones, electrolytes, glucose, imitating the womb down to precise temperature, motion, sounds, music, and recorded voices (ours) took but a few minutes. Five guys watched through a large glass window into the large room where scientists worked rapidly around the tank, opening it, transitioning our child into the world where he must needs breathe. He calmly opened his mouth, coughed a little water out, and yelled so loud, I thought the Queen of England could hear it across the Irish Sea. Five guys with stunned looks on their faces, three of us with tears, all of us faced with a perfect baby boy, innocent, new, pure . . .and by God, we all decided, he'd stay that way until age forty. He, of course, as firstborn, would inherit as beneficiary one day if chosen, if he accepted, and was capable; the genetic chain could remain unbroken. The lab director gave us a birth certificate, handed us his Irish passport and the necessary information to get his American passport. He told us that Raf and I had won the title of genetic dads for this go-around. He hugged Joe and reminded him that he had the same 66% chance of being a dad the next time if there was a next time. I was already thinking to myself that I liked the genetic chain idea and that I would limit the donors to Joe and me the next time. We had no way of seeing our future family of six boys and three girls, all dads finally represented biologically. Nor did we foresee Sam and Raul's sweet little boy a few years later (OK, I paid for that as a bonus for Sam and Raul's faithful wok). Between Schuyler and Leon-Ordonez, we decided on Rafael Jack Schuyler. RJS promptly did a number in his diaper to celebrate and yawned. When we got home, delirious and tired, with RJS rarely out of someone's arms, we had a routine to establish. Paul might have changed diapers and fed RJS, but Raf wouldn't hear of it. His kid, his diaper, his bottle. Unless he didn't want to. Paul could get up with RJ in the night on occasion if his dad needed rest, but Raf was determined his half of his son would know him from day 1. Joe had promised, as we all had, to love whoever came along equally with us and entered his claim for work and contact, burping and the like. Sam might as well have been his dad for the amount of love and attention he gave RJ. Raf also gave us an ultimatum: no son of his was going to mispronounce his name. It was Rah-fah-ale with emphasis on the last syllable, or lightning would fly from heaven. After the first two weeks, Raf, exhausted, allowed himself to be persuaded to let Paul do his job. He eventually told me that he had been frightened that someone would allow his son to be circumcised while he wasn't paying attention, a fate worse than death in his universe. In short, he was absolutely determined that his son look like himself. When I told Raf that RJ was never in danger of that event in this case, he broke down in tears in my arms. "I just got so I wasn't even thinking straight. I was so tired of fighting it." Me? I got my time in too. My dad visited to meet his new grandson, bringing his friends along. Dad cried for a minute or two and tenderly held his grandson, then happily relinquished him to Raf. Dad spent an extra few seconds perving on Raf's half-naked chest and package before realizing that probably wasn't welcome behavior and wobbled over to his buddies to cry in their arms. In the middle of all this action and rejoicing, not to mention the emotional ups and downs, I tried to keep the Schuyler enterprise on track. Even when Eric asked for an appointment to see me accompanied by his attorney.