Back on the Track

I did a double take that I'm sure Rex noticed when I saw him at the back of the group of mourners standing on the other side of Patrick's coffin. It still was suspended on the lift, not yet lowered into the Oak Park cemetery grave. Rex was staring straight at me.

He was a tall man, standing a full head over the other mourners, elegantly dressed, as always, in an impeccably cut black cashmere overcoat. There had been some graying at his temples over the last eight years, but his wavy, black hair was still luxuriant and he was still a handsome man, when all of his individually strong features were considered together. He was still able to cause a chill to go down my spine—and something else to twitch—even after all these years.

He was looking at me with a half smile on his lips and a question in his eyes. He had always been so sure of himself. He seemed now not to be so sure, though. There was, of course, every reason why he shouldn't be.

Seeing him in the crowd across the grave wasn't my first double take. That had been when I didn't see him right beside the grave, sitting there, functioning as Patrick's partner. I'd been surprised to see a fair-haired woman in the chair, her face nearly hidden in a handkerchief, her arms enclosing young children on both sides of her. The boy couldn't have been over seven, the girl five or so. That would be the right timing—assuming that Patrick and Rex had broken it off soon after Rex had broken it off with me to go with Patrick.

Patrick and I had been classmates in college—Patrick in architecture and I in political science. We'd been inseparable in graduate school at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. That was us—wherever you saw Patrick, you could be sure that Ned was around somewhere too. Ned—that's me. There hadn't been anything sexual between us there, although we both knew we were gay. We just wanted the same thing. The "same thing" turned out to have been Rex Helgerson.

Patrick and I weren't shy about our preferences those days. We cruised together on the Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washington, D.C., gay scenes. We let tops hunt us together—we were both too good-looking and narcissistic to do the hunting—and we often went together with other guys and lay side by side on motel room beds while other guys covered, penetrated, and pumped us. We'd hold hands and smile at each other—even sometimes kiss—while there'd be a guy on top of each of us, working hard to get inside us as deep as he could and to find a release there—maybe even competing with the other guy on who could last longer or pull the deepest moans from one of us.

So, I guess you could say our relationship was sexual. But it was unusual.

Rex Helgerson, a Harvard lawyer, was a hotshot Washington lobbyist for the oil industry, then in his mid-forties and teaching a class in the political science department at Johns Hopkins. He was a bigger-than-life Texan, complete with cowboy boots and ten-gallon hat and all the confidence and arrogance in the world, with all the justification to be so. I took his class, and from the first day he was zeroing in on me with attention. We hit it off in class and I found myself drifting into going back to his temporary office in the faculty building after class to shoot the bull with him on politics, the life of a lobbyist, and, eventually, more personal topics.

No, I didn't have a girlfriend. No, he wasn't married. This led to the why of that, and it was Rex who first admitted that he was gay. When he did that, I found that, to maintain trust, I had to admit it too.

"I knew that. I'd seen you at Club O in Washington before I'd seen you here at the university," he'd said.

I was embarrassed and looked away.

"You were with another young guy."

"My roommate here, Patrick," I said. "We're not together, though. We're not a couple."

"Meaning you're both bottoms—submissive bottoms?"

"Yes," I replied.

"I figured as much. I top."

I let that sink in.

"I saw the two of you leave the club with two men," he continued.

I didn't say anything.

"They were older men—maybe as old as me. You like going with older men?"

"They're fine," I said. It was a declaration that he would be fine too, and he understood it as such. He put a strong-fingered hand on my thigh, above my knee, and squeezed. It was slightly painful, and I was forced to look down at it, but I made no effort to move out of his grip.

"My name is Rex Helgerson," he said, and he said it in such a way as to elicit the same information from me.

"I'm Ned. Ned Wilson," I answered.

"I'm forty-five, work in oil, and am not too old to get it up. And when it's up, it's a challenge, I've been told."

"I'm a student—at Johns Hopkins. In political science," I answered. I had no delusions about where this was headed. He was a real stud, so I didn't mind, although I was a little embarrassed with how direct he was being.

"Now presumably over eighteen."

"Yes."

"So, not one of those child prodigies. It's always best to check these days." I guess I knew where he was headed with this at this point. "And available?" he added.

"Yes, I'm available."

"I want to fuck you," he said. "Would you go with a man like me?"

"Yes," I answered, breathlessly. Of course I'd go with a charismatic man like him. He was a god to me.

"Would you go with two men, if one of them was me?"

I didn't answer immediately.

"I'm a challenging lover. I'd give you quite a ride. I'm built big."

My groan didn't dissuade him from continuing. He was a lobbyist. He knew the art of being persuasive without mincing words. I don't know the particular time he'd seen me leave a gay club in Washington with a man, but, knowing the men I'd gone with, he obviously knew that I wanted to be dominated and would take it rough. He seemed to know intuitively that I liked being manhandled by built men.

He fucked me then, in his office, after he'd unzipped and put me on my knees between his thighs. And I let him. I was to find that he liked exotic and challenging positions. He fucked me, him standing, and me backed up to a side wall, shielded from the window in his office door by a bookcase and out of range of his window to the outside as well, with my arms around his neck and my knees hooked on his hips. He hadn't lied about being big. He was big enough to take me in long, swift, deep thrusts without dislodging even in this position. It was all business and heat that first time. We didn't kiss or whisper sweet nothings to each other. He just showed me that he had a big cock, a power thrust, and stamina. He also showed me that he had a pile of condoms, a bottle of lube, and tidy wipes in the center drawer of his desk. This had been no rare occurrence in his office. No one has fucked me like he did, and can, either before or since.

Afterward we sat quietly at this desk again, and he told me he wanted to do me again sometime soon. I said yes.

"I have to go over to Annapolis this weekend—on lobbying business. I'd like you to go with me. There's a Maryland senator there, a handsome man, I assure you. I'll be honest with you. I've told him I'd set him up in a threesome with a delicious young man like you for a favor from him. This is what lobbying is all about, Jeremy. You're being introduced to the reality of politics. Are you interested?"

"I don't know," I said. I knew; I just didn't want to give in that easily, in spite of the irony that I'd just given in to him easily.

"Have you been in a threesome before? You have, haven't you?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Will you come with me to a hotel now? Will you give yourself to me again tonight and decide on Annapolis later?"

He fucked the stuffing out of me in a Baltimore hotel room. He didn't lie about being challenging, even in a hotel room. He didn't always use the hotel bed. He was a large man in every way and was powerful and controlling. And he was athletic, especially so for a man his age. I found that his use of exotic, taxing positions hadn't been a fluke dictated by the limitations of his university office. I'd told him I'd been a gymnast through my undergraduate days, and he put that to the test. If there had been a chandelier in the hotel room, he would have fucked me swinging from it. As it was, he used every surface of the room to stretch me out on or bend me over. He fucked me hard, thick, and deep—repetitively through the night.

I had told him I'd go to the hotel room with him. I didn't know that meant I'd be used repeatedly through the night. I was. But he made me feel desirable—and that I'd moved up in the hook-up leagues.

Intuitively, he seemed to know that I liked being used hard and exotically. And he was right.

In the wee hours of the morning, he whispered in my ear, "Will you come to Annapolis with me and participate in the fine art of lobbying?"

When I answered "yes," he pulled me over on top of him, laced his arms under my pits, trapping my arms above my head, with me grabbing the rim of the headboard; spread my legs with his knees; found my well-reamed hole with his cock head; thrust inside me; and power fucked me to heaven again.

He made me feel like a high-class rent-boy, which was an exhilarating feeling. That's probably why I let him pimp me from the very beginning.

The Maryland State senator's name was Mark Macefield. He was a good-looking, robust redhead and a phenomenon in Maryland, as he was a popular legislator there even though he openly declared that he was gay. He just didn't normally flaunt it.

He did flaunt it that weekend, though. He took Rex and me out on the Chesapeake Bay in a slick yacht, and they divided their time between fishing, eating, jawing about the oil business and what each could do for the other, and fucking me. I rather think they spent an inordinate amount of time fucking me—but I enjoyed it. They certainly said they did. It wasn't until late Sunday night that they doubled me, which was quite a challenge, but I managed it.

The state senator said that we—he and I—should stay in touch as Rex and I were leaving Sunday evening to go back to Baltimore, and he must have meant it, because three years later when he won a U.S. House seat, he took me to Washington, D.C., with him to be his legislative assistant. Working for him put a stop to our sex—Washington was too much of a fishbowl—but we remained close and personal and having been sex partners brought us closer together on trust issues.

Everything was hunky-dory with Rex Helgerson for a couple of months. He regularly royally fucked me, which kept me humming, and occasionally used me to further his lobbying needs. When I could be of use to him with a man, we'd meet with the man in his hotel bar, have a few drinks, and shoot a bit of bull. When he was comfortable with doing me, I'd go up to the room with the guy. He'd fuck the shit out of me—they always seemed to take full advantage of the opportunity, although they didn't always carry through with going to his room. We'd shower, often together, with me sucking him off again. And then we'd come back downstairs and I'd sit there demurely, an ever-present reminder that the guy had been serviced. They'd strike their deal, and Rex would either take me home or back to his hotel to use me the rest of the night. As long as he regularly fucked me, though, I didn't mind. I was getting a good education in the reality of how exchanges of favors in government worked, and I, of course, got an A in his course.

The inevitable split came, though, when he and I went on a double date with Patrick and another professor who had been giving me the eye for months. When I reviewed what happened later, I had to admit that the crux of the matter was that the professor, Vincent, was maneuvering to get me and had agreed to double date as Patrick's date to get to that goal.

We went to dinner and a club. Rex was as charismatic as ever—he hardly could avoid being so. Patrick fell for him hard. We ended up at Vincent's Baltimore house, having gotten half looped at the club and adding fuel to that when we got to Vincent's house.

I became confused about the sequence of events after that. Patrick said—before I turned him off and moved out of our shared digs—that I went off with Vincent first and that he and Rex found me under Vincent, being fucked on his bed, before they had sex. That's not the way I remembered it, and it certainly didn't go with what happened the weeks after that when it no longer was Rex and me but was Rex and Patrick, with Patrick being used with those Rex could influence with sex with a young, handsome man rather than me. By then, though, I wasn't taking calls from either one of them. Not long after that, I got the call from Mark Macefield whether I'd like to come to Annapolis after I graduated from Johns Hopkins, in a matter of a few weeks, and work with him.

When I left Baltimore, Patrick and Rex were living together—or so I was told by others. Between then and now, eight years later, when I'd been informed Patrick was dead and being buried in Oak Park, Illinois, which had been the base for Frank Lloyd Wright's training and business in the prairie craftsmen style Patrick specialized in, I'd been working, first in Annapolis and then in Washington, D.C., with Representative Mark Macefield and trying to go celibate. I'd assumed that Patrick and Rex were still together.

I'd obviously assumed wrong, though.

* * * *

I was brought out of my reverie by an elderly woman touching my sleeve and asking, "Will you be coming back to the house now? Do you need directions?"

"No . . . no, I'm sorry. I can't. I need to get back to Chicago and I'm already late." It was true that the ceremony at the gravesite had gone longer than anticipated. I hadn't gone to the funeral at the church beforehand. I'd gotten lost en route and arrived late, but I suppose I had done that on purpose. I don't know why I had come at all, other than Patrick's mother had sent me an invitation, and she'd been kind to me when he and I were in college. She'd had no idea we both were gay or what we'd done about that. She had devoted her time to the woman who obviously had been his wife and to his children at the gravesite and I hadn't approached her, although I made sure she knew I was there. I couldn't stand the thought of going to where they had lived, where he'd made a heterosexual life for himself—especially if Rex would be there too.

So, having said I needed to leave quickly, I did so—without taking another look for where Rex was—without seeking him out and saying anything, although I was aching to do so. To tell the truth, that wasn't the only thing I was aching to do with Rex Helgerson. I'd never gotten over him. I had to admit that to myself now.

All the way back into the city in the rental car, I admonished myself for not having the courage to talk with Rex. There hadn't been anyone since our split who did it for me like he had. Even the pimping part had given me a high—had put me on a higher arousal plane when he then fucked me in challenging positions afterward. And now I knew that he hadn't stayed with Patrick for long either.

I had booked at the JW Marriott, which was near Chicago's Union Station—or, rather, Mark Macefield's secretary had booked me there and Mark was springing for the room and for the one-day car rental to get me out to Oak Park. He'd been all sympathy when I said that Patrick had died and helpfulness, but I knew that, to some extent, it was a guilty conscious. Although we hadn't had sex since he won a seat in Congress and we'd moved to Washington—and to separate apartments—there always was the possibility there that our affair would be rekindled. But I knew he was pursuing the heiress to a fortune built on corn futures to underwrite his political ambitions and was treating me with kid gloves, not only for old time's sake but also for what I knew. I had no intention of undermining his ambitions, though. And he no longer aroused me. The national scene had made him too calculating and cowardly.

I'd spend the night at the Marriott and get on Amtrak's Capitol Limited bound back to D.C. later the next day at 6:40 p.m. after having done some congressional business that would justify my trip to Chicago and the cost of my hotel room. I was keyed up and had half a notion to go looking for the Boystown area, which I'd been told was the gay district of Chicago. But I just couldn't muster the energy to do that. Maybe part of that was having seen Rex and having those memories dredged up. A one-night stand with a stud from a Chicago gay bar would pale in the face of memories of doing it with Rex. Instead, I called for reservations at the hotel's Florentine restaurant and napped after dropping off the rental car.

It was in somewhat of a disgruntled and scattered mood that I showed up at seven for my dinner reservations and was seated at a table for two for a solitary meal. I knew I could use the time that evening after dinner to read congressional bills and write notes on them for Mark, but that was about the last thing there was for me to want to do.

I knew what I wanted to do, so I had no defenses to what I subsequently did.

"So, we're booked at the same hotel." I looked up to see who had spoken and to see if he was speaking to me. Of course it was Rex Helgerson. Out of all of the hotel dining rooms in Chicago, he'd have to come into the same one I was in. "Are you expecting someone, or can I dine with you? I see you have a menu—that you haven't ordered yet."

"Yes, of course, by all means join me." What else could I say? Besides I was footloose for the evening, faced with paperwork I didn't want to do or didn't need to do that evening, and feeling sorry for myself. Truth be known my thoughts since the graveside ceremonies had continually been interrupted with memories of him doing me.

"You left the graveside in a hurry," Rex said when he was sitting, had a menu in his hand, and the maître 'd had walked off. "I hope you weren't avoiding me."

"No, of course not. I was ducking an invitation to go back to the house. The wife and children took me completely by surprise." I was ducking the reality that it was, indeed, partially to avoid Rex. I had been so sure that page of my life had been turned. Now I wasn't so sure. He looked good, sitting across from me. No, he looked great. Memories of how great he was—in bed—flooded into my mind. But there had been no signal that he was interested; he had every right to hold a grudge with me.

"So, you didn't know."

"No, I didn't know."

"It wasn't really my place to tell you. We weren't really together. I tried to tell you then. You wouldn't take my calls." I had to grant him that, after years of retrospection. And, god, he was still so compelling.

"That's all in the past," I said, trying to brush it all aside.

"And thus it doesn't have to cloud the present?" he asked. He put his forearm on the table, jutting out toward me, as if he wanted me to take his hand. I didn't, though. I cleared my throat, signaling the approach of the waiter, and we suspended our conversation to order our meals.

"I meant it's all in the past. It doesn't have any effect on the present," I said, when the waiter was gone. His forearm was extended across the table again. I still didn't take his proffered hand. I was tempted, of course. Rex had always been a temptation.

"It's a coincidence we're in the same hotel dining room," I said, trying to be breezy and floating along the surface of a chat.

"I'm staying at this hotel because it's close to Union Station," he said. You know me and flying. I'm traveling by train, as usual.

"Me too. That's why I'm at the JW Marriot too," I said. "Funny that we both prefer train travel, especially with all the travel we both probably do."

"We have shared a lot of interests—and preferences—and have a lot in common, Ned."