The Trout

Derrick turned under the shower head, grateful for its warmth. He was also mindful. The cabin probably had a half-size water heater, like his old apartment, and Larry hadn't showered yet. He would need to save some hot water for his soon-to-be father-in-law.

The only soap in the stall was a tall pink plastic bottle of rose-scented bodywash that probably belonged to his future mother-in-law Sharon. But oh well. When in Rome...If he emerged from the shower smelling like a rose, so be it. He didn't like smelling like lake trout either, but that's how he'd entered the shower. After rinsing off Derrick stepped out onto the bathmat and pulled a steel-grey bath towel from the bar—one that had presumably been washed and then hung by the cabin's last occupants before they vacated it. The Steens—Sharon and Lawrence—shared the cabin with another pair of wealthy Manhattanites.

After drying off a naked Derrick entered the cabin's lone bedroom expecting to find the pile of his discarded clothes on the wood-plank floor where he'd left them. Fishy as they were, he would don them long enough to run out to Larry's truck and grab the travel bag he'd brought along for the three-day holiday weekend. Larry had been in such a hurry to get out on the lake he'd said, upon midday arrival, "Leave everything. We'll bring our gear in later. Let's get out on the boat! The trout are biting!" But now Derrick stared at almost empty floorboards. His clothes, except for his white sneaks, were AWOL. While distantly, what sounded like a washing machine clunked and rumbled.

So Derrick sighed, retreated to the bathroom, wrapped damp grey towel around his waist and entered the cabin proper, where a fire already raged in the stone fireplace to his right. At the far end of the cabin—the kitchen—stood his future father-in-law. Larry's back was to Derrick and he appeared to be wielding a knife. But Derrick wasn't looking at the knife, or anything else for that matter. He was looking—staring—at the naked man's well-formed ass. Derrick swallowed.

"Um...Larry?"

"Hey! I got a cold Heine with your name on it, partner!"

Heine?

"This one's yours!" Larry said, turning from the counter only far enough to hold up a gutted, tailless but not headless lake trout. "Remember? You reeled this baby in. What a catch! First time out on the lake...Some assholes here go years before they catch one this big. Great job!"

"Um, Larry? Like...where are my clothes at?"

Larry—or rather Larry's knife—pointed vaguely to the right. "I threw everything in the washer."

Derrick was starting to perspire. It was a small livingroom of stone and lacquered wood, and the heat from the fireplace was searing. He shifted his toweled weight. "The whites too?" he asked weakly, immediately regretting it. His naked father-in-law threw a smile over his softly muscular left shoulder.

"What, you only brought one pair of underpants?"

It was a sweaty Derrick's turn to point. Left. "But...but we left everything out in the truck."

"It's not a truck, son. It's a Land Rover I just paid seventyfive grand for. Sharon went nuts. 'All the expense of the wedding and you go out and buy yourself a new car?' But fuck it. The firm had a great second quarter and technically speaking it's a company car. First rule of business, son: Always take care of number one."

Number one. The only thing Derrick could think of at that moment was...peeing. Which he'd taken care of before his shower. "But...you know what I mean."

"I do?"

"My clothes. Our..."

Larry turned a frown. "Well you can't go out there dressed like that, son." Laughter bubbled to his lips: "And I sure as hell can't go out there like this! Fucking neighbors would murder us."

"What neighbors?" Aside from somebody in a small boat on the very far side of the lake, Derrick hadn't seen another human being since they arrived.

"Oh they're out there, believe me. Nosy bastards too. And there's nothing these local-yocals resent more than us bigshots...well, you know what I mean...from the city. Yeah, go out there like that, son, and the sheriff will be knocking at our door in a half hour."

"But...," Derrick's sigh one of exasperation this time. "But, OK, is there, like, something in the closet I could...?"

"Something of Sharon's," Larry confirmed matter-of-factly. "If you really wanna get the locals wound up. You mean a dress or something?"

"A robe?"

"A pink robe with rabbits or some shit on it? If that's your thing, son, go for it. I won't tell."

"But..."

Lawrence, boning knife still in hand, this time turned a full 180 degrees. His smile magnanimous, kind of: "Chill, son! We got a fridge full of beer over here! Come grab a cold one and relax, and hang with me. We got three days—less now—to really spend time together and get to know each other." Larry scratched his nose with the curled pinky of his knife hand, which sported a gold-banded diamond ring. "As for this?" arms out from his sides now, at almost exactly the same latitude as his meaty cock, his balls, his dark bush, at which his son-in-law stared open-mouthed. "Once inside the cabin it's clothing-optional! Them's the rules! Boys only, however. Sharon would...So lose the towel if you want, come grab a Heine and keep me company."

Derrick started to take a step. Forward. But stopped. Mercifully Larry and his thickly drooping penis and manly pair of balls had turned to face the counter again, with its plastic cutting board and the array of half-dozen trout they'd caught on the lake. Larry had caught. The previously mentioned "what a catch" Derrick had reeled in his father-in-law had in fact hooked, before passing his rod over to his "son," along with reams of advice: "Go slow. Slower. Not so fast. The trout's hooked. He's not going anywhere unless you get over-anxious and yank the hook from his mouth. Smooth. Be smooth about it. It's like foreplay, you and Denise."

Denise being his only daughter. And Derrick's fiancé. Derrick and Denise: it said so on the wedding invites. And on the cake design. Foreplay. What the...?

Derrick, having finally, tentatively reached the kitchen, tried to, as it were, sneak past its naked occupant on his way to the fridgeful of Heinekens they'd picked up at a convenience store on the way. Derrick tried. And failed.

"Know what?" turning in his son-in-law's bending direction. "That washer's still on its, like, first cycle. Gimme that towel, son."

And off it came, with a damp snap, as if Derrick's body, from waist to knees, were some kind of product of a magician's trick. Derrick froze, clenched, bent, while a few feet away Larry stuffed the towel in the still-spinning but slowing mouth of a portable washer, stacked beneath its companion mini-dryer in kitchen's corner.

"There. Good," Larry declared, while sizing up his son-in-law's just-bared midbody. "You look good. Nice. My daughter's chosen well, for once. She's a loose cannon, you know. So get used to it. Gotta stand up to her. If you don't she'll walk all over you. Gets that from me. My father's daughter or whatever the fucking saying is. Always had lots of boyfriends, so watch out. Some of those guys...they like never go away y'know? Nice," he repeated, in a sudden almost trance-like tone, as fishy fingers examined his son-in-law's testicles. It most definitely wasn't a mere fondle. It was more like Derrick, standing naked in front of an open fridge full of green bottles, was being examined, his smallish balls that is, by an obsessively thorough urologist. Or whoever examines guys' questionable manhood.

"You'll do," Larry declared, withdrawing his enquiring hand as he straightened. "But then again you'll have to won't you?" laughing at what seemed to be his own private joke. Six gutted trout behind his back, Larry abruptly frowned as he sniffed the air. Larry, it seemed, was nothing if not mercurial. Mercurial perhaps being a euphemism for...mentally unbalanced?

"What's that smell?" the older man again sniffed. "Christ, son, you smell like a fucking rose garden!"

For the second but not the last time Derrick asked his father-in-law: "Are you sure this is, like, OK?"

"Why? What's not OK about it?"

"I mean..."

In his washed but still fishy left hand Lawrence held, in chiseled crystal, a 12-year Glenfiddich. In his right, his son-in-law's ever-growing erection. If not girth, the "boy" certainly had upcurving length. Maybe that was the appeal. To Denise, his only daughter and wild-child. On the other hand he suspected diameter was her thing. So what then? The kid was good-looking, had an otherwise nice-looking slender body. Smarts. Columbia grad. Good prospects. Was, however, it seemed, on the submissive, pliable side. Fifteen minutes ago he'd stood in the bedroom doorway with a concealing towel wrapped around his waist. Now, after a suggestion or two, he stood hip-to-hip with his naked "dad" (he'd lost his own father in the war) in front of the fireplace receiving a gentle same-sex handjob.

Ah! Compliant. Maybe that was the putty-like appeal...

Derrick was sweating like the Heineken bottle he held strategically in his left hand. "It's, um, kind of gay isn't it?"

"Gay? What's gay about it? I'm not gay. I'm happily married...well...to a former Rockette. No shit. Did you know that? About Sharon? Twentyfive years, dude. We've had our issues, mainly on my side, but..." Dad looked over. At his son. "What about you? You're about to marry my crazy daughter. You're not gay are you? Christ, you shook me!"

"Of course not!" Derrick protested.

Larry made like to swipe sweat from his forehead with his chiseled glass hand. "Whew! Had me worried there for a moment, dude."

"But still..."

Larry drank. Released Derrick's ten-o'clock-high arching cock long enough to give his firm ass a squeeze. Ah, youth... "You worry too much, Rick. Can I call you Rick? It's shorter."

"Well...Derrick. Everybody-"

"Fine. I don't give a shit. Derrick it is. Two syllables. Fuck it. Do you think every business transaction is on the up and up? Do you? Is that what they taught you in business school at fucking Columbia? I went to Rutgers, by the way. Shoot me."

"Well...no," Derrick admitted. About something.

"So, right. A lot of what happens in business, the big-time I mean, it's, well...You get my drift?"

"I..."

"I may be smiling at some motherfucker while all the while planning to screw him, you get it? That's business. That's...reality. Get used to it, partner. Now next week, next Saturday, you're planning on marrying my daughter, right?"

"Well it's more than..."

"Good. Agreed. But this weekend it's boys only. You and me. Getting to know each other better before the big...whatever. And listen, would it kill you to switch hands with your fucking lukewarm beer and, you know...turn the tables?"

"Tables...?"

"I didn't wash that Viagra down a half hour ago when you were using up all the hot water to..." Larry was looking down at his thick, fireplace-fronting erection. And so too was his son-in-law, glancing over, open-mouthed. "We could have a contest."

"A...?"

"We back up three paces, say. You have a natural advantage. You're...24?"

"23."

"Right. Crazy Denise is 24. Get ready. Anyway, you have good stanima?"

"What?"

"Huh?" Larry took another sip of watery single malt. "No. You take hold of my cock. I've already got yours. We back up so our wicks don't fucking melt in this heat. We jerk each other off until...and then we see whose cum shoots the farthest. It's like the long jump, son. In the Olympics. Only...You're 24, you have-"

"23."

"You should skipe me off the board, you swinny prick. Swipe? I'm over twice your age. I'm on drugs, true, but...it's the fucking Olympics! Think of Denise. What do you expect? I'll bet you..."

Things devolved. Another single malt—another double—another Heine on an empty stomach, and son and father-in-law found themselves on the bleary bed, in cabin's only bedroom. It started with a mere finger up Derrick's ass, followed by a Viagra-fueled cock. Rather than the dying fire Larry shot his load up the rectum of the "boy" who would be his daughter's husband in exactly one week. Then he introduced the warm, lubed neck of an empty Heine bottle up the same.

It made Derrick wince at first. Then it slid in easily, in and out, as readily as his father-in-law's thick cock had. What's the difference? There was that rounded lip just behind bottle's opening. But Derrick overcame that. Larry was circumcised too. Eventually, wincing, he cried out:

"Oh daddy!"

"Call me daddy!"

"Oh daddy! I love you!"

Larry, kneeling beside the naked "boy" on the bed, tried to push further but it wouldn't go. He rotated the bottle to its round base but that...that was even more impossible. Derrick's ass was a far cry from that kind of thing. Let alone a fist smothered in Crisco. That would take time. A lot of work. Frustration and persistence. Patience.

A lot of "boys only" weekends at the cabin while Denise took advantage to entertain former boyfriends at their new upper westside apartment. Father-son private time. The works. What fun!

Derrick had already proved himself. He was compliant, submissive—a pussy. Denise would walk all over him. While Larry harvested the fruits of his son-in-law's willingness. To explore, to please, to...?

Larry tried the base of the bottle again. It went in—a circular little ways. Or did it?

Meanwhile six gutted trout lay withering on a white plastic cutting board in a kitchen 30 feet away...