Confirmation Glitch

I lay there on the bed in my windowless bedroom at the Shockoe Commons building on Richmond's East Main Street, watching Ham dress for court at the nearby Lewis F. Powell courthouse. This was a storage room on paper, because bedrooms weren't allowed to be windowless, but this was prime downtown space and the authorities—and the court system as well—looked the other way on building safety issues when it was made worth their while. Hamilton Lee had looking the other way made worth his while a lot.

I was posing for him, lying on my back, head propped up under one elbow, legs bent and spread, the fingers of the other hand playing on my bare belly, giving him the "come back to bed" look. I'd been on edge when he appeared at this one-bedroom—really studio—apartment he mostly paid for at 6:00 in the morning, wanting to dip his wick before going to work. We both had to be at work by 8:30—Hamilton Lee the Third was off to the U.S. Fourth Circuit of Appeals, where he was a justice, and me a bit later to the law offices of Gordon and Keys in the One James River Plaza building. I was a law clerk there, in my first year beyond taking my law degree in the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

I was Ham's boy toy and, after a year, I'd wondered where this was going. What he'd told me this morning before he fucked me, in the missionary position, on the bed he'd paid for, had assured me. I wanted him to come back to bed and fuck me again—even if it meant we were both late for work this morning—especially if it meant we were late for work this morning. I wanted the sex and the commitment, the commitment I wanted him to make to me, to mean more than the jobs.

"Come back to bed, Ham," I cooed, lowering my fingers to my hole and spreading it for him. He had spread it himself with his cock a half an hour earlier, and he'd barebacked me as some sort of seal of commitment, releasing his seed deep inside me. He'd said I should take the barebacking as a pledge that he'd funk no other man than me and that he trusted me to make the same sacrifice. He'd even called it a sacrifice.

"I can't, Brian," he said. "Not today. I have a full docket." He was knotting his blue power tie and buttoning up the gray vest to his gray silk suit. He looked good, trim, glowing with health at forty-nine, the gray at his temples complimented by the color of the suit. Within the next hour the suit would be covered by his black robes. He'd look good in those too. He was a handsome man, and he was a vigorous lover, holding me close underneath him, penetrating me deep, taking his time mining my channel and releasing inside me.

"In Chicago on Thursday," he said. "We'll have time then. It will be better away from here. You'll be there? I've booked reservations for you at the Sheraton Grand. I'll be across the river at the Wyndham Grand. Just a short walk, though."

"Yes, I'll be there," I answered. "But by Christmas, you say? By Christmas we won't need to do any more of this sneaking around."

"Yes, by Christmas."

"Out in the open," I said, not phrasing it as a question but seeking assurance.

"Yes. Out in the open."

I could dream it could happen. He was on a lifetime tenure. There was no reason for him to care what people thought. I, of course, didn't matter to people. They could think what they wanted to about me. But it would be quite an adjustment for me. I'd never done monogamy before. It would be difficult. But it would be worth it. It was quite a commitment on his part. I don't think he'd been monogamous either—but I do know that he'd been hyper careful about anyone knowing he did men.

* * * *

It was a good thing that today was Saturday and only a half day at work, because I wasn't much good at work, needing to tell someone of the momentous change coming in my life. By 1:00, I was on the road, going out Broad Street. I stayed on that when it turned into 250 West at the Short Pump shopping mall rather than taking I-64, as the older highway, once known as Three-Copt Road—and still known that in some segments of the route went through my destination. Thomas Jefferson's father had blazed the road from Richmond to Charlottesville, marking the route by three chops of a hatchet in the trees along the trail. Gum Springs was a forty-five-minute drive west from Richmond. Once a bustling center of legal activity, it now was a sleepy little out-of-the-way crossroads, with an impressive court house building that had lost out on time and redeployed population centers.

Abe Johnson lived at the end of Whitetail Road, off a segment of Three Chopt Road, in a single-wide rusting trailer that belied the elderly black man's actual worth. His worth to me went well beyond the financial, even though it had been his finances that had put me through William and Mary and then the UVa law school. When I entered the trailer, he was sitting at a card table going through his collection of old coins. It had been buying and selling of those that had made him a fortune that wasn't apparent in his lifestyle and that had put me through college. The bug had transferred to me a bit as well. Abe had guided me in collecting coins he thought would appreciate well. I had several mounted in frames and sitting on bookcases and tables in my apartment.

Abe was old and grizzled, but he still, at nearly sixty, was a powerfully built man, fitting for a man who did manual labor for himself and a good many neighbors in Gum Springs. He was a tall man, nearly six and a half feet tall, muscular, and trim. He was ugly as sin, but he was body beautiful. Although his window air conditioner was on and chugging along loudly at an off rhythm, he was just wearing athletic shorts. His muscular ebony body glistened in the heat.

"You didn't say you were coming today, Brian," he said, looking up from his coins and giving me a smile.

"But you're glad to see me anyway?" I responded.

"Always. You must have news. I knew you were antsy about this judge thing. You coming to tell me you've come to your senses on that or that he's proposed."

"He proposed. Said we'd be together and open about it before Christmas." I didn't say anything about a commitment having been made about monogamy, sealed by barebacking. That had come on with no notice. I could start my side of that bargain tomorrow or the next day.

"And that will be a piece of cake for him—being as he's a high-up-there federal judge with a wife and children? Probably a dog and cat too."

"He's got life tenure, Abe. He's at the end of whatever he needs to be conventional for."

"You sure about that?" the black man asked, looking at me—looking inside me, it seemed.

"He says he can't go on with the hypocrisy and that it's me he wants," I said, sounding more defensive than a wanted to.

"It's not him I'm thinking of, son. It's you. He can go hang for all I care. Living a lie and pulling a woman into it. I'll bet he's been doing young men all along. And giving her children while living the lie."

"He says he's not sure they're even his children. He says his wife knows—that she's known for some time—and is along for the ride. That she's been happy being a justice's wife."

"And that makes it all all right?" Abe asked. "He'll be different with you? He won't live a life of lies with you?"

"He says it will all be in the open. Everyone will know. So, no need for lying anymore."

"And you? You won't be living a lie?"

"No, of course not," I answered. But I couldn't look him straight in the face.

"You've never been with just one man before, Brian," he said. "If he makes this commitment in good faith he'll expect you to make a full commitment too, won't he?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Has he demanded this commitment already? Has he made you show the commitment?"

"Yes," I answered, showing a sudden interest in the books on the shelf across the narrow room from where He had said it would mark a commitment, from both of us, when we fucked bareback early that morning. Abe was sitting. But then Abe wasn't sitting anymore. He was standing, towering nearly to the ceiling of his narrow trailer, 240 pounds of hard muscle and sinew.

"Can you really make that commitment, Brian?" he asked. And then when I couldn't answer him, couldn't even look at him, he said, in a low, husky voice. "Come back to the bedroom with me now." I hadn't told him I'd already made the commitment, or that I knew I wouldn't start on it today, that coming out here to see Abe had meant I wouldn't be starting a commitment of monogamy to Ham today. Ham was no more dishonest about such things as I was.

Abe fucked me doggie style, bent over the double bed that took up most of the room in the trailer's bedroom. He rocked the trailer on its cinderblocks with the power of his thrusts. His 240-pound, six-foot-six, body covered and enveloped my five-foot-seven, slim 150 pounds. He held me firmly captive, as he always had done in this position, with one of his beefy, thick-fingered hands cupping my chin and arching my shoulder blades back into his muscular chest and his other hand palming my belly, holding me in place, as he fucked me with the longest, thickest black cock I'd ever taken.

I whimpered and begged for the cocking, murmuring a "Yes, yes, yes. Fuck me like that" mantra as he breeded me, bareback, Abe grunting and straining to take me deep and me writhing and crying out that he was touching me in the core like no one else did. I collapsed under him, relaxing, and he penetrated me deeper, his bulb kissing my spongy walls deep up inside me, his shaft still spreading my channel its throbbing length. He released inside me and I gave a little cry, arcing my own cum as I stroked myself with my hand, as he opened his arms, letting me fall on my belly on the bed, shuddering and writhing as he continued to pump. He had usually worn protection. I think he barebacked me now to ram home his point—to erase the ritual I'd gone through with Ham earlier in the day. One thing was clear. Abe Johnson would fuck me when and where he wanted to.

I also couldn't hide from him. He knew me better than anyone else did. But still I maintained the pretense. It didn't count. This just didn't count to negate what I was moving into with Hamilton Lee. He hadn't publicly declared yet. After Chicago. After then, I would call it off with any man other than Ham—even with Abe.

* * * *

I didn't hear from Ham for the next few days, but that didn't surprise or worry me. I knew he'd be busy before he went to Chicago the next weekend, where he was to give an address at Northwestern University. He'd even said that there would be cases coming onto the docket after he got back from Chicago that would restrict his free time. But then he'd added that he couldn't stay away from me, so there would be opportunities for us—and that, again, before Christmas we'd move in together. My apartment—well, the apartment he paid for for me—was, of course, too small, and he was sure he'd have to let his wife have his house. I asked if I should start apartment hunting in this area, but he said we should do that together. There should be opportunity by the Thanksgiving recess at the court, he said.

Every workday that I could and the weather permitted, I went for a run in Brown's Island Park on Brown's Island in the James River at the foot of Richmond's Capitol Hill. Thus, on the Tuesday after my encounters with Ham and Abe on Saturday, I was out in the park at 6:00 pm after work, running, bare-chested because of the heat, with my T-shirt tucked into my athletic shorts at the back. I was hitting the asphalt pretty hard, as, having had it twice on Saturday, I was antsy with wanting it again, while knowing I was supposed to pull away from it now.

I was checking out the other guys who were out running, several of them familiar to me, one or two of them having fucked me before, because I was a pretty promiscuous guy. This was a sticking point with Ham and the monogamous thing. He'd need to fuck me a lot from me not to pine for more of it than he could provide.

There was a new guy out, running the park paths. He looked like he was older than me, I thought, but not much. He was gorgeous—a sultry, dark-haired, hirsute Italian type. He was running bare-chested, like most of us. He was divinely developed, but in a hard-bodied, sinewy way, so lean that his veins bulged out on his arms, chest, and legs because they had no fat to run through. He was a good six feet tall. In contrast to his tan and dark hair, his eyes were a milky blue. I had observed this, because he passed me four times or more before I realized that he was tracking me and flirting with me.

I flirted back. My need was great. I'd been thinking for a couple of days how I was going to have to maintain a monogamous commitment to Ham and the response had, as the days without sex wore on, been that my commitment to Ham needn't start until the next time we were together. I was in heat. I wanted to writhe under men while I felt free to do so. The third time the man came at me in the opposite direction and smiled at me in slowing down and passing me, I was thinking of him as a sex partner. That was normal with me. I assessed all men I saw as possible sex partners. I even gave them numbers. At first look, this guy looked like a 9 point 5.

When I came upon him standing by a water fountain, I stopped. Looking at him looking at me as I approached had made me slow down and stop, I knew we would fuck. My commitment to Ham could start the next time we met. I was in heat now.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi yourself," I answered. "I don't think I've seen you in the park before. You look good."

"I am good," he answered. "Is there a Starbucks around here?"

"Not far. Over on 12th Street, near my apartment."

"You live near here?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Alone?"

"Yes. I work at the lawyer's office not far from here."

"I'll pay," he said.

"For the coffee, I assume," I said and smiled.

"For that too." He smiled back.

After we'd finished nursing our coffee, he determined that I was twenty-three, a newly minted lawyer, who went to UVa, worked here in Richmond, was named Brian, and, yes, was gay, and I determined that he was here on business from Washington, had gone to George Washington University, was recently out of the military and back from Afghanistan, was twenty-eight, that I could call him Jason, and, yes, he too was gay—and an active top.

"You say you live near here," he said, looking inside his empty coffee cup, bringing the conversation back to available private space.

"Yes, just a block over, on East Main."

"And you said you lived alone?"

"Mostly."

"Today, this evening? Tonight?"

"All alone."

"I'd pay you two hundred bucks."

"You don't have to pay me anything. I'm promiscuous, but I'm not a prostitute." At least in one-night stands, I thought. I certainly felt like a prostitute with Ham sometimes. And when Ham was mad at me he told me I was.

He smiled. "But you're going to show me your apartment? It has a bedroom?"

"It's got a storage room with a queen-sized bed in it. I make do."

He was a highly competent and satisfying sex partner, spending time suck me and me sucking him on the sofa in my living room before draping me belly down on the arm of the sofa, my arms and head dangling toward the floor, while he mounted me from behind and above like a jockey, his feet buried in the sofa cushion on either side of my knees, slowly penetrated me with a quite acceptable cock and fucked me and fucked me and fucked me.

"Do you want me to stay the night?" he asked.

"The bedroom is this way," I answered.

He fucked me in a missionary at the foot of the bed, wishboning my legs while he fucked me slow and deep. He pulled me up onto the bed, stretched his body behind mine, and embraced me. We woke up in the morning before dawn in that position. He was hard and, in fondling me, I became hard and panting, as well. He fucked me in a side split before we showered.

"You have to go to work today?" he asked.

"Yes, but not until 8:30, and it's within a fifteen-minute walk," I answered. It was barely 7:00 then. "There's time for breakfast before you have to go."

The other shoe dropped while we were eating breakfast, he sitting on a stool and me standing and leaning in to him.

"This is a nice apartment," he said. "You pay for it all yourself?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I understand that the federal judge, Hamilton Lee, pays most of the freight here. You have a relationship with him?"

"Where is this coming from?" I asked, backing up around to the opposite side of the kitchen island from him.

"I'm a reporter with the Washington Post," Jason said. "I told you I majored in journalism at GWU, but you seemed so anxious to get me on top of you in bed that you didn't ask further. If you had, I would have had to reveal that to you yesterday. We're doing an article on Lee and an upcoming confirmation and your name—and relationship with him—has come up."

"I have nothing to say about that," I said. "It's getting late. Perhaps you should go."

"Can I finish my omelet first?" he asked, flashing me the smile that I had found oh so disarming the night before.

"I don't think so," I said, moving toward the door. To his credit he just left.

I wondered whether I should telephone Ham and tell him about the reporter but then I might have to reveal that I'd slept with him. I decided it could wait until we met in Chicago. And once I'd decided not to go further with it, it occurred to me that revealing our relationship actually might be a good thing for me. That way that we were a couple was going to come out publicly one way or the other—and maybe much before Christmas.

After Jason left, I found that he'd left a business card on the kitchen island. He really was Jason—Jason Stone—which surprised me a bit. I had assumed he'd given me a fake name, although, devil may care, I'd given him my real name. And he really was a reporter for the Washington Post.

* * * *

I was fiddling around on the computer in my room at the Sheraton Grand Chicago, waiting for Ham to call from over at the Wyndham when the text came through telling me he hadn't made it to Chicago. A couple of monster cases had dropped on the appeals court and he was still in Richmond. I was to have a good time and to use the credit card he'd given me. To say that I was royally pissed would be an understatement. We hadn't fucked since before that Washington Post reporter laid one on me. I went down to the hotel bar and ordered up the most expensive Scotch they had on the top shelf.

"I'd like to buy that one for you."

He had been sitting at the bar when I came in, but I don't think it was as close as he was sitting now. Now there was just one seat between us. We were the only ones in the hotel bar other than the bartender, who was busy polishing glasses. That just as a rouse to make it look like he wasn't paying attention, I think, because whenever I or the other guy might want something, there Joe the bartender was. I thought of him as Joe because that's the name I thought about for all bartenders.

I looked at the guy offering the drink and I thought of danger and G-man—or maybe mafia. He was a big bruiser, but not like in fat. Maybe in his mid-thirties. Old enough to have technique and experience. He certainly looked like the "in command" type. He wore a black suit, and it wore it quite well. He was a solid citizen, square jawed, a rugged face. A handsome devil in a thuggish or policeman sort of way. The hands he cradled his beer bottle in were big—strong looking. I immediately thought of them running over my body, finding and working crevices and curves. I was royally pissed at Ham for standing me up—and doing it across country, for God's sake. I wanted to punish him.

"Normally I'd say yes, but this is a revenge Scotch," I answered. "I've just got to charge this on this card." I took out the credit card Ham had given me and laid it on the bar top.