One Night in San Francisco

[One Night in XXX Story Event]

The shock set it on how stupid I'd been. Pete Parnell hadn't hired me for his Chicago investment firm despite what I had disclosed at my job interview with him about what I'd done in college but because of what I'd admitted I had done in college. It wasn't just that I went with other men, but it was that I had been promiscuous for a time and even had participated in threesomes and foursomes. He had drawn that information out of me and had made it clear that he wanted to know everything I had done even if I didn't do it anymore—that he didn't want to discover later that I had hidden something if he was going to employ me. It said it was worse to have one of his employees pilloried in the press for something in the past that blindsided the firm than it was to know about it beforehand. And I'd misjudged why he had taken an interest in me this past year at his firm. I thought he was as hands-on with all of his employees. But he obviously wasn't. He was grooming me, slowly bending me to his own desires.

How did I feel about the attention—and the intention? I had strayed in college but given it up. I'd convinced myself I could live without it—that I wanted to live without it. And I'd stuck to my guns, doing what I could to only think of any men around me as business associates, not as possible sex partners. That hadn't worked so well with Pete Parnell. He was a real hunk and he'd paid such close attention to me.

Now I thought I knew why.

I'd just disconnected a call from him as I sat in Chicago's O'hare International Airport, waiting for my late morning flight—our flight—to San Francisco to leave. He wasn't coming with me, but he wanted me to go ahead and take the meeting late that afternoon on the firm's investment in a San Francisco waterfront condominium and to use the other arrangements he'd made for the trip.

He'd set the trip up for the weekend, although there was just the one meeting with the construction firm this afternoon, Friday. He'd said that we might as well add a day and a half and see some of San Francisco. I'd let him know I'd never been there. I hadn't even thought to wonder why it would take two of us to attend a progress review session on the project. He'd said he needed to go and I needed to see how these things were done. I was such a dimwit not to have thought there was more to it.

I took out the travel packet—I'd only had time to check the hotel reservation and pull out the airline tickets. I saw now that he had set up restaurant reservations as well and a gym, with massage for both of us, in the evening at a place called Eros in The Castro area. Pete was a fitness nut. And he kept himself in really good condition. He was as toned as I was even though he was fifteen years older than I was.

"Pete, where are you?" I'd asked when my cell phone had gone off and he wasn't there yet. He'd said he'd meet me at the gate a half hour before boarding, but we were less than ten minutes away from a boarding that already was fifteen minutes late, and he wasn't here.

"Sorry, I can't come. Last minute problem," I heard him say somewhere from down the line. That somewhere wasn't here, where the plane was about to board. "You'll have to take the meeting without me. Go ahead and use all of the reservations I had set up for the weekend. We'll talk when you get back. We'll have to talk then, Logan."

"I don't understand."

"I know you don't. It's just all moving so fast. This wasn't the way I wanted to do this," Pete answered.

"This wasn't the way you wanted to what?"

"I wanted to go slower with you. Put this all together more adroitly."

"Go slower with me in what?"

"It came to a head earlier than I thought. This weekend was to make sure with you—to win you over for a relationship."

"Win me over for a relationship, Pete? With you? I don't understand."

"Really? You don't understand, Logan? You haven't seen—felt—that we were moving closer together?"

"I didn't mean for us to get into a relationship, Pete."

"That's not an answer to my question. Are you saying it never entered your mind—that you never thought of the possibility?"

I couldn't answer that. I found I couldn't say no to that, if I was to be truthful.

"Tell me, Logan," Pete continued. "Say it. Say you were thinking of being in a sexual relationship with me."

"OK, I admit it," I said after a pause that Pete obviously wasn't going to fill.

"Say you've thought about having sex with me—under me. You admitted that you had bottomed for men."

"I've thought about having sex with you," I said. I wondered if Pete had any idea how hard it was for me to admit that.

"I've left Helen, Logan. I wasn't supposed to happen this fast. But I left her and I want to start a relationship with you—when you come back. I know you're capable of it, and that you are a submissive. We've discussed that much. Go this weekend, have fun, give in to it, and come back to me Sunday night. I'll meet you at the airport. We can go to your place to begin with. Helen will make a fortress of the house against me."

"You aren't coming this weekend because you've left Helen for me?" I asked dumbly. "That's why you're leaving me high and dry here?"

"I'm not leaving you high and dry, Logan. You have a weekend of expensive fun set up after a short meeting where they'll treat you like a prince and all you have to do is smile and nod your head."

"About the arrangements you've made in Frisco, Pete. Like this evening at the gym, this Eros place, for a workout and massage. How close is that to the hotel? I doubt I'll get out of the meeting before nightfall. I'm not sure I'm—"

"Do that, Logan—the workout and massage. It's all paid for, nonrefundable. Life in San Francisco doesn't even start before dark—or end before the next light. Take San Francisco as it comes. You need to loosen up. I'd like to come back to Chicago ready to take me on—or rather for me to take you on. I want you to be more open to it; not so uptight. Think about it—what you want, what you really want. And the hotel cars will take you wherever you want to go. That's already on my tab. I really wanted to do this trip, but I really can't."

"If this weekend is so important to you, I can't see why you're not going," I said. I sounded petulant about this even to myself.

"It's just impossible, Logan. Listen, my kid saw this blowup between his mother and me. Pete Jr. has a ballgame tomorrow morning, and I need to be there for him. I don't care about Helen, but I can't just leave my boy like this. It just hit him at a bad time. We didn't have time to prepare him for this. You can understand that, can't you?"

Crap, I thought. I hadn't even thought about him having a kid. I felt like I was sinking into a morass. It didn't help that it was stirring old arousals I'd tried to put to rest.

"Yeah, I guess. Yes, sure, I can understand about your son," I said after a pause. And I certainly could. I hadn't been prepared for Pete to be this far along in his plans for me—for him and me. We hadn't even done it. None of it. Sure, I'd thought about it. But I'd been fighting the urge. Apparently, I'd been fighting the urge harder than Pete had.

"And this isn't the way I wanted to get something set up with you," Pete was saying. "I know you're skittish and have been avoiding doing what I know you want to do. But, dammit, we'll be so good together. You want this, don't you?"

"I don't know what I want, Pete. When I left Atlanta, it was to change completely. There's been nothing. I've had no intention of doing anything, of going back into that life."

"But you could do it with me, couldn't you?" Pete asked.

Saved by the bell—or at least put off by the bell—the flight agent was calling for boarding. I had a business class seat and Pete, in whose name the tickets had been bought, had the highest level of privilege on every airline known to man. I'd be boarded in the first group.

"They're calling my flight, Pete. I've got to go. I don't know what to tell you. I didn't have any inkling this was where this was headed. I shouldn't have told you of my active gay past in the job interview last year. I intended to give up that life. I'm going now."

He got a last shot, though. "Whatever happens this weekend was in the plans and is fine, Logan. Remember that. It's what I want. I want you to return ready for it."

Did my job depend on it, I wondered. But I couldn't ask him that. That would wound him—and me too.

I disconnected the phone and looked up into the eyes of a dark and sultry hunk sitting across from me in the departure lounge. I had gone to a remote area of the lounge to take this call, but at some point, the movie star-handsome hunk had come over and sat right across from me and I had been so flustered by the phone call that I hadn't noticed him. I wondered what he'd heard. But he was giving me such a knowing, sloppy smile that I'm afraid he heard too much.

I quickly rose and headed for the departure gate, getting there just in time to, red faced, be waved through to the airplane as part of the privileged boarding passengers.

The embarrassment continued after I'd gotten settled in business class. The seat next to me was empty during most of the boarding, which made sense, as that probably would have been Pete's seat and he hadn't made the flight. Before the doors closed, though, a young man plopped down in the aisle seat. It was the dark, sultry hunk who had given me the smile after I'd had my phone conversation with Pete in the departure lounge.

"I hope you don't mind if I sit here," he said, turning his melting smile toward me. "They kept paging someone who wasn't showing up, I'd overheard your phone conversation in the lounge—sorry, you got a little heated and spoke up—and I put two and two together that your boyfriend wasn't showing up. I found out he had been assigned to business class and I managed to get upgraded into the seat. Again, I hope you don't mind."

"I don't mind, of course," I answered. "But he's not my boyfriend. He's my boss. He was supposed to go on this business trip to San Francisco, but he couldn't make it."

"I gathered as much. I also gathered that he wants to be your boyfriend and that you're not a stranger to such relationships. Sorry, if you don't want to talk about it, but you did talk about it loud enough to be overheard. I understand. I'm gay too and sometimes have boyfriend problems like that."

"I'm embarrassed you overheard the telephone conversation," I said. "I don't openly talk about these things. And I don't usually talk that openly on my cellphone. I was upset. I've toned my life down considerably since college and I hadn't realized my boss had as much interest in me that I have found out he does. Everything's just moving too fast."

"So, you aren't lovers? At least yet?"

"No. It's been since college for me. I've been working for two years. I thought that was the end of it."

"And in college?"

"Oh, I was wild and promiscuous then. You know how the young believe they'll live forever and will forever be young. Also, I wasn't thinking about anyone but myself in college—and my own pleasure."

"But you do admit that it gave you pleasure." He was giving me a sloppy grin that was ever so charming.

"Yeah, I'll have to admit that," I said.

"I can't imagine there could be an end to it—to enjoying sex with whoever you choose to lie with. Surely, it's been hard for you not getting it regularly. 'Hard for you.'" He laughed. "Sorry, I didn't mean it that way."

By now we were taxiing out to the runway and the two of us were speaking in low tones. I was embarrassed about this, but he was so free in talking about it, and he was a real movie-star-handsome guy. I couldn't say that he wasn't very attractive—or wasn't sexually arousing. The phone call from Pete had dredged up a lot of thought patterns I'd managed to tuck away.

"Yeah, it's been rough, I'll have to admit."

"I'll bet. A really good-looking guy like you. He's older than you are, right?"

"Yes. Fifteen years. But he's aged really well. He takes care of himself."

"You do too, I can see."

"Not like he does."

"So, he wants you to come back from San Francisco and just hop into bed with him the first time and then the two of you move in together?"

"Yeah, something like that, I suppose."

"Are you going to do it?"

"I don't know. Probably not. I haven't done it in, like, so long. I just don't want to think about going back."

"Even though it gave you a lot of pleasure back in college," he said.

"Yeah, even though," I admitted.

The flight attendant had started her safety feature spiel, so we went silent and stayed that way until the plane was up in the air and the first round of refreshments had been dispensed in first and business classes.

"My name is Ryan. Ryan Hayes," my seatmate said, resuming our low-voiced conversation. "You probably think I've been too forward, but I live in Frisco. We're pretty open and direct there. It's my world. The world of the night."

"World of the night?" I asked.

"Yes, especially for the gay community, which is extensive. San Francisco is beautiful by day, but the night—the night is when San Francisco comes to life. San Francisco is a sexual being at night."

"I've been living in Chicago," I said with a laugh. "There's nightlife there, but it doesn't sound anything like the hedonism you hint at."

"Hedonism. Now there's an evocative word. A word of personal pleasure."

"And this world of the night. Is this your world?" I asked. I don't know why I asked it. It seemed to be a pivot of some sort in the conversation—the opening up of something. I later thought this was the moment I became open and vulnerable to him—that I opened my legs to him and invited him between my thighs. Somehow my subconscious was at work without connecting to my conscious thoughts. That phrase—personal pleasure—kept working through my brain.

"I work in adult films," he said, which seemed a random statement, but of course it wasn't random. It was directly to the point toward which we were headed. "I am all about the night—and personal pleasure. And you?" he added.

"Nothing as glamorous and sexy as that," I said. "I work in an investment firm. We have a condo high rise going up on the water near Golden Gate Park. I'm just here for a progress meeting with the builders on that late this afternoon. But my boss had booked us for an extra day. Now, I guess, I understand that he was planning something more than just a business meeting with me in tow. It turns out he'd planned a day and a half of activities together, and as far as I know, with just one hotel room for us to share. Oh, I'm sorry. You told me your name and I haven't told you mine. I'm Logan Griffin. I live in Chicago."

"You called adult films glamorous and sexy," Ryan said. "To be clear, I act in gay male porno flicks. The studio I work for is a classy one, though. Our films have plots and the setups are artistic, the photography extremely so. Their hallmark is taking the scene slow and showing how much pleasure the actors are taking from each other. They're picky about who acts in them. So, you think I might be sexy enough to work in these films, Logan?"

"Yes, of course," I answered.

"I find you sexy too. Maybe since your boyfriend isn't making it this weekend—"

"Maybe not," I said, giving him a sad smile. "I haven't been going straight for two years just to go off the wagon because my boss is having a life crisis. I couldn't get into anything that fast, and I don't think I should get into anything like that at all anymore."

"By going straight, you—?"

"No. I don't go with women. I haven't changed preferences. I've gone strictly solo. But I don't know why I'm telling you this. This thing with my boss has me off center."

"So, I've come on too strong. I'm not your type."

"Oh, Lord, you'd certainly be my type, and, no, it's been refreshing to talk with you. But I'm just not in that place anymore, and this conversation you overheard, it hit me from left field. It will take me all weekend to process it. I can't imagine what I'll be able to say to my boss when I return to Chicago."

"Well, OK, I'll cool my jets and we can talk about other things—football or other sports, if you like. But I have a card, and if you change your mind today . . . I have no plans for the weekend I can't break."

"Sure. Of course," I said, taking the business card he was holding out to me. "If I were a player now, you know . . . I'd certainly would be interested . . . with you."

"Good to know," Ryan said as we settled down to chit chat about sports and movies and life in San Francisco compared with Chicago—and Atlanta, where I'd been before that, attending Georgia Tech. I was surprised that Ryan went to college too, at San Diego State. And that he'd been a football player there. But, of course, he'd had the build for that, although unlike many other college players, he hadn't allowed himself to go to fat. He was bigger and bulkier than I was, though. I'd been on the lacrosse and swim teams at Georgia Tech, so I was slimmer than he was. I'd kept myself hard bodied, but I'd never muscled up like Ryan had.

It was with a bit of regret—I hoped on both sides—that we went our separate ways from the baggage claim area. True to his word, Pete had booked a hotel car—I was staying at the Hotel on Francisco Union Square—to get me checked in; to the brief meeting on the condo project, which went well; and then back to the hotel, where I had dinner in the hotel's Urban Tavern. As I assumed would be the case, it already was dark when I got out of the meeting.

Night had fallen on San Francisco.

I stopped at the restaurant's men's room before going up to my room to change to reserve a car to take me down Market Street to Eros, where Pete had made reservations for a workout and massage. During dinner, I had obsessed over my relationship with Pete, my boss. I did have a relationship with him; it just wasn't as hot and bothered on my side as it obviously was on his. But was that because I hadn't given it the attention it deserved? Did I really want never again to have man-on-man sex? I had stopped not only because a relationship went sour in college but also because I thought a change would be expected of me in the career world if I wanted to get ahead. But here my boss wanted to have a sexual relationship with me. He was clearly signaling that the way ahead in his firm was to sleep with him. And Pete was a real hunk. I can't say he didn't turn me on.

My thoughts were conflicted and disturbing and remained so as I went into the men's room and saddled up to a urinal. There was a good-looking guy at the urinal next to me. I was so deep in thought, that I didn't realize that I was standing there longer than normal, with my cock hanging out, urination a bit hard because my cock was half hard from thinking about Pete—and also, truth be known, thinking about the porn star, Ryan, I'd had such an open conversation with on the plane.

The guy next to me was standing there for a long time too. It took me longer than it should have to realize that he was turned three-quarters to me and had his cock, at least half hard, as mine was, in his hand. He obviously thought I was signaling something I wasn't. But before I could move away, he'd reached a hand out and was touching my shaft. In shock I pulled away, turned, zipped myself up, and walked quickly out of the men's room, going directly to the elevators and to my room.

What was it that Ryan had said? Both that San Francisco was an openly gay city and that the party started when night fell. It was night in San Francisco—or dark, at least. I could believe now, when one was propositioned even in a hotel men's room, that San Francisco was the city of the night.

My sexual arousal was kicking in; I was becoming one with the night. In my room, after I stripped down, instead of changing into what I was going to the gym in, with my gym clothes in the collapsed pack I carried in my suitcase, I stretched out on the bed and let my mind run all over these new, long-suppressed sexy feelings I was having from the buildup of encounters today: the phone conversation with Pete, the discussion on the plane with and the signaled offer from Ryan, and just now the misunderstanding of a direct sexual act in the hotel men's room. The stranger's fingers lightly touching my exposed shaft.