Switching Sides Ch. 02

This move to switching sides was a long process in coming, and it was gradual enough that I didn't see the inevitability of it for a long time. I certainly was slow in seeing that it was what I wanted. I fought it for years—but not so consciously that I realized for some time that it even was a fight. I thought it was something just there as a choice I wasn't making because I wouldn't like the consequences. My life was fine without complete sexual satisfaction—or so I thought for the longest time.

The inkling that I was aroused by men—more so than by women, who, I'll acknowledge, I didn't have much trouble getting it up for as well—came in the years that I transitioned in New York from commercial ad photography of all varieties to fashion photography, first of women models and then, increasingly, of men as well. Slowly, nude photography drifted into this as an aside and, because it paid well and aroused me, I also photographed, tastefully posed, of course, sex acts and couplings for private collections. Initially these were of heterosexual couples, but they drifted into poses between women. Increasingly these became couplings between men. If I was aware that the solo and coupled poses of men aroused me more than others, I sublimated that. I managed to put that in the background for as long as I worked in New York. And, eventually, because there was a market for it, I was photographing only men.

I never, in New York, though, advanced to including myself in the photo shoots. I may have masturbated to copies of the photos later, but I'd done that with the photos of heterosexual couplings as well, and when I was working I was concentrating on the sensuality of the poses and acts themselves rather than the genders—or so I told myself.

That was where I met Caroline. She was a model who was really easy on the eyes and who had a husky southern accent—she was from a wealthy family in Charleston, South Carolina—that sent chills up my spine. She was somewhat of a Martha Stewart type—she had a highly successful southern-style interior design and culinary business—and had entered modeling as well by being her own spokesperson in commercial ad layouts and being encouraged to go from there into fashion modeling on the side. The modeling enhanced her home accents consulting business.

I first photographed her for the commercial layouts and then moved with her into the fashion model photography and then, at her invitation, into the more intimate poses. She let me know in no uncertain terms that she was available to me, and we started sleeping together somewhere along that route. She wasn't the only photographic subject I slept with, but they were all women. No matter how, eventually, I found I was aroused by men as well, I was so far into denial that I only slept with women during my years working in New York.

Caroline was the only one from that period of my life who I married as well, and, both of us seeking a change in our lives, we moved out of New York into a new, shared life. We bought a B&B in the long-time seaside resort town of Cape May, New Jersey, where I took on restoring an old six-bedroom Victorian mansion on Decatur Street, three blocks off the beachfront. I handled the management responsibilities, and Caroline decorated it, including furnishings and décor that was for sale, and took on the breakfast duties.

Cape May is a pretty gay town. The Realtor who sold us the Decatur Street Inn, Michael Beard, was gay—and made that obvious in catering to me more than Caroline while we were shopping for a house we could turn into a B&B. The local travel agent, Peter Philips, we connected with to help link the B&B with tourists was gay. He obviously was a couple with his assistant, Ergon Seljek. Even the couple who ran the B&B next to the one we opened, Alex Renard and Sean Temple, of Gaylords Inn, were gay—and they openly ran their small hotel as a gay-insistent facility, and almost to the point, maybe beyond the point, of being a gay bordello. This wasn't a change from the commercial art community I was involved in in New York City, but it was more pronounced here because it was an obvious subset of the Cape May community, and it was only here that I was welcomed into this circle and treated like one of them.

I was treated like one of them despite not having engaged in homosexual relations the whole time I lived in Cape May—or before that for that matter. But I obviously had progressed to the point that they were comfortable about my fundamental interests even if I wasn't. But even in Cape May it was nearly two years before Peter Philips slapped me in the face with reality and moved the issue to the front of my consciousness.

"I'm not telling you this because I want to have sex with you, Cliff," he'd said as we were sitting at the Avalon Coffee House on nearby Gurney Street, sipping beer and watching the people on the Cape May beach—the young men in their skimpy Speedos mostly. Peter was assessing them and I wasn't being committal. But I was ogling them as much as Peter was. "Unless I'm quite mistaken, you are a top just as I am, and so you're not for me. But you are aching for it, I think. And it's time for you to admit that."

Perhaps I'd had too much beer, because I opened up to him then. Life hadn't been good with Caroline for some months. We still dutifully had sex twice a week, but it seemed to be on a routine schedule now and to be more a form of physical exercise than ecstasy. Where once we'd readily agreed to any ideas the other had on running the B&B, we now both seemed to go out of our way to object to what the other one suggested. She didn't come out and accuse me of fucking men, but she'd stumbled on my photography "special" portfolios and seen how extensive they were, she knew I was comfortable with the likes of Peter and Ergon and Alex and Sean, and she dropped a jab or two here and there. In turn, I suspected she was having it off with a local restaurateur. We both realized, I'm sure, that we were headed toward a split, and our attitudes toward the B&B business now seemed more like holding our breaths and managing a holding action rather than thinking of building what we had into the future.

I told Peter about what weighed most on my mind. I told him of my visits to our attic and to the circular window overlooking the terrace and pool of the neighboring property, the extremely gay-male-friendly Gaylords Inn owned and run by Alex Renard and Sean Temple. The place was a tourist B&B, yes, but it went beyond welcoming gay male couples to providing paying guests with company, if they so wished and paid for it. I could only imagine what went on inside the blue Victorian mansion trimmed in pink. But out at the pool, everything happened, from full-body massage by a male masseur in the open-sided pool house to nude sunbathing and swimming . . . and sex . . . in the pool area—not only by couples but in multiple groups too. The proprietors, both hunks, helped provide the extra services.

That didn't put me off either Alex or Sean. Like Caroline, they mixed antiques in with their B&B décor that was for sale. If someone was looking for something in particular that they didn't have, they were quick to send them over to us. Also, if someone booked in their B&B who hadn't expected it to be exclusively for gay males, Sean would redirect them to us. Alex was the chef and he and Caroline got on famously and exchanged breakfast recipes. Sean was the manager, and if it hadn't been for his help with tips on running a B&B, I don't know how the Decatur Street Inn would have managed to stay in the black our first year.

For all that I could see, Alex and Sean were a happily married couple and balanced each other. That's more than I could say for Caroline and me, and I admit that I envied them. The truth was, though, that I envied them their setup over there next door even more. I didn't declare my interests to them—I admit to fantasizing about the tall, redheaded, burly, French-Canadian-extraction Alex, who obviously was the top of the couple, Sean being a breezy, laid-back California surfer type. Indeed, even to that point I was avoiding declaring it to myself. What I fantasized, though, was being Alex, with Sean submissive to my desires. But I think they knew I was attracted to them and they treated me like family. Being in denial didn't prevent me from going to the attic whenever I could and watching the activity in the pool area of the B&B next door.

"I have fought the urge to take my camera with me and to photograph the young men next door and what they were doing," I told Peter. "I still have the contact information for the private clients I photographed young men for in New York. They still would pay well, I know. But the men I photographed in New York were aware of what I was doing—and why—and they were paid well and signed releases. It would have been an unforgivable intrusion on Alex and Sean and their guests to photograph them. I could rationalized that the photos were just for me, I suppose, but . . ."

"But you still don't want to admit that you are aroused by this—seeing men with men live and in photographs."

"Yes, I suppose."

"Caroline? Caroline doesn't—?"

"No, she doesn't know. Not that she cares anymore. I think our time together is drawing to a close, Peter."

"That's a shame," he said. "But if the marriage is on the way out, there's no reason not to be moving toward where we both know you want to go. You're a handsome man, Cliff, and easy to be with. You deserve to turn to your natural inclinations."

"I don't know. I—"

"Come back to my place with me. Now, Cliff."

"Whoa. I'm not anywhere ready to—"

"No, not to have sex. I don't think it would work with the two of us anyway. I'm sure you have the same inclinations that I do. And, no, I'm not willing to share Ergon with you. We are happily paired. But you are a professional photographer, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"And you say you've photographed naked men."

"Yes."

"And in pairs, fucking."

"When they've wanted to go to that end. I've always gotten my shots and left them to it if that's what they wanted to do."

"And later? Did you get yourself off later, wanting at the core of you to have been included in their coupling?"

I paused to think about that, although it was more whether I wanted to admit to it than that I hadn't thought about it before. "Yes, maybe, I guess," was the best I could come up with.

"Ergon would like to have such photographs done—of us. I'll pay you the going rate. And it will give you an opportunity to check out just how comfortable you are with men being with men. If, in the process, you find you want to be involved, you can be—only if you want . . . no pressure. You have to start somewhere. What's important is getting started."

I agreed to it, and knowing the offer was there to participate at any point I was moved to do so probably was what starting me down the road to switching sides.

They were an attractive couple, even in their lovemaking . . . especially in their lovemaking, as there was an obvious passion and sense of being lost to each other in them. They were both beautiful. Although Peter was in his forties, he kept himself in tip-top condition. He was of sturdy English ancestry and was meaty, but, on him, it was well distributed and conveyed a sense of vitality. His blondness contrasted with Ergon's darkness and Mediterranean complexion. He was shorter than Peter and lithe. Peter had met him while on one of those familiarization trips travel agents took to be able to talk of locations knowledgably with their clients. He met Ergon on a beach on the Turkish coast and brought him home.

"Turkish men are especially sensual—openly and unapologetically sexy," Peter said. That thought stuck with me.

I photographed them for nearly an hour as they moved from kissing, fully clothed, to stripping each other down, moving into sixty-nine positions, and, eventually, Ergon lying stretched out on his belly, with Peter covering him close from above, holding the younger, smaller man in an embrace, and fucking him deep. The point of penetration didn't show well in my photographs, which I would airbrush when I developed them to give them an extra sense of artiness and romance, but it was clear that both men were in ecstasy from what they were giving to and taking from each other.

It was so sensual—far more sensual than any other scene I had photographed, as I hadn't photographed beyond the climax before, the principle being that the sex I was photographing was ostensibly simulated to give it the pretense of being art rather than pornography.

I stayed with them there, with Peter and Ergon, that afternoon, though, through the climax to the cool down, and in what I suppose could technically be called including myself in their sexual encounter, I unzipped myself and brought myself to a climax too even as I continued snapping off photos.

"You stayed. And you finished with us," Peter said when they were done, Ergo had padded off to the shower, and Peter had wrapped a robe around his body and lit up a cigarette.

"Yes, I'm sorry," I said. "I've never done that before. I should have left."

"But you don't regret having stayed, do you?" he asked.

"No, I don't regret it," I answered truthfully.

"We'll have to develop on that," he said. "You won't be truly satisfied until you've tried it all. I don't really mind if you do Ergon as long as I am there to share him with you."

I didn't answer him. I was afraid he probably was right, but I didn't want to let that devil out of the sack—at least not until I had resolved my relationship with Caroline.

A couple of days later Peter laid temptation before me. He called me from Gaylords Inn next door, saying that there was something over there he wanted help with. When I got there, he was conversing with Alex and Sean.

"I've been telling Alex and Sean about the photo shoot you did with Ergon and me," he said. "And they would like such a portfolio done on them—and they'd like to offer photo shoots as services for their guests."

"I don't know," I started to say, but then I thought, why the hell not? So, that fall and winter I stole next door with my cameras when my services were called upon. I didn't tell Caroline what I was doing, and she didn't ask. Increasingly she was spending time with her restaurateur, and we now were speaking openly about life beyond our marriage. Our sticking point was that we both had personal equity in and attachment to the B&B. We just didn't want to remain business partners after divorcing. I guess, as well, both of us being competitive business people, we didn't want to admit to a failure in any endeavor we'd entered.

In one other regard, Peter's plans didn't pan out for me either. As aroused I was by the men I photographed at Gaylords Inn, I couldn't bring myself, while I still was in a partnership in any way with Caroline, to go beyond getting myself off by myself when I was photographing a sex coupling.

I agreed with Peter that I was moving in the direction of greater sexual experience with another man—and that I wanted to move in that direction—but I just couldn't bring myself to go there.

* * * *

"What you need then, after you have turned the Decatur Street Inn over to Caroline," Peter said one early spring morning as we sat and drank coffee in the Avalon Café, "is a total break."

"I don't know about a total break," I answered. "I enjoyed owning a B&B." By the end of that week, though, I wouldn't have an ownership stake in the Decatur Street Inn. Our divorce was coming through and I'd finally given in to giving up the B&B. Caroline's family had plenty of money. They could buy me out; I had the money too and had offered to buy Caroline out but she'd refused—out of spite, I thought. So, that was that. I'd been looking at other properties in Cape May, but Peter was finally getting through to me. I couldn't stay in Cape May and get on with a new life, what Peter kept calling "switching sides." If I couldn't stay for any other reason, it was because Caroline seemed determined to stay and run the B&B. Being in the same town with her would make life miserable for both of us.

"I don't know where else I could go," I said.

"As far from here as possible," Peter answered. "A total break, at least for now. A chance to start with a clean slate, a life that's totally different from the one you have here. Tell me," he went on, "I've seen you ogling Ergon. He turns you on, doesn't he?—his dark hair and complexion, his happy disposition, his sensuality. You needn't be coy with me. If he were free of me—which he isn't, mind you; this is all hypothetical—would he be a man you would like to fuck?"

"Yes, of course. And more," I said. "You and he are more than sex partners—you are life partners too. I wouldn't think of going after him, but, yes, I find him very arousing."

"Well, there are more like him where he came from, and the Turkish coast is a tourist haven. I'm sure Turkey would benefit from another small seaside hotel there. And there are plenty of young men there, like Ergon, who would salivate over a hunky American like you. You're aging well, Cliff. Did anyone ever tell you you are the spitting image of that movie star—?"

"Yes, I think you've said that a dozen times yourself, Peter," I said, cutting him off from the overfamiliar comparison.

Thus it was that we started cruising the Internet, looking for buildings on the Turkish coast that could be renovated into a small B&B. The search narrowed on the coast around Kusadasi, the port city that served the popular tourist destination of the ruins of the biblical city of Ephesus. The area was ideal for my purposes, or so Peter insisted.

Peter didn't let me catch my breath once I'd said that maybe I was interested. He did all of the planning of buying that property and two others nearby, one at the seaside and one in the mountains, via the Internet and all of my travel arrangements, including a short stop in Rome, where I was to find that he had other plans for me as well.

"Who the hell buys a stone pile needing renovation that's located in a faraway country they've never even visited?" I asked.

"You do. The new you does," Peter answered. "The man who is going to totally change his lifestyle. The man who is going to switch sides and start to have a life—to live life to its fullest."