An Attack of Loneliness

There was every indication the Mrytle Beach, South Carolina, oceanfront strip was hopping wild in the summer but it was surprisingly quiet—a veritable ghost town—over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday—at least this year. The super of the condo said you just had to know where to go for action, but she couldn’t tell me where—at least for the kind of action I needed.

I would have thought that it would have been made a destination for the winter holidays, but it hadn’t been as far as I could see. The seemingly empty high rises here, with the wind whipping off the ocean, made me feel like I was in an ominous canyon area. There were some stores and bars open on the land side of the strip, but they were so few that they just added to the forlorn loneliness and solitude of being here during the holidays.

I had come here—been shuffled off to here—on extremely short notice right after Thanksgiving. Before Thanksgiving, I was not long out of graduate school, having landed an entry-level job in the FBI, had acquired a boyfriend—more a sugar daddy, I guess, since he was fifteen years older than I was and paid for my small, but quite adequate townhouse in Fairlington, across the Potomac from the Federal Triangle in Washington, D.C., and near the Pentagon. I was settled and I thought I was happy, but now I could see that I was lonely even then and had been for three years.

I’d been quite active and had a lot of friends at Georgetown University as an undergraduate, being zoned in to working in law enforcement investigation—on the national stage if I could manage it—and being on the nationally ranked Georgetown swim team and actively in dramatics. I had taken piano all my life and had found a small jazz ensemble to play with at college gigs and in a few small jazz clubs in D.C.

Law school at George Washington University had been quite a switch. The studies were demanding and isolated me. The onset of the Covid epidemic isolated me further. The jazz ensemble broke up because people weren’t congregating to listen to music. I suddenly found I had been lonely for a very long time and that most of my relationships—primarily the few sexual ones I had with other young male students—had melted away.

I got the job I wanted, an entry-level position at the FBI, and I was a pushover for a man there several ranks above me, Clifford Galworthy, a deputy director, who quickly discerned that I was a submissive gay male and one who had not been in a relationship for some time—a young guy who had had his nose in the books and his body isolating from epidemic for years and who now was in a new career that gave him broader horizons. Clifford had made sure that he fulfilled my needs beyond the office when I suddenly had the free time.

He'd come on strong and he was my superior several layers over. He also was a highly self-confident, handsome devil who spent quite a lot of time at the gym, which is where we met after having been in the same room a couple of times at work, where Clifford signaled his understanding of and interest in me.

We clicked and fucked and he cajoled me out of a shared apartment with two other junior FBI officers in a Roslyn area apartment and into a much nicer small townhouse, where I could live by myself and be available to Clifford when his schedule allowed. Clifford, of course, was married, with children, a dog, and a cat, and lived in a McMansion in Arlington, a ten-minute drive from my digs. He visited me when he pleased. I dared not contact him directly.

I went from rooming with three guys to sitting alone, waiting for Clifford to have time to visit me. They were guys who I was starting to party comfortably with, once they’d gotten over the fact that I was gay and they weren’t and that that didn’t mean I’d hit on either one of them. We played pickup basketball together and tennis and were developing a circle of mutual friends. I went from there to being wary of anyone knowing I was being fucked by a married FBI director and thus withdrawing into a circle of friends consisting of a single man who dictated everything I could do in life.

Then in November, when the FBI director announced his impending retirement, the shit hit the fan. Clifford Galworthy was one of a handful of men up for the directorship job. His life came under scrutiny. Anything embarrassing to him had to go. Being his gay boyfriend when he was married, with children, a dog, and cat, meant I was an embarrassment and, suddenly, a serious impediment to Galworthy’s upward reach.

So, here I was, salted away at somewhere else other than the Washington, D.C., area for who knew how long. I had a studio condo on the eleventh floor of an older high rise called Camelot on Ocean Boulevard near 19th Avenue North. The place was adequate for me and had a balcony overlooking the ocean. Who knew where this was headed, though? I couldn’t stay in this limbo forever.

Clifford was paying for the oceanfront condo I was in, but who knew how long that would last? He said he’d take care of me financially. I couldn’t continue working at the FBI headquarters building in Washington and would have to consider some other job—once everything had settled and Clifford had gotten the directorship or not. Taking care of me financially, even temporarily, didn’t not take care of me physically or emotionally. And the FBI, now denied to me, was what I had been trained to do.

It took wandering the winding canyons of a summer resort in the winter over the Christmas-New Year’s holidays for me to realize just out isolated and lonely I’d been for years. And I missed Clifford. I’d gone into our relationship with open eyes—I didn’t let him mess with me just because he was way up the ladder from me at FBI and could give me favors. I truly liked him and missed him even realizing that choosing him had isolated me in life. I fully understood why we had to cut it off and why I had to disappear.

But, god, I missed him and felt so lonely without him. I couldn’t deny that I had felt lonely even with him, though. He’d had progressively less time to be with me over the past year.

* * * *

“I would think this would serve the purpose better. That looks a bit ambitious.”

It was New Year’s Eve day afternoon, and I was standing in the produce aisle of the nearest open supermarket to my apartment—the Food Lion on Highway 501—holding up a vegetable that was strange to me. It was purple, oblong, plump, and curving up a bit at one end. The guy who had addressed me, his cheery statement accompanying by a smile and a little laugh, was holding up a much slimmer, but also curved at the end zucchini squash.

The guy appeared to be Hispanic and in his thirties. He was very well built, ruggedly handsome, and quite probably a gay dominant. He was wearing a white apron over a black T-shirt and tight, worn jeans and heavy combat boots, but the apron drooped in front, his T-shirt was form fitting, and there was no trouble seeing that he had rings pierced in his nipples. He had one pierced in his left eyebrow, as well. Topping that off was a sleeve tattoo on his left arm in blues and blacks and a tinge of red that, as it peeked out of the color of his T-shirt promised to cover his left pec as well. He was nothing like the look of a guy I’ve hooked up with before. He had that construction worker vibe about him that I’d picked up as well from a couple of guys living next to me in the condo building on the beach. I was heat and a rather rough-looking guy in combat boots was turning me on.

I don’t know how I could so easily tag a guy as gay and as dominant or submissive, but I guess, having floated in the world of queer, it had become an acquired ability. This guy undoubtedly was a gay dominant—and because he also was a hunk and was smiling at me, I was immediately aroused. I hadn’t had any in weeks and I was feeling the lack and the loneliness.

With where our short conversation went, he quite evidently could read me as easily as I did him. I don’t know why. I was careful not to reveal my interests in what I wore, how I walked, and how I held myself. I had assiduously studied the stance of being straight even though I had somewhat of an androgynous look and did have the tell of letting my reddish-blond hair with gold highlights fall to my shoulders. I didn’t let it down often, but there had been instances, like with Clifford, that the sex was better when I let my hair down, enticed him with my green eyes, and even—especially with Clifford—wore a silky slip.

“Pardon me,” I said. “That’s a zucchini. I know what that can be used for. This vegetable. This purple one. I don’t know what this is.”

“Ah, then you do know all that a zucchini like this can be put to use—if the real thing isn’t available. But I was just kidding. You look like a player, so I was just checking on that and establishing an interest.”

“And did you establish anything?”

“I don’t know. You certainly aren’t playing yet. I thought I was a good judge of men. But whatever. I don’t want to embarrass or harass. That there is an eggplant. It’s an acquired taste, but a lot of people like to slice it and bread it and fry, broil, or bake it as a vegetable entry. You should try it. For that, though. For something else, it’s really just too plump.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, putting the eggplant in my shopping cart.

“I hope I didn’t offend,” he said.

“No, no, not at all,” but I turned my cart then and moved over into the wine section. What I needed for tonight—celebrating the change into a new year by myself—was some booze. It should be champagne, but there was just myself to see what I used, so maybe some wine. I had no idea how anyone could obtain the harder liquor around here. The liquor laws in these southern states could get quite tricky.

But what I really needed was company and a man between my legs.

I could kick myself. The produce worker was a real looker. He had a slightly rough edge to him. He aroused me and attracted me. He seemed to be probing me on the possibility of a hookup. It would be very possible, I thought, so why had I gone all naïve on him? Maybe because we were in a nearly deserted grocery store and he worked here. Surely he’d get bounced for hitting on the customers.

But, yes, I fully understood what he meant in saying the zucchini he showed me was so much more useful—and possible—then the eggplant I’d picked up. Not that I’d ever gone to that extreme.

I was thinking of the possible missed opportunity as I drove back to my condo building, the Camelot. When I got to my floor, I could hear that the New Year’s Eve party in the unit next to mine was already revving up. I knew that two guys in their early thirties lived there, a white guy and a black one, because we’d brushed past each other a couple of times as we were opening our adjacent unit doors. The way they were dressed in the late afternoon—white T-shirts, worn jeans, and heavy boots and that they usually were together then told me they probably were construction workers working for the same company. The way they were dressed when they left the apartment after dinner indicated to me that they were gay swingers. They also obviously spent extensive time in the gym. There was one in the condo building. I saw them there a lot.

We’d only smiled and exchanged pleasantries outside our respective doors, but I’d gone to sleep several nights already fantasizing being covered by one or both of them. The white guy had introduced himself as Frank and the black guy as DeLay. I thought they’d both given me the interested “Will he?” eye, but I hadn’t turned on the “flirt” in the brief times we’d talked. I wasn’t sure what their orientation was.

As New Year’s Eve progressed, the party next door blossomed. I only heard men’s voices, and going on 11:00 p.m. I was sure they had a male stripper over there and that the party had gone sexually raunchy. Only now was I sure that the guys next door were gay—and probably gay dominants, ones who would be demanding and a bit rough.

I went to sleep regretting that I hadn’t connected with the guys next door enough to have been invited to their New Year’s Eve party.

And I went to sleep lonely. Oh so lonely.

* * * *

“I’m sorry if we were too noisy for you last night. It got a little out of hand. Or maybe you weren’t here—that you were at a New Year’s Eve party yourself.”

The white guy, Frank, from next door was arriving at his apartment at the same time as I was coming upstairs from a January 1st dip in the condo complex pool. I thought it was sort of kicky to be able to swim on January 1st, even though it was in an indoor pool. I decided to follow this with a walk along the surf line, but I needed more clothes for that. I was in a Speedo and flip-flops, with a towel around my neck. I couldn’t help but notice that Frank was giving me an appreciative look. Frank and DeLay had been in the gym, just in athletic shorts, while I was swimming, and I got the impression that Frank didn’t really need to come up to his condo when I came up to mine—that he had followed me upstairs to talk with me.

Yes, the guys next door were gay, I thought as we stood there ogling each other. The sounds of the stripper and what he was doing that had seeped through the walls of the condo the previous evening had established that. The stripper had been very vocal about what was being done to him toward the end of the evening, and invoked several names, including those of Frank and DeLay. But it seemed that both of the construction-worker-type guys were tops. So, I didn’t think they were living there as a couple.

That meant they were both on the hunt and probably hunted together—and maybe they hooked up and had sex together with another guy. I had gotten the idea they were doing the stripper together.

All of that was new and different for me—and I found the prospects of it invigorating and arousing. Maybe it was a good way to lift myself up out of this loneliness I felt. I didn’t want this to go to clinical depression—if it hadn’t already gone there.

Maybe my offering myself up to these two guys as I was about to do signaled that I was already over the edge on the loneliness and clinical depression scale.

“No, it’s fine,” I answered. “I didn’t go out for New Year’s Eve. I stayed home—alone—so, I’ll have to admit that having your party going on on the other side of the wall let me be at a party vicariously. It sounded like it was a lot of fun.”

“It was,” Frank answered. “Male fun. Male-on-male fun. Does that put you off?”

“No, not at all,” I answered. He was running his eyes up and down my body, taking it all in, somehow stripping me of my Speedo as he did it. I took the towel from around my neck and held it at the side, giving him a full-frontal view. I was hardening up. He surely could tell that. In his athletic shorts he was looking ruggedly hunky to me. I was offering myself and he knew that.

“As I said, I attended your party last night vicariously.”

“I’m sorry you weren’t there in fact,” Frank said. “I did come over yesterday afternoon to invite you to the party, but you weren’t answering the door.”

“Grocery shopping,” I said. That conjured up the hunk I’d encountered in the produce section at the Food Lion. He was even more arousing that Frank here was. But Frank was here and the produce hunk wasn’t.

“Guess it’s something we all had to do. I was telling DeLay that you’d like our party and be a hit there and he wasn’t sure. He’ll be delighted to hear that I was right. How about dinner tonight? You could come over and help us clear out the leftovers from last night.”

“Oh, is there leftover male stripper?” I asked, pinning down that I most certainly was approachable.

Frank laughed. “The stripper was a do-it-all rent-boy. And he did it all. He’s not still here. But if you come over tonight, maybe you can—”

“Maybe I can,” I said, closing the deal. “What time?”

“Whatever time you like. You know you’re a looker. I was telling DeLay that you might be one who would dress to the nines and look convincing.”

“Is that how you’d like me to come to dinner? In drag?”

“DeLay and I always like a surprise. I think you’d be a knockout in a sequined dress and with your hair down.”

* * * *

“Holy shit, you’re gorgeous,” Frank said as he met me at the door of his condo, which was twice the size of mine, having a separate bedroom off to the side with its own oceanfront balcony.

DeLay’s “Wow,” from behind Frank solidified my welcome.

I’d gone all out. My figure was willowy enough to handle the slinky red-sequined, long skirted dress I wore. Underneath were a red filmy slip and matching bra and panties. I wore red spike heels that I’d spent many an hour training to be able to walk in. My hair was down. My green eyes were made up to maximum effect. My red lipstick matched the hue of my dress.

The guys were in their signature tight white T-shirts and jeans—at least until after our dinner of party leftovers. Alas neither was wearing his combat boots.

They both did, however stick to their raunchy and unpolished construction worker personas right through digging into the leftovers with their hands, swigging cheap nine-dollars-a-bottle Andre-brand champaign straight from the bottle and ogling me, touching me, kissing me, trying out their heavily suggestive jokes and stories on me. I flinched from none of it. I was in heat. I wanted something different, something daring.

I wanted to make connections—to somehow be pulled out of this loneliness I was feeling.

I didn’t even flinch or hesitate when DeLay, pulling his T-shirt off to reveal a magnificently muscular milk-chocolate chest, put a gay sex video on the TV, one with a raunchy stripper’s beat in the background, and Frank, who had been standing behind me where I was sitting on a high stool and had his hands cupping and working my pecs, asked me to dance and strip for them.

I did, but I only got as far as slowly unzipping my sequined dress and letting it fall to the floor.

DeLay moved to in front of me, unzipped himself, and fished out one of the longest, thickest erections I’d ever seen. I’d never been with a black man before. I’d heard that, on average, they were longer and thicker than others, but I hadn’t given that much thought. DeLay’s shaft made me consider that this might be true.

He put his beefy hands on my shoulders and pressed down, causing me to go onto my knees in front of him and taking his cock in my hands and mouth. As he moved, I caught a glimpse of the thick ring pierced into the bulb of his cock. Another something new for me to experience. Running the fingers of one hand into my hair, he held my head in place, while he manipulated his cock around my cheeks and into my mouth with the other hand. The ring clicked against my teeth until he had forced the shaft deeper into my throat.

Meanwhile, Frank was behind me, naked now and showing another well-honed body and respectable erection. He went down on his knees close behind me, and put his hands on me—all over me. The hands glided under the hem of my slip, pulling it up to under my neck. His hands went under my bra and kneaded my pecs, playing particular attention to my nubs, thrumming the bars that were piercing my nubs. Then his hands glided down my torso and under the hem of my panties. He pulled me up to my feet, me maintaining deep-throating position with DeLay’s cock.

Frank slipped the panties down off my legs, and I cried out, letting DeLay’s shaft pull out of my throat, as, grabbing my hips between his hands, Frank mounted, penetrated, and began to fuck me from behind. DeLay maintained hold of my head in his hands and forced his shaft back down my throat.

Frank pulled me up and away from DeLay, and carried me over to the sofa. He draped me belly down over the arm of the sofa, hovered over me from on top and behind, mounted me and penetrated again, and rode me to his completion. I had to move my hand down under my belly and take care of myself. Frank was into pleasing himself, not me.

When he was done, Frank called out “Your turn now,” to DeLay, who had stripped off his jeans—he wasn’t wearing briefs—who exchanged places with his roommate. DeLay fucked me in a missionary, laying me along the sofa cushions, moving his knees between my spread legs, and holding my legs out by gripping my ankles. Both of them were using Trojan Magnum condoms they were pulling out of one box. He, big and thick, entered me slowly and with effort as I yodeled, “Shit! Fuck! You’re so big! God, I can feel the ring!” and fucked me and fucked me and fucked me.

Yodeling for him, I glided my hands over his magnificent chocolate torso and moved my hips in rhythm to his thrusts. He rowed my legs back and forth, folded into me with his thrusts, and pulling my legs back with his back swings. At one point, I tried to lift my chest to his, but he backhanded me across the cheek, growling, “Lay there and take it,” and I lay back, as commanded, the fuck being all about him and the way he wanted it. I was just providing the vessel of the moment for their release.

I left no doubt from either one of them that I wouldn’t give them what they wanted. It was clear, though, that what they wanted was just to get their rock off with some new conquest. They did not give or make any effort to take care of my needs. They took and took and took, doing a couple of rounds of tag teaming on the sofa, getting their rocks off and withdrawing until they were hard again.

I harkened back to the previous night, to their party and what I could hear through the wall. I now understood how it went down with the stripper. I could understand his verbal responses—asking guys to slow down who didn’t and for mercy that didn’t come—in terms of how he got gangbanged. If there had been more than just these two here, now, I’m sure they would have let me be gangbanged as well.

They were in magnificent shape—young, fit, and virile. And they were rough with me. They forced me into the positions they wanted, slapped me around when I didn’t comply fast enough, and stuffed themselves inside me faster than I was comfortably able to spread for them. It was all new and different and satisfying in its own way. It didn’t do anything to alleviate my feeling of loneliness, though. We weren’t making love. I was being gang fucked.

This was accentuated when they took a break, going back to the leftovers and bottles of champagne and then out to the balcony for a smoke. They left me to whimper and moan on the sofa. They didn’t invite me to join them. They didn’t do a damn thing but to realize that I was just a piece of new meat to them with a hole to stretch and fill.

The feeling of loneliness flooded in.

After they’d taken a break, they came back inside, moved me from the sofa to one of the double beds in the bedroom, and answered another question I’d had about them. Yes, they were both tops. Yes, they hunted together. And, yes, they shared in sex.

They put me between them and showed the various ways two tops could share one submissive, both of them inside me and fucking me together. I sobbed and suffered, but I gave them what they wanted. At that point, I didn’t have any other choice. I convinced myself it was what I wanted, but they didn’t care whether or not I was having a good time.

They were both asleep and snoring, one on either side of me, when I maneuvered my way out from between them, picked up my clothes, and returned to my neighboring studio apartment and to my own, solitary bed. I was sore from the rough treatment and for all the trips they’d made up my channel. I was still sobbing and whimpering, but I also was giving a little smile. I didn’t blame Frank and DeLay for anything. They’d taken care of the heat I was in. And they hadn’t promised to take care of my loneliness.

* * * *

“Ah, yes, that’s much the best size. Far less painful. Closer to what I can provide. And glad to see you gave up on the possibility of the eggplant.”

“Excuse me?” I said, before turning around and seeing that it was the Food Lion produce guy from New Year’s Eve. No reason why he shouldn’t be here. This was the produce section of the Highway 501 Food Lion on the late afternoon of day two of the new year. I was holding a very-suggestive size and shaped zucchini. Smaller than the one he’d held up on New Year’s Eve, but still formidable in the context that had been hinted at.

“Oh, hi. I thought I bought a zucchini the other day and I was bringing together the ingredients for my dinner and found I hadn’t bought a zucchini.”

“That would be a dinner for you and . . . ?”

“Just me, I’m afraid.”

“Do you really know how to cook a zucchini?”

“No, not really. But there are cook books.”

“And you have such a cook book?”

“No, not really. But how hard can it be to cook up a zucchini? There’s always the Internet, as needed.”

“I know how to cook one—several different ways. All delicious.”

Was this a come-on? I wondered. Was he angling for dinner with me? I looked at him. Apron off. Looking really good in his tight black T-shirt, worn jeans, and combat boots. And he was carrying some sort of musical instrument case. I must have looked at it too hard, because he laughed.

“What, this? This is my tenor sax case,” he said. “I’m coming off work. It’s Friday night and I’ll be hitting the jazz clubs later tonight—after I’ve figured out where I’m having dinner.” Again that anticipatory look as if this was where I invited him to dinner.

“You play the sax? At jazz clubs? They have jazz clubs in Myrtle Beach? Even off season?”

“Yes to all of that. You haven’t found Ziggie’s or the All That Jazz club yet? Or other places where guys like us hang out and develop circles of friends in Myrtle Beach? How long were you planning on being in Myrtle Beach?”

What I wanted to do was to challenge him on the “guys like us” comment, but I didn’t. I gave up on that. He was gay; I was gay. The question was whether we would be compatible. I was an exclusive bottom. Was he a top? He sure looked like one. The tenor sax meant we could be in some realm.

“My stay here is pretty open ended,” I said. “And, no, I haven’t found any place to hang out here in Myrtle Beach. Jazz clubs would be good. I play jazz on the piano and I’ve worked rooms with small jazz ensembles before.”

“Then you must let me introduce you to Ziggie’s and the All That Jazz club,” he said. “We could go tonight after we’ve figured dinner out. Then there are some other clubs for later, if you’re interested.”

“We could have dinner at my place,” I said. “You could teach me how best to cook up this zucchini.”

“Yes, it would be much better for dinner than other uses it could be put to. You could have the real thing if you wanted.” He gave me ‘that look.’ I knew what he was saying, and suddenly I was in heat again.

“I have a condo in Camelot, which is over near 19th Avenue North,” I said.

“I know the place,” he answered. “My name is Ryan.”

“I’m Richard. But my friends call me Rich.”

“I might like to call you Dick,” he said. “Might like to call that name out in the night. Dick, Dick, Dick. Let’s have a Dick. Hello, this is my Dick.” He was smiling.

I didn’t have an answer for that so I just blushed and put the zucchini in my shopping cart.

* * * *

I lay there, purring, and watching Ryan moving back and forth in his bungalow bedroom and bath in the mellow early-morning light. He was getting ready for work, he said.

“I don’t work full time at the Food Lion,” he’d told me the night before. “My family owns the store and I help out when I’m needed—more in the off season like this. I have a putt-putt course near the SkyWheel on Mr. Joe White Avenue. I’m starting to refurbish that for the season today.”

Ryan had done everything with and to me. I hadn’t had time to feel sorry for myself or to feel lonely. He’d known what to do with a zucchini in the culinary sense. He’d playfully known what to do with it in another sense to help open me up in foreplay. Another something new for me—lying on my back on the bed, legs spread and bent, pelvis slightly elevated, while, hovering over me and capturing my eyes with his, Ryan worked me open with a curved zucchini before rolling over on top of me, and working me with his similarly sized shaft.

He’d also known what jazz clubs were open and where they were located. He was welcome on stage in both of them and dragged me up to the piano. We made beautiful music together and I inherited an instant circle of friends who welcomed me back to play anytime. Later he proved to me that there were gay clubs in town even in the off season. There I picked up more friends of Ryan’s who were happy to be friends of mine, as well. I was being given ample reason why I should never free lonely or alone in Myrtle Beach anymore no matter the season.

After 1:00 a.m. on the morning of January 3rd, after an evening that felt to me like New Year’s Eve—the advent of not only a new year but also a new life—he brought me back to his small, two-bedroom bungalow on Dunbar Street.

“It’s all mine, such as it is,” he’d said as his tour through the house ended in the master bedroom.

As small and humble as it was, and as the other houses around it in this section were, it was well kept up and tastefully decorated, and it was located in a highly desirable section of town. When I checked on its Zillow valuation in the next week, I was surprised to see it valued at $480,000.

Ryan wasn’t hurting for money. More important, he was hurting for sexual expertise.

He introduced me to a whole new world in bed, fucking me totally and repeatedly, while constantly being solicited that I was having as much pleasure as he was. He was a master of “hide the zucchini,” both literally and figuratively. We made beautiful, harmonized sexual music together. We even managed to come together. He didn’t just fuck me—he did that well because he was every bit the muscular, demanding, rough construction worker type I fantasized about—he made love to me—constantly. Throughout the night.

Dressed, he came back and stood at the foot of the bed.

“You have two choices,” he said. “You can laze around here all day and be ready to do the town again when I get home, or you can get up, dress, and come help me work on the putt-putt course.”

“You’d want me around you all day?” I asked.

“Yes, that would be my choice. Not letting each other out of the other’s sight for the rest of eternity.”

There certainly wasn’t anything lonely about that.