Arena Stage

Sean

I was never more nervous than while I was waiting in the dance rehearsal hall, trying to keep up with small talk with the pianist, while I was waiting for Miloslav Cersenka for my audition to dance in Defiance. I was torn. I wanted to do this, and not just for the money I needed to help keep Mr. Masters’ lifestyle afloat. I needed this for me too. I was beginning to dissolve into Mr. Masters. If there was ever going to be anything left of me that was me, I needed someplace that Mr. Masters couldn’t go. For me, that was the world of the dance.

On the flip side, however, I was afraid of what was required to become part of Cersenka’s troupe—and I remained shocked that Mr. Masters could just share me around like this. First Leonard Handelsman and now Cersenka. Mr. Masters had always been so adamant that there would be no one but him. I felt used and worthless. I consoled myself with the thought that Cersenka may be too ill to follow his custom. Over the weeks of early preparation for the opening of Defiance at the Arena Stage, his condition had noticeably weakened and, if anything, he looked even more cadaverous and gaunt than ever before.

In the days since I had asked for and been granted the audition, I had been sitting in on the dance rehearsals so that I could see what dance positions and routines were going to be used and I could concentrate my audition on those. What surprised me the most about those rehearsals was Cersenka’s movement there. He would appear, tapping his ivory-headed cane on the floor as he favored one leg in his steps. But then the music would start and he would be out among the dancers, still the master of all in his flexibility and the grace of his movements as he gave instruction. I ached for him on how he would feel when the day came when he no longer could dance like that. And I thought that what appeared to be an acceleration in the progress of his disease probably was welcome to him—that he preferred death to life as a cripple after having been a premier dancer.

When Cersenka entered the rehearsal hall, I stood away from the piano, in the first position, and watched his pained progression to the center of the room from the door. He merely snapped his fingers and the piano music began. Then he gracefully extended his hand to me and put on the mere hint of a smile, and I began to move over the floor in the prescribed audition positions. I was so keyed up that I had to keep trying to make my mind a blank, to let my body do what it had been conditioned and trained to do. It meant the world to me to do well, even though it frightened me to the core on where doing well would lead.

Cersenka was bare chested and bare footed, clad only in a form-fitting black leotard. Even in his emaciated state, his muscle tone held, and his veins popped out on his chest and arms, indicating there was practically no fat on his body for them to run through. He appeared made of steel.

At length I had come near him, and he commanded me to take the position of the arabesque penchée, where I lifted one leg high behind me at over a 90-degree angle and moved my torso forward, toward the floor, to counterbalance. Cersenka came close to me then and put one hand on my belly and the other one high on my thigh.

“Demi-pointe,” he commanded. And, as directed, I went up on my toe. Cersenka, in dramatic strides, walked around in a circle, turning me. His breathing was raspy, and I felt the hand he had on my thigh move up and cup my basket.

I knew now that I had passed the dancing segment of the audition and we were now in the second phase—the phase where he possessed me as his.

“Felix, enough, thanks. You may go.”

Cersenka was addressing the piano player, who brought the music to a graceful conclusion and stood up, bowed, and walked out of the rehearsal hall in long strides, my heart matching the beat of his clicking heels.

I was alone with Cersenka now. He was breathing heavily, and it wasn’t all a result of his condition. I was trembling from the feel of his strong hand cupping my cock and balls through the tight-fitting unitard material and the dancer’s belt.

He was still circling around in the center of the hall, moving me in the arabesque position. I felt his hand going from my basket up my extended leg, and he was pushing the red terry cloth leg warmer off my calf.

“Change position, arabesque penchée,” he barked, and I came down off toe and lifted the other leg up as high as the first one had been and went back on demi-pointe. Cersenka circled me about a few more turns and then ran his hand up the extended leg and pushed the other leg warmer off.

His hands went to my shoulders, and he pulled the straps of the torso portion of my unitard down over my arms and down my chest and then all of the way off me. I was naked now, except for my dance belt and my ballet slippers.

“Drape pas de deux, legs extended,” he commanded and turned me away from him and lifted me, my back against his chest, and I extended my legs, knees bent, out to the side in graceful ballet pose. I was trembling, though, knowing what we were building up to, trying to control myself and to remain in traditional ballet positions at all times and to move into them and from them as gracefully as possible. I knew this was all part of the audition.

He had one arm around my belly, holding me to his chest, and his other hand was gliding below the waistband of my dancing belt. He started fondling my cock and balls and his lips went to the hollow of my neck. And I began to moan for him.

In smooth movements, he unsnapped my dance belt and let it fall to the floor and pushed the waist of his leotard down below his ball sack.

“Ankles on the back of my thighs,” he whispered in a hoarse voice, and I brought my legs around his and hooked them above the back of his knees. He lifted me then and settled my channel on his already-condom-clad engorged cock, and he was raising and lowering me on his tool, fucking me as I groaned and moaned for him. He wasn’t large, but he was long, and it was all I could do to maintain graceful ballet positions and not shudder or writhe to his strongly controlled, slow, deep fuck. He was murmuring and I could hear him crying softly. I felt he was worshipping my body as he fucked me—and that he was savoring every deep penetration as if it was his last—which I realized, and he must too, it very possibly would be.

He wasn’t steady enough on his feet to do this for very long. He pulled me off his cock and, sharply instructing me not to break position, hobbled over to the piano, carrying me in front of him. He gently lowered my buttocks to the piano keyboard and moved in between my legs. He slid his cock deeply inside me again, and then we were fucking in earnest, my buttocks making discordant music on the keyboard.

He was wheezing and breathing heavily, and I was afraid he was going to expire on the spot, but he also was whispering to me how good a fuck I was—and a very nice dancer too.

He wasn’t particularly vigorous, but I gave him as good a ride as I could, and running my hands over the veins popping out on his torso and arms was arousing to me. I imagined that when he was younger and healthier he was quite a good lover.

I did what I could to convince him he was still a good lover, and he began to cry again at my acceptance of him moving inside me. I pulled his face down to mine and gave him a sweet kiss as I felt his pelvis jerk and the filling out of the bulb of the condom inside me. He was smiling in gratitude when we parted.

I started to whisper, “Did I—?”

“Monday morning at 9:30 sharp. Here and ready to dance,” he murmured back at me.

And, with that, I became a member of the cast of Defiance.

* * * *

“Now? You want me to go with you now?”

“Sure, now,” Gil said to me. He was smiling and holding up a picnic basket. “This food’s not going to be in very good condition the next time Masters and Handelsman are gone for half a day without expecting us to tag along.”

“But I’ve got to practice,” I said. “I got a place in the dance troupe.”

“So I gathered,” Gil said. He gave me a funny look, but I had no idea why. And then he continued on. “You don’t think there’s any way Cersenka’s going to fire you from the troupe, is there?”

I surveyed his face for evidence of censure. I’m sure he knew what I had to do for Cersenka to get the job. But he probably didn’t know that I’d already become a favorite of Cersenka’s and was being taken frequently in the dressing room he occupied at the theater.

Catching my expression, Gil stammered out, “I mean we’re too close to the opening for him to replace you, aren’t we? And . . . and I’ve seen you dance. I don’t think there’s any chance he’ll want to replace you.”

“But where will we go?” I then asked, anxious to change the subject. “A picnic on the dock, watching the Boxoffice, won’t be much fun.”

“I’ve got wheels,” he said, “And a map and an assurance that there’s a slice of rural paradise within a three-quarter’s hour drive.”

“Wheels?” I asked skeptically?

“Come, come with me,” Gil said as he reached his hand out to me, tilted his head, and gave me a winning smile. “Come with me and I’ll take all of your cares away, if only for an afternoon.”

How could I resist? I went into the men’s room off the lobby and stripped off the unitard I was wearing when he stopped me en route to the dance rehearsal hall. Gil stood in the doorway, leaning up against the doorframe and giving me a little smile. I felt like blushing. Here I was being fucked at least once a day and by different men, feeling so jaded and used, and yet I was blushing when I noticed a man watching me undress. Of course Gil wasn’t like any of the others. He’d said he wanted me, sure, but he hadn’t been pushy yet. And thus far I hadn’t been with him. And he was the most arousing to me of the bunch.

“What?” I asked over my shoulder as I pulled the unitard off and turned my head to catch the expression on my face.

“Can you turn, please, and face me? Just a moment?”

I did and stood as tall as I could, my arms out to my side. Gil’s eyes slitted and I could hear the raspy breath escaping him.

“God, you’re beautiful. Can I . . . can we . . .?”

“No picnic?” I asked, putting on a pouty face. “You promised me a picnic.”

“I’ll be outside in the hall,” he said, his voice full of regret.

When he was gone, I put my T-shirt over my head and rolled it down my chest, and then I pulled up a pair of tight jeans. I didn’t put on any briefs, and I turned toward the door in surprise when I heard another intake of breath and a low, “Oh, god.” Gil was peering around the corner, and his eyes were riveted on my crouch as I slowly pulled my zipper up.

There was no question that Gil wanted me. He wasn’t pushing me, though. I liked him all the more for that. And I was sort of sorry I’d cock teased him like that. I hadn’t really decided whether I’d give myself to him today. I rather liked the suspense—and the thought that I had some decision in the matter as opposed to most of what had been happening to me of late.

“What? This car?” I asked as we reached the staff parking lot. “Isn’t this the lighting technician’s car . . . whatshisname’s car?”

“Jack, the senior lighting technician. Yes, this is his Mustang. And you don’t know what I had to do to get the use of it. But it was worth it. You need an afternoon away. You look more relaxed already.”

I frowned, turning away from Gil so he wouldn’t see me do it, and I felt bad then. I was pretty sure I knew what Gil had had to do to get use of the car. I’d seen him fucking the lighting technician. It had made me think at the time that he’d do almost anyone, that he had no taste or limits at all, but now I was mad at myself for jumping to that conclusion. Now it seemed likely he’d done it for me—to get use of this car to take me for a drive. Who would have guessed Gil was such a romantic? For me.

The first few miles driving out of D.C. were a little hairy. We missed the turn to the 14th Street Bridge that would have taken us across the Potomac at the Pentagon and had to find our way around the Tidal Basin and catch the Arlington Memorial Bridge that headed into Arlington Cemetery on the Virginia side. Gil managed to get off on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, headed west, though, and within minutes we were in parkland running up the Potomac on the Virginia side and I was feeling freer and less pressed already.

“What are we in this rut for, anyway?” Gil asked as we rode west under towering trees.

“Is that a rhetorical question?” I asked. And then when he didn’t respond immediately, I tried a couple of answers. “Because we just fell into it and can’t seem to climb out? Or because we like the fucking?”

Gil laughed at that. “No, seriously.”

I thought for a few minutes and then tried again. “Because of the rush it gives us—well, me, at least. The theater is my life. It excites me. And it puts me beside so much talent.”

“Like the lion of the theater, Creighton Masters, who hides behind your writing skills?” Gil asked. His voice was softer now. He was being serious now.

“His talent is mammoth,” I answered. “It will come back. The success of Defiance will get him going again.”

“A success built on your writing? You virtually wrote Defiance, didn’t you?”

I didn’t answer; I looked out over the Potomac and trained my eyes on a couple of scull shells practicing racing below the gray-rock walls of Georgetown University.

“Who named it Defiance?”

The sculls were almost neck and neck. I couldn’t decide which one of them I wanted to draw ahead. It was frustrating not knowing who to pull for—not having decided to pick which scull I perceived to be the eventual winner or to invest my wishes in the underdog.

“You named it that, didn’t you? It’s in the name itself. Can’t you see that part of you was screaming to be free of this?”

I heard calls from the girls in back of both of the sculls, voiced almost simultaneously, and the sculls, still neck and neck, lost power. I sighed my profound disappointment that they both had given up, not establishing a winner.

“OK. Let’s return to Masters. What if he doesn’t come back? What if he has no plays in him anymore?” Gil said. I didn’t answer. “Is the power of his cocking enough then?”

“I don’t know, Gil,” I said, turning toward him in anger. “Is the power of his cock good enough for you?”

“Ouch,” Gil responded. But he failed to rise in anger. He gave me a lopsided smile instead. “I repeat . . . if his talent doesn’t come back?”

“I don’t know,” I answered after the Mustang had churned away another mile upstream.

“What would you do if you were free to just go away from here?” he asked.

“I don’t think about that,” I answered.

“That’s one reason for us to go on this little excursion . . . to think outside the box. The box represented by Arena Stage, the boxes our individual masters have made for us.”

“Only one reason?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he flashed back. “You know the other reason.”

“Yeah, I guess?”

“And are you scared?”

“No, I guess not,” I answered. “But I also don’t know, Gil. Are you just going to take me like everyone else has—just because you want me? Or am I going to be given choices?”

“Check,” Gil said, and I was glad that he at least attempted a smile. “Did anyone ever tell you you were a very clever boy?” he finished with.

“Not recently,” I answered. And for some reason that answer made me sad. And then I went back on the topic we’d slipped off of. “I don’t think of Arena Stage as a box. I love the theater. I’d want to stay in it. Maybe not here in Washington, maybe not even in New York. Maybe I’d want to do something fresh out on the West Coast.”

“What’s in the cards for you and Masters after Defiance?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ll have to try to get him to cut down on the spending, of course. And there’s another play.”

“Another play? He’s written another play.”

“Well, not exactly.”

“Ah, I see. You’ve written another play for him.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“So, can I read this play when we get back?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” And then I wanted him to do some answering. “So, your turn. Where will you go? What would you do if you left here?”

“I’d go far, far away. Maybe even to the West Coast too. If I didn’t leave Lenny pissed, I probably could get a job in the entertainment industry out there. Maybe not plays. But TV or movies, maybe. I’m good as a fixer now. And I am workin’ on gettin’ away. I’ve got my escape fund building.”

“Your escape fund?”

“Yeah, that’s what I call it,” Gil answered, and then he gave a little nervous laugh.

“And how much more do you need before you can escape?” I asked.

“Hmmm. I don’t know.”

“How will you know when you have enough then?” I asked.

He didn’t respond, so I continued, “Maybe until you decide how much you really need, you’re just not all that anxious to escape.”

We rode in silence for the last couple of miles in a wealthy rural area, with mansions buried behind natural woodland growth, until we got where Gil had told me we were headed—the Virginia side of Great Falls Park, bordering the stretch of rapids on the Potomac several miles above Washington, D.C.

When we drove into the parking area, it was almost deserted. It was early in the year, and no one could have anticipated in advance that we’d have such a glorious, warm day. Gil parked at the far edge of the lot, under a tree.

He turned to me, a wary expression on his face. “This is where I tell you I want you and wait to see how you react.”

“Maybe differently than before,” I answered in a small voice.

“Differently enough?”

“Yes . . . maybe.”

Gil had his arm around my neck. He pulled me to him and we kissed. And while we were kissing, his hands were busy. He pulled my T-shirt over my head and was running his big, brown hands around my chest, pinching at my nipples with one hand, while the other slid down my belly and under the waistband of my jeans. He had undone my jeans snap, and I felt and even thought I could hear my zipper slowly descend as he ran his fingers into my pubic hair and pushed out with the back of his hand. I sighed at the feel of his fingers in my pubic hair, and then his hand descended lower and wrapped itself around my cock. His thumb flicked on my piss slit while my cock engorged and straightened out inside his fist.

I moaned and spread my legs, putting one foot up on the dashboard where it met the side window and the other one over his knee. He was slowly working my cock.

“Gil,” I gasped, as I came up for air. He raised my arm that was pulled into his chest and lowered his face and buried his lips into my pit.

“Let me get over there in your seat, under you,” He murmured, when he turned his head from tonguing my pit.

“No, Gil. No, please.”

“Let me fuck you. I want to fuck you so bad,” Gil moaned.

“Gil, I’m scared. You’re so big in every way. You’ll split me. Masters . . . Masters, he . . .”

“Shush, Sean. Shush. It will be fine. It will be good. I’ll be gentle. We’ll go slow. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Oh, god, let me fuck you. I want you so bad.”

“No, not here,” I said through clinched teeth and between gasps. “Let’s go have the picnic and be more comfortable when we do it.”

“But you want me. You want me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes,” I said louder. “But I’ll still want you after the picnic lunch you brought along.” I was still unsure, however. I didn’t know how I’d react when we finally started doing it. I wanted him, but I had lied to him. I was, in fact, scared. I didn’t want to fall for him. I was having trouble handling the men I had to take. I just didn’t know. But I thought when push came to shove and I said I couldn’t go through with it, he wouldn’t force me. That already put him high on my list.

After that I let Gil take the lead. He took the picnic basket in one hand and my hand in the other, and we walked down the path along the side of the rapids until Gil decided to move off the path over toward a rock outcropping, where he found a private little tree-lined dell sheltered from the path by the rocks and carpeted in thick moss.

The setting was idyllic, amazing, actually, knowing it was this close to downtown D.C., and the sound of the rushing water over the rapids was soothing. I relaxed on the blanket through the picnic lunch, and the couple of beers we each had. We didn’t discuss anything deep, not like the raw nerve endings we’d toyed with during the car ride. I said little, lying there in Gil’s arms while we were sipping at our second beers. I hadn’t put my T-shirt back on since the encounter in the Mustang, and Gil took his time working my chest with his hands and lips and removing my jeans as we lay there, and then I sighed and moaned while he fondled my cock and balls and fingered my channel entrance while we were kissing and he moved his lips to my nipples and pits.

While he was kissing me and working me, I was becoming scared again—not because I didn’t want him, but because I was afraid I wanted him too much and because this would add yet another dimension to an already complicated situation—and because of that bulge in his trousers. I murmured that maybe we shouldn’t be doing this, but Gil shushed me and assured me it would be fine and that this was exactly what we should be doing.

When he felt me relax to him, he rose and stood over me and slowly stripped down. I began moaning as soon as I saw his strong, heavily muscled, low-hung body—the first time I’d seen him in the altogether. A hulking black beauty, all power and primeval attraction.

There were no more questions, though. I no longer cared if he split me asunder. I turned on my back and spread my legs for him and he came down and covered my body with his. His massive cock was rubbing on my belly as he kissed me on the lips, and I needed nothing more than this to be set aflame. He felt my surrender in his kiss, and he started kissing and tonguing down my body.

When he reached the tip of my cock with his lips, I arched my back and murmured that he didn’t need to do this.

“Yes, yes, I do,” he answered in a husky voice. “This is important to me. This means something to me.”

And then he made slow, sensual love to my cock and balls with his mouth and tongue. I raised my pelvis to him and began a slow motion with my hips when he had fully taken me in.

I’d never had attention paid to my cock and balls for this long and this well. I felt my seed rising in me, and I murmured that we’d better stop, that I might come. But he paid no attention to me. He kept sucking at my cock, putting pressure on it and scraping it with his teeth, coaxing me to give myself, my essence, to him. I was close, crying out that we needed to stop, that I wanted him inside me. But he was relentless. I grabbed for his head, burying my fingers in his hair, trying, without successful to pull his head away from me, fearful that the increased pumping of my hips would be too much for him to handle. But it wasn’t too much for him to handle. I moved my legs over his shoulders and hugged his head close with my thighs. His fingers were digging deep inside my channel.

I knew I was being vocal, and I tried to tone myself down. But nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I was in full force in fucking his mouth. And now I wasn’t trying to pull his head away, I was holding him close to me. I felt my balls being ingested into his mouth along with my cock and being moved to his cheeks on each side, and he began to hum, the vibrations driving me crazy and pushing . . . me . . . over the edge in a torrent that matched the race of the churning waters in the nearby Potomac.

He released me then and sat up over me and looked down at me with the most loving, tender look in his eyes. I lay under him, exhausted and panting, and looking up with an expression that mirrored his. I was horrified and exhilarated all at once. I loved him. That was the last thing I should be doing. But I couldn’t hide it from myself, even if I could try to hide it from him. I was hopelessly in love with Gil Johnson.

He was on the move again, lifting my buttocks with his strong brown hands and rolling my pelvis. His lips went to my channel entrance, and I reached a whole new level of arousal as he tongue fucked me.

After that, when he covered my body with his and slowly, stopping as I found necessary, panting to open to him, to accommodate his gigantic size, slid his cock into my channel. As he promised, he possessed me slowly, moving massively inside me, giving me the sensation of doors opening willingingly, welcomingly to him and walls stretching, sighing their love and crying out their jubilation in the progress of his possessing cock, bringing me to ejaculation again while he was still inching to the center of me. There was little pain even though he was so long and thick. And then, totally sheathed, he began to move in and out me, as every nerve in my body ran to luxuriate in the full possession of me by that moving, mastering cock. But as nice as his slow, easy, eternal fucking was, it was almost a sideshow to that glorious blow job Gil had given me.

* * * *

Three weeks later, the production was coming together. The script rewrites were finished, which was a good thing, because most of my time was now spent in dance rehearsals. And the dance routines were also about as close to perfection as they were going to get.

Masters was brooding, no longer the center of attention, and spent much of the time during the day in the townhouse, going through papers he wouldn’t let me see. Often at night he was on the Boxoffice, however, and those nights he came home too exhausted to mess with me when he got into bed. I knew that this was something Gil was doing—for me. He was occupying both Masters and Handelsman, and keeping them off me.

It also meant, however, that the occasions when Gil and I could meet were rare. But meet we did, where we could. And we made love whenever there was an opportunity.

Although Gil was helping to minimize the demands on me from Masters and Handelsman, there was little he could do with Miloslav Cersenka. I had become the dance master’s favorite. He frequently would call me into his room at the theater after dance practices and would fuck me on the chaise lounge there.

I worried about him, though. The closer the dance sequences were coming to perfection, the more ravished his body appeared. He was dragging to the rehearsals in the end, and he was asking me to show the other dancers what he meant when he was trying to correct their positions. His eyes took on a haunted look, and his fucking was labored and almost perfunctory, even though he cried through each one as if it was his last.

Thus, it was bound to happen on that day, when, face flushed and excitement bursting out of him, Cersenka ended a dance rehearsal by saying we were ready. He trumpeted the fact that he had fulfilled his responsibilities a good week before the dress rehearsal and while Handelsman was still yelling at his actors and calling them fucking dumb donkeys.

He took me by the arm and led me to his room, bubbling over with pride at just how perfect the dance sequences were. As I stripped for him, I could hear him behind me, wheezing, but still talking up a storm, barely intelligible and slurring his words, although I knew he was congratulating himself on cheating death—on having taken on another production, prepared another dance ensemble, when everyone, all of his doctors included, had warned him it was too much. How he had snatched his victory and produced a masterpiece of dance work.

He died in my arms, his cock inside me, his face buried in the hollow of my neck. He jerked, and I thought he was coming. But, he wasn’t. He was going.

I dressed him and sat him up at the dressing table, as if he had slumped over dead there. Then I dressed myself and went to the front of the theater and told them I’d found him unconscious in his room and that they should call 911.

The sounds of the sirens were coming closer as I left Arena Stage through the lobby entrance and crossed Maine Avenue for the short walk to the 7th Street townhouse.

Masters was sitting at the desk in the living room, looking through some papers. I walked over to where he was sitting and looked down and recognized envelopes from a Realtor in New York City and saw at once that they concerned the sale of our apartment in Manhattan.

He swept other papers over those, but he hadn’t been fast enough. I’d seen them. And I was in shock. But as I’d already been in shock, the import of the papers didn’t occur to me until later.

Masters looked up at me, a wary, guilty look on his face.

“You’re back early,” he said.

“Miloslav Cersenka is dead,” I said. I knew I sounded flat, too matter of fact. That’s what shock was doing to me. “Just now. I found him in his room. I suppose those sirens we’re hearing are for him.”

“Had he finished preparing the dances for Defiance?” Masters asked. No “Oh my God,” no “Oh, I’m sorry you had to be the one to find him,” no “I’m sorry we pushed him like that,” no “What a great loss to the theater.” Just, “Had he finished his part of my fucking play?”

I had never hated Creighton Masters as much as I did at that moment.