Kept Men

Even before I got off of the train from Raleigh, North Carolina, in Asheville, where, as a New Yorker, I was completely out of my element, I saw that the man, himself, had come to meet the train. I didn’t realize that I would be relieved to see a familiar face, albeit one I was a bit apprehensive about, as I started this new venture, but I was. I was to take up my new duties as an associate lawyer, not long out of Yale University and new to the South, in a branch of our law office in Asheville principally to serve the Vanderbilt family, which was building a country estate there. Calvin G. Holloway, the senior partner in charge of the Asheville office, was standing on the platform. An older black man in livery was there as well, and a younger, nervous and despondent-looking young man, standing next to luggage was there too.

Holloway wasn’t here just to meet me, I quickly learned. He was here to put the other young man on the train to return to Raleigh. And when I came off the train and onto the platform, the other young man, Harry, gave me such a venomous look that it almost sent me reeling back up into the passenger car. It was almost as if it was my fault I was arriving and he was leaving. As it transpired there was a cause and effect there, but it was hardly my fault—or I didn’t believe it was blame that should be exclusively—or even primarily—assigned to me. It all, of course, revolved around the commanding Calvin G. Holloway.

“Benton,” Mr. Holloway said as I turned my gaze from Harry. “Benton Barkley, is it not? Welcome to Asheville and our branch of Collins, Bagwell, and Holloway here. We were seeing Harry off, so it was no trouble meeting your train.”

That set me back a bit. Whether pretend or not, he was acting like he barely remembered me. How insulting was it that someone who had recently stripped and fucked you wasn’t sure they remembered you? But that was Calvin G. Holloway—he floated above we mere peasants. I had been easy for him. He was a powerful and commanding man. He had laid me and I had given no thought to deny him.

He gave me the distinct impression that he normally wouldn’t be meeting the train of a lowly associate lawyer in the firm himself and that this was a great honor. I was to be an assistant of a sort, more-or-less a gofer, for him, but no more than an associate lawyer still on probation.

And, as he was one of the senior partners, and having been sent to hold down this prestigious branch of the firm to serve the Vanderbilts as lawyers for their Biltmore estate, for which construction started the previous year, 1888, I couldn’t deny that he was in an exalted position relative to me. The firm was ginning up with the hope that landing the Vanderbilts as clients, if only for their southern holdings, would lead to other connections with the New York elite. I, having come from there myself, would not, I am sure, have been hired otherwise.

“After you put Harry’s luggage on the train, please carry Benton’s luggage out to the carriage, Jacob. We will be in the bar until that is accomplished.”

“Yas, sah,” the very brown older man in livery said, and, with that, Harry of the despondent and sour look was consigned to Jacob, and Holloway, taller and thinner than I—and so much more distinguished looking—put an arm around my shoulders and led me toward the station bar. The way Holloway held me to himself, I knew that he remembered me. He’d certainly spent enough time inside me. What he remembered now was that he owned me.

“We have an apartment for you near our North Lexington Avenue downtown offices, and it will be cleaned for use tomorrow, but for tonight you can come to my house on West Chestnut Street in the Montford District. I think you’ll find that more comfortable than a hotel.”

This was coming as very much of a surprise. I was to take on assistance duties to the man, but I had assumed, by the way he had greeted me at the train station, that he would hardly recognize who I was in the office for some time to come. I certainly hadn’t expected to be entertained in his house on my first night in the city. “I could certainly go to a hotel,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to impose on you and Mrs. Holloway.”

“Nonsense,” he answered boisterously. “Mrs. Holloway is on a buying spree in New York City. This exposure to the Vanderbilts and their acquisitiveness, as favorable as it is to the law firm, has become a very bad influence on my wife, I’m afraid. No, I’ll be all alone this evening and night. I’ll be happy to have the company.”

I also was to find that he wasn’t going to provide the entertainment; I was. That really shouldn’t have surprised me either. He wasn’t going to pretend like he barely knew me tonight; he was going to become reacquainted with every inch of me. Everything was moving so fast, however. I could hardly catch my breath. I certainly wasn’t to have any control over getting my bearings in this new job.

* * * *

Off we went from the train station in a carriage, with Jacob at the reins, quickly getting into the plush tree-lined Montford district to the northeast of the downtown area, where the Holloway house was located. It was a large, wooden Victorian mansion set well back from the street. I was given a well-appointed bedroom that was larger than my entire set of rooms in Raleigh had been, but only my luggage was to occupy the room.

When I came down from my room at the dinner hour, having, after a sponge bath, exchanged my travel clothes for the best clothes I had that could be considered more casual than business suits for the office, I found Holloway in his study, drinking bourbon and smoking a cigar. He was wearing a red silk dressing gown over black trousers. He was bare-chested under the dressing gown, with red silk suspenders, and he showed as quite a fit man for his age. His curly chest hair was darker than that on his head but, like the head hair, was shot through with gray. The room had been darker when he covered me before, and he took me from behind then, so I only now was getting a full impression of the man under several layers of clothing.

Taking a look at me as I entered the study, he tugged his robe even more open to show that his pecs were still hard and his nipple was puffy within a swirl of curly hair. He wanted me to know why we were here alone.

“Is that what they wear in New York to go to an intimate dinner?” he asked. I was wearing breeches and a white cotton shirt, with leather suspenders. He reached over and unbuttoned three buttons of my shirt. “There, that looks more comfortable.” He slid his hand in under the material and caught one of my nipples between thumb and forefinger. He wasn’t wasting any time. But then, he’d held me naked before, so this was just teasing foreplay to where he knew he could go.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I answered. “It is what I have. I wasn’t in Raleigh long enough to learn to dress for the region.” I can’t say I was taken aback that he was working me and getting into doing so so quickly. I had some inkling of why I had been given this job and what was expected from me. My own proclivities prevented me from being shocked by any possibilities. I had already noted that Holloway was a handsome and fit man—for his age. I was known to be fine with men his age, most of whom were not as well-conditioned as he was.

“No matter,” he said. “We will go shopping before we introduce you to Ashville society—or the aspect of the society that I float in—and within our branch of the firm. We do have our own ways and expectations here.”

I could tell that was so from the way he was dressed, which, while obviously expensive and elegant, was not what one would wear to a private dinner in New York—an intimate one, possibly, although I hadn’t gotten into that in New York, although I had, in fact, been to intimate dinners with men Holloway’s age. I had been intimate with Holloway myself. Networking with the powerful—although undoubtedly not this intimate—was one reason my family had been in favor of me coming south when my father, who had dealings with George W. Vanderbilt, the builder of Biltmore, heard that Holloway’s firm in Raleigh was looking to hire an associate from New York of Vanderbilt’s general age. The already fabulously successful entrepreneur in railroads and steamships was just a year older than I was.

“You’re quite a fit and enticing young man,” Holloway said, not offering me a seat as I stood before him, and he reached up, his fingers still rolling one of my nipples between his fingers. “Does this arouse you, young man?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“I’m sure it would arouse me too,” he said, looking pointedly at my hand, dangling at my side. I got the hint and raised my hand, sliding it under the lapel of his robe, finding and teasing his nipple out of his swirl of chest hair. He gave a pleasured grunt as I grasped the nipple between thumb and forefinger as he was doing and squeezed and rolled it.

“You do know why you have been selected to support me in the job here, don’t you?” he asked, giving me a pointed look.

“Yes, sir,” was as much as I needed to answer. He smiled and reached over with his free hand and released another of the buttons on my shirt. What was what was being clearly established.

“You are going to give me whatever service I demand of you, are you not?” he said.

“Yes, sir.” And that settled that.

He released my nipple and I did his and he said, “Shall we go into dinner and fortify ourselves for later pleasure?” He stood and moved toward the study door. I followed.

It was just the two of us at dinner at a table that would seat eighteen. He sat me immediately to his right, with him at one end of the table. The meal, of course, was sumptuous and was served by three male servants, all of whom disappeared when they’d done their share of the duty, giving me the impression Holloway and I were the only ones in this big house when we’d withdrawn back to his study for port. During dinner he outlined that I was there principally, from the perspective of the law office, because I was a New Yorker and of George Vanderbilt’s age, which was twenty-six at the time. I was to assist in discussions with him over legal matters in the construction of Biltmore and apprise Holloway of any reactions or strange word uses from the young millionaire that might be elucidated by his New York origins. I was not to become too intrusive, however.

It was then that I learned that I was directly replacing the Harry who we’d seen off at the railroad station when I arrived. He’d been Holloway’s assistant and more, I surmised, for the last year. But he would not be a help in understanding the ways of New Yorkers as he was a southerner, so he was being shipped back to Raleigh, replaced by me. I had been hired because I was a New Yorker with southern roots. I was careful not to tell Holloway that my father had business connections with the Vanderbilts, though. I wanted it to be quite clear that I would be working in the law firm’s interests.

We were sitting in two overstuffed, facing lounge chairs in his study after dinner, drinking port, smoking cigars, and listening to the scratchy, but fascinating, sounds coming out of what Holloway said was a gramophone, which only recently was patented by a friend of George Vanderbilt’s, Emile Berliner. There were only a few in existence at that point and Vanderbilt had loaned his gramophone to Holloway until a place was safely built for it at the Biltmore Estate. Although it was somewhat hard to tell, it seemed to be some sort of classical piano music. Chopin, Holloway said.

In any case, it was setting a mood—at least for Calvin Holloway.

As I watched, he unknotted the sash on his dressing gown and brushed the sides away. Then he slowly unbuttoned his fly, flared the front panel of his trousers, and pulled his shaft out. He was thick and long and in erection. Slowly stroking his cock, he said, “I wish to see you again—as in nature. Disrobe for me, please.”

And so it seriously began. We had both known it was building to this. It had helped that he’d covered me before—in Raleigh. It was time for me to earn my promotion into this job and my keep.

“Pose, please. Entirely open and vulnerable. Don’t try to hide anything from me.”

I stood and slowly stripped my clothes off, standing there afterward, arms at my side, casting my eyes down demurely. It had been thus in Raleigh before he had devoured me.

“Beautiful. You are a gorgeous young man,” he said, his voice low and guttural. “Put this on, please,” he said. He brought forth a red satin slip from beside his chair and held it out to me. When I had slipped it over my head and smoothed it down my body, he murmured “There, even more beautiful. Come here.”

I went to him. He spread his knees, and I came in close between them. He slid the straps of the slip down so that the bodice fell off my pecs. Nuzzling his face into my chest, he took my nipples in his teeth, one after the other, and suckled them, making little mewing sounds. Instinctively knowing what he wanted, I arched my back a bit, threw my arms around his neck, and moaned in low tones while he worked my nips with his teeth. After a few minutes, he drew back, and in a husking voice, said, “Kneel to me.”

I knew I was somewhat androgenous in looks and that my body was willowy, and I knew how to cross into taking on feminine demeanor when that was what men wanted and was how I was dressed. This obviously had been what brought me to Holloway’s attention to begin with. And in that time period, that was a popular fetish among powerful men in business in the United States.

I knew he wanted more than that—more than just androgenous looks and demeanor and to suckle my nipples. I knew he was going to have whatever he wanted and I might as well anticipate what that was and provide it. I went down on my knees between his spread thighs. I took his cock in my throat and gave him head. As I sucked, he reached under with both hands and resumed working my nipples between his fingers. I didn’t take him to an ejaculation, though. At length, after disengaging from my puffed-up nipples and running his hands over my body underneath the slip as I sucked his cock, his hands moving to concentrate on palming, squeezing, and separating my buttocks cheeks and seeking and find my hole. When he’d had enough of this, he murmured, “Turn for me. Put your ankles on my shoulders.”

This was it. He wasn’t just a tit man. He was a cock-in-hole man as well.

I did as he bade, pressing my cheek and my chest to the carpet in front of his chair, my arms bent and my palms flat on the carpet to hold myself steady. He grasped and raised my ankles onto his shoulders, and I moaned and groaned for him as he slid the hem of the slip up to my waist, squeezed and slapped my exposed buttocks repeatedly, and then moved to working my hole and my cock and balls with his fingers. I scrabbled at the carpet as he gripped my waist between his hands and pulled my buttocks up to his face, which was buried in my crack, his lips and tongue going to my hole. Still gripping my waist with one hand, he grasped my cock between my legs with his other hand, and while I whimpered and moaned, he ate my ass out and stroked my cock, taking me to an ejaculation.

When I had come, he pushed my legs off his shoulders and brought me down into his lap, facing away from him. He positioned my hole at the mushroom cap of his cock, and slowly brought my passage down onto his erection.

I murmured my surrender to him in a tremulous, high-register voice. “Be good to me, Daddy,” I whispered, my voice belabored by the effort to take his shaft inside me.

“Fuck yourself on it,” he murmured, and, getting my feet onto the chair cushion on either side of his hips, with him holding my waist between his hands, I used the leverage of my legs to rise and fall on his shaft. He was hard as steel inside me, filling and stretching.

Before he came, he took control, turning me on the cock without losing purchase so that I was facing him, my ankles again on his shoulders and my torso streaming down to the carpet in front of him, my arms extending out in an “I am completely yours” cruciform position, with my back arched and cheek to the carpet. He pulled me on and off his cock with a grip on my waist under the hem of the slip, and, with a grunt and a tensing and one, then a second, and finally a third jerk, he breeded me.

He was a strong, muscular man. He had no trouble manipulating my smaller body at will, and I made no effort to deny him anything. He was now my fully in-control master.

None of this came as a surprise to me. When I had met him in Raleigh when he’d been there to approve my appointment, he had taken me to his hotel room and vigorously fucked me through the night, holding me in front of him, penetrating from in back. I had already experienced his cross-dressing and tit play fetishes. He had provided a black-lace corset, with a padded bra then for me to wear to enhance his arousal while he fucked me. I was fully prepared for the use of sexy women’s clothing to happen this night as well, and, in that, I was correct.

“Come,” he said as he released me and I slithered to the floor. “Let us go up to bed.”

The sound of our steps on the stairs to the upper level and to a guest room—he said we would not sleep in the bed he shared with his wife—echoed throughout the house, giving the distinct impression that we were the only ones in the cavernous building. Awaiting us on the bed was a black-lace corset—probably the same one he had provided in the Raleigh hotel—which he had me put on, and he fucked me again on the bed.

It may not have been the case, though, that we were alone in the house at night or that Holloway’s men servants weren’t fully aware of his sexual fetish. The next morning, we were awakened by the arrival of a groom who brought in coffee and pastries, with both Holloway and me naked in bed together, under the sheets, and his trousers and dressing gown and both the red silk slip and black corset on the floor below the bed, topped by the riding crop Holloway had used when he bent me over the foot of the bed, beat me, and mounted and rode me like I was his mare. Holloway was on his back, and I was on my side, turned toward him, one of my arms across his chest. I was suckling one of Holloway’s nipples, and he was mewing his pleasure. The groom just moved about the room opening the draperies and not showing any indication of surprise that Holloway had a new young man in bed.

It wasn’t long before I realized that I had replaced Harry in that role as well. The groom was still in the room when Holloway rolled over on top of me, between my legs, grasped my wrists to hold my arms over my head, positioned his cock and penetrated and started fucking me in the missionary position. He was a virile and vigorous man. He had fucked me through the night, breeding me again and again. Although they were doing so in Raleigh at the time, Holloway showed no interest in using what recently had become called rubbers even as the connection between syphilis and unprotected sex was becoming more realized.

He breeded me each time we coupled. Most men pulled out of me to release their seed. Not so with Cal Holloway. He always had me laid out under him, under his full control and looking into my eyes in triumph—and pumping me full of his cum, and usually do so as he was sucking on one of my nipples.

The groom stood at the foot of the bed and watched Holloway take me. Later the groom fucked me as well—and he, too, liked doing it with me wearing a slip or a corset. Holloway knew how to select his grooms. He clearly knew the groom was fucking me too, and I enjoyed the groom’s cocking—he was young, handsome, muscular, and virile—so I just fell into my duties in this regard.

* * * *

I was a man of some means outside of my job. I didn’t fully rely on the firm of Collins, Bagwell, and Holloway or even on Calvin Holloway individually for my keep, but Calvin Holloway clearly wanted me to be a kept man—his kept man. And I could not hide that Holloway’s fetish aroused me and I wanted what he provided for me.

The first thing after breakfast of my first day in Asheville, we were out in his carriage, with him taking me to his tailor to be outfitted in clothes expected of a successful young kept lawyer in Asheville. From there we went to his golf and tennis club, where he sponsored me for membership. Then we drove to his favorite luncheon restaurant for a noon meal at his expense. And finally to the apartment on Carolina Lane, the next street over from the firm’s offices on North Lexington, that he proudly said he was paying for and where I would be living. I could have covered all of this easily myself, from my family income that nicely supplemented my law firm salary, but Holloway wanted to make clear that all of this—and I—were being kept by him.

I don’t know what the word would be for the male mistress of a man, but that’s what Holloway, who was married and had a family, wanted me to be. He wanted a mistress. But he wanted the mistress to be a young man who dressed as a woman for him during sex and who liked to have his nipples sucked and was willing to do that for Holloway, in turn.

I quickly understood that this had been Harry’s apartment before it was mine. The location was obvious too. The building was small, with only six apartments on three floors, mine being on the middle floor. It fronted on Carolina Lane, but it backed on a deserted walkway between it and the back of the lots on North Lexington. There was a secluded entrance into the apartment house in the back. Immediately behind the apartment house, fronting on North Lexington, were the law offices of Collins, Bagwell, and Holloway. As there were gates between the rear-yard enclosures of the two properties, this gave Calvin Holloway private access to my apartment. He frequently used this access during ensuing months for an extended noonday tryst, having sent me out on errands beforehand, to enter the apartment house from the front, and prepare for him, and await him in my apartment—our trysting nest.

I also knew this had been Harry’s apartment and what he’d done here because its furnishings included a closet containing women’s lingerie in a young man’s size—large enough to fit me. I didn’t have to buy anything to be what Holloway wanted from me. It was all here already.

That first day when Holloway showed me the apartment after our shopping spree and lunch at his favorite noontime restaurant, and having discovered that my luggage had already been placed in the apartment, he selected a black, lacy bra, panties, and negligee combination from the closet, had me slip them on and parade for him in the bedroom, and then fucked me through the afternoon on the bed.

He took me to his club—our club now—on the slopes of Town Mountain, near the Grove Park Inn and overlooking the city, for supper, showing me off as his new boy. The club obviously was for likeminded men to him as we were welcomed and treated as a natural couple. It was clear that Holloway’s fetishes weren’t seen as unnatural here. The club had accommodations and he wanted to show me all that the club membership offered, so after sitting with him and a couple of other male members of his set and age in a smoking room afterward, enjoying port and watching men play billiards, the three took me to a club bedroom, I once more slipped into a silky slip, and the three of them fucked me on the bed, one after the other, as the other two watched and gave instruction and encouragement. Holloway’s fetishes included voyeurism and gang banging. So far, I was good with this, looking forward to having more spice in my life than I’d previously gotten.

The others in the law branch office were polite and welcoming enough when I started work there. They showed me the deference of being the senior partner’s assistant and of having been brought in to smooth over the cultural differences of the client being from the North, from New York City, while those representing him being fully entrenched in the South and in southern culture. I was there, with experience in both worlds, to breach the divide between them. But they knew. It was obvious that they knew that I also was Calvin Holloway’s kept man, and I’m sure they knew that Holloway practiced sexual kinks.

I didn’t know if they had any specific idea what Holloway’s fetishes were, and I wasn’t about to give any hints about that. I didn’t even confirm that I was gay or that I was Holloway’s kept young man.

There were a few other young men on staff who obviously were of the same preference as I was and, being of an age and interests close to mine, would have been natural intimate companions. But they all stood off, recognizing that I was owned and that my owner had the power of livelihood over all of them. And I didn’t do any big reveal with any of them either. They were all submissives, like me.

Everything in the office was done to accommodate Calvin Holloway’s wishes and preferences. I was sure that occasionally he went off with one of the other young men in the office—there were very few women working there, and that young men of a certain preference worked there was directly connected with Holloway’s interests—but he only regularly was with me, and I suspected that his fetishes only clicked in with me. None of the other men who went with him came back in the shock of discovering what he liked best. I was sure that some knew why we were both away during long lunches and what we were doing, but it was never alluded to in the office.

I had only been in the office for a couple of weeks before George Vanderbilt, bringing his own entourage, including an architect representing the chief architect for Biltmore, Richard Morris Hunt, arrived from New York on an inspection tour of the house construction, which was beginning to take shape. My intended role was to remain in the background, observing and listening, and then to give Holloway my impressions of Vanderbilt’s reactions and comments later, in private. But it wasn’t long before Vanderbilt saw me sitting in the back benches and brought me forward.

“Benton Barkley? Is that a New England accent I hear in your introduction? Any relationship to Bradley Barkley?”

“Yes, sir, he’s my father.”

After that I was brought up to the table, and although I continued to hold as close to the brief Holloway had given me as possible, I was being placed more in the forefront, and my relationship with Holloway was adjusted ever so slightly, but still significantly. I no long was completely his, beholding only to him. Vanderbilt took a shine to me, as did the architect he had brought, Ronald Carlson, and now I was there as much because Vanderbilt wanted me there as that Holloway did. Holloway could hardly complain. It was why they had brought me in—for the ability to relate to Vanderbilt and those who came from New York with him. The unforeseen wrinkle was that I already had social connections to the Vanderbilts. The saving grace was that Vanderbilt had no sexual interest in men—including me—at all.

The change was slight, but it was significant, and it led to a touch of reservation in bed. Almost as soon as my position as a wholly kept young man had begun, the edge was coming off it. Holloway still visited and bedded me, but he turned increasingly to other young men in the firm as well and he never again, after that first night, shared me with other members of our club. I knew that full control was important to him, so I also knew that my life in Asheville now hinged on how often Vanderbilt would visit and need aid from a local law firm. There was no hint that the connection with Vanderbilt would be a sexual one, though, which simplified that matter significantly.

Of course, when I thought about it, a favorable connection with Vanderbilt was what my whole association with the law firm of Collins, Bagwell, and Holloway had always hinged on. Holloway was just using me sexually; there was no real affection between us.

* * * *

I wasn’t the only one in my apartment house being kept. The young woman in the apartment across the landing from me, an actress at the semiprofessional stage theater nearby on Broadway Street, named Sally Ames, frequently had a middle-aged man visit her apartment, using the rear entrance as Holloway did. I presumed this meant he was paying for her and the apartment. She was a beautiful young woman who I met and talked with on the stairs occasionally. I found she was working at the Broadway Street Theater and she learned that I had studied creative writing at Yale in preparation for law school and aspired to be a playwright. I’d written some plays, I showed scripts to her at her request, and she was showing them to the theater ensemble as possible productions at the theater’s annual local playwrights festival.

I knew why the man visited her because the way our apartments were configured my bathroom window looked into her bedroom. He was a gross-featured, heavy-set man and she had a great figure, which made a sight of him bending her over the bed and fucking her from behind while he manipulated her breasts with his hands seem a little sordid and sad. She always had a stoic expression on her face as he slowly banged her from in back, so I don’t think she was doing that from love. That’s why I assumed the man was paying for the apartment. I compared this in my mind with the arrangement between Holloway and me, but I assured myself that I enjoyed Holloway’s attentions as well as having him pay for the apartment. He certainly was in better shape than the man who visited Sally Ames in her bedroom.

She held Bohemian parties that I could tell by the sounds coming out of her apartment were quite open, and it was natural that she would invite me to them and that some evening when I knew Calvin Holloway would not show up unexpectedly because he and his wife were hosting a dinner party, I accepted an invitation.

The party, indeed, was open and sensual. Everyone there was young and Bohemian, drinking and smoking and loving each other up. They were all artists in some way or other and rebelling against the strictures of society. They were all flamboyantly dressed to the extent that they were dressed at all. The group was predominated by people from the Broadway Street Theater, but there also were some artists there, some wealthy young people of no particular calling other than hedonism, and more than one musician.

The middle-aged man who visited Sally’s bedroom never attended one of these parties as far as I could discern.

As the evening progressed to the sound of flutes and a saxophone and the buzz of conversation that ran the gambit from high art to low intentions, the attendees willowed down to those intending to move into the sexual. Sally was lying on a sofa, her skirts bunched up to her waist, smoking and looking languidly at a pair on the carpet in front of the sofa, where a young woman with alabaster skin and Asian features was being fucked by an Italian sous chef from one of the city’s fancier restaurants. Sally herself was being fucked, initially by his fingers and eventually the whole shaft, by an ebony poet.

I had been making eye contact all evening with a theater friend of Sally’s, a dusky man of no more than twenty-one who was achingly handsome. Sally had introduced me to him after she had made an unsuccessful pass at me and had fondled me through the material of my trousers without the response she was seeking. She merely laughed and said that, although it was a waste of perfect man, it was fine—that there were plenty of men for both of us at the party. Sally told me he was a young actor at the Broadway Street Theater, a mulatto, black father and white mother, named Jacques Franklin.

I knew I should have left before the open sexuality descended on the party, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I was much too much interested in Jacques Franklin. And he obviously was interested in me. All of the others remaining had paired off—in one instance in a two males and one female threesome—when Jacques, slouching on a loveseat, caught my attention and waved me over. He had stripped off his shirt some time ago, exhibiting a magnificent chocolate, brown, muscular chest. But now he’d unbuttoned and flare his trousers and had the biggest, blackest cock I’d ever seen out and was stroking it into an erection. He gave me that “come here” look.

The shaft was mesmerizing. I’d never seen anything as big and black as that before. It and his plump balls were darker than the tone of the rest of his body. He was uncut. When he pulled the foreskin back, which he did to gain my interest, the bulb proved to be a huge, purple mushroom cap. He knew he had caught and captured my attention with it, and he wagged it at me, stroked it, and beckoned for me to join him.

“Come here,” he said, looking directly at me, and everyone around us hazed off into the background. I was just the two of us in the room in my mind. “Come to me on your knees.”

I went on my knees, crawled to him, took the shaft in my hands and mouth, and worshipped it.

“Come up here and sit on it. Fuck yourself on it,” he murmured to me.

“Not here,” I responded, my voice thick with lust, and suddenly aware that we were not, in fact, alone in the room. “My apartment is across the landing.”

“Even better,” he said.

Across the hall, in my apartment, both of us naked, both of us body beautiful, Jacques younger than me, a novelty in my experience, he sat at the foot of the bed, and I crouched over him in his lap, facing him, rising and falling, with glorious difficulty considering the size of him, on that big, black cock of his. Through the night, he took me in one position after the other, possessing me with his enormous black shaft, filling me with his cum. At no time did I have to dress or act like a woman for him.

In the morning, as I was lying on the bed, unable to rise or close my legs and as he was dressing, he said, “Could you give me money for a cab?”

“How much do you need?” I asked.

“Twenty dollars would do it,” he said. I knew he didn’t need a cab and I knew a cab wouldn’t cost him twenty dollars to go anywhere in Asheville. I knew what he was asking for, what he was establishing. And I didn’t care. He was worth it. That big, black cock of his was worth it.

“No problem. My billfold is there on the bureau. Take Twenty dollars.”

There was more than twenty dollars in the billfold. He counted out two tens and stopped, looking at me. “Will we do this again?” he asked.

“I want to, yes,” I answered. I watched him fan out more bills from my wallet and look at me expectantly.

“Take it all. Everything in the wallet,” I said. He smiled and did so.

“Tonight?” he asked.

“Yes, please.” I knew the Holloways had houseguests and that I could safely count on him being occupied for another night.

“And right now, again,” I added. Smiling, he stripped off again, mounted the bed, stroking his magnificent black cock into erection against, mounted, penetrated, and began fucking me again in the missionary position. I lay back in complete surrender, back arched and pelvis elevated, luxuriating in being stretched and owned by a big, black bull.

Lying there in his arms, torso reclining toward the bed, pelvis elevated over his, his shaft deep inside me and moving, as, his torso hovering over mine from the side, he looked down into my eyes, catching every nuiance of the caressing of my passage walls in the core with that big, purple mushroom cap of his. Did I own him or did he own me? It probably wasn’t really a contest.

The next week I found time to go with Jaques to find new, better rooms for him in a nearby apartment house. I, of course, took over the rent. I could afford it. Holloway was fully keeping me and I had extra income anyway.

Now, in addition to being a kept man, I was keeping a young man myself.

The arrival of summer gave me increased opportunity to establish myself with Sally’s Bohemian artists crowd, to spend more time with Jacques, and to enhance my connection with the Broadway Street Theater as they worked with me to include one of my plays in their local playwrights festival. The Vanderbilts were doing a European tour, so I had little to do with that account over the summer other than watch their palace being built and outfitted. The Holloways were taking advantage of the absence of the Vanderbilts by doing Europe as well. That kept me out of negligees and out of Calvin’s clutches. He continued paying my rent, though, so he was still keeping me.

The relationship with Jacques wasn’t solid, as I knew he was fucking other men—and women—as well, but he was still accepting my apartment payments, so he was still my kept man. And as long as he kept pulling out that black snake of his and letting me worship it . . .

He still had that magnificent black cock of his, and he still knew how to use it.

I was just floating along—being kept and keeping.

* * * *

“Do you, by chance, play tennis? These tedious meetings have me cramped up and in the need of exercise. The club I’m staying at has tennis courts and I would dearly love to find someone to help me unwind. You look like a tennis player. You look athletic.”

“Yes, I play tennis,” I said to Ronald Carlson, down from New York for intensive meetings on the interior architecture of Biltmore in advance of George Vanderbilt’s return from Europe. Everyone anticipated he’d want to come almost directly to Asheville to see the progress on the construction of his southern castle. The Holloways were still in Europe, as well. I had been assigned to guide Carlson around on his previous inspection tour, and that hadn’t been a chore. We were coming out of our first round of meetings on the construction progress. He was in his late forties, but he was an extremely handsome and fit man. We had hit it off quite well. “I play most often on clay, though, I said, so—”

“Some of the courts at the club I’m staying at are clay. They are actually easier to sign up for on short notice.”

“Oh, they are clay at my club too,” I answered. And that’s when I discovered that it was my club—the club for men who enjoyed the intimate company of men—that Carlson was booked at for his Asheville stay.

“Oh, you’re staying there,” I said. “I presume you know—”

“What kind of club it is? Yes, of course,” Carlson said, with a smile. “I found out from Cal Holloway where I would be comfortable staying. I know he’s a member of that club. I know you are, as well. You can relax. I know about you and Holloway, and I have no problem with that. I go with men too. And, like Holloway, I enjoy covering young men. Holloway tells me he covers you and that you are well worth the experience.” The smile remained on his face and he reached out and touched my forearm.

Oh. That was explicit enough.

“Does that disturb you—that I know? Am I being too forward?”

“No, not at all,” I said. “No, to both. I’m relieved to know.”

“Is there any chance that—?”

“Yes, every chance,” I said, interrupting him, wanting him to know that I wouldn’t have any reservations.

“Would you like to come to the club and play with me . . . tennis?” he asked.

I realized then how smitten I’d become with him and had looked forward to his visits. “Yes. Yes, I would very much like that,” I answered. “Shall we?”

We did play tennis, watching each other more than the ball, going bare-chested when we got heated up, which we only could have done at this club, and getting heated up more by watching each other play bare-chested. We fucked in his room at the club. There was no question that he would be dominant and I the submissive. That saved a lot of possible awkwardness.

When he came out of the bathroom from his before-sex shower, naked and swinging free, I gasped, and, looking down, he shrugged and laughed. “I should have told you. I’m what is called an octoroon—three white grandparents and one black one. A particularly well-endowed one. It was by chance that the fourth one could dominate in this department. I forgot that this is the South. I hope the size or color don’t put you off.”

“Not in the least,” I answered. “I was just surprised.” He was a white man, but he had a black cock to rival that of Jacques in both size and color. I was fascinated. Within minutes I also was fucked. He strode over to me, pulled me up from the bed, turned me, and embraced me close. He bent me over the bed, went down on his knees, and pressed his face into my buttocks cheeks. When he rose, embracing me in front of him closely, he bent over me, my cheek and arms pressed to the bedspread, positioned himself, mounted and penetrated me, and fucked me to heaven.

An hour later, as we lay stretched out against each other on the bed, he murmured, “That was all I dreamed it would be.”

“Yes,” I answered.

“I hope you don’t mind that I went right for it. I’d been thinking about you for some time.”

“No, that’s fine,” I answered. And it was. He was quite expert and efficient.

“Which brings me to the offer George Vanderbilt wanted me to pass on to you?”

“Vanderbilt wants to fuck me too?”

“No,” he said, with a laugh. “Vanderbilt doesn’t swing that way.”

I didn’t think so. I certainly hadn’t gotten that impression from the times we had met, and I would have been scared to enter such a high-profile relationship. With my own family background, that would have been just too complicated—too risky. It was more than enough to be Calvin Holloway’s kept man and trying to keep Jacques Franklin—almost too much; I’d been contemplating backing out of one or both of those relationships, if I could.

“Vanderbilt does recognize talent, though. He’s asked me to tell you he has a position for you in his enterprises back in New York, when the Biltmore house is completed. He says he has the impression the law firm here is only keeping you on while the house is being built as a buffer between him and them. He says that’s been a successful arrangement, and he has a job for you when it comes to that point.”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I—”

“I’m interested in that myself,” Carlson continued. “I would like to have you in New York.”

“Like you’ve are having me here in Asheville?” I asked, and I added, “and I hope you will have me again.” We both laughed.

“Yes, like I hope to have you again here in Asheville—frequently. If you come back to New York, I’ll take care of you. I’ll buy you an apartment. I’ll take care of you.”

Ah, where had I heard that before? I clearly looked like I needed taking care of. Yet another “kept man” arrangement, I thought. What did I think about that? Well, naturally, I wasn’t dead set against such arrangements. I was in them now both as kept and as keeper. The construction of Biltmore wouldn’t be completed for a year or more. There was no need to make a decision now.

“It’s something to think about,” I answered. “But now—”

“Yes, I’m in erection now again as well,” he said. “What now? You roll over on your back and spread your legs, or—”

“I think you on your back. Let me ride that lovely black cock of yours for a while.”

“Lovely. But, first, tell me . . . Holloway indicated what you did for him.”

“You want me to wear a bra and a slip when we fuck?” I asked.

“Not all the time. But perhaps occasionally. Could you do that for me?”

“Yes, of course.”