Martinsville Mask

Gabe’s Roadhouse was a rural gay leather’s club northwest of Richmond, Virginia, where I and Vivian lived. It was located there, on Port Conway Road, because it was across the Rappahannock River from the extensive A.P. Hill army training base, where rigorous basic military training for the U.S. Army was conducted on a base named for a Confederate general. When a guy went through the toughening and isolated training at A.P. Hill, he came out with the body of a god and randy as hell, with competing urges to beat up someone and to fuck someone. That was why a sex club would be located nearby. That the appetites of some of these guys, isolated under intense conditions just with other guys, went toward other guys was the reason Gabe’s Roadhouse was there.

The base was far away from everywhere. When you got sent here for training, you were in the sticks. Gabe’s flourished because it was a rough place for the young army guys, pent up with vinegar from their training, to let loose. Guys willing to help them do that came from far and wide, many in leather and on motorcycles, to help the young, fit soldiers do that. That’s why I was here. Not just because I wanted to experience it, but I wanted to write about it too—to write about raw emotions and the results of having those.

It hadn’t been easy to find out about this place. They didn’t exactly want the army to know about it.

I sat in my rental car in the high-fence-enclosed parking area behind what had once been an old farmhouse for several minutes after arriving from Richmond and practiced my scowl in the rearview mirror. I knew I looked the part, although it was a disguise—a mask of my real self, which was more the jet-set sophistication of the entertainment industry, my part being on the literary end of it. I was nicely bulked up for this; I spent a lot of time in the gym and a lot of guys said I looked younger than my thirty-five years.

It had been an effort to pull my ensemble together, the hardest part was in finding the black leather chest harness, with silver studs, with four strap-down straps to hold up the really hard-to-find tight black-leather trousers, with a codpiece, which dipped so low at the waist that the suspender straps were necessary and the waistband tickled the root of my cock. I was wearing a billowy white cotton shirt, open to the navel and ready to be discarded on whim. Accessorizing all of this were calf-high black leather boots, a black-leather biker’s hat, a riding crop, and the swaggering scowl I was practicing in the car. All I lacked was the motorcycle.

I walked into Gabe’s like I owned the place. The club room was on the first floor of the building and was entered from behind, off the parking lot. I had to wade through motorcycles to get to the door, so I knew it was a good day at the club. It was a good day, indeed. The place was crowded, a band was wailing away, and the dance floor, tables, and bar were well filled, if not to capacity. I had no trouble separating the soldiers from the bikers. The bikers were all in leather and heavily tattooed. I had a few of those, but they were the “can be scrubbed off” variety. The soldiers couldn’t have come off base in leather, so they wore mainly jeans and T-shirts. Some were in their army fatigues. They also were mainly smaller and submissive looking, although still fit, because soldiers who knew about Gabe’s and came here were not generally dominants. They came to be used, not to use.

One reason a place like Gabe’s was a success near a remote military training base like this was that the rigorous training on the base conditioned the guys to focusing on taking discipline and pain. Many of those on these bases wanted something entirely different from the discipline they were getting every day when they were allowed off base. There were others, though, seeking a different release other than the joy of having the punishment and training to stop—those who wanted sexual release—who just wanted an extension of what they already were receiving on base. They wanted to be controlled, used, punished. Those men came to a place like Gabe’s. And those who wanted to provide this discipline and pain also heard of Gabe’s and came here to use others.

I was working on a project about both kinds of men. As with all my work, I wanted it to come across as being authentic.

I started to move into the area with tables, picking out a table with two soldiers sitting and looking around. There was a cloud of smoke over the room; the clinking of pool balls off in a section that had once been the house’s dining room competed with the sound of the band in the corner of the club room. When I saw that one had a book and was putting it back into his backpack, though, I veered off and went to the bar. I recognized the book as In the Silence, an adventure thriller by a midlist author, Miles Martins. I wasn’t ready to discuss that, which the two soldiers apparently had been doing before breaking off and looking around at the other tables, so I tried a different venue. The soldiers with the book was looking at me like he thought I’d come over to their table, but I just turned away.

The name of the soldier at the bar was Roy, he told me when I let my fingers brush across one of his nipples under his thin T-shirt and he turned a smile on me. He was young, redheaded, and short. He had a somewhat bewildered look on his face, like this was his first visit to Gabe’s and he wanted something but didn’t know how to get there from here. I gave him what he wanted. I could tell that my mere touch of him intimately was like a jolt of electricity to him. I dropped my hand to his hip, which effective held him in place. I knew I looked good to him and that my having taken the initiative relieved him on how he was going to get started with this. He was mine for the taking—unless something spooked him and he bolted away.

His eyes went big when I angled in beside him at the bar. I obviously was the man of his dreams—the reason he came here, although he hadn’t known when he’d finally had the courage to enter Gabe’s whether or how to get across the barrier to his dream. I took him there.

“Has anyone offered you a drink yet?” I asked. He had a beer, but it was approaching empty. “Are you old enough to drink that?”

“Yes, I am,” he said, defensively, which told me that maybe he wasn’t. “I have a beer.” He lifted the glass to show me that he did.

“But you bought that yourself, right? No one’s bought you a drink. You haven’t been claimed yet, Right?”

He gave a little tug at the “haven’t been claimed yet” remark, knowing that we were into negotiations now.

“No, no one bought me this, and, sure, I’d like a drink. My name’s Roy.”

“Mike, here. I like the looks of you, Roy.” I signaled to the bartender for my first beer and Roy’s second. “You dance, Roy? You’ll dance with me?”

“Sure,” he said, as the drinks arrived.

“And more, Roy? You’ll do more for me? You’ll let me do more to you?” I had studied what lines I could use to test what I guy would do and what would arouse a guy who wanted what I was looking for—what I was researching. I’d already written the line in a novel in my head. I reached down and touched him on his basket. I sensed him shuddering. I was rushing him. He quite apparently was getting a charge out of that. My research was working with this one.

“What do you mean?” he asked. I think he knew exactly what I meant.

“They use you hard in military training over at A.P. Hill, do they, Roy?”

“Yes, it’s hard training.”

“And you came to Gabe’s because you like being used hard, right?” He didn’t answer because he was busy draining his second mug of beer.

“You let me buy you another beer and we’ll dance and then I’ll use you hard.”

Again, he didn’t answer that, but he accepted the third beer.

We danced for a while, close, touching each other, getting well acquainted. I whispered in his ear what I’d like us to be doing—what I’d like to be doing with and to him. I quizzed him on why he came to Gabe’s—what he was looking for. The stuttering answers to all of that drew us down to the basement of the building, where, inside insolating rock walls, a sexual torture gym was on offer. It was nearly as crowded down here as it had been upstairs. Men were wearing less down here than they were upstairs. Soldiers were getting what they came for; leathermen were giving what the soldiers wanted.

Roy was submissive to everything. His eyes lit up when he saw the unoccupied black leather sling in the corner. I laid him in that, on his back, legs spread and restrained to the corner chains at one end and arms the same at the other end, His head arched back toward the room. We took care of whether he’d take cock in his throat first.

My codpiece was flapping open, cock projecting, fully erect, a thickness and length I was proud of. I held Roy’s head cupped in my hands and fed my cock into his throat, moving the fingers of one hand to his throat to feel where I was penetrating. He gagged and groaned as I slowly face fucked him, but he held. This was what he’d come to Gabe’s for—for this and maybe more. We’d find out how much more.

Leaving him in that position, I moved behind him, using my riding crop, and warmed and redden his bare butt cheeks and fingered his hole with my other hand, while he grunted and vocalized the glory of what I was giving him. Other guys gathered around to watch and egg us on. Even more showed up when I mounted and penetrated him. They watched the fuck, stroking themselves and their neighbors. When I was finished, I gave him over to a line of leathermen who followed me. I positioned myself at his head, forcing him to take my cock in his mouth, while other guys moved, one after the other, below him, grasped his hips between their hands, and fed his ass their meat. He clearly was overwhelmed; he just as clearly was realizing the dream that had brought him to Gabe’s.

It was then, while I was standing to the side, my still erect cock in hand rubbing his cheeks both outside and inside his mouth and watching others give Roy what he had come to Gabe’s to get, that all hell broke out. The room suddenly was swarming with cops—military police in khaki fatigues and boys in blue. A couple of civilians were there with flashing cameras as well.

The A.P. Hill brass had picked today to object to having Gabe’s Roadhouse on their doorstep and catering to their young soldiers.

The soldiers could be disciplined and brought to the wall for this. The other guys, like me, who were there to give them what they wanted—although I was there for another purpose altogether—were at limited legal risk. We faced a night in jail, if that’s what the local police wanted, until our lawyers showed up to nitpick what laws we were breaking under the careful preparations Gabe’s Roadhouse had established for the business it was providing.

But that’s what the flashing cameras were there for. The A.P. Hill brass and local authorities wanted to shut this down. They didn’t care all that much for carrying through prosecutions on the leathermen. They just wanted them to go away and not to come back. And for the “leathermen for a day,” like me, here for limited or other purposes, they wanted to embarrass us enough that we’d go away and not come back.

They zeroed in on men like me with their cameras, which would lead to a photo or two in the newspaper and online until or unless people like me could muster enough clout to close those down. Once up there, though, the damage was done. I bore the brunt of these raid, all thanks to a guy with a book in his backpack.

The guy I’d seen upstairs with the book wasn’t a seeking soldier from A.P. Hill Base at all. He was a plant, someone sent in by the authorities to help set the stage for the raid. Not long after the cops arrived and were separating out soldiers from leathermen—and helping a sheepish Roy, eyes glazed over from having been oversatisfied with his dream—the plant with the book came downstairs. He was flashing the book.

“This guy here. This one’s a writer. Look at the photo on the back of this book. I’m sure this guy’s Miles Martin.” He was waving around the copy of In the Silence, which, indeed, was one of my novels. Flashes flashed. I was now going to be a star for a day on the Internet.

I had been Mike here, with a leathermen’s mask. But, yes, in another life I wore a Miles Martin mask. At home, with Vivian, who wore other masks herself, the mask I wore was that of Marty Miller.

But, no doubt about it, I’d been made. It didn’t matter that this had all been a mask—a role I had taken on to research my next book—that it wasn’t the real me at all. But it wasn’t the real me that would be depicted in the salacious news. I was someone else altogether. That and four pennies wouldn’t get me a nickel, though.

* * * *

“Isn’t it just the cutest little house?”

“Yes, it’s something very special,” I said, nearly tripping over a young guy—a very nice-looking young guy—kneeling at the baseboard in the 980-square foot log cabin I’d bought near the center of the 1,500-people town of Martinsville nearly on Virginia’s border with North Carolina. The town was far, it seemed, from anywhere, which was rather the point for which I was relocating there. I was conversing with the real estate agent, another rather hunky guy named Ted Compton, who had sold me this place two months earlier just from photos on the Internet and exchanges of e-mails. I had bought it as a writing retreat and had done so without telling Vivian, my wife, but I hadn’t expected to be occupying it on the sort of retreat I now faced. I’d started negotiations on it before the A.P. Hill incident, intending to retreat there to write my next book that I’d been researching at the club near A.P. Hill.

I’d just spent the one night in the Bowling Green jail over the A.P. Hill gay club raid issue. The authorities had mainly been into closing the club down and disciplining the soldiers who went there. Roy, the soldier I’d worked over, had managed to disappear during the raid, so they didn’t have him to go into what I was doing at the club into detail, and no one else they picked up was willing to give them help on that. They, of course, were highly skeptical of my explanation that I was researching a book and that’s why I was in sex leathers—that it was just a role I was playing, a mask to enable my research. Yes, it sounded lame, but it was, in fact, the truth. I wasn’t the dungeon master type I was portraying. It was a role to help me write it. That didn’t mean I wasn’t actively gay, though. They had me there.

It also didn’t mean, I had found out about myself in Gabe’s Roadhouse, that I didn’t become aroused by taking on a BDSM role in sex. I had gotten hard when I was flogging Roy. I can’t deny that. I don’t think I wanted to do that again, but it showed me that I wasn’t shy about fetish possibilities.

And on that note, it didn’t really matter all that much that they’d ended up letting me go without filing charges. I was the most public fish they’d landed in the raid. They had gleefully plastered me all over the Internet and press with the story of the raid to give it a higher profile. And, so, although most of my friends in Richmond knew I was gay—and even my wife, known to the world as the film actress Vivian Royal, knew—the whole world hadn’t known before that the younger novelist husband of the international movie actress Vivian Royal was gay and had been caught in a raid on a gay club in Virginia—and not just any gay bar, a leather bar.

The story was still reverberating around the state and entertainment and book industries two weeks after the fact, and that’s when I decided the small house in the countryside I’d bought to retreat to to write was going to have to be my “disappearance” hideout. I couldn’t face Vivian, who I knew as Maggie Pearson. She was still on movie location in Egypt. Who knows what damage I’d done to her reputation? And for all I knew they’d release her from her contract for this bad publicity that was in no way her fault.

So, I just disappeared and came on down, leaving our luxurious 6,000-square foot Georgian mansion on the James River in the exclusive Westover Hills section of Richmond, Virginia, for this two-bedroom, one bath log cabin I’d bought for a mere $75,000. I’d probably have to put that much more into it to make it fully livable, but the charm of the house with a price tag that was closer to a car Vivian would buy than a house had intrigued and sold me.

“Yes, yes it’s very quaint I said,” giving the Realtor, Ted Compton, a smile. The look he gave back indicated an interest I was well aware of, but surely he hadn’t seen the news reports on the roadhouse raid and connected it with me. I’d picked Martinsville because it seemed like it was at the end of the world while still being only a couple of hours’ drive from Richmond. Surely he wasn’t giving me that smile because he’d seen me in the news.

I had met Compton for the first time that day. I hadn’t known that he wasn’t any older than I was—thirty-five—or so good looking. I hadn’t picked this town for opportunities to have trysts away from Richmond. Just the opposite. I thought of Martinsville as a hick town with no knowledge of anything but missionary hetero sex. I could freely be me among Vivian and my literary and entertainment set in Richmond, but that wouldn’t work here. She and I got along quite well and were comfortable in our set of friends. She wasn’t as interested in men as her public mask portrayed her to be and I was happy to have her conversation, money, and access to interesting people. But we had a much more conventional marriage mask on for the world at large beyond Richmond to see.

I had wanted the isolated retreat to have to get away to. That Compton might be a prospect for something more than just my Realtor hadn’t been foreseen. Our initial interaction had been quite formal, but from the time we’ve spent together going to closing on the house, inspecting it with the plumber and electrician Compton brought in and were now waiting for a small moving van from Richmond to arrive with the few things I was bring from home to augment the furniture that had been left in the cottage, we’d progressed to something bordering on friendship—and maybe, now that we were meeting face to face, intimacy.

“We can be very discreet here in Martinsville, Mr. Miller—or may I call you Martin? We are quite informal here.”

“You can call me Marty . . . Ted,” I said. Martin Miller wasn’t just another mask, although I guess I could say it was the one I’d be wearing here in Martinsville. That was my legal name.

“Yes, well, Marty, as I was saying, I think we can manage to make you very happy here without a lot of fuss. We’re a small town, but there’s a lot on offer here. I hope you’ll feel you can call on me to help you settle in and get what you want here. We’re not a gossipy sort of town. We can be discreet.”

“Thank you,” I said, going to the front door of the cottage with him. I almost felt that there was some subtext in what he was saying that I was supposed to understand. But it had been a taxing day. I’d think on that later. I continued to have the nagging feeling that perhaps Compton had seen the coverage of the roadhouse raid in the press and the photographs and specific mention of me. He had given me “that” look, or so I thought. Perhaps it was my imagination or my thinking of him in those terms. He was quite a hunk, although a bit on the obviously submissive side. Seeing that, though, had me imagining him naked, in a sling, and a whip in my hand. I wrote that up to thinking about my new book and getting into the mood of that.

I carried the box of my Miles Martin books and my research material for my next book over to the desk in the living room and started to unpack. Looking down, I saw the young electrician working on the wiring nearby. He was looking up and giving me a shy smile. He was a hunk too. I suppressed a laugh. What was a joke about plumbers apparently carried over to electricians as well, although in this guy’s case, being able to see the butt crack was more sensual than gross.

Maybe there would be more to life in Martinsville than just an embarrassed retreat from my more sophisticated world in Richmond—and from the exposing press which, I feared, would put the end to my cushy and comfortable marriage.

* * * *

I had grown tired of unpacking that evening and, just in athletic shorts and sandals, had spread out my work on the desk of the combined Living and dining rooms of the log cabin. This room was in a section protruding out into the garden. There were glassed French doors on the two long sides of the room and two smaller ones on either side of the rock fireplace in the end wall. The garden had been planted with a profusion of flowers, giving the room an airy, outdoor vibe. The room gave the feeling that it could be made part of the outdoors just by opening the French doors. The two bedrooms, with a kitchen and a bathroom/laundry room combination spanned one side of the living-dining room, giving the cottage a T shape from above. All of the rooms were small. That was OK with me. I had always felt I was in a hotel resort in the Richmond house. That was Vivian’s house. It was part of her Vivian Royal mask. I preferred it when she was Maggie Pearson.

The entry door was in the crook of the T of this cottage and one entered from a deep porch in the angle of the living-dining room and bedroom arms. A patio table with two café chairs abutted the bedroom wall of the T and two Adirondack chairs sat on the edge of the porch looking out at the side garden. The city lot was large for a central-town location on Church Street and was enclosed by a basketweave fence that made my new world private. I had no idea yet whether the mosquitoes would let me use the covered stone entryway porch. I made a note to pick up smudge pots at the local hardware store because I had every intention of including the garden in my living space here.

I had two books running and the materials for both on the desk, including the Miles Martin In the Silence adventure thriller that came before the one I was now researching—no working title yet—with In the Silence. I had notes the gay male erotica one I was researching, The Glass House, on the desktop as well. My erotica line came out under the authorship of Mike Miles and was kept completely separate from my mainstream writing. It was The Glass House that I had been researching when I was caught up in the Gabe’s Roadhouse raid. This BDSM sex book, one of my few “on the edge” GM works, revolved around a totally glass, ergo open and transparent, house on Italy’s Lake Como, which, conversely, hid a sexual torture chamber in its rock-foundation base. My trip to the leather roadhouse in A. P. Hill had been to steep myself in sexual sadism to be able to write The Glass House with conviction.

I couldn’t honestly say that my mainstream novels sold as well as my gay male erotica works did.

An after-dark knock on the door revealed the Realtor hunk, blond and tanned and built Ted Compton, bearing a bottle of scotch, two glasses, and a duffel bag.

“We didn’t take time to celebrate your purchase this afternoon,” he said. “Everyone should celebrate a change in lifestyle. I didn’t know if you would have unpacked glasses yet, so I brought two. Are you going to invite me in, or do I stand out here until the neighbors see a man at your door after dark?”

The innuendo, and how did he know I was changing lifestyles in buying a small log-walled cottage in a hick town?

“Yes, of course, come in. I have glasses, though. I’ll get them. Yours are shot glasses and it’s been a bigger glass for scotch than that kind of day.”

We both laughed. He looked good. Very good. I hadn’t had it since the night of the A.P. Hill base roadhouse raid, and Ted had been signaling since earlier in the morning when we’d first met at the lawyer’s office.

When I returned from the kitchen with the glasses, he was standing by the desk, looking at book material I’d spread out there. He wasn’t dumb.

“So, it’s true,” he said. “We now have the novelist, Miles Martin, in our midst. We’ve become a literary town.”

“I suppose,” I said, holding the glasses out for him to fill, “although I didn’t come to slap my name on the town.”

“With a name like Martin in Martinsville, that could be what’s understood,” he said, and we both gave a little laugh at that. I hadn’t thought about that connection. I wondered if the name of the town had been any part in my picking this isolated burg for a retreat. I didn’t think so. I’d seen the house on the Internet first, I think. I don’t think I was thinking about location at that point. But one never knows with a writer and the way a writer’s mind works.

“And you’re Mike Miles, as well,” Compton said, “picking up my written notes on the gay male erotica book. I must admit I did wonder and speculate.”

“You know Mile Miles and what he writes? You read those books?”

“Of course I do. I’m sure you know I would.” He gave me a smile. There wasn’t any more question that he was gay and was interested in me.

“So, you knew. And I suppose you know about the roadhouse raid up at the military base north of Richmond too.”

“Yes, but that came later. I do financial research on prospective clients. Your name—and photo—came up with a connection to the actress, Vivian Royal, under the Marty Miller name. That led to your books under Miles Martins. It led to photos and some other scuttlebutt, and I formed hopes.”

He paused there, giving me a pointed look to see if I got what he was signaling. I did.

“Some deeper research came up with your other line of writing—the Mike Miles books. And, yes, I already was a reader of your gay erotica. And then I saw the press stories on the raid up at the base by Bowling Green. And I wasn’t surprised then that you would be interested in buying something private and isolated in a place like this. I wonder. Who are you hoping to be here? Marty Miller? Or can I hope there will be some Mike Miles in your life in Martinsville—and some of what got you in hot water up near Bowling Green?”

“I’m hoping I can wear the Marty Miller mask here in Martinsville,” I said. “I would like to be just that here. I hope I will be permitted to be that.”

“Oh, I won’t tell. And there’s a lot going on below the surface in this supposed sleepy little town. I’m sure you can be Marty Miller here. It would be lovely if some of us could have a taste of Mike Miles and books like this one you’re working on. There are a group of us managing our lifestyle very nicely here. You’ll fit in if you want to.”

The paper he was holding had some very steamy BDSM passages from The Glass House manuscript.

As I moved to get in the tub of water, he pushed me down at the tub’s side, on my knees and forced my head into the water. He grabbed my blond hair with his fist, pressing my chest into the side of the tub with his other hand on my back, and dunked my head once, twice, six times, seven, in the water. I sputtered for air, gasping as Hoffman pulled my head out of the water each time. He continued dunking me until he felt me completely collapse, no fight or independent movement left in me at all. Then he dragged me away from the tub, put me on my back on the bathroom floor, and put my ankles on his shoulders as he knelt between my open, spread, vulnerable thighs.

Was there a hint of blackmail here, I wondered, or was he just trying to establish his interest and sounding me out on whether I could help him with that? It was clear that he was actively gay and searching for a hookup. There was nothing in the way he looked that made him undesirable.

“If you’re interested in having Mike Miles moments here, I can help you with that,” he continued. “The best club to go to—a roadhouse like the one up in Bowling Green, but not as leather every night—is down on the state line in Price, off Route 220.” He laughed. “The building itself straddles the state line, so that guys move out of one state to the other if they have to without spilling their drinks. Guys go down from here and up from Greensboro and Winston-Salem, North Carolina.”

“Uh, thanks for the tip,” I said. He had equated it with Gabe’s Roadhouse—with leathermen bars. I wondered if his interest was . . . and then I saw that it was. He was opening his duffel bag and taking out restraints and a hand whip. “Listen, Ted, I don’t think—”

“Yes, indeedy, depending on your interests I can keep real quiet on who you really are and what you really like,” he said.

So, the question on whether he would be willing to blackmail me to get what he was interested in was being answered.

“Listen, the A. P. Hill roadhouse was research. I don’t submit to—”

“I want you to dominate. I want to submit.”

Ted Compton made clear that wanted to be abused and then used. He had some sort of network of like-minded men in the state that had conveyed more about how I had been dressed and what I had engaged in at Gabe’s Roadhouse when it was raided. He got the impression that those were the services I liked to provide, not that I had been researching for the book, draft pages of which he held in his hands. I decided to give him what he wanted to the extent I could.

“I’m not sure I know what to do.”

“I know what I want. Just give me what I beg for.”

Among the toys he’d brought in his duffel bag was a contraption of leather leads that fit under the mattress of a double or bigger bed, with the leads, with restraints on them, coming out from the four corners of the mattress. He had me bind him at the four wrist and ankle points with this, naked and face down on my bed, a bolster under his belly to lift his pelvis. He had a great body. I had no trouble getting up for him. He had a ball gag in his mouth and I had the hand whip he provided in my hand.

At his insistence and direction, I whipped him on the back, buttocks, and thighs and then mounted him from on top, penetrated, and fucked him. We both got hard; we both got off; I enjoyed it much more than I thought I could or, certainly than I thought I should. I vowed that after I finished writing The Glass House, I would go a lot tamer with my work. I didn’t want to enjoy this; I didn’t want to get involved in this to the point that I needed it to get off, as Ted Compton seemed too. We both did get off.

As I worked him, wording for scenes for The Glass House reverberated through my brain.

When Derek had come, the satyr pulled his fist out of the young man’s ass, exchanged it for his monster cock, and fucked the stuffing out of the German. Derek loved this too. Derek even loved it when the man released him from the restraints on the bed but only to carry him across the foyer and back into the sexual torture dungeon, where he hung Derek on a St. Andrew’s cross, facing the brick wall; whipped him on the back, buttocks, and thighs, and then saddled up behind him, palmed the young man’s belly, pulled his pelvis back, mounted him, and fucked him again. Derek was puddled at the base of the X-frame, on the stone floor, panting and purring for twenty minutes before finding out that he was all alone. All three men who had manhandled and sexually tortured him from the morning into the afternoon of his twenty-third birthday were gone.

Afterward, we floated back into a sense of reality. “You’ve got a great body and a huge cock,” Compton said. “And you did me well—for what’s available here in Martinsville. I admit I have to go to other places—even beyond Jack’s, the place on the state border I told you about, to get it like I wanted it. It sounds like I would have liked Gabe’s Roadhouse. But I don’t think your heart was really in it.”

“No, sorry,” I admitted. “It wasn’t. I was researching this new book when I got caught in that raid. I’m not really into that. Sorry.” I hoped I could convince myself of that. Both at Gabe’s and here, with Ted, I got more into it than I told myself I wanted to. Whipping Roy had made me hard; whipping Ted had made me hard . . . no, I didn’t want to think about that too much.

“Oh, well,” Compton said at the door. “I think you’ll find what you like at Jack’s in Price, on the state border. We’ll keep in touch. Who knows, maybe someday you’ll want . . . you’ve got a great body and you’re a very interesting man. Here in Martinsville—”

“Yes, we’ll need to keep in touch,” I said, moving the door shut enough to give him the hint.

“Don’t worry. Here you can be just Marty Miller, if you like, here for whatever reason you have. I’ll tell people you’re just dull.”

“Thanks,” I said, before shutting the door on him. “That’s the Martinsville mask I’d like to live here.”

“But you’ll keep seeing me, won’t you?”

“If you wish.”

And it was. It really was. With these two experiences, I could put life into my sex scenes in The Glass House. I wouldn’t write such scenes in the next Mike Miles book, though. Maybe I’d want to write another one of those . . . someday. The experiences certainly got me hard and bothered.

But I hadn’t shut the door on continuing it with Compton.

* * * *

After two weeks alone in the Martinsville house with no communications from anyone in Richmond, because they didn’t know where I was, or from my wife, since she was in a tent somewhere in Egypt, I had been left in peace. I had made great progress on both the mainstream and erotica works I was researching and beginning to write, and I was going catatonic over the lack of sex.

Vivian and I moved with quite a fast crowd in Richmond. I was used to getting casual sex at least weekly—most often from Charles Vine, a too-rich-to-work piano player who anchored all of our impromptu parties. I think Viv liked Charlie better than she did me—she certainly had known him longer and he amused her—so the arrangement was fine with her and she was accustomed to finding him in my bed the morning after we’d caroused all night.

But I wasn’t in Richmond. I was here in Martinsville, and I needed to lay someone. I couldn’t call Ted Compton, because he wanted something different from a man than I wanted to learn to need. But thinking of Compton reminded me that he’d mentioned a place south of here, down on the border with North Carolina, in a place called Price.

I drove down.

Jack’s bar straddling the Virginia-North Carolina line was similar to Gabe’s Roadhouse in most respects. It was located in what once had been a farmhouse off a rural state route with nothing much else around. The parking area was behind the house and was set off with an eight-foot wooden fence to hide the cars from view from the road. The first floor was a bar. I never saw what, if anything, was downstairs or upstairs, however, because the major difference between the two gay clubs was that this wasn’t a leather bar—at least not on this evening.

There was a platform for a band, but no live band was playing this night, and a dancefloor and a few tables. Jack’s had more space devoted to pool tables than Gabe’s had had and that’s where most of the guys were gathered on this night. Jack’s was just as smokey as Gabe’s had been. Instead of a band that night there was a jukebox, and a few of the guys were slow dancing on a small dancefloor. There was a whole range of ages and body types. The uniform of the evening was low-rise worn jeans and white T’s. Some, like me, had tank tops on—those who had a musculature they could be proud of. Not a lot of the guys had sculpted bodies, though. Mine was good enough to where I got a lot of attention when I entered and bellied up to the bar.

I ordered a beer and turned with my back to the bar, casing out the patrons. It wasn’t a real busy night. The best of what was on offer were at the pool tables. I zeroed quickly on one young ginger top in his early twenties, slender and with a good face. He was playing pool with grace, moving like a dancer, doing well with the stick. He looked vaguely familiar, and from the time I entered the bar, he frequently looked over at me. Backed up to the bar, I looked back.

When he finished his game, he turned his stick over to another guy and sauntered over to the bar.

“Surprised to see you in here,” he said, as he reached me. “Playing pool builds up a thirst. Buy a guy a drink?”

He was telling me he was available to me and that he was a sub, and he wasn’t wasting any time. He also acted like he knew me. He gave me a smile and I realized that there was a reason for that. He had been the electrician working in my house the day I took possession—the guy with the inviting butt cleavage.

“My name’s Cory. Cory Jenkins,” he said. “I’ve seen you. You were—”

“Taking possession of the log house in Martinsville the day you were checking the wiring,” I completed his sentence. He clearly was pleased that I remembered him. “I’m Marty Miller,” I said.

“Yes, sir, you are. You sure you know what kind of bar this is, Mr. Miller?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You pitching or receiving.”

“I like to give a good sub a spin.”

At that moment, the bartender, who had been on the phone, hung up and clanged a captain’s bell behind the bar. I was startled. The others in the bar started on the move.

“Call from the Ridgeway firehouse, guys,” the bartender called out. “Sheriff’s cars coming through. You have about six minutes.”

“Guess I don’t need that drink,” Cory said.

“You remember where I live? Church Street.” I asked. “I’ll stand you a drink at my house.”

“Great,” he said. “Yeah, I remember your place. Cops are coming from the Virginia side. Drive into North Carolina, down to Madison, turn east over to Wentworth, and back up into Virginia through Eden.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said to Cory’s back. He was already on his way out the door to the parking lot.

I fucked him on the sofa in the small living room of the log cottage, our beers untouched and going warm on the coffee table before us. He was yielding and I was a lover with him, covering him in kisses, my hands exploring everywhere, as I undressed him, lay him out under me along the sofa cushions, and, as he gasped and moaned but didn’t resist, slowly worked my way inside him. I was thick enough to stretch him to the limit, stopping to feel him opening more and then giving him more. Arching his back and moaning, he embraced me with his arms, hugged my hips with his knees, and rocked with me in a deep fuck.

Then I fucked him on my bed, Cory on his belly, grasping the brass rails of the headboard, slightly raised on his knees as I mounted him from above and behind and rode him and rode him. Later I lay on my back and he straddled my pelvis and rode me.

We fit and moved like long-time lovers, giving and taking, demanding and yielding, coming together—again and again through the night.

He never asked me who I was beyond Marty Miller, who lived in a neat little log cabin in the center of Martinsville and wrote some sort of books. I wore my Martinsville mask for several more weeks. Cory came whenever I called for him, and he lay under me whenever I asked for it.

He made no demands. It was whatever I wanted. He was just what I needed in that time and place.

My writing flourished. My world was content.

* * * *

I had been in Martinsville for four weeks when my cellphone buzzed. My wife, Vivian Royal to her fans, Maggie Pearson to me, was calling me.

“I’m back in Richmond. You aren’t here.”

“I meant to tell you before you left for Egypt. I bought a little cottage down in south-central Virginia, in Martinsville.”

“I never heard of Martinsville.”

“Few have,” I said. “That was rather the point.” We both laughed. “I want someplace to go when the writing gets tough.”

“Charlie misses you, and he asked to tell me that it’s a vital part of you he misses. I won’t pretend to I don’t know what part that is. You’ve been gone from Richmond so long, though, that I guess you found someone else to fuck.”

“You can say that. Listen, Maggie, I’m sorry about the bad publicity that got kicked up while you were in Egypt. If you want a—”

She snorted. “You mean the gay club raid near that army base?”

“Yes.”

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity in showbusiness, doll. It all adds spice. Are you coming back to Richmond soon? Charlie’s not the only one who misses you here—although it’s your conversation I miss, not your cock.”

“I guess so, but, if you don’t mind, I’ll keep this cottage in Martinsville and come back to work here when I need to get away from Richmond.”

“So, the piece of man flesh you found down there is a real firecracker, is he?” She asked.

“You can say so. I don’t have to wear a mask with him, Maggie.”

“Lucky you,” she said. “He’s there now, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said, reaching over and running the back of my hand down Cory’s torso from his throat to the root of his cock. He was lying on his back on my bed.

“You were about to mount and fuck him when I called, weren’t you?”

I don’t know how she did it. She always seemed to know. She must have heard the happiness and lust in my voice. “Yes,” I answered.

“In that case, I’ll catch you latter, sweetness.”

She gave her signature deep-throated laugh and clicked off on me.