Nutcracker Christmas Partying

December, 2023

“Good evening, Mr. Reynolds. I hope you enjoyed the show. We haven’t seen you for some time.”

“I was doing the European tour for most of the last year, Fritz,” I said. Fritz had worked the backstage at Lincoln Center’s Koch Theater for as long as I could remember—since before my first ballet here, a couple of months shy of turning nineteen. He had worked his way up to backstage manager just as I had worked my way from the dance line to principal roles. “I’ve been touring the ballets there, checking out how other companies do it.” I didn’t say that I only was back in New York now because the pandemic had lessened enough that they could do Frank’s memorial service.

“I hope you haven’t given up dancing,” Fritz said. “You were the best Cavalier in the annual productions we did here of The Nutcracker back in the day.”

“That was twenty years ago, Fritz,” I said. “No, I haven’t danced in a ballet for some time. Not since . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

“Not since Mr. Carlton died?”

“No, not since Frank left us. I always danced for him.” I could talk to Fritz about this. He had always been understanding. And he’d idolized Franklin Carlton, who had been a mainstay here. His money had helped provide these productions.

“When they said we could do The Nutcracker again this year, I’d hoped you’d be back—maybe in the role of Herr Drosselmeyer. The production just doesn’t seem the same without you in some role.”

“It doesn’t seem the same to me to be watching from the audience and not in it in some role, I admit,” I said. “Maybe next year.”

“I do hope so,” Fritz said. “When did you first start in it here? You must have been a child.”

“I was eighteen, in the background dance line. I think I had four costume changes. In the early eighties.”

“Well, it’s good to see you again backstage. Are those flowers for anyone in particular?”

* * * *

December, 1983

I was nearly nineteen. I wanted to be a professional ballet dancer in the worst way. It was my first professional production, The Nutcracker, with the New York Ballet, at Lincoln Center, my first visit to New York. It was a beginning, but it threatened to be an end too. I couldn’t afford to go on—not unless I found a way to earn more. I was willing to do about anything to be able to continue trying in the New York ballet, and I had some assets in addition to the dancing ability. I was young, good-looking, very fit albeit sight and lithe, and I’d gone with men before. I wasn’t coerced to go with men. That had been a choice completely independent of the ballet. So, it was natural to use that as I could. I was headed to the Long Island shore opposite Fire Island to use that.

“They’re just renting it for the week. It doesn’t belong to any of the men who will be at the party, Adam.”

I had remarked on how lush the mansion was that Gregor was bringing Kyle, Win, and me to as candy for a private Christmas multiday party in an area called Babylon, on Long Island. The driveway was long, flanked by now-leafless trees that a hunk of a black man was stringing white fairy lights on as we drove up to the house. I looked up at him where he balanced on a ladder and he stared back down at me with a knowing smile. My body quivered.

Did he know what sort of party I and the other guys were coming to? Did he know that we were the entertainment? We obviously were too young to be guests at a party in a venue like this.

I didn’t feel guilty nor was I embarrassed about coming to this party and letting men cover me. I was only eighteen—so were Kyle and Win—but we were all mentally old and tough for our ages. We knew what we had to do to get ahead in professional ballet. We were all in New York City for December, gathered from across the country. I was training at the Philadelphia Dance Academy, at least through the end of the month when my family no longer could afford tuition there and I’d maybe have to give up my goal of being a premier ballet dancer. What I’d earn from this party plus what little I’d be paid for dancing the line in Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center would just get me to the end of the year—another two weeks. Of course, if there was a generous tip, I could go on longer. Gregor had told me the tips would be good.

Gregor Gerinko, the dance master for this NYC Ballet performance of The Nutcracker, had made the arrangements for us to be at the party and had driven us out to Babylon in a rental car. Kyle, a blond from Cleveland; Win, half-Chinese from San Francisco; and dark, Jewish me from Philadelphia, were all in the weekend cast of the Christmas ballet, performing background dance line duties in several different costumes each in roles going from mice to mechanical dolls, to toy soldiers, so we were free in the middle of this week before Christmas to take on this extra gig. We all had male ballet dancer bodies: less-than-normal height, willowy stature just beginning to muscle up, and limber, flexible bodies. Each in our own ways we were beautiful young men—more beautiful than handsome.

“There are six men at the party,” Gregor said as we approached the house. “You are to give them whatever they want. There’s a cook and a coordinator, but you guys will be the waiters and servers to attend to the men’s needs and desires. The waiter duties are secondary to what they want sexually. Don’t ask them any questions that would lead to their identities. This is a very private party. They are paying you well for what you’ll provide. Just always look happy to be there and with them—and treat them all like they are hung gods, no matter what their looks or their age. Open your legs to them on demand and treat them like they are the best stud you’ve ever had.”

“You’ll be there too, of course,” Kyle said.

“No. I have to go back to the production,” Gerinko said. “I’ll be back to pick you up Thursday evening. The party here ends that afternoon. Don’t go wild at the party in ways that breaks anything in the house. It’s being rented. You’re there for these men. You are to be their sex slaves for the three days of the party.”

We certainly couldn’t say we didn’t know what was expected of us. I’d let men do me before. I hadn’t been in an orgy, though, and I was a little excited about the prospect of what could come. He said there would be six of them at the party.

As we were climbing out of the rental car and being motioned into the ornate double front doors of the mansion by a scowling, thuggish looking man in his forties who was identified as Steve, the party coordinator, I sensed we were being watched. It was chilly, but not cold for a December in New York, but the thought of what I would be doing for the next couple of days made me tremble and shimmer a bit and I pulled my coat tightly around me. I looked back at the long driveway we’d just come down and my eyes met those of the black hunk on the ladder, stringing lights. His gaze was piercing. I wondered if he was some sort of gardener or handyman here and whether he knew how the house would be used for the next couple of days. And I wondered if he knew how three eighteen-year-old male ballet dancer would be used as well.

Was he into this as well or did he view us with disdain?

I’d never been with a black man before. I had been used in Philadelphia by men I needed to help me in becoming a ballet dancer, so there was nothing new in what would be happening here, but they’d always been regular men—nothing dangerous or forbidden about them. And none of them had been black—or as muscular as the man on the ladder.

But it seemed in the way that black man on the ladder looked at me that he knew—and that it turned him on as much as it must be turning on the six men coming together to have this mid-week party with three eighteen-year-old male dancers the week before Christmas.

* * * *

The six men we partied with in the Babylon mansion didn’t tell us who they were—either as individuals or to each other—but they talked comfortably among themselves and it wasn’t hard to understand that they all were involved somehow in the stock market in the city or that they socialized together there and went to the same gym. It was also clear that they were all wealthy, as they would have to be to party like this. They obviously had partied like this before and were comfortable doing it. They ranged in age from the late thirties to the early fifties, and although some were a little heavier than others and some less handsome than others, I would have guessed they all gymed regularly. They all had “good-enough” bodies and I got the idea that they wouldn’t let anyone hang with them who didn’t. Some revealed they were married and some mentioned that they had children. None of them were embarrassed in acknowledging this in the context we were in. They didn’t say that to Win, Kyle, or me, of course, just to each other in conversations we heard.

We three guys weren’t people to them. We were just Christmas season toys for them to enjoy. We could be moving close to them in the room and it was like we weren’t even there except to be eye candy.

They had this party business down pat. They didn’t use names. They just called each other One from the obviously most important one down to Six, one of the youngest ones—someone who evidently worked for One in the city. They did most everything a group of gay, but macho, men would do in a laid-back multiday party in a well-appointed house. They played cards and pool. They watched sports on TV. They bantered with each other about sports and business. They wore what they wanted, which in the case of the younger and more ripped ones, wasn’t more than athletic shorts. They drank constantly, but only smoked outside.

And they fucked the three eighteen-year-old ballet dancers who wandered around, serving and servicing them. When they had the notion, they just grabbed one of us and put us under them. Every one of them was significantly bigger and heavier than any of us dancers. This casual using on a whim and when they had gotten it up was what they were at the party to enjoy. And we catered to their fantasies, going down on our backs, spreading and opening our legs to them wherever we landed, and arching our backs, rocking against their crotches, and moaning for them when they stuck it in us—telling them they were irresistible studs.

It was a game with them. Two or three of them might be standing or sitting around, having a conversation, and one of them could grab a guy and fuck him right there while the conversation just kept on going.

The three of us wore only short Scottish kilts, with nothing underneath, and Santa hats to mark the holiday. Our job was to float around, looking huggable, playing in their games or watching TV with them, as they desired. We got their drinks and the snacks. We let them explore our bodies with their hands and their lips and let them fondle our mounds and crevices where and when they wanted. And we knelt in front of them and took their cocks in our throats when they desired. And we lay down for them, flipped our kilts up, and took their shafts in our asses as and where they wanted. They knew we were dancers in a production of The Nutcracker, and it was a running joke for one of them to grab one of us by the nuts and squeeze for us to entertain the rest while our eyes watered, we begged for mercy, and they chanted, “Nutcracker, nutcracker.”

They laid us where and when they wanted. There were six bedrooms on the second level, one for each of them, and more, smaller ones in the third, attic level for the ballet dancers—although none of us spent as much time in our own bedrooms as in one or more of the six rooms on the second floor—or on the floor, a table, or a sofa in the party rooms. Indeed, none of us spent much time at all without a cock in our throat or our ass channel.

We each knew what was entailed in coming to this party. We each were being paid well. Even though still eighteen, none of us were virgins to men. Each of us wanted to come out of this with a great tip.

One of the first-floor rooms was an ideal party room. It was large, with banks of French doors out onto the terrace on two sides, one overlooking the Great South Bay, with Fire Island beyond. The room had a long bar, a card table, a pool table, several long couches, ottomans, a large fireplace with a roaring fire, three large-screen TVs, providing coverage of a college football bowl game that could be seen from all angles but that was receiving little attention, and, in a bow to the season, a huge, lit, and decorated Christmas tree.

We were well into the Monday afternoon, with the men from One to Six gathered in one room for the first time, and making full use of both the bar and the three ballet dancers.

Win was belly down on an ottoman in front of the fireplace, kilt flipped up in back, and Two mounted on his ass, grasping his hips, and fucking him. Four was crouched in front of Win’s face, cupping the guy’s head in his hands, and feeding his cock down Win’s throat.

Kyle was buried in one of the couches, a very muscular Five crouched between his thighs, with Kyle’s ankles on Five’s shoulders, and the tightening and releasing of Five’s plump buttocks cheeks making obvious he was plowing Kyle’s anal channel. At eighteen and dancers, all three of us were flexible, and the men delighted in putting us into athletic, taxing positions.

For my part, I was chest down on the surface of the bar at one end, grabbing the far edge of the top, with Three standing between my spread thighs, gripping my legs under my knees to raise and spread them, lifting my ass to his face, and eating my hole out. When I was well open, he lowered and hooked my knees on his hips, lowered my ass to the level of his crotch, worked his erection inside me, and fucked the shit out of me.

While four of them were feasting on the three dancers, One and Six sat at the other end of the bar, paying more attention to the football game than the rest of us were, watching the fucking, and talking—they were talking shop of their financial firm as far as I could catch.

The end of the bar was next to a glassed French door. When I turned my face in that direction, I saw that the black guy who had been stringing tree lights in front had now moved around to the back and had been clipping boxwood bushes. He wasn’t doing that when I looked, though. He had stopped and turned to watch me getting fucked in the family room on the bar top. He was still holding clippers in one hand, but he was rubbing his crotch with the other. He was bundled up enough that I couldn’t tell how well-built he was. But he was certainly a handsome, bald dude. Black and a bit thuggish. I shivered in arousal—more for him than for the forty-something man who was fucking me.

Although I’d been done a fair number of times since I’d turned eighteen, I’d yet to be fucked by a black dude. I’d heard they could be bulls in size and vigor. I wondered. I certainly wondered about this one watching me while Three fucked me.

This was turning out to be quite a taxing day for me. Two, who was now fucking Win and who was a huge-cocked man, had screwed me on the same ottoman soon after we had arrived that morning, and Five, almost a pleasure to be with as he had a great body, was fairly young, and took his time, had done me in the dining room after they had eaten lunch—the ballet dancers ate separately. He pulled me into his lap as I was passing him in the dining room, and had settled me on his shaft, facing him, and he raised and lowering me on his shaft while he worked my mouth, throat, and nipples with his mouth until he climaxed inside me. Five was a hunk. I didn’t mind his attentions and I willingly gave him what he wanted.

One hadn’t made use of any of us yet that I could see, although he declared that I’d be in his bed that night. It was obvious that none of the other numbers questioned whatever One said would be done. Six was so busy brownnosing One that I didn’t know if he’d ever get around to screwing one of the ballet dancers. I sort of thought he might be bottoming for the others before the party was over.

* * * *

The numbered men went into some sort of meeting in the dining room, closing the doors, in the late afternoon, and Steve, the party coordinator, told us ballet dancers to be scarce, not to be anywhere close to the dining room in case anyone thought we were eavesdropping. That was quite all right with me. I felt the urge to be somewhere else altogether anyway. Pulling on a heavy coat over the flimsy kilt hanging from my waist, I left the house to explore the grounds.

A light snow had fallen since we’d arrived. It had cleared off the stone surfaces but covered the grass. I only had sneakers on my feet, so I stuck to the walks and moved toward the water of the bay between tall boxwood hedges. Half way down to the shore a stone path went off to the left, and, curious, hearing the sound of wood being chopped, I took the path.

It opened to a clearing with a small, picturesque cottage, looking like something from the English Cotswolds. It wasn’t so much the cottage that brought me up short and made me gasp, though, as it was in seeing the black man, the groundskeeper I’d seen earlier, in the clearing in front of the cottage, chopping wood on a block. He was stripped to the waist even in the cold air of a New York December, steam coming off his magnificent, muscular chest from the exertion of the chopping. Now that I saw him without the bulky bundling, I could see that he had the physique of a god. Not only that: his chocolate-colored torso was covered with a swirl of bluish tattooing, covering his left side, outlining his beefy pectoral muscle on that side and swirling down his left arm to his wrist.

He looked up, having heard my gasp. We stood there for the longest moment, staring at each other. There was an animal magnetism about the man that held me in place. He had seen me being taken in sex. He knew I would take his cock.

I knew I should turn and bolt, back to the relative safety of the mansion, but I didn’t. And when I didn’t, he carefully put the ax down, slowly walked over to me like a slinking panther, grasped my wrist, and guided me into the cottage. Whimpering, I didn’t resist him. I let him draw me into the building.

Once inside, he turned me, back to the wall, just inside the door. There was a small table beside where he pressed me to wall, where he recently had eaten, because a plate and utensils were still there as well as a dish with a thick slab of butter on it.

He said nothing. Neither did I. He knew what he was going to do. So did I. And he did it.

He stripped me of my coat, leaving me just in the kilt with nothing under it. He grasped my throat in a strong hand and held my head against the wall. His hand went under the kilt. He laced his fingers through my balls at the base of my shaft and squeezed and distended them, pulling whimpers and moans out of me.

“Relax,” he growled, continuing to work my balls and cock, which engorged. I worked at responding as directed. He stroked me off, still holding my head to the wall with the grasp of his other hand on my throat. His eyes bored into mine. His face was only inches from mine.

“Come for me,” he commanded, and, trembling, I did.

His hand went to the buckle of the kilt holding it to my waist. That undone, the material of the kilt slid to the floor and, other than my sneakers, I was naked.

Pulling back a good six feet, he feasted his eyes on my naked body.

“Very nice,” he said. “Perfectly proportioned. Touch yourself.”

I did as he directed, starting to come erect again.

“Very nice indeed. Fondle your balls. Now stroke yourself. Nice.”

He unbuckled himself, drawing his leather belt out and letting his trousers fall to floor, kicking them aside, he came in closer.

“Now me. Touch it.” I did. He was in magnificent erection. He moaned low.

“Stroke it.” I complied. His moan was deeper. I was moaning as well.

He pressed his pelvis against mine. He was in massive erection. I didn’t see it, but I felt it pushing itself up between my thighs, already moving below my ball sac, across my hole, which puckered and began to blossom open.

He was going to fuck me. I wanted him to fuck me. I moaned and whimpered something that was indistinguishable even to me.

“Fuck me,” I whispered.

“Yes,” he answered.

He grasped my wrists together and bound them in the leather of his belt, raising them up and hooking them on a hook above my head. He grabbed my ankles and hooked them on his shoulders, using my flexibility as a dancer. His hands glided over my chest and down my sides, over my belly, and back up to pinch and thumb my nipples.

I shuddered and trembled and shimmered and whispered, “Please, please,” not being able to say again what I really wanted, which was his hard dick inside me. He’d said “yes” to that. I was going to be fucked the first time by a black stud.

I groaned and gave a little cry as I saw him reach over onto the surface of the table and sink his fingers into the slab of butter there, and then I gasped and cried out louder, screaming, “Fuck! Shit!” as his greased fingers found, penetrated, opened, sank into, and began to stretch my hole.

His cock soon followed when I was lubed and open. He was enormous. I sobbed and moaned as he penetrated, mastered, and then pumped me, all the time holding my head against the wall with a grip on my throat.

“Yes, yes. YES!” I cried out as he pumped and pumped, stretching my passage, and my passage responded. The muscles of the channel walls undulated over the huge shaft, making love to the cock as he fucked me.

He fucked me hard, deep, with vigor, and to his completion. He stroked my cock and squeezed my balls with his free, greased hand, while he fucked me, and I came again before he did.

So, that was what it was like to be screwed by a black bull. It was like no other coupling I’d ever experienced. It had been all about him—the pleasure he wanted to take. But it had given me maximum pleasure too. I felt totally fucked.

When he was done, he unhooked my wrists, let me sink to the floor, muttered, “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself,” and, picking up his trousers and retrieving his leather belt, left the cottage. He was nowhere to be seen when I was able to collect myself, pull my coat back on, and leave.

I had never been so fully and brutally taken.

When I got back to the house, the meeting of the numbered men had been concluded. I avoided them and went up to my room and to a bathroom to soak in the tub and whimper and moan. En route Steve had stopped me.

“They are going over onto Fire Island tomorrow and staying the night. So, you three will be free to do whatever you like here until Wednesday afternoon.” Steve had taken a shine to Win, so I knew how Win, at least, would spend our “free” day.

Having a free day without the number guys pawing me was a relief, but I would have liked it better if they had already gone to Fire Island for an overnight Christmas orgy at a male brothel there. The black bull groundskeeper had wiped me out—and they’d done me royally earlier that afternoon themselves.

But they put a full evening of fun and games with the three ballet dancers, with Two and Four repeating with me what they’d done with Win on the ottoman in front of the fire. The screwing continued into the night, with me winding up riding One in a cowboy position on his bed, One lying on his back, holding my waist in his hands, as I rose and fell on his shaft. Six was, initially, on the bed beside us, fucking Kyle in a missionary position. He couldn’t keep himself from One, though, and he abandoned Kyle, mounted himself up behind me while I was riding One’s cock, slid his shaft inside me on top of the one One already had in my channel, and the two doubled me to a three-way ejaculation.

It was a lot for the small, lithe body of an eighteen-year-old guy to take. But take it, I did. I was still gaping open from the black groundskeeper earlier in that day. That helped me take two together later.

Kyle had used the doubling as an excuse to escape and the three of us collapsed on the bed in a heap. As we were recovering, I, surprisingly, was pushed off to the side, One continued lying on his back, but now Six saddled himself on One’s pelvis and, like I had done before, sank his passage on One’s cock, and began riding him in a cowboy.

So, One and Six were more intimate than merely boss and employee, I discovered, and, as I surmised, Six was more amenable to taking cock than giving it. I probably should have figured that out earlier.

They didn’t notice when I quietly rolled off the bed and padded out of One’s bedroom.

* * * *

It was snowing, but, like a moth to the flame, that didn’t prevent me from pulling on a warm coat and boots and leaving the house. I took the path down toward the bay, seeing the glow from the black groundskeeper’s cottage filtering through the boxwood hedges before I reached the turnoff. I took the path toward the light and knocked on the door, but before he could decide whether to answer the knock or not, I pushed the door open.

He was sitting, cross-legged, in front of the fireplace, where a fire was flaring. He’d put up a Christmas tree beside the fireplace. It wasn’t as grand as the one in the main house, but it was nice enough. Christmas music was softly playing in the background. The interior of the cabin, living and dining room combined, and a wall of kitchen cabinets and appliances, glowed from strategically placed candles. A wine bottle and one glass sat on the slate hearth, signaling that he hadn’t been expecting me—or anyone else. He was wearing just red-flannel pajama bottoms.

Once more, the musculature and tattooing of his torso took my breath away.

“I said I was sorry,” he said when he saw me framed in his entry door. “I couldn’t help it. You gave it to those men at the house. I had to have it too.”

“I don’t want your ‘sorry,’” I said. “I came because I don’t know your name. You didn’t tell me what your name was.”

“No, you didn’t come for that,” he said.

“No, you’re right. I came because I want that big, black dick of yours inside me again.” As I said that, I opened the coat I was wearing and let it fall to the floor. I stood there just in the boots that I then slid my feet out of as well.

We held for a couple of long seconds, him obviously trying to decide which way to go, me knowing exactly what I wanted.

“Come here,” he growled at last. “I’ll give you all of the big, black cock you can take.” He slipped his pajama bottoms off, and I gasped at seeing that he was well on his way to a huge erection. He pulled me down on top of him, I took his cock in my mouth, and the fuck began. It moved on to him kneeling on the rug in front of the fire and holding me in his lap, facing him, my torso streaming back toward the Christmas tree, as he grasped my hips and pulled me ever so slowly on his shaft, as I groaned and moaned at the stretch of him. Once partially saddled—I could tell that he wasn’t going to be able to bottom inside me without a lot more preparation—I was being worked on and off his stretching shaft until, first, he came and then as I lay back and moaned, he stroked me off.

We lay there, like that, both of us concentrating on him going flaccid inside me.

“I’m told the men are going over to Fire Island tomorrow and staying there until the next day,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered.

“I attended the lighting of the tree in Rockefeller Center the other night. It’s really something to behold. Have you seen it? Do you ice skate? There’s a skating rink there.”

“I haven’t had time for anything like that,” I said. “We’re putting The Nutcracker on at Lincoln Center, and all my time has gone to rehearsals and performances. I’ve seen nothing of the city. I’m up from Philadelphia. Never been to New York City before.”

“I’ll take you there tomorrow. We’ll be back before the men return from Fire Island.”

“I don’t see how—”

“I’ll clear it with Steve up at the house. He’s in charge while the men are gone. They need never know.”

“I guess you could tell Steve there’s some sort of emergency requiring me to return to New York for the day and you volunteered to take me,” I said. I couldn’t help it—I felt taken care of that he didn’t ask me if I wanted to go to the city with him—that he just said that’s what we’d do.

“I’ll take care of it, and I’ll take care of you,” he murmured. And he did take care of me, turning me over my belly, running an arm under my waist to raise my pelvis to his desire, and mounting, penetrating, and fucking me again. I lay there, cheek to rug, eyes gazing into the fire, luxuriating in that big black shaft working my passage. This time he prepared me longer and found a position that, when I’d been opened well, he was fully saddled, and I was fully penetrated, stretched, and fucked.

* * * *

I don’t know what he told Steve, but it worked. We went into the city for the day, didn’t return until the next morning, Wednesday, and neither Steve nor the men said anything about it. Kyle and Win didn’t give me away either.

The day in New York City was glorious. Frank—that was the name he finally gave to me—seemed to know every place a guy would like to see in the city and he took me there. He drove me into the city in a nifty Porshe sports car he said went with the Babylon mansion and Steve let him use, and he parked it in the garage of a fancy old high-rise apartment building between Central Park and the East River on 68th Street. That evening, when it was getting dark, we walked back from Central Park to Rockefeller Center to be there when the lights on the Christmas tree went on. Then we ice skated on the rink there.

From there we took a cab up to 68th Street East to the apartment house whose garage he’d used for the Porsche, the Lenox Hill, old, elegant, and over fifteen stories. He took me near the top of that to a huge four-bedroom apartment, which he said belonged to someone he knew who wasn’t in residence at the moment, and who said Frank could use it. The furniture in the apartment looked old, like it had been there for generations, elegant, and expensive.

There, in a big four-poster bed in one of four bedrooms in the apartment, he fucked me through the night. He asked how the men at the party had fucked me and what positions they’d used, and then he replicated them. He wasn’t the least bit judgmental that I worked the party as a prostitute. He showed no jealousy that six men were screwing me at the party.

It all worked out that we got back to Babylon before the number men returned from Fire Island. He let me off at the house and he went on to his cottage in the back garden. I wasn’t back long before the men returned. Whatever they’d done overnight at the male brothel on Fire Island, it didn’t wear them out, because they returned as randy and ready as they had been when they left. I didn’t have time or opportunity to go back to Frank’s cottage that evening or night because the six men fucked the three ballet dancers all over the mansion all evening and into the late morning of Thursday when they all packed up and left. Our dance master, Gregor Gerinko, arrived in the afternoon to take Win, Kyle, and me back to New York.

We had a rehearsal at Lincoln Center that night, and the next day, Friday, we were back on stage in the weekend cast of The Nutcracker. I barely had time to think about Frank and our fuck in front of the fire and in his bed and the trip to New York City. But every moment I wasn’t taken up with dance rehearsing and performance was occupied by thinking of the positions the big, black bull had used to cover me—and on how much better he did them all than the six men at the Babylon party had done.

* * * *

The sex week hadn’t exhausted me and the tips were great. It had been exhilarating, and I felt I’d put on the best two performances on Friday that I ever had. Gregor Gerinko even patted me on the butt at one point and praised my dancing in the tin soldiers’ scene. Afterward, as I and the other minor male dancers were crowded into a large dressing room, fighting with each other to get our costumes and makeup off and running through the showers so we could dress and get out to the late-closing eateries within walking distance of Lincoln Center, Gerinko came to me. He was holding a bouquet of red and white roses.

“You have an admirer,” he said. “If you don’t make it back to the hotel tonight, I’ll take care of that.”

The heads of all other dancers swarming around in the room snapped around to look at me. It wasn’t unknown, actually, that someone in the audience—male or female—hit on one of the dancers this way, but it didn’t happen often, and not usually with a bouquet this expensive looking. Also, it usually happened when the admirer was known to the dancer.

I was at a loss on who it might be, and responded naturally. “I think it must be a mistake. They must be for someone else,” I said.

“No. It’s Franklin Carlton. He’s one of the backers of this running of The Nutcracker. He’s a multimillionaire playboy,” Gerinko said. “He’s gay too and you aren’t the first dancer he’s ever picked off the line. If you have ambition to move up to solo roles, I think you need to go out to him. His car’s in the alley by the stage door.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know about just going off with—”

“Your ballet school called me today,” Gerinko interjected. “They said someone by that name had guaranteed your tuition for the next year at the school. The man’s got the hots for you, obviously. I know you thought your training would stop with The Nutcracker. What are you willing to give to be able to continue? I know you’ll give sex. You just went to a sex party. It’s up to you, of course, but it looks like you’re about to link up with a sugar daddy if you’re smart enough to do so.”

It was a nifty Porsche sports car. And the driver, of course, was the hunk black bull supposed groundskeeper at the rented Babylon party house.

“You aren’t just a gardener and handyman in Babylon, are you?” I asked as I climbed into the passenger seat of the Porshe.

“No. That’s my house. The guys who were using it are associates of mine.”

“The guys who wanted eighteen-year-old male dancers to fuck,” I said.

“Yes. And, yes, they are men I associate with. I like my men young. When I really like them, I want them all to myself, though.”

“For just a short while?”

“With the right guy, I’d be looking for longer than just a while—much farther into life, I would hope. I want to start with them young and flexible like you, as a dancer, are, because I want to train them to my desires. But enough of that. I was thinking we’d have dinner at the Atlantic Grill. They are officially closed, but they keep a room open late for special reservations, and then back to the Lenox Hill apartment for the night. I’d get you back well before tomorrow’s matinee of The Nutcracker.”

“I suppose the fancy apartment is yours too,” I said.

“Yes it is. It’s been in the family for a couple of generations. No one will disturb us there. Buckle up and let’s go.”

I knew it would be quite a ride. That was quite all right with me. I liked that he didn’t really ask me if I wanted to go with him. He knew I did.

* * * *

December 2023

“Well, it’s good to see you again backstage. Are those flowers for anyone in particular?” the backstage manager of the Koch Theater said.

“Yes. There’s a young man in the troupe I’ve met—Jamie Martin,” I answered. “On the dance line, taking the roles I took in my first production of The Nutcracker here. The same age I was when I started. Do you know him?”

“Indeed, I do,” Fritz said. I gave him a searching look, afraid that he would show disapproval. But he didn’t. Fritz had always been understanding that way. “He’s a handsome young man and good on his toes. Reminds me of you back in the day. I think I just saw him coming out of the dressing room. Ah, yes, there he is.”

Fritz called out to Jamie, whose face lit up in a broad smile when he saw me—and the bouquet of red and white roses.

“You were terrific,” I said, as Jamie approached and Fritz patted me on the arm and turned away to talk with a stage hand. “And it was a great production of The Nutcracker,” I added.

“You really think so?” Jamie asked, pleased. “Coming from you, that’s great praise. I think The Nutcracker has been your life.”

It was Frank who was my life, I thought. The Nutcracker had just been the catalyst that brought us together and helped us stay together for nearly forty years. But Frank told me to move on—not to give up. I’d seen Jamie dance in a ballet at my old dance school in Philadelphia. I had recommended him for this production and he had, indeed, done great.

“I was thinking we’d have dinner at the Atlantic Grill,” I said. “They are officially closed, but they keep a room open late for special reservations, and then back to the Lenox Hill apartment for the night. I’d get you back well before tomorrow’s matinee of The Nutcracker.” I checked. You have three days off after that matinee. I thought we could go out to Long Island for a couple of nights. I have a house in Babylon there, opposite Fire Island.