This story is completely fictional and any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. The story also contains explicit sexual acts between males, so be warned!
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Copyright 2013 by Macout Mann. All rights reserved.
IT STARTED IN A PARK
by Macout Mann
Chapter 19
The Clarissa Controversy
As his sophomore year ended, Sammie certainly didn't need a summer job. He could have made more money with pen and brush than working construction. But he chose to do as he had done the previous summer and spend most of it working with Jim. Whoring for Merritt would continue to offer diversion in late August.
Christian effectively had become Sammie's manager. If he hadn't, Sammie wouldn't have known even to pay income tax. Christian didn't disagree Sammie's decision to do construction. He felt that Sammie should be Sammie, and his relationship with Jim was all important.
Sammie had finished the portrait of his parents, and Hyrum Gunther had asked him to do an oil or two to test that market. Sammie asked Jim to pose. He was to be the helmsman on a pirate ship in a storm at sea. He also wanted to use Win, Jim's son who was now six, in a picture of a lad at a swimming hole. He would paint the figures from life and add the backgrounds from his imagination.
Christian suggested that Sammie pay both of his subjects for modelling and Sammie quickly agreed. He could certainly afford it. Jim refused to accept any money, so Christian and Sammie set up a college fund account for Win. If Sammie continued to contribute, even if Win didn't want to go to college, there would be seed money for anything the boy did want to do.
Sammie undertook the project, painting Win on sunny afternoons in tattered cutoffs after he and Jim finished work, and painting Jim in late twilight some evenings and on weekends. Before Sammie left for Atlanta he had painted both the figure of a shirtless Jim fighting an imaginary ship's wheel in an imaginary storm at sea and the figure of Win about to leap from an imaginary rock at an imaginary quarry.
Occasionally, Jim would also take Sammie to Mike's Place after work. Sammie, dressed as a hard hat, didn't attract attention, and the management in deference to Jim never asked for I.D.
Sammie had peered into Dunbar's door back in Columbus sometimes, but he'd never been inside a redneck bar before, and he was fascinated. Seeing that his charge could use further education, Jim took Sammie to a real roadhouse one Saturday night, where there was a country band and the farm hands and city boys alike were looking for gals to make out with. If they couldn't make out, they could at least dance and have their pricks teased. Rather than doing either, Sammie was busy making sketches. Within a year they would become the basis of another set of Sam Caldwell prints that would sell even better than his first effort.
You'd think that with all this work and play that Sammie wouldn't have time for sex. You'd have to think again. There was still Buck at the job site. Much of the same crew seemed to gravitate from one job to the next. Vernon was having to teach in the Summer Session, but Sammie was still living at his place, and they sought relief with each other more often than not.
The relationship that meant the most to Sammie, however, was with Jim. For all of the time they had known each other Jim had always been the top. Oh, he would blow Sammie all right, but Sammie had never tried to fuck Jim and Jim had never offered his ass to the younger man. And Sammie hadn't thought it should be otherwise in spite of his more robust relationship with both Vernon and George.
The night the two of them went to the roadhouse, however, Jim gave Sammie a real surprise. As they drove down the nearly deserted highway and Sammie was giving road head, Jim pulled off onto a side trail and parked on the edge of a large pond.
"Go ahead and get me off," Jim said. "Then I'm gonna give you a kick. I've been ready to let you do it for a long time...and I think we're both ready."
In the darkness of the pickup's cab, Sammie sped up his ministration to Jim's rock-hard shaft. To Sammie the ejaculate seemed more ample than usual. Then Jim quickly removed Sammie's sleeveless denim shirt and jeans and stripped himself down as well. He grabbed a frayed blanket from behind the seat, jumped out and spread the blanket on the truck bed. "Come on," he called to Sammie. "I want you to fuck me."
"Do what?" Sammie couldn't believe his ears.
"I want your dick up my ass, Sam." Jim vaulted up onto the truck and stretched out on the blanket. "I'm goanna be tight as hell, because it's been a while, but I want your fuckin' dick right now."
Sammie climbed up next to his idol. He could barely make out Jim's beautiful body in the darkness, but he kissed his nipples, then pressed his own bare chest against Jim's. He slipped his index finger into Jim's ass and felt that it was as tight as a virgin's hole. "My god," he thought.
Shaking with passion Sammie slobbered over Jim's ass crack and began to prepare his rosebud for the penetration to come. When he had widened it as much as he could, he tongued Jim's ass, until Jim spoke.
"Let me get your dick wet for you," Jim offered. Sammie turned about and Jim took his tool into his mouth and moistened it with as much spit as he could.
"Take me, man," Jim commanded.
With Jim's legs in the air, Sammie directed his prong at Jim's asshole and slipped the tip of the head into Jim's sphincter.
"Ugh," Jim cried. Then, "Don't stop!"
Sammie's hips thrust forward just a bit.
"Ugh...yeah."
Sammie couldn't have been more thrilled if he were taking Jim's cherry.
"Ugh...yeah! Fuck me, man. I wanna feel that motherfucker deep in my ass!"
Sammie was all the way in, and he began a joyous, rhythmic pummeling of Jim's hard body. Both men were in ecstasy. Jim especially, because he felt that he had now given Sammie the gift of real manhood. Sammie, because he so appreciated what Jim had offered him. As he shot his load he wept with joy. Their bonding was complete.
The fall term was pretty routine. Sammie completed both his oils. He went to the library and carefully studied diagrams and pictures of Eighteenth Century sailing ships. Soon, he had painted in the mizzenmast behind Jim, the ship's wheel he was trying to keep control of, the quarterdeck railing, and in the background the shadowy figures of the captain and another pirate. The fury of the storm was expressed in showers of spray and the whitecaps barely visible beyond the deck. He was familiar enough with swimming holes to finish the study of Win from memory. Both pictures were complete in time for Christian to take them with him to Cleveland at Christmas.
Hyrum Gunther was willing to buy both canvases outright, but Christian insisted they be sold on consignment. He felt that Sam would come out better that way, and he was probably right.
Christmas break also brought the end of the fourth semester of Sammie's swimming instruction and with it a Red Cross "Water Safety Instructor" badge which he proudly sewed onto his swimming trunks.
Sammie took the portrait of his mom and dad home with him Christmas. Even his dad agreed the likenesses were good. His mother seemed a bit more receptive. Taped to the frame was also an envelope containing a ten thousand dollar check, Sammie's bigger Christmas present to his folks.
Sammie's mother was overwhelmed.
"Where the hell you get that kind of money?" his father demanded.
"Selling my pictures," Sammie proudly answered. "If I put your portrait up for sale rather than giving it to you and mom, it would bring at least seven hundred and fifty. My prints don't sell for that much, but in the last year I've sold four hundred of them."
"Shit! I wouldn't give you ten bucks for it," his father spat.
Even a fun and profitable week with Merritt didn't restore Sammie's good spirits. When he returned to Sparta he had a heart-to-heart with Christian. For the first time ever Christian embraced the fragile young artist.
"I'm so sorry you've been hurt, Sam," Christian began, "but sometimes parents just don't understand.
"I was lucky. Both my parents were artistic. Your father obviously will never understand you, and I'm afraid you've just got to accept that. I'm sure that both your mother and your dad love you, but neither of them seems able to express their love in a way that you find meaningful.
"But you know, Jim and Vernon and I, even Captain Worthington--and I don't know how many other people here at Sparta--love you. You can always count on me...and Vernon and Jim. Always."
"I know," Sammie said, fighting back tears.
"Your future relationship with your parents," Christian continued, "is something only you can deal with. A decision you must make for yourself. You are obviously going to become a very successful artist. You will be able to support your folks as they would want to be supported, and I hope you will. But for now, don't let their lack of understanding depress you. You've got a golden future. Let us help you seize it."
Over the next few weeks Sammie gradually lost his depressiveness. Hunter was his usual ebullient self, George his usual submissive bottom. Gradually Sam Caldwell's six print set, "Honky-tonk Night" took shape.
When Christian, as his advisor, received his cumulative grade point average, he was more than pleased. 3.7 out of a maximum 4.0.
One of the required courses at Sparta for all undergraduates was Public Speaking. That was one of the courses in which Sammie had made a B, and Christian was glad that he'd advised Sammie to elect a second semester. "One of these days, you are going to have to make speeches a lot," he told Sammie. "So you'd better learn to do it well."
In 1982, being outed was still traumatic, especially in places like rural Georgia.
The tradition at Sparta was that each Spring a student from each department of each of the undergraduate schools was honored by vote of the faculty as "Outstanding Student of the Year." A special edition of "Lamda" featured their choices.
The Art Faculty did discuss the political implications of their selection, but ultimately unanimously bestowed the honor on Sam Caldwell.
The day after the "Lamda" story ran, a letter to the editor from Clarissa Estes appeared. It berated the Art Faculty for choosing a junior for the honor, since traditionally it went to a senior. Her letter ended, "Furthermore, Sam Caldwell is a homosexual. The university should not be recognizing people like that for honors."
Christian Ballard almost had a coronary. "That fucking bitch!" he shrieked.
He went to see Malcolm Pritchard, the head of the department. "What can we do?" he asked.
"She has a right to her opinion," Dr. Pritchard answered.
"And I have a right to mine," Christian responded. "May I have your permission to respond, not officially, but personally?"
"Your grave," Malcolm said. "You have the same rights she does."
The next issue of "Lamda" featured the following response:
"I do not write this officially as a member of the Art Department Faculty. This is my
personal observation. In that capacity, I would like to point out that Miss Estes has every
right to object to the Art Faculty's choice to select a junior rather than a senior to receive
the award. That is a departure from usual practice. I, and evidently the other members of the
faculty, found Mr. Caldwell's record worthy of our not respecting tradition. So be it. We can
have that argument. And I welcome it. With Miss Estes or anyone else.
"I find fault with Miss Estes, however, for her characterization of Mr. Caldwell as—we may as well
say it—"a queer."
"As Mr. Caldwell's faculty advisor, I have never had cause to characterize his sexual orientation,
just as I never characterized Miss Estes'. But as the university's art historian, I would point
out that just as the Greek letter, "Lamba," adorned the shields of ancient Spartan warriors, also
the "Homoioi," the citizens who bore those shields, were encouraged to bond together homosexually
to promote their warrior instincts.
"As to art, I would remind Miss Estes that artists from Michelangelo to...[the list was so long that
the editors of Lamda had to edit out half the names] were gay.
"If Mr. Caldwell, as Miss Estes alleges is, is a `queer,' he joins a distinguished list.
"Christian Ballard, PhD."
The Dean of the College was incensed by Christian's letter. He fully expected a reaction from the President. He called Malcom Pritchard on the carpet. "Did you allow this?" he demanded.
"He discussed it with me," Dr. Pritchard answered. "I told him he had the same freedom of expression as she did. He was not to speak as an official of the university and he didn't."
The next day another letter appeared. It read:
"Clarissa Estes is spouting `sour grapes.' She thought she'd get it, but obviously Sam deserve
it more.
"Janice Abrams"
There was a flurry of letters. The last one to be printed read:
"I have been Sam Caldwell's roommate for the last two years. You don't think I'd know if
the xxx-xx-x-xxxxx was queer?
"Hunter Bronson"
The Dean was mollified.
It was right after classes on Friday. The gym was full. Hunter demanded that Sam go with him to work out. They emerged from the locker room and were besieged by a hoard of guys. Sammie was lifted onto shoulders and the crowd marched around the gym singing, "For he's a jolly good fellow..."
Finally, Sammie was able to be heard above the din. "Hey, guys, let me down or I might get a hard on."
The laughter wouldn't stop.