Jay was tired. He was cranky. He did not have the energy, the will, even the desire to exert himself. He felt the beginnings of some lousy grippe settling in. All he was good for was to feel the ache in his limbs.
His room was a closed-off section at one end of a long attic in Mitch and Bill's house. It had a large double window that opened inwards. Its ceiling had a very gentle slope. He could stand straight up and even stretch his hands over his head in most parts of the room.
It was sparely but handsomely furnished. A good single bed, an oak dresser with a marble top, two chairs: one, a brown leather club chair, the other, his desk chair, and a desk. There was a built in closet and a beautiful hand-woven Iranian carpet on the wood floor: abstract, interweaving flowers, birds, and starry shapes in silver, green, and red emerging from and falling into a deep field of midnight blue.
The auburn moon was framed inside the field of the window. Jay had swiveled in his chair a half circle from his books and his computer. With his back to the desk he looked at the moon high above Manhattan, hanging in the sky crowning the Brooklyn Bridge.
Pinned to the wall beside the window was a nearly poster-size picture of Mitch standing in the sunlight on a Caribbean beach. He was gorgeous and mesmerizing. He was not naked. He was in a black bikini in the picture, full body, tan, solid, muscular, and defined, standing, his back to the sea, with a blue sky supported by columns of cumulus clouds floating above the horizon, above his broad shoulders. Jay spent a good deal of time admiring that picture, spacing out, lost in it.
Jay could always find himself though, and gather back his attention, and get back to work, which is analyzing the performance of several major corporations for a highly-regarded semi-annual mutual funds report he wrote.
The bell rang. It was Mitch summoning him. He did not want to move.
Nevertheless, Jay stood up and went over to the speaker. Never yelling towards the mouthpiece from a distance, but approaching close to it and speaking softly, he said, Yes, sir.
Jay, get yourself together and present your ass down here in ten minutes. The tone was not unfriendly; neither was it friendly.
Yes, sir, immediately sir, Jay said, forcing out the energy with which he uttered the words.
It was time for a workout: push-ups, chin-ups, weights, crunches, repetitions. He was going to have to function for at least an hour as a well-oiled muscular machine, his body undergoing total discipline, his mind undergoing total eclipse.
He stripped, stepped into a black spandex jock, loose nylon sweat pants, cuffed to the ankles, also black, and put on leather athletic shoes.
He sucked in a breath as he pinched each nipple with a small silver ball claw. It wasn't just a workout he was going to have to go through. It was a workout powered by a continuous pain signal. He didn't want it, but once he gave himself to it, which he had no choice but to do, he couldn't do without it. It was his strength.
As tired as he had been, he was suddenly mobilized.
He did not want to press the pins at the ends of the claw into his nipples. But that was irrelevant. He was going to, and once he did, the pain was a relief. He relaxed into the pain and felt it as a warm gift.
Last, he put on a loose, sleeveless, top, also black. He generally wore all black. When he raised his arms to get the shirt over his head, stretching his pecs, the pins bit down on his nipples. He exhaled and gave himself to it gratefully.
Downstairs, off the kitchen, in the room which they had built for workouts (with an attached shower and sauna), Mitch was already doing bench presses. Jay presented himself, standing at attention, waiting to be recognized.
Jay watched as each muscle flexed when Mitch worked his body, each muscle, each move more gracefully powerful than the last.
Mitch stopped and pulled his loose-fitting sleeveless shirt off ^Ö Jay's was a copy ^Ö and wiped the sweat off his face with it, allowing Jay to gaze at his magnificent chest, like a bronze breast plate, and his impossible nipples, strong and delicate, raised hard on the mounds of his muscled man-breasts from which Jay had often sucked the sacred nectar of masculinity.
Mitch approached him with the suggestion of a smile on his lips and the full comfort and confidence of mastery in his eyes. He stood still a few feet away from the trainee and regarded him. Jay was not sure whether Mitch was pleased or dissatisfied with him.
Slowly, Mitch pressed down on the clips on Jay's nipples, taking the administration of his pain out of his hands. Jay felt a fresh, icy stream of pain. His knees almost buckled. But when they began to, he felt a steel rod pierce through him and into his backbone.
Parallel to the floor, Jay was a beautifully mechanical thing, precise in every fiber as he bent or straitened his elbows and raised and lowered himself. His whole body stiffened into a solid muscular elongation.
Over the course of a year, Mitch had performed a miracle. He had caused Jay, through his discipline, to sense that it was a source of deep pleasure to feel pain. When he endured pain and when he overcame pain by enduring it, Jay felt exceptionally powerful.
Jay realized that the pain Mitch gave him was a special gift. That pain was the source of all Jay's power, emotional and intellectual as well as physical. That pain had become the source of all his pleasure, too, and pain was the cause of the intensity of his sexual pleasure. Jay quivered with the desire to have a gift to give in return. The gift he knew that was his to give was accepting the pain he was commanded to suffer and welcoming it gratefully.
Welcome suffering. The oxymoron was overwhelming. It decomissioned his mind entirely every time he stopped to think about it.
I am very pleased with you Jay, Mitch said.
Now his eyes, still keeping their secret mystery of power, nevertheless, shone with a smile. Jay held his breath. Jay saw that Mitch's lips were even fuller than usual. Jay wanted to give himself to Mitch then as a torrent of kisses.
He put his lips, humbly, delicately, respectfully to Mitch's and offered a kiss in the form of a tender bite.
Mitch swallowed the kiss and did not return it. Instead he put one hand on Jay's shoulder. With the other he pinched the silver claw hard into his nipple.
Jay did not move an inch but felt the pain flood inside him and turn him more nearly into steel.
Mitch posed like a statue of Apollo Narcissist with one hand on his hip, one clasping the back of his neck. He held his chin high. He presented his chest for worship. His eyes, along with his full head, were turned slightly to the left and seemed aware of nothing but their own power.
Jay bowed to him, forehead touching the ground at his feet, and slowly drew his tongue around the god's ankles and worshipped his feet.
Jay knelt before him, encircled his body, soft as marble, with his trembling lean and muscled arms, and took Mitch's unbending and forbidden manliness into his mouth and nourished himself. He swallowed Mitch's spirit deeply and felt it recreating him and regenerating him.
Jay slid his right cheek against Mitch's abs and when he reached Mitch's chest he was drawn to his nipples with an irresistible compulsion. He tongued and then he chewed one nipple and then the other. They had the contours of a walnut shell, and the shape of a small bullet. Jay's lips planted kisses on the nipples and lingered worshipfully in the temple of discipline.
He dragged his tongue over the taut flesh up to Mitch's fresh and musky arm pit and began as if under a spell to kiss the deep hollow with long, deep, slow kisses as if he were kissing Mitch's lips and entering his mouth. He grasped his master's muscled thighs between his own. Mitch felt his devotee's hard cock rubbing in desire against him. It pleased him.
Lunch in an hour? Jay called out as Mitch passed by his office.
Not today, Jay, Mitch said, slowing down and turning on his heels when he heard him, for he had passed right by his office, although the door was open and the walls onto the corridor are glass from floor to ceiling.
Mitch hung in the doorway for an instant, and smiled brightly at his own happiness. Bill is going to pick me up and we'll have lunch together.
Jay was happy for him, too. Bill was Mitch's beloved, and more. Mitch had consecrated himself to his relationship with Bill.
Jay might have liked if^Åbut that was neither here nor there. He came second, and if it hurt, well, it hurt. So much the better! It was the way Mitch wanted it. Mitch liked it when he suffered and felt pain because of him, when he envied him, when he realized with a pang of the heart that Mitch was unattainable.
Sure thing, Jay said, brightly. You look great, he said. And I'm still allowed to admire you from a distance, no?
Suit yourself, Mitch smiled and winked, and added, I saw the drafts of your report. I don't know how you do it.
Thanks, Jay said, grinning.
No, for real, Mitch said, and added with another wink and a snap of his thumb, That's a great tie you got on, kid.
Thanks, Jay began, but Mitch was already gone.
His heart ached as it bubbled.
He felt the urge to go down to the company gym at lunch time. He wasn't hungry, his nipples were tingling, his body was screaming for a workout. It felt good. He inhaled and stretched his chest.
The gym was nearly empty and he drove himself ecstatically through a routine until his body was ringing like triple brass. In the shower the water beaded on his skin. Afterwards he rubbed himself down with a harsh towel and stood naked before the mirror admiring himself.
He had ten minutes. He adjusted the knot in his tie and made sure his hair was perfect.
He stepped out onto the boulevard before going upstairs. He saw the main street turn back into highway, and, in the distance, he saw the highway turn back into mountain roads.
He turned back into the building and took the elevator up to the twentieth-eighth floor.
The polished black and green marble shone under his feet and his own reflection was being cast out from within it.
Marble turned to a mustard yellow, plum rouge carpet.
Jay followed the carpet to his office and sat down at his glass-topped desk, the color of the night sky, and looked at the random pile of books scattered over it.
Everything was fair game for his research. He read up on politics and trade and wars, on pop sensations and media gossip, on mergers, CEOs, deals, and proxy fights. He followed opening and closing prices and law cases. Society was nothing really but the way money behaved in a given region on a given population, on sets of individuals, how it made sets and subsets interact. Everything was the way it was because of money. He had to know how everything was going in order to know what money was doing.
He opened his laptop and logged in and began to write. He spent the rest of the afternoon writing about the cost of the war, in dollars and in lives, and on its effects upon the economy and on people.
Mitch and Bill were leaving in the morning for a week in Cuernavaca. He had hoped to see them before they left, but they got home after three and they were gone by eight thirty the time it was when Jay got out of bed, to shower and dress for the office.
His heart melted when he found an e-mail from Mitch sent right before he left saying he'd see him soon.
The street was noisy and Jay felt uneasy. He was standing on the sidewalk in a pair of low slung dungaree shorts and a skin tight wife beater, standing in the pride of his chest, wishing to be looked at and desired.
Beer?
A guy with blond hair, green green eyes and wearing a dungaree jacket which hung open over his well-muscled, sun-tanned chest held the stein out to him right there on the street.
Thank you, Jay said, sir.
My pleasure, Scott answered. I have not seen you around before.
I haven't been here before, Jay said.
Been busy? Scott said.
Have I ever, Jay said.
You want to talk about it? Scott said, teasing him.
I'd bore you, Jay said.
You couldn't bore me, Scott said.
I've been looking all week at statistics regarding the War in Iraq, focusing on amounts of money spent, how it was spent, who got it, and on the numbers of people dead or injured. Who. How many. It's very grim.
You're very sweet, Scott said.
Thank you, Jay said, softly, looking at him with receptive eyes, aware that it was a line generated by the heat of the moment, but he was hot, too, so he felt its power over him.
My place is down a couple of blocks, Scott said, sliding his arm around Jay's waist and beginning to walk home with him even as he proposed it. Jay let himself be led and did not resist.
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