Sam

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter One

The first picture I saw was the ninth one in the series and the first one that could be described as a nude shot. Anyway that's the way it had been posted to one of the more provocative newsgroups on the internet... Sam (NUDE) Sam09.JPG (LORENZO) and the date it had been posted, which was two days before I downloaded the thing and saw Sam. It didn't show much except Sam's bum and a little of his chest, but it did show his face.

Of course, I hadn't expected it to be our Sam. I hadn't been aware that he was into modelling in the nude... well, none of us had... but we had all been aware that he had the body for it. We'd known that for a long time.

It wasn't that Sam was a muscleman or a jock or anything like that. He didn't do anything physical that any of us knew about, but he had this great natural latino physique and a square handsome face to match. If Sam had been around at the time, Michaelangelo's David would have been decidedly hispanic.

Sam kept to himself most of the time. He attended classes with the rest of us, of course, but he did not socialize much. It wasn't that he was aloof or anything... Sam was always pretty much open to a conversation or a party, but he always came and left alone. None of us had ever seen him actually date anybody and it was a foregone conclusion that none of us had seen him naked... until Sam09.JPG showed up, that is.

I probably would have gone on believing that I was the only one on campus who had seen the thing if I hadn't sent the e-mail to LORENZO@EUROMAIL.NET. But I didn't send it right away. I sent it after Sam15.JPG arrived and I'll admit that, when I sent it, the only thing I was looking for was the pictures I had missed.

That's what I told Lorenzo. I asked him as nicely as I could to send along the other thirteen, since my server seemed to have missed them, and if he did not feel like reposting them, would he please send them to me by e-mail attachment.

The answer I got two days later was a bit of a shock. It was a bulk mailing to five e-mail addresses, all of them located on the same ISP as me. I knew three of the addresses well and one of them vaguely. One of them, somebody named Arlo, I didn't know at all.

The message in the e-mail was succinct. It read, "Perhaps you guys should learn to share." There were no attachments and no promises of reposts. There was not even a signature... electronic or otherwise. I was ruminating about this when my cellular telephone rang.

"Who's this Arlo guy?" Norm Chaisson asked me.

Norm's e-mail address had been one of the others that were familiar to me. I guessed that there was no use trying to convince him that I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

"No idea..." I answered.

"What ones have you got?" Norm went on unperturbed as if collecting photos of our friends from the alternative lifestyles newsgroups of the internet was the most normal thing in the world and I would undoubtedly know what he was talking about.

"Nine and fifteen," I answered, confirming Norm's assumptions.

"'Sthat all?"

"Yah... Why how many did you get?"

"Four..."

"Which numbers?"

"Three, seven, ten and fourteen..."

"Where'd you find them?"

"Obviously not in the same group you did..."

"Where?" I pressed.

"Amateurs... How about you?"

"Gaymale..." I admitted.

"Hmmm..." Norm assessed, but I'm not sure what he was assessing. "Have you talked to the others yet?"

"Hell, no! I just got the message."

"Yah, me too. Okay, then, you call Frank and I'll talk to Oki..."

"Why?" I asked, suddenly apprehensive that word was getting around a tad too fast about my sexuality. There would probably be speculation about my proclivities by dinner time.

"Hey, man, he told us to share..."

"Norm, if he told you to jump off a pier, would you do it? You don't know this Lorenzo guy from Adam."

"No, but I know Sam... What do you suppose happened to him?"

"Why? What do you mean?"

"You mean you hadn't noticed that he isn't around anymore?"

"No... Did he drop out?"

"Seems like... He's not around here anyway."

"When'd he leave?"

"Dunno... I went looking for him when I found the first picture. Nobody's seen him in a while."

"Did he have a room mate?"

"Yah, but he don't know nothin'. I don't think he's even seen the pictures."

"You didn't ask him?"

"Of course not... I just asked him where Sam was. He didn't seem to know. Evidently Sam never came back after the Christmas break."

"Well, maybe we should check the others then..." I agreed. "One of them might know something."

I rang off and looked through my directory for Frank's number. I was listening to the phone ring at Frank's when I idly clicked on the e-mail again and checked to see if there was anything new. Frank picked up about the same time I got the next message. It was another bulk, but this time it was only addressed to four of us and it came from Arlo.

"Have you checked your e-mail lately?" I asked Frank.

"Ah... no, I haven't," Frank lied and confirmed by his tone of voice that he knew exactly what I was talking about.

"You have an invitation to dinner," I informed him. "Some guy named Arlo wants you to show up at seven tonight at Luigi's Spaghetti House."

"How'd you know that?" Frank asked.

"I got the same bulk invitation... It says you are supposed to bring along one disk with your Sam pictures on it for each of the other four guys."

"What're you talking about? What Sam pictures?"

"The Sam pictures you wrote to Lorenzo about..."

"Shit!"

"What?"

"Nothing... just shit!" There was a long silence on the other end of the line. I decided not to disturb it. "How many people know about this?" Frank asked eventually.

"Just you and me and Oki and Norm..."

"Oh shit! Not Norm!"

"Uh huh... oh and this Arlo guy... Do you know who he is?"

"No..." Frank answered distractedly and I knew that he was telling the truth.

"What's the matter, Frank?"

"Nothing, Rick... Everything's just peachy keen!"

"Are you worried about being exposed, Frank?"

"What do you mean 'exposed?'"

"I didn't mean anything, Frank..."

"Yah, well watch it!"

Evidently Frank was having a hard time admitting things to himself. I decided to try another tack.

"Have you heard from Sam lately?"

"Why would I hear from Sam? Sam was nothing to me!"

"What do you mean 'was?'"

"Well, he isn't around anymore is he?"

"No, not according to Norm..."

"Shit! Norm... why did Norm have to be involved in this?"

"None of us had to be involved, Frank. We all wrote e-mail and this Lorenzo guy noticed we're all on the same server... that's all"

"Yah, well he had no right sending us that bulk mail!"

"Hey, man, it's done! Try to get over it! Are you coming to dinner tonight?"

"Why should I?"

"To get the rest of the pics..."

"I don't think I want the rest of the pics now. Are you going?"

"Yah, and I imagine Norm and Oki will show up too when they find out about it. And besides, we'll find out who this Arlo guy is. Hey, c'mon, man... I hear the spaghetti's great at Luigi's."

"Yah, well, if I ain't there, start without me."

Frank rang off.

Almost immediately the phone rang again.

"Hey, man, are you going?"

"Yes, Norm... I love spaghetti."

"Kewl..."

"How about Oki?"

"He's the guy who told me about the invitation. Did you talk to Frank?"

"Ah... yah."

"Well, is he gonna be there?"

"He said he'll try to rearrange his schedule, but not to count on it."

"Frank was a little pissed off, wasn't he?"

"You might say that..."

"I just did, man!"

"Is that why you asked me to call him?"

"No way, man! I had to talk to Oki anyway."

"Norm, if Frank does show up tonight..."

"Yah? What?"

"Try not to push his buttons."

"Hey, man, don't sweat it! Oh, and Rick..."

"Yah, what is it?"

"Do you have four disks I could borrow?"

"Sure, Norm... Come and get them."

"Kewl!"

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Two

Luigi's Spaghetti House is not in town. It's out on the highway just beyond the college and it does a brisk business because it keeps its prices low and its quality high. A lot of the Economics crowd eats there and discuss the fundamental truths of supply and demand... and completely miss the point that they are sitting in the middle of a model that has worked for years based on exactly opposite principles.

I drove Norm to Luigi's in my van because his truck was laid up waiting for a new transmission. It was doing this because Norm never takes care of anything. He is a moment to moment kind of a guy and does not believe in schedules or scheduled maintenance or much else for that matter... other than football. Norm is a defensive lineman.

Frank plays football too. He and Norm play on the same college team, but they might as well be on two different ones. Frank is offense. He's a receiver and spends most of his time avoiding guys like Norm... both on and off the field.

I really didn't expect to find Frank there when we arrived, and he wasn't, but Oki was.

Oki is an exchange student from Japan. His real name is Teshu something or other, but everybody calls him Oki. I'm really not sure why this is, since his real name is nothing like that. It might have something to do with the fact that he comes from Tokyo, but if it does, nobody ever explained it to me.

Oki is a serious-looking guy with black-rimmed glasses that match his hair and eyes. He is thin, but not skinny, and does a lot of swimming at the university pool where he has a position on the relay team and also plays water polo. I did not know Oki well until the night we got together at Luigi's. This was mostly because he looked so serious all of the time, which is, I suppose, kind of natural, when you are in a strange land and are not sure of what is going on.

Norm introduced us and Oki smiled at me. He also bowed, which I found a little disconcerting... so I bowed back. Of course this only prompted him to bow again, but I stopped at one. I didn't want to keep bobbing up and down all night. I was sort of anxious to get to the main event.

We all went in together and found that the place was relatively quiet. There were a few tables taken, but most of them were empty. There was a sign that told us to wait to be seated, so we did, and it wasn't long before a waiter came over and showed us to a table in the corner of the room near the kitchen door.

I was wondering if we should mention to the waiter that we were expecting someone named Arlo to join us, but when I asked the other guys what they thought, Oki told me that he didn't think that would be necessary. He pointed out that there were five places set at the table and in front of four of them sat four identical black computer disks.

"It looks like Arlo is already here somewhere," Oki volunteered. We each sat down at one of the places that had a disk on the napkin and fished out our own contributions. We took turns placing the disks at each of the other places other than our own. When we were sure that we had it right we pocketed the disks in front of us.

"Who do you suppose he is?" I asked as I looked around the room and tried to find someone who looked like an Arlo.

"Maybe he went to the can," Norm mused and the musing seemed to remind him of something. "I'll be right back... gotta wiz..."

This left Oki and I by ourselves. I smiled at him and he returned it, so I figured I would make small talk.

"Where'd you find your Sam pics?" I asked.

"Alt.binaries.erotica.oriental," he answered.

"What was Sam doing there?" I asked.

"I don't know," Oki answered. "Maybe it was to attract Asian guys."

"Did it work?"

"I always found Sam attractive," Oki admitted. But he didn't admit anything else.

I was grateful that Oki did not press me about where I had downloaded my Sams. So far, I was the only one who had found them in an openly gay newsgroup. It was then that I remembered that I had not asked Frank where he'd found his.

"Do you think that Frank will show up?" Oki asked as if he had been reading my mind.

"If he doesn't he'll be missing a great dinner," I answered. "The food's great here!"

"That must have been what brought him," Oki motioned to the main door and I turned in time to see Frank start the long walk across the floor to our corner.

"Well, speak of the devil..."

"Where's that ox, Norman?" Frank asked as he pulled up the chair in front of the place Oki pointed out with the four disks piled on the napkin.

"In the bathroom," Oki offered. He offered it with a smile that betrayed the fact that he had been hoping that Frank would attend.

"I'm tellin' ya, Rick... if he starts anything tonight, I'm gonna clean his clock for him."

"Norm said he would behave himself, Frank."

"Yah, well he'd better..."

Now was not a good time to inquire about which group Frank had found his Sams in. I was surprised when Oki did.

"I don't do newsgroups," Frank answered in a low, controlled voice. "A friend of mine e-mailed them to me because he though he recognized Sam and wanted me to find out if it was him or not. I asked him where he'd got them and wrote to this Lorenzo guy to see if he could tell me where Sam was. I was a little concerned that he might be in trouble."

Frank's explanation raised a few doubts in my mind. That very afternoon he had told me that Sam was nothing to him. Now he was concerned enough to want to know if Sam was in trouble. I smelled a rat... a closeted rat who was into self-denial in a big way. But I didn't let on.

"Hey, Rabbit!" Norm was back. He used Frank's nickname familiarly. I guess football players are like that. "Did you bring us anything good?"

Frank seemed to understand what Norm was talking about, because he reached into his shirt pocket and produced four red disks. He distributed them to the rest of us and placed one on the pile by the vacant seat.

"Kewl! Color-coded!" Norm enthused.

"I figured it might get a little confusing knowing whose was whose," Frank explained to everybody but Norm.

"Would you care to order now?"

The waiter had appeared behind Norm. He only became visible when Norm sat down.

"We're expecting one more," Oki explained.

"The gentleman who made the reservation regrets that he cannot dine with you this evening," the waiter answered. "He did, however, ask that we inform you that dinner is on him tonight. He has arranged for payment up to twenty dollars per person."

"Arlo's not going to be here?" Norm seemed to whine a little. I knew he was disappointed. I was too. We could have traded amongst ourselves and probably got the same number of pictures without Arlo's contribution. The chances of him having found his pictures in a newsgroup other than the ones we had found ours was remote. The real reason we had shown up was to find out who Arlo was... and now it didn't appear that we would.

The waiter waited. He was a pleasant enough looking guy with dark brown hair that flopped over his forehead and needed to be tossed back from time to time. His complexion was olive, tending towards sallow... but it could have been the lights. His eyes were slightly sunken and his nose had a slight upturn to it, but it was his mouth that you really noticed. it was very wide. Consequently he did not open it too much when he spoke and it was a little difficult to understand what he said.

It was hard to gauge his physique in the oversized white shirt and black pants that he wore. The checked apron that covered the front of his pants gave no indication of whether he might have a decent basket beneath it, but when he'd taken our orders and turned to enter the kitchen, I did notice that he had a cute ass. Well, I always notice these things. I caught Frank noticing too.

The conversation eventually got around to the matter at hand, Sam's disappearance and reappearance on the InterNet Newsgroups. From there it went to speculation about Sam's sexuality.

"Why would the guy pose like that if he wasn't gay?" Frank wanted to know.

"There could be any number of reasons for it," I answered. "Half the models you see posing naked are doing it for money. It's a way for them to get by. Some are coerced of course. Some just do it for kicks."

"What sort of kick could you get out of posing in the nude?" Frank asked.

"I don't know... I could probably get a charge out of it," Norm answered.

"You could get a charge out of a dead battery," Frank observed laconically.

"I would do it..." Oki admitted out of the blue. We all looked at him. Admittedly we all looked at him hopefully. "...if it wasn't for my family," he added.

Norm and I looked at each other. Frank was still looking at Oki, and Oki stared back at him. They were communicating, but just what they were communicating Norm and I would not know until the next morning. Even then we would have to be satisfied with our own speculation about why Frank was seen coming out of Oki's dorm room at six o'clock in the morning.

"These days you have to be careful," I commented when Frank's and Oki's moment had gone on long enough. "Everybody has a scanner. Any picture you have taken of yourself can be all over the world in a matter of hours. It doesn't matter if you never show it to anybody. The guy at the photo store will probably spot an occasional set of pictures he wouldn't mind having for himself and the next thing you know, somebody in Timbuktu is sending you e-mail asking you for a date!"

"How would they get your e-mail address?" Oki wanted to know.

"I was speaking metaphorically. But you know what I mean... It could have been an innocent experiment, but some bozo likes what he finds and all of a sudden people are posting messages like... 'Post More of OKI65...'"

"Do you think that's what happened to Sam?" Norm asked.

"I don't know... it's possible..."

"Anything is possible," Frank agreed.

We all agreed that whatever the reason for Sam's little penchant for modelling, he had the body for it... and the face... and the knack. Three out of four of us even admitted that we were grateful to whomever had posted those pictures. Frank still maintained that his sole reason for possessing them was a concern for a fellow student.

I kept an eye on our waiter all through dinner. It was easy for me to do this because the waiter's staging area was just outside the kitchen door on the opposite side of the door from us. There were three waiters on that night, but ours seemed to be the least busy. He did not greet many customers, so naturally they did not get seated at his tables. A couple of times we made eye contact and he smiled a closed mouth smile that sort of acknowledged my presence. Then he would toss his head to get the hair out of his eyes and go back to doing whatever it was he did. I imagine that he heard quite a bit of our conversation that night and when it came time to depart I slipped a healthy tip under my plate.

We had resolved nothing at the dinner, but we each had a complete set of disks... all except Arlo, that is... His disks sat in front of his place setting, exactly where we had placed them. We wondered if we should take them with us. I guess we wondered loud enough for the waiter to hear. He came over anyway.

"I will take the disks," he informed us. "The gentleman wanted me to take them for him."

"Do you know him?" Norm asked. "Do you know who he is?"

"I know him to see him," the waiter answered. "He brought four disks in here tonight. He expects to take four disks out."

The waiter's long fingers wrapped themselves about the disks and he deposited them into his shirt pocket. Then he began to clear away our dishes. I watched when he picked up my plate and found the five dollar bill I had left there. He turned his head and acknowledged the tip with another closed mouth smile. When he had cleared the dishes he straightened up the table and leaned over to avoid having to go around to where Norm had made a pig of himself on the bread sticks. When he bent over, his ass flexed and I found myself staring at it.

"You coming, Rick?" Norm called from halfway across the room.

I snapped out of my reverie and dashed for the door, aware that everyone in the place had seen me ogling the waiter's ass.

As I have previously insinuated, Frank got a ride home with Oki that night and I was stuck with Norm. We climbed into the van and I started her up. The one thing I wanted to do more than anything else was to get rid of Norm. After that it was a toss up. I could play it safe and check out the disks with the pictures of Sam. That would have been my usual game plan, but if I stuck with the safe game plan, I might lose the game. I was exposed now, for all intents and purposes. I might as well play to win. Anyway, that's what I told myself as I said goodnight to Norm, invented a phony date that I had to keep and turned the van back towards Luigi's Spaghetti House.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Three

By the time I got back to Luigi's and took a seat at the bar, a lot of the customers who had been there for dinner had left. Things were winding down for the night, as I had suspected they would, and some of the staff were preparing to leave. I watched as one of the cooks put his coat on and headed out the back door, which was just visible at the end of the hallway where the washrooms were.

I did not see our waiter of the evening and at first I believed that he might have already left, but just after the cook left, the mens' room door opened and out he came. I felt a funny sort of anticipation that I usually only get just before exams. I watched him pull on his coat and adjust it in the mirrored hallway wall, then he picked up a slightly battered satchel that had been sitting beneath the coat rack and turned towards me.

I'm not sure when he became aware that I was watching him, but his head came up and he returned my gaze steadily as he walked right towards me.

"Can you call me a cab, Bill?" he asked the bartender who was standing right behind me. But his eyes were meeting mine when he spoke and I knew what was expected of me.

"I can give you a lift into town if you like, Arlo."

He did not seem surprised. In fact there was no change whatsoever in his appearance. He tossed his hair back out of his brown eyes, but that was just a reflex action. He'd been doing it all evening.

"Forget the cab, Bill..." He lifted his satchel to an empty bar stool and himself to the one beside me. "I knew that it would be you who figured it out," he said. "Would you mind telling me how?"

"A lot of things really," I said, "but the clincher was your name tag."

"I didn't wear my name tag..."

"Precisely... but you have holes in your pocket where you usually do. Everybody else was wearing theirs. All of the other waiters were introducing themselves to the people at their tables too, but you didn't. You also did not bring any customers to any of your other tables. That would be bad for a waiter... no tips. I suspected that was to keep things quieter in our corner and enable you to hear what we were talking about."

"Is that why you tipped me and the others didn't?"

"The others are cheap." I hadn't liked the way he had gone straight to my weakness. I had tipped him because he had a nice ass. He knew it too. I tried not to show the frustration that I felt about him being my equal when it came to powers of perception. "Can I buy you something to drink?"

"No thank you, but I do believe you said something about driving me home..."

"Yes I did... My van is right out front."

We walked to the van through the crisp winter air and I felt a chill that shivered its way out of me. It took a lot of my confidence with it. I had reached the end of my game plan. To be sure it had been successful, but success was not something I had anticipated and I had neglected to plan anything after it. I opened the door for him and he climbed into the passenger side and dropped his satchel between the seats. When I had settled into the driver's seat, I became aware that he was watching me. I tried not to let on as I started the van and dropped it into reverse, pulling it around to face the highway.

I looked at him.

"Left," he said. So he did live in town.

"Do you live in residence?" I asked.

"I have an apartment on Center... 330... by the bank..."

I knew the spot and I drove him to it, aware all the while that he was watching me and was not concealing the fact. I supposed it was only fair... I had been watching him all evening after all. When we arrived I found a parking spot and pulled into it. I had been wondering how I could go about engaging him in conversation. I really wanted to get to know him and like a fool, I had driven him home in silence. I was still trying to figure out how to start a conversation and what to talk about when he opened the door and said, "Come on up. We should talk."

I tried nonchalance.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"The same thing you do," he answered, "Sam... Lock the doors. You may be here a while."

Sam had been the furthest thing from my mind, but I dutifully locked the van, and followed him into the lobby happily confident that he had not seen through me... completely.

His apartment was beautiful and tastefully furnished. It was a shock to think that he could afford a two bedroom in the heart of town on a waiter's salary. When he opened the first bedroom door and led me into it, I was even more perplexed. The room had no bed. It was an office filled with electronics gear and computers... some of them still in packing boxes.

He switched on one of the machines and handed me the disks that had been in his breast pocket.

"Would you mind copying these to my Sam directory? I really should take a quick shower. I smell of onions."

He left me to figure out the rest for myself and it wasn't too long before I heard the sound of the water running in the next room. I dutifully copied the files to the directory and resisted the urge to examine the rest of the apartment while Arlo showered.

I had a look at Sam instead, clicking on each picture in succession and getting what amounted to a striptease performance. I was getting a hardon when Arlo rejoined me, wrapped only in a towel that did nothing to conceal his beautiful ass and very little to conceal the fact that he was very well hung. He dropped into the chair beside me and I smelled the fresh fragrance of deodorant mixed with the subtle aroma of the soap and shampoo. He continued to dry his hair and I ran through the files again for his benefit.

When his hair was sufficiently dry, he tossed the towel he had been using to dry it into a hamper by the door and leaned back in his chair, lifting one naked foot to grasp the edge of the computer desk with its long lean toes. This caused the towel he was wearing to separate and I was treated to an uninhibited view of his creamy smooth thigh. He adjusted the towel around his privates making sure that they remained covered, but also, I suspect, making sure that they were properly outlined against the towel. This did nothing for my hardon problem. I watched all of this out of the corner of my eye as we progressed through the Sam photos, and wished for an excuse to turn and look at him directly.

"Well, what do you think?" he asked as we came once more to the end of the slideshow.

I turned to look at him reclining provocatively in his chair. He had dark brown nipples that were like flat round disks against his creamy white skin. The middle of the nipples were erect while the surrounding darkness spread out in about the same diameter as a five cent piece before encountering a sharp demarcation where the skin took on its regular hue.

Arlo did not have much of a chest, but neither did he have much of a gut. His stomach was flat, certainly not rippled with muscles, but neither was it devoid of musculature. It was well-defined with the navel neither buried nor protruding, but just there. I longed to trace its intricacies with my tongue. Below the navel a wispiness of dark hair developed exponentially into a fullness just before its progress was hidden by the towel.

"I think I'm getting a hardon."

He smiled, not the closed mouth grin that I had seen at the restaurant, but a full toothy smile that made me aware of just how big his mouth really was. It was a charming smile, boyish and natural, and a little silly too, if the truth be told, which is probably why he did not use it in public.

"Yah, me too," he said and once again adjusted his towel, the better to show just how well his erection was doing. He looked at it unselfconsciously.

"Down boy!" he ordered.

"Does it do any other tricks?" I heard myself ask, and wished immediately that I could take the words back.

But Arlo only smiled again and said, "I'm trying to teach it to roll over and play dead, but it seems to have a mind of its own." He looked at it for a second more, then he looked at me.

"Why don't you take a shower too?"

"Do I smell that bad?" I asked.

"You don't smell at all," he answered. "It will relax you though. Sex is always better when you relax."

"Are we going to have sex?" I asked.

"Of course we are. You didn't come all the way back to Luigi's to tell me that my name is Arlo."

"I didn't come back to force myself on you either."

"I would never let anybody do that," he answered. "If I hadn't wanted to have you in my bed tonight, I never would have cancelled my taxi. Come on, I'll wash your back for you."

We left poor Sam staring nakedly out of the computer screen at us as Arlo took my hand and led me out of the computer room and into the bathroom.

Arlo washed more than my back for me and I returned the favour for him as we shared the tub and examined the bits of each other that we hadn't seen before. I had my way with his navel and even got that long curved cock of his down my throat a couple of times without gagging, but we weren't in the tub for sex, we were there to prepare for sex... foreplay if you will... or familiarization...

Arlo's cock is long and complete in its natural state. Nothing had been removed from it, I'm happy to state. It slopes downward over his testicles which hang low in their sack, whenever Arlo is not excited. I did not find that out until the next morning.

Arlo's ass, however, is the piece de resistance. It starts in the small of his back where two dimples define its northernmost territory. From there it slopes quickly downward and outward into two almost perfect globes. They would be perfect globes were it not for a couple of additional dimples which grace either side and appear and disappear when Arlo flexes... something he seems to do almost constantly whenever the area is being attended to... for instance, like when he's having sex... or preparing to.

Between his asscheeks Arlo is moderately hairy, sufficiently hairy to add texture to his taste and let your tongue know precisely where it is... providing you're into that sort of thing. I was extremely into it that night, probbing Arlo's upturned ass as his face moaned into the pillow and he stroked himself, slowly while I lapped around the rim of his membrane, and furiously whenever I forced my tongue into his hole.

I was glorying in the savoury taste when Arlo pulled away from my face and flopped over onto his back.

"Fuck me!" he ordered and lifted his feet one at a time to my shoulders.

I looked stupidly at the toes on either side of my head and realized that I did not have a condom or any lubricant. He must have realized what I was thinking. He opened a sliding door of his bookcase headboard and revealed a pharmacy of supplies. Arlo had everything.

"You can forget about the condom," he advised. "Tonight I want the real thing. Use a little KY though... you're pretty big."

"You should talk..." I smirked and lavished the goop onto myself and his hole. "Are you sure you don't want me to use a rubber?"

"I'm not worried about you," he answered. "I've been watching you for a while now."

"I only met you tonight..." I argued.

"Don't worry... I'll use a rubber... when my turn comes."

"But how could you know me when I didn't know you?"

"I didn't say I knew you, I said I'd been watching you. From what I noticed of you, I believe you would never expose yourself to unsafe sex... ergo, you don't have to wear a rubber. Now will you please fuck me? Or do you want to play '20 Questions?'"

"Can I ask one more?"

"Okay, what is it?"

"Do they make condoms long enough for you?"

"No..." Arlo laughed and his smile made me smile too. "But I promise I won't stick it in all the way. Now fuck me!"

"All right... all right!!! You don't have to yell!"

I guided my stiff cock up to his hole and pushed against the membrane. Gradually it parted and I felt the first throes of exstacy as the head slipped past the portal. Arlo's back arched as the main shaft began to spread him, but he took it like a man and there was only a moderate amount of pain evident on his face as he accomodated me. Once his foot slipped down onto my chest and pushed slightly against me to force me back as a slight gasp escaped his throat, but he said nothing and soon the foot returned to its spot on my shoulder where, from time to time, it brushed against the side of my head in what I liked to think of as a stroke of affection.

Soon my tentative entry turned into strokes of passion as I massaged his insides with my cock and gauged the results of my ministrations in the contortions of Arlo's face. His mouth particularly expressed his enjoyment as I worked myself faster and faster towards climax. The edges of his mouth twitched between a smile and a moan and his nostrils flared as I finally shot my seed into him. His eyes refocused upon me once more as I leaned into him and his legs dropped down to wrap themselves about my waist, preventing me from pulling out... encouraging the moment to continue as I swallowed his mouth and probed for his tongue. His tongue was probing for mine as well and there was spit everywhere, but we had no idea whose it was... nor did we care.

After we had regained our breathing and a little of our dignity, we trotted to the bathroom and cleaned ourselves up. It was still early enough... probably around ten thirty... so we poured ourselves some wine and Arlo showed me around his computer setup.

It was impressive. He had all the latest equipment. There was a top of the line scanner and a CD Recorder. His printer was a color laser, also top of the line and he had a cable modem hookup. He was always on line.

"Maybe we should see if Lorenzo has sent us anything lately," Arlo suggested. "Where did you find yours?"

I told him, and he opened the newsgroup in his browser. Sure enough there was another Sam... this time, Sam017.JPG waited to be downloaded, and when we saw it, we both whistled. Sam had popped a boner for the very first time.

"Perhaps he was watching us..." Arlo speculated.

I couldn't entirely discount that possibility.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Four

"Did you see them yet?" Norm asked me as I tried to pass him in the hall and find my own bed where I planned to sack out until noon to make up for the workout Arlo and I had given each other the previous night.

"See what, Norm? The pictures of Sam? Yah, we saw them..."

Right away I knew I had mispoken. I could only hope that Norm would miss my first person plural allusion.

"What do you mean 'we?' Where were you last night anyway?"

"I told you last night... I had an appointment..."

"Until..." Norm checked his watch and found that it was not working. "...this hour? You got laid, didn't you?"

"Yes, Norm... I got laid... it happens!"

"Evidently it happens to everybody but me! Frank had his way with Oki last night too!"

"Do you work for the Enquirer, Norm?"

"Only part time..."

"Get used to it, Norm... people sometimes get laid." I tried to put some distance between us, but Norm was quick to catch me up.

"Who did you lay?"

"It was a mutual thing Norm. It's not like I just walked in there and had my way..."

"Yah... yah... yah... but who did you have this mutually agreeable liaison with?"

"Arlo..."

"Arlo?"

"Arlo."

"You found Arlo?"

"He served you your dinner last night."

"Yah, Rick, we all know that Arlo bought dinner, but which one was he?"

"The guy who handed you your plate, Norm. Arlo was your waiter."

"No shit!"

"No shit... That's where I went last night after I figured it out. I drove him home and one thing led to another... and before I knew what had happened, it had happened."

"The waiter?"

"Yes, Norm. The waiter."

"How'd you figure it out?"

I went through my reasoning again, and I told Norm of Arlo's reaction and how he had confirmed everything I had managed to figure out. But I didn't tell him anything about the rest of the evening... except of course, our discovery of Sam17.JPG.

"Frank and Oki came up with Sam18," Norm told me. "You'll find it on your email."

"Was that Oki's source or Frank's?" I yawned.

"I don't know..." Norm looked seriously like he thought it might make an iota of difference. "I'll check..."

That was how I finally got rid of him and managed to crash for a couple of hours, a couple of hours that were filled with dreams of the previous night and the things that Arlo and I had done to each other.

I have already told you about what I did to Arlo. After we downloaded the file and had a chance to check it out, Arlo mentioned that it was now his turn, and I should get my ass, and everything that was attached to it, back to the bed. We brought the wine bottle and our glasses too. They would serve to add a touch of elegance to the proceedings, which quickly deteriorated into a fuckfest.

Arlo opened me with his magic wand and a little perseverance... I can be a little tight when faced, or perhaps I should say reared with an instrument of those proportions. But when I finally admitted him, it was an incredibly enjoyable union. I felt my insides swell and abate as he pushed and pulled and perspired and moaned above me, making incredible faces and even more incredible noises, which I found flattering, if not downright endearing.

Arlo, as I have already described, was well-endowed. But his was a tool that did not so much rend as explore. I hadn't known that I was that deep, and in spite of his assurances to the contrary, he drove the monster home to the hilt of the condom that he wore.

It wasn't my first time being entered... I had already amassed another two encounters with mutual fucking... but it was the experience I had been waiting for... the perfect fit... and I found it hard to believe that I owed it all to a guy named Sam, who had been my secret, but unattainable, desire, while I had completely overlooked a guy named Arlo, a guy who had evidently had his eye on me for a while too, but who had, for reasons known only to him, been keeping it to himself.

After our intercourse we chatted. Well we praised each others prowess in short bursts of gibberish that passed for conversation as we regained our breathing and our senses.

"Wow!" he remarked as he rolled off me and collapsed in a pool of perspiration beside me.

"Yah, wow!" I concurred.

"That was fantastic!"

"You know it, man!"

"Argh! I think my toes curled up there!"

"I know what you mean!"

When the blood finally started returning from the scenes of our passion and began once more to re-enter our brains, the conversation became a little more genteel.

"Arlo?"

"Uh-huh?"

"This has been the greatest night of my life!"

"Do you really mean that?"

"Yes, I do... I don't want it to end."

"We can do it again in a while..."

"No, it's not that I was talking about... It was meeting you that I was talking about. I had no idea who you were yesterday at this time, and now, well, I don't want it to end... that's all.

He regarded me. I know this because I was regarding him and making note of his peculiar features, which individually seemed almost paradoxical, but all together became a face and body that could only be described in one word... Arlo.

Arlo remained silent. Perhaps he was considering my comments. Perhaps not... but his silence did give me pause and I began to regret having said what I had said.

"That's a strange name you have there," I commented when the silence had become a bit too much for me to endure.

"My parents met each other at Woodstock," he advised. "It could have been worse. I might have been named Country Joe. They already told me that I would have been named Joan if I had been a girl."

The moment had passed irretrievably. I laughed at his dilemma, but couldn't help wishing that the conversation had gone a different way.

We showered again and finished the wine. I gave him a foot massage while we watched one of the movies in his collection. Then we fell asleep in his big bed... after we changed the sheets.

Along about noon I found my room too bright to sleep and decided to check my email. Sam18 was there as promised and I made up a bulk mailing to distribute Sam17 to everybody but Arlo.

Sam18 was a candid shot of Sam apparently getting dressed. It had none of the rigidity of Sam17, so we could only hope that Sam16 would be a better prospect... if we ever found it. That was the thing about the posts... a lot of them were still missing. And none of us could figure out where they might be. We had pretty well exhausted the usual groups. About the only explanation possible was that they had been posted to a group that was not carried by our ISP. There was a distinct possibility that Lorenzo had access to Latinos which was a newer group and had not shown up yet on our servers.

I made a note of all this in the bulk posting and suggested that it appeared that the postings were winding down. Then I called Arlo to mention it to him.

"I was hoping you would call," he said. "I have to go over to Maple Ridge tonight and I thought that you might like to come along."

"What's going on in Maple Ridge?" I asked.

"I have a few deliveries to make. It should only take a couple of hours. It'll give us a chance to talk about a few things."

"What things?"

"I can't really tell you now," he hedged. "Will you come? I can pick you up at five and we can catch some dinner on the way."

"All right," I agreed, "but it's my treat tonight."

The truck pulled up to the residence at exactly five, but I did not know that it was Arlo driving it right away. The reason for this was the business name painted on the panel of the truck... Madison Furniture and Appliance. The firm was based in Maple Ridge, a town with aspirations to becoming a city about twenty-five miles to the east of us. When the truck's horn honked I became aware that it was not there to make a delivery and I hurried around the side to the passenger door.

Arlo had cleared a spot for me in his second office and I climbed into the van amid the purchase orders and delivery notifications that had been wedge or clipped to various protrusions of the dash.

"Does this thing have an airbag?" I joked.

"Yes, and you'd better hope that it doesn't deploy," Arlo joined in. "The shrapnel would probably kill you."

He guided the truck out of the turnaround before I could reconsider my folly and jump out.

"Whose truck is this?" I asked.

"It's mine... well, it belongs to the business, but I'm a full partner, so... yah, it's mine."

"You own a business?"

"Just part of one..."

"So you're in the furniture and appliance business."

"Mostly the computer end of it... and last year we expanded into the Cable TV market."

"Yah? Who's we?"

"My father and I. He started the business with mom, but when computers came along, he decided he would have to take somebody in who knew something about them. He couldn't find anybody who knew them any better than I did. You might say it was a match made in Woodstock."

"That explains the furniture in your apartment..."

"That's mom's end of the business. I let her pick out the stuff like that. Dad looks after the refrigerators and stoves, and I make up the customized systems."

"That's a neat little arrangement," I commented. "Who looks after the Cable TV?"

"That was my dreamchild," Arlo admitted. "It also takes more time than I have to give it, so we had to hire a team to look after it. It isn't paying its way right now, but it will when we get the start-up costs out of the way."

"Is that why you work at Luigi's?"

Arlo grinned. "No, the bank is covering that part with a loan... I work at Luigi's one night a week cause it's a great place to meet people."

"So you arranged for us to come when you were working..."

"No, I work there on Fridays. I was only there last night because of Lorenzo's bulk mailing. I figured it would be a good idea to know who everybody else was. I asked the boss to let me host a party and he said to go ahead. That's the real reason I didn't take any other customers. It wouldn't have been fair to the other guys who really need the tips. I wasn't eavesdropping. I only wanted to know who was who before anybody figured out who I was."

"You must have been pretty sure that we would show up."

"I had no idea... but I figured it was worth a chance. I guess you guys were just as anxious to find out who I was as I was to find out who you were."

"I thought you said you'd been watching us for a while..."

"I'd noticed you and the Japanese guy, Oki, I guess his name is, but I had no idea that you were two of the e-mail addresses until you showed up."

"Then how did you know we were your group? I mean, there were only the three of us when we got there."

"I didn't expect everyone to arrive at once. That was a plus. The big guy looked like a Norm... and Oki had his disks in his hand when he came in."

"Do you meet a lot of people there?" I asked.

"I've met a few. Mostly I overhear conversations and I can tell whether somebody is worth getting to know. Sometimes I get some business when I hear that somebody is having trouble with their system. I give them a card and if they call me, that's cool."

"Do they call you often?"

"We've done a few thousand dollars worth of business that way."

"What about the other kind of call... the personal kind?"

"You weren't the first, Rick, no..."

"Neither were you... but you were the best."

"You weren't too shabby yourself," Arlo added and his smile was broad and genuine. It was also infectious and I found myself returning it.

"Was Sam ever one of them?"

"I couldn't get Sam to bite. How about you?"

"Naw, we only went to English together. I doubt if he even knew I was alive."

"He probably knew you were alive, Rick. A lot of people have noticed that."

"You included?"

"Yah, but I already told you that, didn't I?"

"I believe you mentioned it. What was the deal with that anyway? Were you watching me for some special reason?"

"No, I just liked what I saw. It's not like I was tailing you or anything... well I had a file on you, but it was just a small file... whenever I found something out about you."

"You had a file on me?"

"It was more like an entry in a little black book."

"Can I see it?"

"You want to see your file?"

"I think I have that right under the Freedom of Information Act..."

"That only applies if it won't adversely affect national security."

"Does it?"

"It might affect my security."

"I don't think that's the same thing. Give me my file."

Arlo reached into his satchel and pulled out a notebook computer.

"You'll find it in a file called 'Prospect." He handed me the computer.

"How many computers do you have?"

"Just two... everything else belongs to the business."

I opened the machine and switched it on. The screen was bright and full color. I had no difficulty finding the file and when I did, I noticed that it was a database with about fourteen entries in it, including one for Teshu... Oki.

I went to my own form and read the information there. It was scanty at best and I noticed right away that my last name was mis-spelled. I corrected it and then I filled in a few of the other missing entries... my birthdate, height and weight. I noticed that there was another entry for length and circumference. These had the entries eight and three and a half recorded in their boxes.

"When did you measure it?" I asked and tried to sound a little annoyed as I did.

"When you had it jambed up inside of me," Arlo answered without missing a heartbeat's delay. I guessed that he had been expecting the question.

"What does this mean? Rating - five... Five what?"

"Five stars..."

"Is that good?"

"It's scored out of five."

"When did you score me? Before or after?"

"I filled that in this morning after you left. I entered your eye color then too."

The only other rating I didn't understand was the single letter 'T' in the 'Sex' catagory.

"Tight," he answered.

I switched to Oki's form. It was almost blank, but I noticed that he had managed a birthdate and a length and circumference.

"Hey, when did you and Oki have sex?"

"Get out of there!" Arlo complained. "I only gave you permission to look at your file!"

"But I thought you only had been observing us," I answered. "How come you know his measurements?"

"I didn't get that information first hand... and I don't know if it's true or not."

"Where did you get it?"

"I ran into him on a Gay Chat Channel one night. He was telling everybody what he had... so I asked him to measure it around the widest part."

"And he did?"

"He said he did."

"Shit! I didn't know he was that willing to come across with the goods!"

"Like I said, I don't know if it's true or not. I didn't go to meet him."

"Why, were you supposed to?"

"Yes... but I chickened out..."

"You chickened out? Mr. Hung-like-a-bloody-horse chickened out?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

"Why does anybody ever chicken out?"

"There could be lots of reasons."

"There was only one... I can't take rejection."

"Why would he reject you?"

"Because I lied to him..."

"What? Did you tell him you had twelve inches or something? You know you're bloody close to that any..."

"I told him I was tall and handsome!" Arlo blurted. "It seemed to be what he wanted to hear."

"You aren't short, Arlo. You're a couple of inches taller than Oki."

"That wasn't the problem, Rick. I could have worn elevator shoes if I'd had to."

"What? You think you aren't handsome?"

"I know I'm not handsome... Sam is handsome, not me. I have a mirror, Rick!"

"Well, it can't be a very good one. I think you're handsome."

"You have to say that!"

"What?"

"You're in the passenger seat of a very large vehicle travelling at an excessive rate of speed. You have to humor the driver. But I know differently. I know what handsome is and I am most definitely not it."

"You are definitely handsome and I am not afraid for my life. Stop the truck! Pull into that restaurant!"

"Chickening out, Rick?"

"No, I'm taking you to dinner, remember? Then I'm going to take you into the restroom of the restaurant and have my evil way with you."

"A mercy fuck? I think I can do without that, Rick."

"A mercy fuck!? Is that what you thought last night was? Just stop the truck! There's no mercy involved. You're the hottest thing I've met on campus or off and I don't care who knows it!"

Arlo guided the truck into the roadhouse restaurant and found a spot to park.

"What about Sam?" he asked.

"What about Sam?" I returned the volley.

"I thought he might be in the running for the hottest thing you'd ever met on or off campus. Why else did you write to Lorenzo?"

"He was naked! I was looking for the rest of the pictures."

"Why?"

"What do you mean, 'why?' I liked what I saw. I wanted to see more."

"Would you have sent for more pictures if it had been me?"

"You bet I would!"

"You see, that's it, Rick. I just can't believe that."

He took the computer back from me, closed it, slid it back into his satchel and got out of the truck. I followed him to the restaurant. I liked following him. It had something to do with the way his ass moved. I could not believe that Arlo did not find himself attractive. I certainly did. I wondered how I was ever going to convince him.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Five

"Don't get me wrong, Rick... I don't think I'm ugly," Arlo smiled as we slid into the restaurant booth and grabbed the menus. "I just know what the score is. My features are a little out of whack. I used to get teased a lot when I was a kid. It was a lot worse then. I looked really peculiar. I suppose you could say that then, I really was the ugly duckling."

"The ugly duckling turned into a swan," I reminded him.

"Yah, but that was just a case of mistaken identity. I knew who I was all along. I'm Arlo and I always have been. I shouldn't have lied to Oki. That was my mistake. When Oki sent the message asking for a meeting I said I would go. But the closer I got, the more I got thinking about how people had treated me when I was a kid, and I guess I started to worry."

"What about last night?" I asked. "You didn't seem too concerned at the restaurant."

"We had already met. You were initiating the thing and you had already managed to get around first impressions. I was fairly certain you had been watching me when I was waiting table, and you had guessed that I was the fifth one on the bulk mailing. Everything added up to a decent chance that you were approachable. When you drove me home, you were very nervous. That was a sign that you were either trying to think of a way to talk to me about sex, or you were ready to run as soon as I got out of the car. When you came upstairs, there was no doubt left."

"Are you always this logical?"

"Of course... I work with computers. Come to think of it, I also owe that to my traumatic childhood. I spent a lot of time by myself. I got used to that, and when computers came into my life, I fell in love with them. I figure I got about a three year jump on everybody else."

Arlo smiled his broad toothy smile again and I had to smile back. Then I leaned over the table and he leaned over to join my conspiratorial conference.

"I'm still going to fuck you in the washroom," I told him.

"No you're not," he answered... and he was right... at least for the moment.

After dinner we piled back into the truck in a slightly better frame of mind and headed off to our first stop, a motel on the outskirts of Maple Ridge. Here Arlo greeted the manager familiarly as he carted in a CPU and made his way around the counter to the office. It was a simple swap that he was making and it took him only a few minutes to replace the motel's 486 with a pentium. He rebooted the machine and smiled to himself as the monitor lit up.

"You're ready to go online, Mr. Lawrence," he told the owner who had been observing the installation by my side. I had been watching Arlo's butt. "We should be connecting the cable by next week, and then you will have an internet presence. Your website is already up. As soon as we hook you on we'll get you into a few search engines and see what that does for business."

Arlo handed me the 486 and asked me to put it into the truck for him. I was just slamming the door shut when he reappeared and grinned at me as I climbed back into the passenger seat.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"I was just thinking," he answered. "If Mr. Lawrence wants a good ad to run online he might do a whole lot worse than telling people that Sam slept here. He could put in a picture of Sam on the bed... you know, the one where he's laying there with a hardon?"

"Sam17... Would that be ethical?" I asked.

"No, but it would probably be effective. Now prepare yourself, Rick... I'm about to introduce you to my parents."

"You didn't tell me I was gonna meet mom..."

"Yah, well, I wanted you to come with me," he grinned. "Don't worry, they hardly ever bite, and I think they're almost over disco."

"What a shame!" I smiled back. "Disco is about to make a comeback."

"It is? I have definitely got to get out more often. I'm still into alternative rock."

"It's hard to find a good alternative rock band anymore. They've all got forty million dollar contracts and find it difficult to find anything to complain about anymore."

"Whatever you do, don't tell mom and dad about alternative rock. They still think that Chili Peppers are a spicy Mexican dish."

We met dad at the Madison Furniture and Appliance Store, where Arlo backed the truck into a delivery bay and pulled the rear doors open. He fetched a cart and loaded the remaining boxes from the van onto it. We wheeled them in and Arlo's dad greeted us warmly, as he placed the boxes onto shelves that he kept for orders ready to be picked up. Then we picked up even more boxes and loaded them onto the truck.

"I put the custom systems together at home and bring them in each week," Arlo explained. "A one week turn around time is pretty good when you think about it, and some of these systems can get pretty expensive."

"So that's why your other bedroom is so crowded..."

"Yah... it makes it kind of difficult to have company over..."

"Unless you know them very well," I observed.

"Or want to..." he corrected.

"Have you guys had dinner yet?" Arlo's dad asked as we finished loading the truck and wandered back to the store. I could see where Arlo had obtained his facial features. His father owned the same mouth and eyes, while his hair might have once given him the same trouble that Arlo always seemed to experience keeping it out of his eyes. That problem was one his father no longer experienced.

"We ate on the way," Arlo informed him. "Is Mom over at the house?"

"Yes, son, she wanted to put together a care parcel for you. She's been baking all day."

"I only live twenty-five miles away," Arlo protested. But he did it with a grin. This was one of those comfortable conversations that families enjoy... the ones where everyone knows their lines, and nobody ever fails to say them properly.

"Well, you know your mother, son..." Arlo's dad played his part. "You'd better get on over there and let her see you."

The affection was evident between Arlo and his father. It made me feel a little jealous, and it also made me realize that Arlo had been raised in a very protected environment. When he had sought solace and comfort as a child, he had probably always found it. It would be easy for a boy to hide in a world like that, when the teasing of his mates was too much to endure. And it would be easy to develop into a social hermit in that world... hiding in plain sight and never getting involved in less than a sure thing.

This was probably why Arlo knew us, but we did not know him. I decided then and there, that Arlo was a person I wanted to know a whole lot better, even with his clothes on, and it was with this thought in mind that I hopped back into the truck and we set out for Apple Hill Road, where the Madison family home sat in the same neighborhood where Arlo had grown up.

We entered through the kitchen door which was at the back of the house. A wide verandah stretched around the rear of the house and sported a number of tarpaulins tied securely around the summer lawn furniture and garden tools. There was a shed in the back yard too. I wondered what was in it. All the normal things one puts into a garden shed seemed to be on the verandah.

Mrs. Madison was in the kitchen, right where Mr. Madison had told us she would be. There were pies and muffins cooling on the counter and a big casserole of something or other bubbled in the oven, throwing off aromas that mixed and jostled in our nostrils.

"Arlo!" Mrs. Madison beamed and hurried to the door to smother her son with affection that embarrassed him and made me even more jealous. My family hardly ever touches one another. We show affection by respecting each other's private space and trying to impress each other with our accomplishments.

Arlo introduced me to his mother and she kissed me too. It was a bit of a shock to me, but Arlo didn't seem to think it untoward. We pulled up chairs to the kitchen table which was placed exactly in the middle of the room, and Mrs. Madison began her interrogation, while all the while attempting to force feed us with the bounty of her kitchen.

"Where did you meet Arlo?" she asked me, and I noted that she had stressed the fact that I had met Arlo and not the other way around. It was obvious that she had assumed that Arlo had not gone out of his way to meet me. I told her about Luigi's Spaghetti House, where I had gone with friends and met Arlo as our waiter. Arlo sat back, slouching a little in his chair as I described the meal and the discovery that our waiter shared a common interest with us.

"Oh, and what is that?" she asked. Arlo too looked a little interested in what I would say, but I noted that he did not betray any concern... just interest.

"Computers..." I revealed. "The guys I was with are all into computers. I found out later on that Arlo has us all whipped when it comes to hardware. I imagine his software is light years ahead too."

"He likes those things, that's for sure," Mrs. Madison agreed, then with her curiosity satisfied, she turned her sights on Arlo. "Did you remember to bring back the pie plate?"

Arlo's anguished look was answer enough.

"Well, no matter... your father is going up next Tuesday. He can pick it up then. I got you some new underwear yesterday at Deerfields. It's up in your room. Why don't you take Rick up and show him your museum while I get dinner on the table."

"We already ate, Ma," Arlo noted as he nodded me in the direction of the back stairs. "Rick bought me dinner on the highway."

"Well, I'm sure that was ages ago. You'll have a little something with your father and me before you head back."

"Resistance is futile, Rick," Arlo informed me as he followed me up the stairs. "I always put on about three pounds when I come home. Here, let me show you the Arlo Madison Museum of Artificial Intelligence."

I was swept back to my childhood when he threw the door to his room open. The bedroom was huge and contained, not only the regulation single captain's bed, but a full selection of books in bookcases and the three compulsory model airplanes suspended from the ceiling by nylon thread. There was a desk, neatly ordered and still stocked with stick pens and paper in the event that Arlo should suddenly revert to childhood and once again need to fill a three ring binder for school. The dresser was a high model with six drawers stacked one over the other. Atop it a white plastic bag with the name Deerfields printed across it in a subdued pink, bore the promised underwear. Arlo gave it a cursory inspection before turning and unveiling his collection of home computers.

He had one of each system, from the video game standalone systems up to the ancient forerunners... the keyboard based toys, with a cassette recorder for each and a collection of tapes as well. Each one represented a phase of his life and the growth of home computing, which had a lifespan that paralleled Arlo's and mine... more or less.

We smiled benignly at the early efforts and the directions they had thought that computing would take... standalone systems fed only by magazines of information that you could retype into your own computer and recreate on your screen. The thought of working alone in a corner somewhere, cut off from the world and only ever communicating with other afficienados at school or by getting a real job with real computers made us realize that every age has its dark period.

Today it was possible to take a photograph in the morning and have it displayed on the other side of the world before dinner... the previous day. I commented to Arlo that I could not now count the times that my email program showed me receiving an answer to a letter before I had sent it.

I got a better sense of Arlo's youth in his childhood bedroom that evening than I ever would have been able to get in his apartment bedroom if I had moved in with him the first night we had sex. They were right about the bedroom being a museum, but they were wrong about what had been exhibited there.

I listened while Arlo spoke about each of the computer systems, about when he had received it and what it was capable of doing, but he was telling me about his life, not the machines'.

I found my eyes wandering around the room as he spoke and eventually they came to rest on the photograph on his bedside nightstand. The photo was Arlo, and had been taken when he was half his present age. It showed a gawky kid with a couple of satellite dishes for ears and a mouth that was far too big for his face. It spoke volumes about the problems the boy had experienced and explained the residual trauma that the man still endured. It was not a pretty picture, and I found myself wondering if Arlo and I would have been friends before I discovered the joys of sex and his ass in particular. My eyes drifted back to the present day face and I realized that Arlo was indeed not handsome... but at least he could now claim excessive cuteness.

I realized then that I had developed another feeling towards Arlo. It seemed impossible that I had not known him the day before. I could not now think of not knowing him. I wanted only to be with him... to share a conversation with him... to have sex with him... and less and less it had to do with the monster between his legs or his little melon ass. The fact was that Arlo was quite my favorite person. I guessed that meant that I had fallen in love with him.

I had no sooner realized this than I found him looking at me peculiarly. I realized that I was staring at him. He had stopped talking. Had he asked me a question? I didn't know.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I was trying to remember something..."

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Did you remember what you were trying to remember?"

"Yes, I did."

"Are you going to tell me?"

"Yes I am."

"Are you going to tell me today?"

"Undoubtedly..."

"Are we playing twenty questions again?"

"No... I was just thinking about what you said this afternoon when I called you."

"What was that?"

"You told me that we had to talk about something. You said you couldn't discuss it over the phone."

"No I didn't, I said I wanted to discuss it in person."

"Well, here we are... Have we talked about it yet, or do you want to discuss it now?"

Arlo's self-assurance seemed to leave him momentarily. He looked a little frightened, as if I had reminded him of something about which he did not particularly want to think. But he regained his composure quickly.

"No we haven't talked about it yet, and no, I don't want to discuss it here. We'd better see if Mom has dinner ready."

He led the way down the back stairs again and we landed in the kitchen at about the same time that Arlo's dad was receiving the same greeting we had recieved from Arlo's mom.

"I know you boys will want to get away and get back before it gets too late, but you are going to eat something here, and I will not take no for an answer," Mrs. Madison ordered.

We sat where we were bidden and I consumed my second dinner of the day, a steak in savoury gravy cooked with onions and other vegetables and served on a bed of rice. It was the kind of a dinner you would never get in a restaurant.

We cleared out after dinner and as we were leaving Mrs. Madison suddenly remembered something.

"Rick," she said, "while you and Arlo were upstairs, your jacket started buzzing. I couldn't figure out where the sound was coming from, and when I found out that you had a phone in your pocket, it had already stopped ringing."

"It couldn't have been too important," I assured her. "They will probably call back."

We climbed into the truck and I settled in for the twenty-five mile trip back to the city. Arlo was quieter than he had been that day. I took it for indigestion. I was experiencing a little distress myself from the two dinners I had eaten. It surprised me therefore when he pulled into the same motel we had stopped at earlier and parked in front of a door with the number seventeen marked on it.

I looked at Arlo. Arlo did not look at me. But he reached into his pocket and pulled out a key with the number seventeen on it.

"Did you mean what you said last night?" he asked me. Well he asked the windshield. He still hadn't looked at me.

"What did I say... specifically?" I asked.

"You said that you didn't want what we were doing to end."

"Of course I meant it. Is this the discussion you wanted to have?"

"Yes, it is. Have you changed your mind?"

"No, I haven't."

Arlo looked at me and held out the key. I took it.

"Then, why don't you unlock the door and I'll get our things..."

"We have things?"

"Well... yah... I figured we might need a change of clothes for the morning."

"You were a boy scout weren't you?" I asked.

He smiled and I leaned over and kissed him. Then I locked my door and unlocked the motel room.

It was like deja vu. I knew the room. And I knew as well that I had never before been inside it. I stood dumb-founded in the doorway, and Arlo had to push his way past me to get inside.

"This is the room..." I blithered.

"Yes it is," he answered. "I found it when I was working on Mr. Lawrence's computer system. Here, can you open the wine? It's kind of cold and I would like it to breath a little."

Arlo went back out to the truck to fetch in his satchel. I was just inserting the corkscrew into the winebottle when my telephone started to ring again. I opened it and said hello.

"Rick, this is Oki... I want to talk to you. Can I come over?"

"Why, Oki? What's up?"

"I just got Sam20, but I need to talk to you about Frank. Can I come over?"

"Oki, this is my cellular phone. I'm not in town right now."

There was a short pause while Oki assimilated this.

"Where are you?" he asked.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Six

"That was Oki on the phone," I told Arlo when he had locked the truck and returned to the motel room. "He says he's on his way over."

Arlo looked at me and I could tell that he was uncomfortable.

"Why?" he asked finally. "Did you invite him or something?"

"Hell, no! He invited himself. He told me he wanted to talk to me."

"What about?"

"I think he wants to talk about Frank."

"Our Frank?"

"Yah... I think so..."

"Did he say so?"

"Not in so many words... no..."

"Did you tell him that I was here?"

"No... he didn't ask. He seemed to be in a hurry."

I don't know whether Arlo looked annoyed or relieved.

"Oh and he says that Sam20 just showed up."

Arlo smirked a little when he heard that.

"I guess that blows your theory out of the water then," he grinned.

"What theory?"

"Your theory about the postings coming to an end... I was going to mention the same thing to you earlier, but it slipped my mind. Sam18 has a different date on it than the other ones. That one was taken two months after the first ones."

"Date? What date?"

"Along the edge of some of the photos you can see where the camera recorded the date. Some of them have been cropped, but at least seven of them show the date. They were taken in October. Sam18 was taken on December 7th. He wasn't getting dressed... he was getting undressed... again!"

"Yah? What's the deal with this room?" I asked.

"I found it when I was loading the pentium for the motel," Arlo explained. "I was switching the data over to another database when I saw a familiar name. When I compared the date on the first pictures to the date on the database, I knew that I had discovered the location of the photo shoot."

"You are a regular detective, aren't you?" I asked.

"Not really... I just lucked onto some information. I didn't check any farther in the database or I would have been looking for a later date on some of the other pictures. I suppose that there was nothing that said they had to use the same motel though..."

"They?"

"Yah, Sam and whoever took the pictures..."

"Was there another name on the motel's database?" I asked.

"No, just Sam's..."

"Maybe he took them himself..." I speculated.

"What the hell good would it be to be an exhibitionist, if there was nobody around to see?" Arlo asked. "And if he took them himself, why would he drive all the way over here to rent the motel room?"

"You think that Sam is an exhibitionist?"

"He would be if he put the pictures on the net himself."

"You mean, Sam is Lorenzo?"

"No, I don't think so... but I can't say for sure... maybe he is..."

The more we discussed it, the more we realized that we had no idea who had posted the pictures or whether Sam himself had any idea that his naked body was now on display for the entire world to see. About the only thing we could be sure of was that Sam knew who had taken the pictures... and we didn't.

Nor did we know why.

"When did Oki say he would be coming?" Arlo wanted to know.

"He didn't say, but I imagine he'll be here soon," I answered.

I saw Arlo glance at the wine bottle with the corkscrew still inbedded in the cork. I looked at it too and noticed the two wine glasses that stood beside it.

"I'll take off, then," Arlo said and pulled his jacket back on. He stepped towards the door.

"Why?" I asked stepping in front of him.

"Because he's coming here to see you," Arlo answered.

"Yah? So?"

"So, I should take off..."

"Arlo, it's your motel room..."

"That's all right... You guys will probably want to be alone." He made another move for the door. I stepped in front of him again.

"I want to be with you," I complained. "Look man, I don't know how Oki got my number, but I didn't give it to him. He sounded like he had a real problem though, so when he asked me where I was, I couldn't just say, 'See ya in the morning!' I had to tell him I was here. But don't worry... I'll see what he wants and send him on his way. But I'm sleeping with you tonight, Arlo... one way or another! If you run away from me... I'm going with you."

"I'm not running away from you..."

"Then, prove it!"

"What do you mean?"

"Kiss me!"

"I haven't brushed my teeth yet."

"Neither have I. If we're going to share each other, we'll share oral bacteria too... Kiss me!"

Arlo still looked uncertain of himself, but I saw him wipe his tongue along his teeth and swallow. I did the same. I stepped towards him and our lips brushed together. Then the spit started and a second later we were slobbering all over each other the way we had the night before.

"Now you have to stay," I told him when we broke our kiss and wiped each other's chins.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you can't be seen in public with a bulge like that in your pants. Open the wine, will you? You're not going anywhere without me."

We kicked off our shoes and stripped off our jackets, shirts and pants. When Oki arrived, he would have to face the fact that we would be waiting for him to leave as soon as possible. We laid on the bed and switched on the television. Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door. I got up and opened it. Oki bowed to me. I bowed back. He bowed again.

"Will you for Chrissakes get in here! I'm freezing here!"

I pulled him into the room and shut the door. When I turned to introduce Oki to Arlo, I found that Arlo was no longer in the room. Moments later the shower water began to run.

"You have company?" Oki looked distressed.

"No, I am company. What's up Oki? How did you get my phone number?"

"Norm gave it to me..."

Oki hesitated and looked about him. I could tell that he was having the same revelation I had experienced earlier.

"This is Sam's room," he ventured at length.

"That's right, Oki... What else did Norm tell you?"

"He told me that you had found Arlo."

"Yes, I did. Arlo tells me that the two of you met on a chat line."

"It's true, Rick. That is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I am sure that he is angry with me. Would you tell him that I'm sorry?"

"What are you sorry about, Oki?"

"I behaved disgracefully. I lied to him."

"Oh? What about?"

"He asked me some personal questions and I lied about the answers. He wanted to meet me that night, but I did not go to the meeting. I was too ashamed of myself. I thought that I would never meet him... but now..."

"Oki, if you didn't want to see him, why did you go to dinner last night?"

"I didn't recognize the e-mail address right away. I knew that it sounded familiar, but I did not connect it with the person I had met on the chat line. On the chat line he called himself 'Country Joe.' Can you explain it to him?"

"I don't think there is anything to explain, Oki. Did Norm tell you who Arlo is?"

"No, he just told me that you had figured it out. When I remembered where I had seen the e-mail address and who it was, I figured that was why he hadn't showed up for dinner."

"What? You figured that he was stiffing all of us to get even with you?"

"Yes, Rick, and I want to apologize to you for that too."

"Arlo isn't angry with you Oki."

"He isn't?"

"No, he thinks that you are angry with him."

"But I do not know him..."

"He didn't show up for your meeting either."

"Why not?"

"Because he lied to you too. Well, he thinks he lied, but I can't be sure... He said he told you that he was tall and handsome, but he doesn't think he's handsome."

"That worried me too," Oki confessed. "I thought that he might be disappointed when he found that I am Japanese."

"He knows you're Japanese, Oki. That doesn't make any difference to him."

"That is good to know. I do not feel so reluctant to meet him anymore."

"That's good," I commented. As if to punctuate my comment the shower water stopped running. Oki looked up expectantly. "Is there anything else on your mind, Oki?"

"I would like to know how you found Sam's place."

"Arlo discovered it when he was exchanging computers for this motel. He noticed Sam's name on a reservation for this room. It was an accidental discovery."

This seemed to remind Oki of the disk that he held in his hand. He held it out to me.

"This is the last Sam that I found. I got it from Orientals again. I also got another one in my e-mail from Norm... we're up to Sam21 now."

"Thanks, Oki. I'll get the disk back to you as soon as I copy it."

"I had better go now," Oki observed. "I imagine that you two will want to be alone."

He bowed his way out of the room and I heard the car drive away as Arlo emerged from his shower. I handed him the disk and traded places with him, lathering quickly and scrubbing myself for the evening's activities. I brushed my teeth with the tooth brush that Arlo had supplied, and I shaved with the razor he had used. Then I wrapped myself in the remaining towel and rejoined him in the motel room. He had the latest Sam up on the computer screen.

We poured the wine and took a sip before removing each other's towels and tossing them to the floor. Then we toasted Sam, for having brought us together, and lowered ourselves onto the bed.

The one thing we had that evening was plenty of time to explore and kiss each other's bodies. We were not in a rush to get to the main event. I had spent the evening learning about Arlo with his clothes on. Now I took the opportunity to explore him with the clothes off. I tasted every part of him and he followed my lead, licking and fondling me. We were both erect and ready, when there was another knock on the door.

We scrambled for our towels and I opened the door.

Oki bowed to me again and apologized for disturbing us.

"I ran out of gas, Rick. May I come in?"

The night was colder now, and I was wearing even less than I had been wearing when Oki first arrived. I was not about to stand there and put up with any more bowing. I reached out and pulled him into the room before he could get started again.

I heard a little gasp of shock escape him, and I didn't realize why right away, but after I got the door closed, I turned to see Oki staring at Arlo, and Arlo staring back at Oki.

I did the only thing I could. I introduced them.

It was then that Oki finally figured out that I was not sleeping with Sam that night.

It was then that I realized that although I had done nothing to encourage such an assumption on his part, that I had done nothing to discourage it either.

It was then that Arlo became confused as Oki began to apologize to him, when he was certain that it should be he who apologized to Oki.

Once the apologies and the explanations were out of the way, we found ourselves wondering what we should do about the situation that had presented itself. It was not my place to make suggestions and I was relieved when Arlo asked Oki if he would like to stay the night.

We phoned for some more towels and Oki took over the bathroom.

"I'm sorry about this," I told Arlo as we picked up our wine glasses and our conversation. "I should never have answered that stupid phone!"

"It's okay, Rick... honestly... I don't mind at all. Who knows? I may get a chance to check those measurements."

"They're going to be a little off... He told me he fudged them."

"He lied? How dare he?! I guess this means we'll have to fudge him."

"Are you suggesting a menage a trois?" I asked.

"There doesn't seem to be any other way of having any fun tonight."

"Maybe we should ask the Asian gentleman what he thinks?"

"Oki came back here to try to catch you and Sam together. If he's out of gas, I'm the pope!"

"Well then, your holiness, perhaps we should join him in the shower."

"Should we knock?"

"It might be a good idea... The Movie Channel ran Psycho a couple of nights ago. We want to fuck him, not scare the shit out of him..."

As if on cue, the water stopped and we heard the shower curtain being pulled open. Arlo rapped lightly on the door.

"We're coming in," he told Oki.

"I'm naked..." Oki's voice warned in return.

"That's okay, so are we."

"Does it take two of you to deliver towels?" Oki asked.

"Well, you see, that's just it," Arlo told him, "They're out of towels. We are going to have to lick you dry."

"Good thinking," I acknowledged. We ditched our towels and opened the door. Oki was still standing in the tub. He clutched the shower curtain about himself and watched our approach through the steamy air. Arlo took the curtain from him and revealed Oki's naked body. Oki did not protest, but he looked a little worried, a sort of anticipatory concern that seemed to vanish as Arlo turned him to face him and I stepped into the tub behind him.

"You are very beautiful," Arlo told him. "We want to have sex with you. Does that concern you?"

"A little... yes..."

"In what way?" I asked.

"I wouldn't want Frank to find out," Oki told us.

We both promised that we would never mention anything about it to Frank and Arlo lowered his head to Oki's chest. His tongue carressed Oki's left nipple as I began to lick at his right shoulder blade. We both felt the shudder that went through the body between us and we set to, exploring every part of him.

Before long, Oki was dry enough to lay on the bed. Arlo positioned him in a spread-eagled position and kneeled between his legs. This afforded me a direct shot at Arlo's upturned ass, and I took advantage of it. I thrust my tongue between his ass cheeks and lapped at and about his hole until Arlo pulled off Oki's cock long enough to implore me to fuck him.

The goop was on his ass in a matter of seconds and I mounted him eagerly, remembering the previous evening of bliss, and how the union of our bodies had been like an extension of the union of our souls. Of course, tonight I knew a whole lot more about Arlo's soul than I had the night before, and it only added to the ecstacy, knowing that I had managed to fall in love with someone with whom I also enjoyed being. Oki being there beneath him did not matter. Sure he was an interloper... Sure Arlo was enjoying him at the moment... But it was Arlo and I who were spiritually joined. Oki was a spectator in that sense. I don't mean to say that his involvement was superfluous to the activity. It wasn't. But Oki loved Frank. Arlo, although he had yet to mention it, loved me... and he still does.

It did not take Oki long to get the hang of the third man position. He became the rover, attacking any available orifice that was not currently in use. He presented himself for our delectation, and we made use of whatever he presented, licking and sucking him, fingering and fucking him, whenever we were not preoccupied with each other. I achieved orgasm twice that night... once within Arlo and once within Oki. Arlo fucked him too before he fucked me. Oki fucked the two of us simultaneously as we hunkered side by side on the bed and he flitted back and forth between the two of us. I don't know if he just couldn't make his mind up or what it was, but he used the same condom for both of us and when he came off in Arlo, he had two of his fingers rammed into me.

Arlo and I were unconcerned as Oki sweated and pumped above us. We were preoccupied with a kiss that, had Oki been paying attention and not been busy with his own problems, could probably have made us permanent additions in the book of records. But we had no witnesses, and the only thing we achieved was a further deepening of our love, and a soggy spot on the pillow we shared.

When Oki finally collapsed between us we took advantage of his temporary unconsciousness to slip into the bathroom and shower together. We bathed each other and massaged our favourite parts of each other. Then we towelled and rejoined Oki, who was up and into self-reproach. He had this denial thing going pretty well. I guess he felt that he could only have a good time if he punished himself afterwards.

Arlo and I watched him for a while, then we suggested that he might want to take another shower before bed. He looked at us peculiarly and disappeared into the bathroom. We did not hear the water running, though, and moments later Oki appeared, fully dressed and grabbed his coat.

When I asked him where he was going, he said that he had suddenly remembered that there was a can of gas in the trunk of his car, and it should be enough to get him to the gaseteria on the highway.

I have seen Oki many times since that night, but he has never once mentioned it, and neither have I.

Arlo and I slept in each other's arms again that night after we had finished the wine. We awoke to a cold crisp morning and a need to rush back the twenty-five miles to campus to get me to my only lecture of the day. But as I prepared to descend from the truck, he leaned over and kissed me. I returned the kiss and knew without him saying anything that he had done a taste test the previous night, and he had chosen me.

That weekend I checked out of the residence and moved in with Arlo.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Seven

When you move in with somebody, the first night is always a party. If you are intimate, the first night is invariably a honeymoon. The next morning, however, you begin to discover your partner's idiosyncracies.

Arlo is a doddler. He takes his time over things that normal people like to get out of the way quickly. I noticed this first on Saturday morning, which was not my first morning-after with Arlo, but rather the time that we decided that we really did not want to live separately.

I had driven him home from Luigi's of course, since I had driven him to work and passed most of the evening at the bar, sipping Perrier and watching the ebb and flow of the Friday night crowd. My Friday night would have been a whole lot different than that, normally. I usually went to Flanagan's and a couple of other bars, but suddenly, the prospect of watching basketball or hockey on a television with a bunch of drunks spilling on me didn't seem like fun anymore... not that it ever had, but I had appearances to maintain.

But ever since Wednesday, I had realized something that I had never really faced up to until that moment of gut-wrenching, mind-numbing, lung-emptying realization had passed and I had determined that I was still breathing and my heart was still pumping in spite of the revelation that had been made, both to me and about me... that I liked men. It was not long after I had assimilated this revelation that another one shook my senses... I liked one man in particular, more than any other I had ever met... Sam included. And it wasn't just that I liked Arlo... it was more like we fit into each other's existences, in much the same way that we fit into each other's bodies.

We went out after Arlo got off, but it was to a club that he knew... one that my friends would not normally frequent... in fact, I doubted that they would know that it even existed. It had no sign and the entrance was through a basement door at the back of a well-lit alley.

Inside there were a lot of people dancing to some pretty bizarre music, and it wasn't long before I realized that they were all men. Some of them looked like women, and did a better job of it than a lot of the girls on campus. But they did not appeal to me in any way. I had decided that I liked men... I wasn't about to change my mind now. In spite of the cross-dressers, this place seemed more natural to me than the sports bars with their phony macho bullshit, gambling machines and free-flowing beer, piss and vomit.

The prices were also better in the basement, which was all anybody ever called the place while I was there. I made my way in to the bar and picked up a couple of drinks, while Arlo found a barrel which would pass for a table and a couple of kegs which became our chairs. It was kind of dark in our little corner until Arlo pulled a long candle out of his inside jacket pocket and liberated an empty wine bottle from the cardboard boxes that were stacked to our right. He jambed the candle into the bottle and asked a passing smoker for a light. There was still something missing though. I pulled a clean handkerchief from my pocket and spread it atop the barrel. That completed the decor satisfactorily.

Arlo asked me to dance with him, and I did. It was then that I realized what dancing was all about. Up until that night in the basement, dancing was something I did to be seen with a girl. With Arlo it became a form of public sex, holding each other and pressing our bodies together during the slow dances, and giving way to wild abandon during the fast ones. It was all very primitive and tribal and I felt immensely liberated, especially when Arlo turned his back on me and waggled that ass of his at me in close proximity to my groin. I became aware that I was engorging right there on the dance floor, and I didn't care who knew it.

Whenever we sat out a dance or six, we attracted company at our barrel... people who knew Arlo and some who recognized me. Our presence together seemed to signal a special sort of celebration among Arlo's friends and a knowing nod or two from my associates, some of whom surprised me by their presence here in the underground, in the same way that my presence seemed to amuse them. I didn't see Oki or Norm though, and it was a lead pipe cinch that Frank would not be caught dead in an atmosphere like that, even if he was aware of it.

I abandoned whatever was left of my reserve and threw caution to the wind. Arlo was having a good time, and that was good enough for me.

We didn't have sex that night. We showered together of course, and I attended to his toes, massaging them for him and kissing them to satisfy my own craving for his taste and touch. It seemed to embarrass him a little, but I pointed out that I would hardly be doing it for someone who meant less to me than he did.

That's when the idea of living together came up.

"You have great hands, Rick," he moaned as I kneaded his left foot with my fist. "Strong fingers..."

"And you have great feet," I smiled. "Long toes... straight, long toes... and great toe nails too. How do you keep them so even?"

"I bite them..."

"No, seriously..."

"Seriously? I clip them with a nail clipper... how else would you do them?"

"I thought you might get pedicures..."

"Yah, right! I don't let anybody touch my feet!"

"So what are you saying? I'm not anybody?"

"No, I'm saying you're special... very special..."

"Why, because I have great hands?"

"No, because you're you. When I'm with you, I feel special too."

"You are special to me too, Arlo. You awaken me..."

"I'll try not to do that too early today," he joked.

"You know what I meant... You bring out my spirit... I feel good whenever I touch you... whenever I'm near you... whenever I think about you..."

"Are you telling me that you love me?"

"I guess I am... Does that surprise you?"

"Of course it does. We haven't known each other that long, you know..."

"But you said you feel special when you're with me. Doesn't that mean that you love me... a little?"

"I love you a lot," he admitted and I felt my body chemistry pitch out of whack when I heard him say it.

"So why does it surprise you that I love you too?" I asked when my equilibrium returned.

Arlo sighed and he looked at me sadly. I knew he was getting ready to tell me something he did not like to say.

"Usually, when I fall in love," he began, and the words came haltingly, "I'm the only one who does it. I have never met anybody who loved me too..." He paused a moment and considered what he had said, before adding "...at the same time."

"Love isn't a law of averages thing, Arlo. It happens..."

"It just doesn't usually happen to me..."

"It did this time..."

"You mean it don't you, Rick?"

"Of course I do. I love you, Arlo." I heard myself say the words and I knew myself that they were true.

"You actually said it."

"Uh huh... I love you and I want to share my life with you."

"You don't do things by halves do you?"

"Why should I? I mean what I said."

Arlo looked at me steadily as if he was trying to gauge the strength of my commitment.

"Did you mean it when you said that you loved me too," I asked him.

"Yes," he answered. "I just wasn't prepared for you to be in love with me too. What happens now?"

"We keep loving each other..."

"That's it? Nothing else?"

"What else is there?"

"You said something about sharing your life with me..."

"Yah... and I meant it."

"Well, doesn't that mean we should live together?"

"I suppose it does. Do you want me to live with you?"

"Do you want to live with me?"

"We've slept together two nights now, and we've only known each other for a little over two days... Yah, I think it's time to live together... your place or mine?"

"Here, of course," Arlo smiled. "Your place is a little cramped."

"How do you know? You've never seen my place."

"I lived in residence my first year," Arlo laughed. "I know what it's like!"

"Then it's settled," I affirmed.

"Yes, it's settled..." Arlo pulled his foot from my grasp and crawled down the bed to my arms. We kissed a long passionate kiss and I stroked his hair back out of his eyes. Then we turned out the light and pulled the comforter over us. I held him in my arms and knew the perfect feeling of love... a love that does not have to be proved by sex, and cannot be improved by it either. It was enough to hold him and to smell his hair in my nostrils, to feel the softness of his skin and the firmness of his nipples. He adjusted himself to better fit against me and I felt my erection find the cleavage of his ass. We laid like that for the longest time until the heavy regular breathing told me that he had fallen asleep, content in the knowledge that he was perfectly loved. I held him as the sun made its appearance in the morning sky, then I too succumbed to sleep... and dreamed beautiful dreams of Arlo.

When we awoke that afternoon, I had Arlo's feet in my face again. His head was at the foot of the bed and the comforter was twisted about, covering only our mid-sections. I grabbed his foot and kissed it. He pulled it away as if by an automatic reflex, and lifted himself to gaze stupidly about him.

"How the hell did that happen?" I asked.

"I have no idea..." he answered. "but I think that sometimes I levitate in the night... nobody's ever seen it happen though."

"Well, shall I join you, or do you want to turn around again?"

"Why don't you join me?" he suggested, and I twisted around to lie beside him once more.

"Can you cook?" he asked. I thought it a strange question until I recalled our previous conversation and the commitment I had made earlier that morning.

"I know my way around a kitchen..." I admitted.

"Good!" he responded. "I can't cook for shit! I always get thinking of something else and forget the food. Most nights I end up eating out. Friday nights at Luigi's started that way."

"So when did you start waitering there?"

"A year ago... I was eating there one Friday night and I was watching my waiter... He seemed to have a lot of friends coming to his tables, so I asked him if his friends tipped him as well as strangers do. He told me that he didn't know any of his customers that night... he was just being friendly... and then he told me that he thought he would probably know at least one of them by morning... then he winked at me."

"And did he?" I asked.

"Did he what?"

"Did he get to know one of his customers?"

"How the hell would I know?"

"Arlo!" I all but screamed, "He was trying to pick you up!"

"Do you think so?"

"He winked at you!"

"Yah..."

"How many guys wink at you?"

"Not many... Do you really think he was putting the moves on me?"

"Of course he was! You were eating alone, weren't you?"

"Yah..."

"How many other people were there alone that night?"

"I didn't check..."

"I can tell you without having been there that Friday night at Luigi's, there would not be many people eating alone. The waiter was hoping that you were trolling. But obviously, all you were doing was eating."

"I'm not too good at that am I?"

"No, and I don't want you to start now," I said as I kissed his nose... just before he sneezed.

"Sorry," he apologized. "I have a sensitive nose... you'd better stick to my lips."

"Lips are okay..." I told him. Then I grabbed his lower lip between my own and pulled it away from his face, until it popped back and made a small splashing noise when it hit his teeth. My right hand found its way along his back and down past the dimples to his naked buttocks. I pulled them to me and felt myself being stabbed by his erection. "...but cheeks are better!"

"We don't have time for that," he complained. "It's already three o'clock. I have work to do and you have to go and get your things. We'll have to save that stuff for tonight."

"What is it that you do on Saturday nights?" I asked, suddenly realizing that I knew very little about Arlo's habits.

"I usually listen to music and work on whatever systems I have to put together for the store," he answered. Then he smiled and added, "But I'll try to fit you in..."

I kissed him on the lips.

"You'd better," I warned him, "or you won't get any lasagne."

"You know how to make lasagne?" he breathed in wonder.

"The best lasagne you'll ever eat..." I promised.

"If that's true," he gulped, "I will be your love slave through eternity."

"They always said that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach," I laughed. "I guess it's also the way to a man's ass..."

"Well, yah," Arlo added, "but it's not a direct route. There's a lot of intestines between the stomach and the ass!"

Well, I couldn't answer that, so I pushed him out of bed and chased him to the bathroom, where I poked and prodded him as we showered and laughed and dried each other.

That afternoon I gathered up my stuff and piled it into the van, hoping that I could evade Norm's questioning. I managed to get everything I owned out of the residence without seeing him too.

But then, I went to the supermarket to shop for dinner, and managed to run into him at the butchers counter.

"Rick! Where have you been?"

"What's up Norm? Did you find another Sam?"

"You mean you haven't heard? Sam's got a tatoo!"

"A tatoo? Where'd he get that?"

"I dunno, it's on his right arm... one of those big old black tatoos that look like somebody did it with a magic marker."

"When did that show up?"

"In Sam25, and then again in Sam27..."

"We're at twenty-seven now?"

"Yah... why where have you been?"

"Ah... I've been a little occupied lately. I'm moving in with Arlo."

"With Arlo?" Up to this point in the conversation, Norm had been keeping his voice low, so that only the customers and staff within a thirty foot radius might overhear. But for some reason, my cohabitation with Arlo seemed to be news he wanted to share with the entire supermarket and quite possibly thirty or forty other stores in the mall. "You two are shacking up together?"

"We're living together, Norm... It's a two bedroom apartment, for Chrissakes!" I don't know why I felt the need to hide the fact that Arlo and I were intimate, but I did not like the details of our lives being speculated about in the fresh meat department of the supermarket. "Could you please keep your voice down?"

"Hey, man, I think it's great! I mean you liked the guy right off the bat, and now you're living together. I wish something like that could happen to me..."

"It will, Norm... some day... You just have to be willing to take a chance and watch for it when it comes. Haven't you ever had a relationship?" I asked.

"Naw... I don't seem to attract people. Is there something wrong with me, Rick?"

"No, Norm..." I lied. "You just have to watch for the right person to come along."

"Can I help you?" the butcher asked.

"You go first," Norm offered.

I ordered my pound of ground beef and dropped the package into my cart. Then as Norm pointed to the stack of steaks that he wanted, I bid him good-bye and pushed my cart towards the onions and garlic.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Eight

"Look at this, Rick!" Arlo called as I dropped the groceries onto the kitchen counter and hurried to the bedroom where the computers were. "Sam's got a tatoo!"

"Yah, I heard..." I told him, but I pulled up a chair and took a look anyway. Sam, as usual, was showing a lot more than his tatoo.

"You were only gone an hour and a half," Arlo marvelled. "How did you find out? Did you run into Norm at the residence?"

"No, at the supermarket... Why do you suppose he went and did a stupid thing like that?"

"Maybe he was hungry..." Arlo speculated.

It didn't take me long to figure out that we were discussing different people.

"No, I mean Sam... Why do you suppose he did a stupid thing like getting a tatoo?"

"Oh, I don't know... I think it's kind of attractive. I was thinking of getting one myself."

"What?"

"Yah, I thought I would have them put 'MOTHER' on my chest." There was a twinkle in Arlo's eye and it didn't take me long to realize that he was putting me on.

"They probably wouldn't have room," I told him. "Your chest isn't that big! Why don't you have them write 'RICK' instead?"

"Geez, talk about a long term commitment! Maybe I should have them write it on my foreskin... then if you don't work out, I can just get circumcised and there'd be no harm done."

"Shit, man! That's the unkindest cut of all! You mean, you'd just chop me off like that? And I haven't even moved in yet!"

"No, man, I wouldn't get it cut off," he tried to sooth me. "Anyway, I wouldn't have to... I could just have them put a 'P' in front of it and there would be no need to get rid of it!"

Arlo laughed and wheeled back his chair. He kissed me on my pouting lips and told me not to worry. I kissed him back and told him to get up off his little dimpled ass and give me a hand with my things.

When I was squared away, Arlo went back to work and I set to in the kitchen, preparing the sauce for the lasagne. I eventually found out where he kept everything and an hour later the dish was in the oven. I sliced the baguette I had managed to find and prepared a Caesar Salad. I had seen Arlo's mother in action and I had tasted her fare. I decided to pull out all of the stops. She would be tough competition.

There is something about a dish made with garlic that is sensual almost to the point of being sexual. Arlo began to notice the effect almost immediately as the smell invaded his workshop and his nose. I began to get requests for an estimate of when dinner might be ready. I told him that these things could not be hurried. He told me that he would try to relay that message to his stomach, but he did not know if it would understand. I poured him a glass of the bordeaux that I had found in the mall and took it to him.

"Do you know if your oven has any hot spots?" I inquired as I handed him the wine.

"I have an oven?" he asked.

"I'll keep turning the lasagne," I decided.

"I knew about the refrigerator," he complained. "Why couldn't you ask me about the refrigerator... or the microwave?"

"No wonder you eat out all the time..."

Arlo smiled his broad smile and made me fall in love with him all over again. I knew that I had to get out of the workshop or I would be pulling his clothes off. That would not have been good. He was holding a soldering iron.

"Drink your wine," I told him. Then I went to set the table.

When the lasagne was done I set it to cool and toasted the baguette with garlic butter, then I found a basket and a towel, and when the garlic bread was ready, I brought everything to the table and called Arlo.

He approached the table with his wineglass in hand and I poured him another from the bottle of bordeaux. Then I served him his salad and cut the lasagne.

I watched him as he ate, but his face did not betray any emotion. He did not look at me either. In fact he looked in every other direction, going out of his way to avoid my gaze.

I offered him the basket of bread. He took it and set it in front of his plate. I refilled his glass whenever he emptied it. I was beginning to think that there might be something wrong with my taste buds... or perhaps there was something wrong with his, but when he finally finished, he stood quietly and walked around the table to my place. He pushed the table away and straddled my lap as I sat there. Then he leaned over and swallowed my mouth in his... forcing his tongue into my mouth and mingling the tastes of the wine, the garlic, the lasagne and his saliva with mine.

When finally we had broken our kiss, he hugged me and I felt his heavy breathing in my left ear.

"Does this mean that you liked it?" I inquired.

"You are a fabulous cook," he told me in a sensuous whisper. "What's for dinner tomorrow?"

"Trout Amandine..."

"Ooooo... Fuck me..." he breathed.

"Don't you want your dessert?" I asked.

"Later..." he moaned.

I lifted myself from the chair with Arlo still wrapped around me and carried him to the bedroom. I laid him onto the bed and undressed him, starting with his shoes and socks and finishing with his shirt. He waited impatiently for me to strip too, and then I joined him on the bed and he crawled on top of me. He greased himself and then he attended to me before settling himself onto me and lowering his ass over my cock.

He began slowly, raising himself and dropping back onto my cock, while massaging his own monster. Gradually he accustomed himself to my intrusion and he sped up, his hands falling to the bed beside me to brace him and give him a better purchase. I took over the masturbation of Arlo Jr.

"Careful," I warned as he began to rise and fall furiously. "You just ate. I don't want you to get sick.

He collapsed on top of me, giggling helplessly, and I rolled him over and finished the job straddling him. I rolled off him, breathless and a little nauseous, from the exercise so soon after having eaten, and then he was kissing me again.

We cleaned up in the bathroom and I asked him again if he wanted his dessert. This time he agreed, but when we left the bathroom he led me to the bedroom again. He laid me on the bed and opened his pharmacy to fish out a condom.

"No," I said. "I don't want anything between us."

I took his erection into my mouth and sucked it to its fullness, savouring the taste as the thing slid into and out of my mouth and covered itself with my saliva. I even eschewed the KY telling him to use spit instead. I wanted nothing but Arlo inside me... and I got it all... clear to the hilt, as he fucked me deeper than I had ever been fucked before. I groaned and cried and felt finer than I had ever known that I could as Arlo slaved above me to probe a little further.

When finally he discharged, it felt as though he was half-way to my stomach, and I couldn't help thinking that what he had left there would soon be encountering the garlic bread and lasagne. The only thing I was sorry about was that I had not yet tasted Arlo, but later that night, after my dinner had settled and he had recharged, I made him let me.

We declared Sunday to be a day of rest. It was the day we got to know each other even better as I took over part of his closet space and set up my computer. We stayed off line and talked mainly about our families and our futures, our dreams and desires. I made the dinner and had to fight off Arlo's advances as he devoured it and became once more, mad with passion. We compromised and showered together, then we watched another of his movies on the television and finally collapsed into each other's arms in the big bed.

Monday brought us back to our routine. I surprised him with breakfast... something he normally did not eat... but there is nothing like a little eggs benedict to start the week off right. I saw him glance into the refrigerator to see what else I might have planned, but I had not yet bought the evening's groceries, and it looked a little bare in there.

On the way home I bought a rice steamer and a wok. Monday's dinner was a chicken stir-fry served on a bed of rice with a delicate Chardonnay. Arlo finished his second glass of wine and tossed his napkin down. He leaned towards me with a rather seductive gleam in his eye and asked me where I had learned to cook like that.

"Have you ever heard of the Skiddlepeak Hotel?" I asked him.

"No, I haven't," he replied.

"Not too many people have," I answered. "But it exists, and I have worked there for the past two seasons. I learned everything I know about cooking from Chef Philippe. He works there during the season, and winters in the south of France. He says that I am his best assistant, French or English."

"Do you always work there?"

"It is sort of compulsory... My parents own the place."

"Could you get out of it... that is if you wanted to?"

"Why, Arlo?"

"Well, I was sort of hoping that you might work with me this summer."

"What do you mean? Putting together computers?"

"No, I wanted you to work at the new cable business. We need guys who know what they're doing. We're going to push Internet hookups through the cable and offer them at reduced fees for anybody who signs on during the summer. We're going to need all the help we can get if it takes off like I think it will."

"I don't know, man. Mom and Dad sort of rely on me to earn the money I get at the hotel to pay for my school year."

"You'd get paid by us too, Rick... probably more than you'd make at the hotel. And we'd be working together. I'd install the cable while you hooked up the modem and loaded the software."

The idea was tempting. I could imagine a summer of watching Arlo's cute butt crawling around the floor in front of me while I tried to keep my mind on the computer screen. If I was really lucky, Arlo would wear a heavy tool belt that would drag his pants down and leave a permanently exposed ass crack and two dimples for me to oggle.

I supposed that my cousin Monica was old enough and smart enough to take over my end of things in the kitchen, but I still hesitated to abandon the family business so suddenly.

"I'll tell you what," Arlo suggested, "You can handle reservations from Maple Ridge. That will help your parents won't it?"

"You mean on the internet?"

"Why not? We can set up the same program I'm using for the motel. It practically runs itself. Your parents are on line, aren't they?"

"No, they're not."

"Hmmm..." Arlo meditated. "Well, we can put them on line, can't we?"

"I suppose so, but I would have to train them."

"We could take care of that during reading week. We'll set up the website on our server and all they would have to do is open their e-mail a couple of times a day. You could look after everything else from here."

"It might even mean more bookings!" I found myself getting into the spirit of the idea.

"We'll use the 486 we took out of the hotel. It's a little slow, but they shouldn't be into a lot of multi-tasking right away, so they should be able to use it all right."

As I watched Arlo becoming more an more obsessed with his planning, I knew that I had found the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I experienced a moment of doubt when I realized that we had only known each other for five days, but then I recalled the moment in my van five days earlier, as I was driving Norm home from dinner, when I had decided that I would return to the restaurant and present the waiter with my evidence that he was Arlo. I recalled the agitation that my decision had caused within me. And yet I had done it. As Arlo had later oberved, I had not gone there that night simply to tell him what his name was. Something else had drawn me there. Could it have been fate? I sort of doubted that. I think it was the way we communicated all through the dinner and never said a word to each other.

The next night Arlo's father came to dinner. He had been in town as predicted by Arlo's mother, and his usual routine would have been to take Arlo to dinner at the Morrissey Hotel a few blocks down the street. That was his plan for this day too, but Arlo had prepared a surprise for him... me!

I served chateau briand with mushrooms and carrots, another Caesar Salad and some brie I had managed to find fresh in from France. For dessert I served pears in a light sauce and we killed a bottle of Cote du Rhone as we ate.

Arlo's father was so impressed that he left without the pie plates he had been specifically sent to fetch.

After dinner had been cleared away and Arlo and I had bid his father farewell, we turned on the newsgroups and did our usual search for Sam. We found one in Arlo's favourite group... Sam28... but that was the last one we found for a while. The Sam postings seemed to stop. It was as if Sam knew that his job was done.

Two weeks later we got a bulk mailing from Norm. It was an invitation to dinner at Luigi's Spaghetti House. The recipients of the invitation were the same ones who had received the first invitation from Arlo, only now Arlo received Norm's invitation and not the other way around.

Arlo and I dressed for dinner and tried to figure out if Norm had some news about Sam. We had not seen any of the others since I had moved in with Arlo. We climbed into my van and arrived just as Oki and Frank got there. Frank looked uneasy as always, and Oki seemed a little hesitant about talking to us too casually as well. So I introduced Arlo to Frank and then to Oki, figuring it would not be a good idea to mention the night Oki had spent fucking and being fucked by Arlo and I. Oki seemed to relax a little when he became aware that we were not about to expose him.

We went in together and Arlo found our table by checking the reservation list. Norm had still not arrived, and I began to wonder if I had been expected to pick him up. But then, through the restaurant window, I noticed the light of a single headlight turning into the parking lot, and I knew that Norm had arrived.

Moments later he walked through the door followed by another man... a man with a moustache who looked familiar to me. Norm beamed at us as he walked across the floor and when he got to the table, he announced that he had brought a special guest along for dinner.

"I want you all to meet Tony," Norm grinned. Then he pointed to each of us and told Tony who we were. "And I guess that's Arlo there beside Rick," he speculated as he finished the introductions.

"That's right," Arlo said as he took his turn standing and shaking Tony's hand.

"So what do you do, Tony?" I asked. I was still trying to figure where I'd seen his face before.

"I work at Hamilton's..."

"You remember Tony, doncha Rick?" Norm pressed. "I met him the day you moved in with Arlo. He's the guy who waited on you at the meat counter. Remember how you told me that I had to watch for somebody... that somebody would come along for me? Tony was right there all the time. We got talking about what you had said and it turned out that he had been wondering when he would ever meet a guy too!"

"Rick, you're a matchmaker..." Arlo observed.

I smiled weakly and tried to figure out what the hell was going on... and if I could legally be held responsible for any of it.

Perhaps Sam's job was done after all.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Nine

It was the middle of Spring before Sam29 showed up. We had almost begun to believe that the pictures had come to an end... and when we opened our e-mail, we almost wished that they had. That was mostly because Lorenzo received mail from another couple of guys on our server and decided that he would make them members of our little club.

Frank was really pissed! It didn't improve his mood any when he got another bulk mailing from Arlo and I setting another Wednesday night rendez-vous at Luigi's. As usual, he threatened not to attend, but as usual, he showed up at the appointed time and place.

Oki, at first, declined to attend. He was to return to Japan within the month and did not think that it would serve any useful purpose for him to continue searching for Sams, since he was almost certain that the newsgroups which brought them would be banned in Japan. I pointed out that he would probably have access to e-mail over there, and it would be nothing for us to send any pics that turned up. Oki agreed to be there if Frank wanted to come.

Norm replied that he would be happy to attend, and inquired if it would be all right if he brought a friend. Arlo sent back a note telling him that, of course, Tony would be welcome too. To this Norm responded that he and Tony were no longer seeing each other, but his current room mate, Al, had expressed a desire to attend. Arlo once again assured Norm that any friend of his was a friend of ours... providing that he was up-to-date on the Sam situation. Norm assured Arlo that Al knew everything about Sam and his pictures.

The two new guys, Jason and Aaron, were both freshmen. None of us knew who they were. But Arlo and I showed for dinner a half an hour early in order to check them out and make a decision about them before we admitted to being the group they would be looking for. We told them both to wear their watches on their right wrists to assist us with their identification.

Arlo and I watched from the bar as each car pulled up into the parking lot. We speculated about the major hunks, but were disappointed each time to see that they invariably opened the passenger doors for their ladies. "Such a waste..." Arlo sighed.

I glanced at him and saw the twinkle in his eye. I also noticed the watch of the man next to Arlo. It was on his right wrist. Like the rest of him, his left wrist was tanned... all except for a pale band where his watch normally covered the skin.

The guy was pleasant-looking but a little anxious. He was blond with blue eyes and a physique that spoke of weight-training. He was dressed in a baby blue pullover with pants a shade darker and white sneakers that completed his ensemble... not the outfit I would have picked to wear to a spaghetti dinner, but to each, his own... He did not wear socks and one of his bare ankles bore a tiny tattoo. It was impossible to say what the tattoo represented, so I left Arlo to watch the window while I made a quick trip to the men's room. I came back a few minutes later nonchalantly tossing my keys into the air and catching them... that is, until I got to the bar, whereupon I missed them and they went scuttering under the stool that Jason was sitting on. I determined that it was Jason in the time it took to bend over and pick up my keys... the tattoo was a modest little script that read, "Jason," in the same manner that an artist would sign his work.

The young man on the stool next to Jason did not wear a watch, but from his expression and the way he spoke to Jason, I determined with very little difficulty that his name must be Aaron. His face was pleasant and open, the kind of person you know comes from a good family, just from the way he reacts to everyone. Manners are a dead giveaway.

Jason looked at me as I resumed my seat and I smiled at him and at Aaron. Aaron returned my smile, but Jason still looked a little stand-offish. So I suggested to Arlo that he and I find the others in our party and get dinner going.

The mention of Arlo's name produced the desired result. Aaron leaned over and excused himself.

"Are you two guys here for the Sam pictures?"

"That's right," Arlo answered. "You must be Aaron and Jason."

"He's Jason... I'm Aaron," Aaron responded. Jason still had not said a word.

"You two guys know each other?" I asked.

"This is the first time we've met," Aaron explained. "Sorry, I didn't have a watch... I spotted Jason and asked him if he was here for the Sam group."

"I'm Rick," I told them. "Arlo and I are your hosts for this evening."

"Is it just the four of us?" Jason finally spoke.

"The others are a little late," Arlo answered. "They should be here shortly. Shall we find our table?"

"I'm game..." Aaron answered.

Jason tossed back the rest of his beer and nodded, "Why not?"

It turned out that Aaron was the talker of the two, but his views were very rarely shared by Jason, who had a rather unique viewpoint on just about everything. Fortunately, he did not feel inclined to elaborate much. He did tell us about himself, though. We got the feeling that was his favourite subject.

Jason had done a lot of things, including a bit part in a porno movie out in California. This was his claim to fame. From that gig he had become a male dancer, putting off college for a year to travel the circuit and bare all for a few bucks. He told us that he still did weekend engagements in New York and would probably spend the summer in Manhattan with one of the guys he had met the previous year.

Aaron was eating this up, and it was a bit of a shock to him when Arlo asked him what he did... on the side.

"Shit... nothing like Jason," he sighed. "I still live at home. If my parents ever caught me dancing in the buck they'd tan me for sure!"

"Same here," Arlo admitted. "Only I have my own... we have our own apartment." I noticed the way Arlo corrected himself. As far as I was concerned it was his place. I only had dibs on the kitchen.

"You guys live together?" Aaron asked.

"Yes," Arlo smiled and took my hand in his. He looked at me. "We have been together for about three months now."

I nodded my agreement.

"Do you have any special friends?" Arlo asked Aaron.

"You mean gay?" Aaron asked. "Not really. It's kind of tough to get a life like that going when you live in your parent's house."

"Yah, that's why I moved out," Arlo commiserated. "Can you afford a place of your own?"

"I can't even afford to live in residence. I worked last summer, but I didn't get enough to pay my tuition and pay for a room. I was laid off half-way through the summer."

Jason yawned.

Norm picked that moment to make his entrance. Accompanying him was a large man in a leather jacket and blue jeans. Al also wore a pair of shiny black leather boots. Evidently Norm was taking a walk on the wild side. He spotted us right away and led the way to our table. We introduced Aaron and Jason to Norm, and Norm introduced Al to everybody.

I noticed an immediate interest on Jason's part. He stifled his next yawn. Aaron, who had been Jason's companion up to this point noticed the sudden change as well. Jason had become focused for the first time that evening on something other than himself. Aaron became silent, recognizing that Jason was no longer listening to him... if, indeed, he ever had...

I left Arlo to engage Norm in conversation, while I leaned over to Aaron and asked him what he was studying in university.

"Sports medicine," he answered and grinned. "It's the best of all possible worlds... You get to examine some of the greatest bodies in the world, and they pay you to stick your finger up their asses."

I had to agree that it sounded like a pretty good go. I asked him if that was how he had lost his watch. He laughed an infectious laugh.

"No, they haven't let me do anything practical yet. So far the only thing I've done is give massages. But I am studying phys-ed too, and I get to hang out in the showers a lot."

"You shouldn't have any trouble meeting guys then," I speculated.

"I meet lots of them, but they're all straight," he sighed.

"No they're not," I told him as I noticed Frank and Oki coming through the door. "But they try to act that way in the showers. Here come a couple now."

"Shit!" Aaron exclaimed. "I know those two guys! One's on the football team and the other guy plays water polo. Are they with us?"

"Actually I think they're with each other," I whispered as the odd couple approached. "But they are members of our little club... yes." I pointed out that Norm, too, played football... or more properly, tried to prevent others from playing football, while Arlo and I were addicted to tennis. If Aaron was to complete his sports medicine education, he already had a pretty good group of prospective patients joining him for dinner. I did not speculate about the injuries that Jason might incur if he kept to his plan to retake Manhattan in the coming summer, but I did have some concerns that he might not survive the night if he and Al managed to get together somehow.

We went through the introductions again and Frank and Oki eyed the new faces warily, unsure of the implications of their attendance at the dinner, but still curious enough to actually show up. I also did another sweep of the faces at the table and noted with some satisfaction that the face I most enjoyed looking at was Arlo's. Aaron's was a close second, but after that, I wasn't too impressed with any of the others.

We ordered dinner and discussed the latest image of Sam that had turned up. It was remarkable for its location. It was an exterior scene... the first that any of us had seen, although we could not be sure that the few we had missed had not been taken outdoors. In point of fact, it was also an interior, having been taken inside a cave, but it was the first that we knew of that had not been taken at the motel where Arlo, Oki and I had fornicated on the same bed where Sam had first revealed himself.

We could tell that the newest Sam had been taken inside a cave because of the shadow of the flash used to illuminate it. It showed Sam standing beside what might have been graffiti, but turned out to be something entirely different.

We all wondered where it might have been taken... all of us but Jason, of course. It turned out that he knew.

"New Mexico..." he told us. "I was there last August with a guy from Wisconsin. We hit all those tourist things."

"Which tourist thing is this?" Frank asked.

"It's a cave where the Indians used to live. They decorated the walls with all this shit. I guess the television reception must have been bad in there."

None of us could really tell if Jason was that stupid, or whether he was attempting humour. But the Indian drawings thing seemed to fit. If that was the case, we now knew where Sam had gone... New Mexico... but we still had no idea why.

"I guess that's why he only has his shirt off in the picture," Arlo mused. "The place was probably packed with tourists."

"It wasn't when I was there," Jason remarked. "It took the guy I was with over an hour to find somebody to take us through. We were the only ones in there."

"Shit! I'd love to go out west," Aaron enthused.

"So why don't you?" Jason asked. The way he asked it made it unclear if he was only making conversation or just wished that Aaron and the rest of us were someplace else. It was a sure thing that he was not interested in any answer that Aaron might provide. He only had eyes for Al, and Al was beginning to notice this too.

"I can't afford to go," Aaron answered, fortunately missing Jason's sarcasm. "I've never been anywhere, really. I couldn't even go away to college. We had to have one in our home town!"

"You'll get your chance," Arlo told him. "I've lived all my life between here and Maple Ridge. When you own a business you don't travel much. But I did get up to Skittlepeak two weeks ago with Rick."

"I hear that's a great spot!" Aaron enthused. "I've never been there either."

Something clicked in my mind. When Arlo and I had been up to the hotel, my parents had greeted the idea of me missing the summer there with a little skepticism. They were not too happy with the idea that my cousin should take over for me. Monica was currently seeing a young man from Utah, and there was some doubt about her being available by the time summer rolled around. Consequently, my plans were still up in the air.

"How would you like to go up there with me this weekend?" I asked out of the blue.

Arlo looked at me.

"I mean, how would you like to go up there with us?"

"Up to Skittlepeak? I can't afford that!" Aaron repeated his standard reply.

"It wouldn't cost you a thing," I told him. "You'd be my... our guest. We've got to go up there anyhow... to tweak a computer..."

"Where would we stay?" Aaron asked.

"Don't worry, you'll have your own room at the Skittlepeak Hotel. I know for a fact that they aren't booked up at this time of the year." I did not want to give away too much of my plan at this point. I needed to be able to back out of it without having committed to any particular part of it. The first part was to get Aaron up there and then we would get to know him better. This way my parents and Chef Philippe could meet him too.

"It's a great place," Arlo told Aaron. "You'll love it."

"I'll have to check with my parents first," Aaron said. I guessed that he too was leaving himself an out. "But I'd love to, if you're sure I won't be in the way."

"You won't be in the way," I assured him. "We leave early Saturday morning and we'll be back late Sunday night."

"If you want, you can come over Friday night," Arlo offered. "That way we can all be ready to go at the same time. You can also show Rick how to give a decent massage."

"You've never complained about my massages before," I noted.

"You never get past the feet," Arlo complained.

"I would, but you always want to do something else by then," I countered.

Aaron laughed. I knew then that he would be coming with us. What I didn't know then, was who else would show up.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Ten

Arlo no longer worked at Luigi's on Friday nights. He had quit that job two weeks after I moved in with him, partly because he no longer could afford to devote the time to a separate occupation, partly because he no longer had to worry about getting his meals out, but mostly, I like to believe, because he was no longer on the make. He had found me... or rather, I had found him... and he was satisfied... I hoped.

We were just sitting down to dinner at seven o'clock when Aaron showed up. The kid had impeccable timing. We hadn't expected him for a couple of hours more, but I had made enough for three, and we invited him to join us. At first he declined, saying that he had already had supper at his place, but when he saw the stuffed sole that I had prepared for Arlo, he reconsidered and decided that he would like to try a smidgen. That meant that Arlo was down to one serving only, which was okay too, since Arlo was starting to get a gut.

After dinner Aaron offered to help me with the dishes while Arlo finished a system he was working on. By then we had pretty much told him the story of how we met and decided to live together. As I washed and he dried, Aaron shared his secret desire to find somebody the way Arlo and I had found each other.

"I think that Jason is pretty much out of the question," he sighed.

"Jason loves Jason. He doesn't seem too interested in anybody else," I answered.

"I think that Jason was pretty hot for Al the other night," he challenged.

"He was in love with the look... When people can't be interesting by being themselves they try to do it by dressing up. That's what defines them to the world."

"I guess that makes me a nothing..."

"No, that makes you the guy you are... open and honest and able to be hurt by people like Jason. You will find somebody better, Aaron. More than likely, they'll find you."

I reserved my speech about keeping his eyes open for the right man to come along. It hadn't helped Norm much. Al had checked out of Norm's life the night before. We didn't have to wonder where he went.

"Thanks, Rick," he said. Then he seemed to reach down inside of himself for a reserve of courage. "Can I kiss you?"

Well, I hadn't expected that.

"Why do you want to kiss me?"

"Because you're nice..." he answered. Then he added, "...and I've never kissed a man before."

I wondered what to do. Aaron was a good-looking guy. I normally wouldn't have thought twice about kissing him, but I had a very close relationship with Arlo to consider. Then the answer came to me in a flash of inspiration. I have those from time to time...

"Just a second," I said, "I'll have to check with the home office... Arlo, he wants to kiss me. Is that okay?"

"Yah," Arlo's voice came back from the workshop, "but no tongue involvement..."

"He says it's okay," I assured Aaron, who seemed a little embarrassed by our candor. But he kissed me anyway. Then I kissed him. "Now you have to go and kiss Arlo..." I told him, "...it's compulsory." He grinned from ear to ear and hurried in to Arlo's workshop while I adjusted the erection I was beginning to get.

It was a few seconds later that I heard Arlo call to me. I found the two of them, their lips still glistening with saliva, staring at the computer screen. Sam30 had arrived.

It had been taken at the same spot as the previous picture, only in this shot, Sam had dropped trou... at least to his knees and was showing the major equipment once again.

"I can't get over how cute he is," Aaron sighed. I shrugged at Arlo, and Arlo shrugged back at me. We had been through more than two dozen of the photos by now, and had pretty much gotten over the gee-whiz phase. Now it was more of a game to find the pictures... sort of like an easter egg hunt.

"Where'd you find this one?" I asked.

"I didn't, Frank sent it to us... well, to me. I guess he removed your e-mail address from his list."

"Frank?" I quizzed. "I wouldn't have thought that he would admit to having it, let alone give it to anybody else."

"Yah, well, maybe Oki's bringing him around," Arlo suggested. "Anyway, I'm going to take a shower and then I want my massage!"

We forgot all about Frank as Arlo reminded us of the other activity we had planned for that night. I saw Aaron swallow... noticeably, as Arlo left the room... peeling off his shirt.

"Excuse me," I said, "but it's my job to wash his back for him."

"That's a job?" Aaron managed after swallowing again.

"Yah, well sometimes he makes me do the front too," I explained. I kissed him again. "Why don't you get ready to show me how to rub him the wrong way?"

I saw Aaron swallow again as I hurried to the bathroom and joined Arlo in the tub. We showered quickly and dried each other, then wrapped ourselves in bath sheets and rejoined Aaron in the living room.

Aaron had changed from his jeans and striped long-sleeved shirt into a pair of white boxers and a plain white t-shirt. He showed a firm pair of lightly haired legs that ended at a pair of bright white socks. Everything he wore looked brand new, as if he had hoped that someone would see his underwear and wanted whoever it was to get a good impression. I could imagine his mother telling him to be sure to wear his clean underwear in case there was an accident and the doctor's might think less of him, somehow for wearing the soiled ones.

"Where do you want me?" Arlo inquired.

We had brought my foam mattress up from the storage locker in the basement when we knew that Aaron would be staying overnight. We pressed it into service a little early laying it on the floor and Arlo on top of it. Aaron placed him face down and turned his head away from the side he took. He motioned for me to take the other side of Arlo and I got down onto my knees. Arlo immediately took hold of my towel and lifted it to peek underneath, so I lifted the waist of his and exposed his dimples.

Aaron chuckled at our familiarity, but the bulge in his shorts began to grow. I guess that's why he faced Arlo away from himself. He couldn't avoid my eyes however as he knelt there on the other side of the mattress and nervously placed tentative finger tips on the naked back of my lover. His voice too was an octave higher than it had previously registered before we started and he told me to match his motions on the other side of Arlo's spine.

Arlo moaned a little as our fingers began to knead him and he flinched involuntarily at the foreign touch in areas that were sensitive to ticklishness. But when Aaron brought out the squeeze container filled with body lotion and squeezed a little onto Arlo's shoulders, our victim's moans turned into sighs as we massaged the stuff into his skin. His skin seemed to glow and I found myself tenting my towel.

"I'm getting major hardon activity here," Arlo conceded.

"You're getting a hardon?!" I complained. "I just put up the main tent pole of the Ringling Brothers' and Barnum and Bailey bigtop!"

Aaron snickered. Arlo's eyes, which had been closed, opened to peer around at me. Then he checked my towel and smiled a silent, but silly smile.

We got to Arlo's waist and Aaron's fingers stopped. He started again at Arlo's shoulders and began to once again work his way down the ribcage on his side.

"Is that as far as you guys are going to do?" Arlo demanded.

"Well, hun," I replied, "we ran into that silly towel thingy of yours!"

Arlo's hands moved beneath his upturned butt and seconds later the towel no longer covered him. I looked at Aaron who was staring at Arlo's ass.

"Pretty, isn't it?" I commented. But Aaron was beyond speech by now, and gulping like crazy. "A lot of people think that this is Arlo's best side," I told him. I was trying to relax him, but it seemed that he was transfixed by Arlo's butt, so I grabbed the squeeze container from him and applied a little to each of Arlo's cheeks. "But trust me," I told Aaron, "it gets even better!"

Arlo snickered.

I began to rub the lotion into the cheek of Arlo's butt that was on my side. Aaron just watched me, mesmerized.

"Did one of you guys leave?" Arlo inquired.

That was enough for Aaron. He jumped to the other cheek and soon we had them glowing the way the rest of Arlo's back was shining. In the process we revealed Arlo's secret place. I know that affected Aaron... it always affects me. But I controlled my desire to continue the exploration with my tongue. We worked our way down his thighs and calves and then we lifted Arlo's feet and began to work on them. I kissed the one I was holding and stuck the big toe into my mouth for a second or two.

"Don't try this with your average football player," I cautioned Aaron, who was now back to working normally, but still a whole lot quieter than usual.

He laughed... but he resisted the urge to copy my toe-sucking... if indeed he ever experienced the urge at all. That's the thing with feet... some people are just not into them!

Aaron was, however, feeling a whole lot easier with Arlo's nudity... until Arlo rolled over.

"I told you it would get better," I said. But Aaron had lost his ability to speak again, and was back into swallowing audibly.

"Would you like me to put the towel back on?" Arlo asked.

Aaron shook his head and swallowed again. I guess he was salivating pretty well by then... I know I was.

Arlo finished adjusting himself to the mattress and then closed his eyes waiting for the massage to continue. Aaron moved to his head and I watched him lift Arlo by the neck and begin to move his head about, his fingers finding the base of my lover's neck and drawing their way up to the point in Arlo's skull where the spinal cord and the brain join.

I moved to the other end and began a similar workout on Arlo's toes, working my way up the front of his legs to his knees.

Aaron finished with Arlo's neck and began working his shoulders lifting and flexing each arm, manipulating them this way and that, and returning them to their rest position at Arlo's sides.

I saw him hesitate before touching Arlo's chest. I nodded to him to go ahead, and he applied the lotion to both sides of Arlo's breastbone. Then we returned to our positions on either side and worked our way down Arlo's chest and stomach, until we encountered the staff of life. I noticed that one of Arlo's eyes had opened a little. I guessed that it was just too much for his curiousity, wondering if Aaron would actually be the one to handle it.

Aaron did not touch Arlo's flagpole. He bypassed it in favour of his thighs, while I worked the area in the middle. I polished Arlo pretty well, and he was shining by the time Aaron announced that the massage was finished. I thought I heard him breath an audible sigh of relief when Arlo hopped up and picked up his towel. But his relief was short-lived. I pulled my towel off and took Arlo's place.

"My turn!" I announced.

We finally bedded down for the night at about eleven o'clock, Arlo and I in the bedroom, Aaron in the workshop on the mattress we had used for our massages. We kept our door shut for privacy... yah, I suppose after letting the guy see us naked that was like closing the barn door after the horses were gone, but we were actually trying to give him his room to move about without feeling that he would disturb us. We still hadn't seen Aaron naked, but we both kissed him goodnight.

We had no idea if he would still be there in the morning.

He was.

It was a fine Spring morning, full of crisp coolness that demanded a heavy jacket... a jacket that would be discarded by mid-morning. By mid-morning we were half-way to Skittlepeak and about three-quarters of the way through Aaron's life story.

He had indeed lived a sheltered existence, protected from the world and himself by the guiding hand of his parents and his church... afraid to communicate the growing realization that plagued him... knowing that he would be condemned to a hell he feared that he could no longer escape. He had known that he preferred other boys early on. He had been told about the wages of his sins as well. At the tender age of fourteen he had realized that even if he never gave in to his lusts, he must still suffer the torment of purgatory and eternal damnation, simply for having considered them in the first place. Such was the completeness of his religeous training.

He knew that he could not find a compassionate ear to tell in his circle of friends, and it had not been until university that he had even considered that there might be another life... one without the restrictions that had haunted his early years.

He might have studied theology, to try to find an out for himself. But the year before he was to begin his post-secondary education, the priest of his church was arrested and charged with contributing to the deliquency of a minor. Nothing was ever heard of the charge after the newspapers first reported it, but another priest arrived to take his place and Aaron began to wonder. Shortly after that he began to think for himself.

He also began to look about him and noticed a few people like Arlo and I. He didn't name us specifically, but he did say that he had seen the both of us in his travels... travels which took him to a bar in town where he would not have gone the year before.

And then he discovered the internet at college. Well, he had always known about the internet, but he had not been allowed to access it from his parent's computer without them being in attendance, until he found the computer lab at the university. That first day had been an eye-opener. It had also been the day when he found his first Sam. It had taken him until Easter to work up enough nerve to write to Lorenzo, and when he did, he did it late at night on his parent's computer. Then he had erased the message from the out mailbox.

The next morning he awoke early and found the answer. He erased it too. He began to worry when he found another message the next day. That was the message from Arlo and I. He copied it onto a disk before he erased it. Our evening at Luigi's was to be his coming out party, he had decided, and he did not want to forget any of the details of the message.

We pulled into a gas station to fill up and Aaron picked up a round of drinks for us. As he was bringing them to the van, a motorcycle slowed as if it was about to pull into the station, but seemed to change its mind and accelerated away. I would not have thought anything about it at all, except that it had looked familiar. Aaron told me that he had seen it somewhere before as well, but Arlo had missed it, and it did not sound familiar to him when we described it.

"Yah, well a guy who drives a delivery truck for a furniture store can't be too discriminating about vehicles anyway," I laughed.

"I am going to mop the tennis court with you this afternoon!" Arlo promised and then accepted the orange juice that Aaron offered him. "You're going to need another massage!"

I smiled a condescending smile. Arlo couldn't beat me with both hands tied behind my back. But I wondered where I had seen that motorcycle. And I wondered why it had decided not to stop at the same gas station where we were.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Eleven

Skittlepeak Hotel is more along the lines of what most people think of as a lodge. It was built in sections, first as a series of cabins along the shore of the lake, then as larger buildings which were constructed over a number of years and eventually joined together as the place became more widely known and a lot more popular.

Like a lot of the Catskill resorts the Skittlepeak gets the majority of its business from returning vacationers who visit it each year and mostly around the same time. The clientele are mostly well-off and well-on, and this presented the hotel with its major dilemma... loss of business through attrition. There would come a time in the lives of a lot of the customers when moving out to the Skittlepeak each year would become more trouble than it was worth. As much as they enjoyed the place, advancing years would force a cancellation, and the next year would not be booked, either because of continuing health problems or because the customer would have passed away... sometimes without canceling their reservation.

The problem with a clientele in its advanced years was that business had a sad habit of dropping off all at once, and especially after a hard flu season.

My mother and father had faced this sort of phenomenon twice already, but had managed to bounce back each time... once by running an ad in the New York newspapers, which had attracted a new clientele from the slightly less-senior citizen population, and the second time by hiring Chef Philippe to please the palates of the fussiest gourmand.

Now, Arlo and I hoped to attract an even younger group to augment the retiring and expiring crew. We had been planning our ad campaign ever since the idea of me not working in the Skittlepeak kitchens had forced us to find alternatives. We already had the check-in desk computerized. Now we had to convince my parents to go along with some of the other ideas.

Aaron, of course, knew nothing of this, nor did he have the slightest idea that he was to play a pivotal role in releasing me from my duties. I still had to get my parent's approval, but more importantly, I had to get Chef Philippe's. There is something almost tyrannical about the head chef's control of the kitchen... and as goes the kitchen, so goes the hotel.

Arlo had a new toy with him this trip... a digital camera to record views of the hotel and its accouterments for inclusion in the webpage, which we planned to use as the virtual brochure for the online crowd. He had already snapped off a shitload of pictures and transferred them to his laptop by the time we arrived at the hotel. Upon arrival and after the compulsory hugs and kisses from my parents, he set out to record the vistas he had planned to include in the pages he had already designed and transferred to the website.

It was as he was clicking the shot of the honeymoon suite that he realized we had run into our first major glitch.

"There's no hookups for the internet in the hotel rooms, Rick," he complained as he rejoined me in our room. "We were thinking so much about getting your mother and father on line that we never thought about the kind of person we're trying to attract."

"Of course," I said, "you can take the boy out of the city, but you'd better not take away his internet! What's the damage, Arlo?"

"We can probably wire up one wing each year," he proposed. "You and I can handle that. It'll be the local ISP that'll be the problem. Of course, if you go the cable route, you'll have to provide modems in each room, but that might not be a bad idea... Most of the folks will have laptops and you can't fit one of those cable modems into them anyway. An exterior through the card slot is the only alternative. We should be able to get a rate on a multiple hookup. But it's something they're going to have to supply anyway if they hope to attract the younger crowd. That and another tennis court..."

I could tell that Arlo was anxious to get onto the clay and try to whip my sorry ass. I promised him I would meet him at the courts as soon as I took Aaron around to meet Chef Philippe.

I had already spoken to my parents about the plan I had to introduce Aaron to the hotel without telling him why. They had agreed to meet him and evaluate him on the sly. Already he had impressed them with his manners and good nature. Now I had the major hurtle to overcome. But I had an in... Chef Philippe liked me. Another plus was the fact that Aaron was learning French. I introduced them to each other and made my excuses about my pending date to destroy Arlo on the tennis court.

I slipped out the back door and made my way through the parking lot to the front of the hotel. As I came around the front and cut through to the swimming pool and recreation facilities I spotted a very familiar motorcycle. It was the one I had seen at the gas station... the one that did not seem to want to be where we were.

I also remembered why it looked so familiar. It had been the previous year during the autumn months that I had seen it just about every day parked out in front of the residence where I had lived before I moved in with Arlo. Naturally, it had disappeared during the winter months, and I had disappeared during the late Winter and early Spring... in just the same manner that Sam had. I wondered... but not for long.

I found Arlo in his white tennis shorts and coral top waiting for me at the enclosure. There was no need to book a time, it being so early in the season, and we found ourselves with the whole place at our disposal. There was also no use mentioning the motorcycle to Arlo, since he did not know who's it was any more than I did. But I found myself trying to recollect if I had ever seen the owner. When I realized that I had, but that I had never seen him... or her... without the protective covering of a helmet and riding leather, I put the bike out of my mind and concentrated on destroying the only man I have ever truly loved.

We showered when we had finished, and Arlo made his excuses. He always had his way with me after a tennis match... a sort of compensatory win, if you will, and that day was no different. We frolicked for a while on the big double bed and he drilled me silly with that cattle prod of his.

It was along about four o'clock when we finally re-emerged sheepishly into the hotel corridor and met Aaron on his way back from the kitchen.

"Who won?" he asked.

"I did," we both answered. Then Arlo looked annoyed and added, "Oh, you mean the tennis match..."

Aaron smiled and said something in French. I think it might have been "Honi soit qui mal y pense," but I could be mistaken.

"Does this mean that you and Philippe had a good afternoon?" I inquired.

"You can be the judge of that," Aaron announced. "He's letting me prepare the duck for tonight's supper... er, dinner. By the way, I'll be your waiter. He's showing me how to do it right, in case I ever need a job in France, I guess."

"He's putting you to work?" Arlo asked.

"I wanted to help," Aaron explained. "Besides, it's really neat to see some of the stuff he does out there. I'm just gonna grab a shower and get back there. He has a couple of uniforms for me to try on."

Arlo grinned as Aaron disappeared into his room. I guess he was beginning to believe that he had, indeed, won, and when we talked to mom and dad that night after dinner, they confirmed Arlo's impression. Aaron, they said, was a dear, and they couldn't wait to find out if he would take the job. Arlo was grinning again as he sent me to break the news to Aaron.

I found him in his room, in his boxer shorts and nothing else, trying to scrub a duck grease stain out of the shirt sleeve of the waiter's outfit.

"We have a laundry that looks after that," I told him.

"I didn't want it to set in," he explained. He left the shirt to soak in the bathroom sink and hurried to find his clothes. I found myself watching his unfamiliar figure and wondering what might be in the boxers.

"Aaron, I wasn't entirely honest about why I wanted you to come up here this weekend with us," I told him.

He turned and looked at me. There was a puzzled look on his face, but it changed to a smile very quickly.

"Why, did you want another massage?" he asked. Then he did a strange thing. He dropped the shirt he was about to put on and stepped towards me... very close to me as a matter of fact. I was a little dumbfounded as he invaded my personal space. I felt the heat from his body as he stepped close enough that our bodies were indeed touching lightly. "Or was it something more than that?"

Aaron's eyes closed as he leaned towards me and our lips met. It wasn't like the kiss he had given me the night before. This time he lingered, prolonging the contact and violating the no tongue rule that Arlo had imposed the previous evening.

When we finally broke the kiss he did not withdraw his face, but spoke to me in a low and very sexy whisper. I could smell his breath and feels its impact against my skin when he asked, "Don't you think that it's my turn by now?"

"You want us to give you a massage?" I asked.

"Just you," he replied, and I felt somebody's fingers unbuttoning my shirt. They must have been Aaron's fingers. Mine were still in my pockets where I had kept them ever since entering the room... well, I kept them there until Aaron removed my shirt. Then they found their way to the waistband of his boxers... quite on their own.

Aaron smiled and kissed me again. My hands were inside his underwear and caressing the cheeks of his ass when I remembered the real purpose of my visit. But Aaron was still kissing me, and I decided that I should not speak with my mouth full of his tongue. I decided to put off my announcement until he had a chance to finish whatever it was that he had started.

When I felt my pants fall around my ankles I began to wonder if Aaron had been serious about me giving him a massage, then I felt my own boxers being lowered, so I figured, what the hell and I pushed his down too.

"You had better wash my back for me," he explained, "and my front will demand equal treatment too."

"Hmmm... just like Arlo..." I speculated.

"Exactly like Arlo," he asserted.

I grabbed him by the seven inch handle that had been jutting out ever since I had removed his boxers and led him to the bathtub. We got that cleared up right away... he was no Arlo! For one thing, he was circumcised... nowhere to tattoo my name... For another thing, his ass was heavier and less inclined to separate itself into two distinct globes. It was muscled to be sure, but it was more like my ass... which is not my best feature.

Aaron's nipples are larger than Arlo's and are pink besides. His chest is not too thick, but I enjoyed what there was of it as I lathered it. His stomach was about the same size as his chest and his navel was a definite innie. When I got around to his back, I got the same impression of straight up and down, at least until I got to his ass.

"I haven't worked out much," he told me as I rubbed the soap and my hands along his body. "I thought I would start weight training this summer."

I don't know why people feel they have to apologize for their bodies. I liked Aaron's just fine, and I guess, judging from the way he carried on later, he found mine to be all right too.

We started off by drying each other and then we adjourned to the hotel bed. Aaron let me explore his body the way I had explored his the night before... only I used my mouth to massage some of the things that would fit handily into my oral cavity. Before too long, we were lying side by side and sucking each other pretty good.

It was Aaron's idea to fuck. He wanted to fuck me, and I agreed, providing he could come up with the condoms. He had them in his massage kit. I dressed his appendage and we used some scented oil to ease the way. Then he worked me like a madman.

Before too long he withdrew and discarded the used condom. I pulled him back down onto me and kissed his neck as he tried to regain his breathing and his composure. Then I fished a condom out of his little satchel and he watched anxiously as I applied it to myself.

"I've never been fucked," he admitted.

"There's always a first time..." I told him, "...and guess what! This is yours!"

He got into some serious gulping when I said that... that is until I turned him onto his back and lifted his naked feet to my shoulders. I lavished the oil onto his hole and massaged my finger into and around his sphincter. He was enjoying the violation... that is until I replaced my finger with the tip of my penis. Then I saw his eyes widen as his anus did the same. I prodded a little until I felt him relaxing, the tip of my penis within him. I pushed gently and met resistance, but each time I pushed I met a little less. Finally, I believed he was ready.

"This is going to hurt you more than it does me," I assured him and I rammed the thing home. He didn't scream or anything, but from the way he writhed and tried to get that thing out of him, I knew that my promise had been fulfilled. Eventually he got around to enjoying it and even worked with me to make my experience a pleasurable one, but it was even money there for a while about whether he would ever speak to me again without first prefacing his remarks with something like, "You dirty bastard!"

I let myself out of the hotel room a little while later and took Aaron's virginity with me.

"Did he say he would?" Arlo asked as I rejoined him and dropped onto our bed.

I remembered then what I had gone to Aaron's room to discuss. I felt like an idiot.

"I never asked him," I admitted.

"What? You went over there at eight. It's almost ten o'clock now! What the hell did you talk about? And why is your hair wet?"

"Aaron wanted to discuss other things," I hedged.

"What other things?"

"Just other things..."

Arlo stood up from his computer. I noticed a familiar face on the screen. I noticed a few other things that looked familiar too.

"Did we get another Sam?" I asked, desperately trying to change the subject.

"Yes, Sam31... Don't try to change the subject. Why didn't you ask him?"

"It slipped my mind..."

Arlo strode to the door muttering something about not sending a boy to do a man's errand.

Two hours later I felt him slip into bed beside me. I reached over and touched him. His hair was wet.

"Did Aaron say he'd take the job?" I asked.

"Shut up," Arlo murmured and I knew the ball was back in my end of the court. I would have to ask Aaron myself in the morning. I hoped the boy could still walk.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Twelve

When I awoke, Arlo was not in the bed. He liked the country around Skittlepeak and even when the air was as cool as it was this early in the morning, he enjoyed a hike through the woods... a lot more than I did. The day was slightly overcast... a usual morning occurrence on the higher elevations, and perhaps that contributed to my mood. I felt a little depressed. I'm sure that not finding Arlo in the bed beside me contributed to my melancholy, and my remembrance of the events of the previous evening did nothing to relieve the fear that perhaps Arlo had decided that I was a lover he could not trust.

I switched on the computer and took another look at Sam31. It bothered me too. Sam did not look too happy in the picture, which was another interior shot, but not one from the same motel room where Arlo and I had defiled Oki. This Sam was definitely taken in a private home. The staircase in the background was not one you would find in any motel room... or a hotel room either for that matter. And the way Sam was not dressed, it was obvious that wherever he was, it was not a public room.

I heard a door open and close across the hall. It was Aaron's door, so I decided that now was as good a time as any to let him know that he had a summer job, if he cared to accept it. So I opened my door and was about to hail his retreating back as it walked along the corridor to the kitchen, when I realized that it was not Aaron's retreating back... it was Philippe's.

I wondered if there would be enough left of Aaron to sweep into his duffel bag. Since his coming out on Wednesday night, he had wasted no time, and was evidently now involved in an international affair as well.

I closed my door and finished getting dressed. All of a sudden, I could not bear being separated from Arlo. I pulled on my hiking shoes and slipped out through the patio door.

There was no doubt in my mind about the direction Arlo would have taken. Arlo's camera was gone and he had told me on the way up to Skittlepeak that he wanted to photograph the beaver dam and house that he had heard about from my father during reading week. I set out for Turtle Point, a flat rock jutting out of the lake about a mile beyond the boat houses. The beaver dam was in a river just beyond the point and it caused no end of problems for a cottager who had built a cabin in the only level spot he could find on his property. Unfortunately. the beavers had been there first, and their construction created a swamp around the cottage's foundation. The man tried to evict the beavers, but each time he destroyed the dam, the beavers rebuilt it. The cottage was infrequently used, while the beavers were year-round residents and obviously felt some territorial privilege.

The owner of the cottage was a lawyer up from the city. Most of the folks around Skittlepeak were rooting for the beavers.

I did not make it to the dam that morning, nor did I get to Turtle Point. As I was passing the boat house, I noticed that the door was open. Naturally, I went inside to investigate, and I found Arlo crouched in a corner, soaking wet, clutching a tarpaulin close to him and shivering both with fear and with the cold.

"What happened to you?" I asked as I stepped toward him. But instead of my presence reassuring him that he was now going to be all right, he began to sob. I pulled out my cellular phone from its case on my belt and dialed the number of the hotel. Although we were less than two hundred yards from the hotel, I realized that it would be a long distance charge. I asked for Aaron's room.

"Yah..." Aaron answered.

"Aaron, bring all of your towels and some dry clothes out to the boat house will you? And hurry... Arlo's had an accident."

Arlo watched me, miserable in his own private thoughts, and when I kneeled down beside him, I noticed that his lips were turning blue. I pulled the tarpaulin over us and pressed my body to his, trying to share my warmth with him.

"Tell me how you managed to fall in," I said.

"I didn't fall in... I was pushed..."

"Who pushed you?"

"Frank..."

"Frank?! Is he here?"

"I guess that was his motorcycle..."

"But why did he push you?"

"Because I wouldn't have sex with him..."

"He wanted you to..."

"Please, I don't want to think about it. Do you see my camera anywhere?"

I looked about us. It was dark in the boathouse, but the light coming through the door illuminated most of the walkways between the slips. I glanced about as best I could, but the camera was nowhere to be seen.

I held Arlo even closer to me and felt tears on my cheeks. They were my own. Somewhere in the distance I heard the unmistakable sound of a motorcycle starting up. Arlo heard it too and I felt him tremble.

"That son of a bitch..." I breathed in Arlo's ear. "I'm gonna kill him..."

"No, you're not..." Arlo answered and his teeth chattered when he did. "If you kill him, I lose you. I don't want to lose you, Rick. I forbid you to lay a finger on him."

Aaron arrived at that point and we lifted Arlo to his feet. We hadn't established a story to explain Arlo's accident, but we made one up as we went along, stripping him naked and toweling him down. We told Aaron that Arlo had fallen in while looking at the boats that were suspended over the slips. There was no reason to lie, but there was Arlo's self-respect to consider.

Aaron found the whole thing amusing, and we did not fault him for that. We were both sure that he would have been equally incensed had he known the real story. It was Aaron who found Arlo's camera... at the bottom of the slip into which Arlo had been pushed. We left him there to fish it out and I hurried Arlo back to our room for a hot shower and a little nap.

I cuddled up beside him and kissed him lightly on his neck as he relaxed into unconsciousness.

But I could not sleep again. I had too many thoughts rushing through my brain, and one way or another, Frank was going to pay.

That afternoon we rejoined society and discovered that Aaron had been told by Philippe that he had been hired to work the summer. Aaron did not put two and two together and figure out that the whole weekend had been a ruse to assess him for the job. He looked on it as a marvelous stroke of luck resulting from having been in the right place at the right time, and having had an early morning roll in the hay with the head chef. We did not disabuse him of that notion.

The sun warmed the place up enough for Arlo and I to play tennis again that afternoon, and we took advantage of the opportunity. It was not the same cut throat style of game that I usually play, however. I wanted Arlo to win, but whatever the reason, I still couldn't give him a game, and we ended up back in the showers after he got his retribution out of my ass. I can't say that I minded that either. I began to wonder, however, if Arlo played to lose.

We were all tired and it was a quiet trip back. Aaron slept a little in the back of the van. He had had a busy weekend and he was drained... in every way imaginable. Arlo and I held hands a little while Aaron slept and I felt his fingers explore my palm. It was a good feeling, knowing that our love could survive just about anything the world could throw at us. We felt like a couple of beavers.

When we arrived at Aaron's house, his parents were waiting for him in the front window. They watched the van pull into the driveway and that prevented us from kissing Aaron, the way we both wanted to do. He smiled his thanks for a perfect weekend and slid the side door shut. We saw him wave goodbye, then turn and race to the house to let his parents know about his job at the Skittlepeak.

It was nice to get back to our apartment... nice to drop the phony story about Arlo's accident... and a definite relief to be by ourselves and able to show Arlo that my love for him had only grown with the time we had spent together at Skittlepeak. I told him about waking up that morning and not finding him beside me. I told him how empty I had felt and how I had needed to be with him.

He kissed me hard, and there was a tear in his eye.

"Don't ever leave me alone," he whispered into my ear.

"I will always be here," I promised him. "But right now I have to go out and find something for breakfast."

I kissed him and told him I would be back in a very short time, then I retrieved Aaron's mattress, and took it back down to the basement locker. I got back into the van and headed it to the residence I had shared with Norm... and Frank.

I found Norm in his usual spot, wandering the halls... mooching. He asked me if I had found Sam32 yet, and I told him that I wasn't looking for Sam tonight... I had my sights set on Frank.

"Frank's over at Oki's... as usual," Norm told me.

"He wasn't there this morning," I remarked as I turned and headed for the door.

"Rick, what's wrong?"

I suppose it was a mistake, but I took Norm into my confidence. When I told him that Frank had assaulted Arlo, Norm took me into his room.

"Man!" he said after I had relayed the entire story... what I knew of it... to him. "That bastard just doesn't think his shit stinks!"

"What makes it even worse," I confessed, "is Arlo forbids me to lay a finger on him."

"You'd think he'd want you to kill the son of a bitch!"

"He's afraid I would. He told me that he didn't want to lose me."

"Yah... well, I can see where he's coming from. Murder can get you the death penalty in this state. Even if you beat the shit out of him, he can put you away for a minimum of two years. Yah, Arlo's got a head on his shoulders... he's right."

"I'm still gonna tell the son of a bitch what I think of him!" I said, lifting myself from Norm's unmade bed and striding to the door.

"Why don't you send him an e-mail, with copies to the Chief of Police and the Dean of the University?"

I had to admit that the idea was tempting, but I also needed to see Frank face to face. I thanked Norm for understanding, marvelled a bit about his level-headed idea, and then figured that it must have something to do with his flat top which I imagined he had gotten from too many crashes on the defensive line. I hopped back into the van and headed for Oki's.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed the motorcycle. There was a space beside it, and I pulled into it. I resisted the urge to take a tire iron to the bike, and strode to the residence door. I hammered on Oki's door and he opened it. His look of concern changed to a smile of recognition and he bowed to me. I didn't have time for niceties.

"I want to talk to Frank," I told him.

Frank came to the door shirtless and shoeless. He didn't have any socks on either. When he saw me there, he stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him.

"What do you want?"

"I want you to apologize to Arlo. Then I want you to get your sorry ass as far away from him as possible."

"And I presume that there is a threat buried in there somewhere..."

"No... a promise..."

"You don't really expect me to be worried do you, asshole? I could eat both of you for breakfast!" His index finger found my breastbone and tapped it... hard.

"I don't care what you do to me, Frank. But you stay away from Arlo, understand?"

"It's still a free country, you fuck! I can go wherever I want!"

The finger jabbed me again. Frank wanted a fight. He wanted me to start it. He wanted to get me thrown out of school. Arlo had been right. I should not have come here.

"I'm not going to fight you, Frank. There are other ways. But if you so much as talk to him again, I'm coming after you... legally..."

I turned and headed back to the van. When I was safely inside I realized that without Arlo pressing charges, Frank was right. I couldn't do a damned thing to him. I started the van and tried to settle myself. I needed to be rational.

Then I spotted the motorcycle out of the corner of my eye. It was standing on its kickstand in the middle of the parking space it inhabited. I don't know how the van managed to clip it and knock it over... but I do know how many times the left front wheel of the van rolled over the rear of the motorcycle... three... then I figured I had better get out of there.

I almost forgot to buy the groceries, I was so hot and so elated. It was a strange mixture of feelings. I had to double back to the all night grocery store and by the time I got back to the apartment it was eleven o'clock. When I got into the elevator I found Arlo there... with the mattress I had taken down to the locker before I left.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Aaron's back, Rick," he smiled a compassionate smile. "He had to leave home... and it's all Frank's fault!"

"Frank? Again?"

"Yah, he didn't just send Sam's picture to us. He put it on a gang mailing to the entire group. Aaron's father found it after he left. They confronted him with it when he got home. He told them that he was gay... not the best sort of way for it to come out, huh?"

"Jeesh! The poor kid!"

"I told Aaron he could stay with us until he moves up to Skittlepeak for the summer."

"Yes, of course..."

"But I'm gonna murder Frank..."

"No, you're not Arlo... I already took care of Frank."

"You didn't kill him did you?" Arlo looked terrified.

"Of course not! You told me I couldn't... so I didn't... But he'll be walking everywhere he goes for a while."

"Did anybody see you?"

"I don't think so..."

"Good..."

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Thirteen

I taught Aaron everything I knew in those next few weeks... both about food preparation and safe sex techniques. I wanted to make sure that he survived the summer, both for his sake and for mine. We fitted him into our lives the way we fitted him into our apartment and he soon became very comfortable with his existence. This helped him with the adjustment he had to make from a home life where hell and damnation were his only expectations, to a saner view of relationships which were based not on theology, but on love.

I don't mean to imply that Arlo and I had anything against religion. We just didn't care for the organized end of it. We were still certain that we would find a way to deserve to be sent to Hell, but we both doubted that it would be for falling in love with each other. A more likely cause for damnation might be the lies I told the police.

There was hell to pay about the motorcycle when Frank found what I had done to it. But I assured the police, who dropped by to ask me a few questions, that I had noticed that the motorcycle was already on the ground when I arrived, and if I had backed over it, it had only been because I hadn't seen it when I backed out of my parking space.

Frank, of course, could not tell the investigating officers why he believed it had been me who had done the damage, without confessing to his own earlier outrage, and I think he realized that. Nothing much happened after the original inquiry, but I did start parking the van where I could always keep an eye on it.

Both Norm and Frank were staying in town over the summer to get into shape for football season, but there was a definite chill between them. Norm liked Arlo. He came over from time to time for dinner and Arlo helped him with a couple of his computer problems. Norm appreciated Arlo. All he ever did with Frank was shower.

School finished up in April, of course and Oki moved back to Japan. We were sorry to see him go. He was a great Water Polo player, and we all enjoyed watching him... on his way to and from the pool. None of us paid too much attention to the game in progress, preferring to concentrate on the divers in the adjacent pool, whose physiques also brought a bulge to our pants that would have prohibited our use of speedos had we been there to swim.

We had a few weeks to relax before the middle of May, when Aaron would move out to Skittlepeak, and the advertising campaign would begin for the Internet cable hooks-up. We had a little time to devote to our other hobby, figuring out what the hell was going on with Sam.

The Sam pictures continued sporadically, but were now taking on a character that none of us found appealing... including, if the expression on his face was any indication, Sam.

There was no longer anything innocent about the pictures when they began to show Sam in various attitudes of submission and eventually showed him in full bondage. We wrote to Lorenzo to complain, but the only answer we got was another group mailing... this time adding three more members to the Sam Club on campus. The message in the e-mail read, "Wusses..."

We didn't think too much of that, and neither did Aaron's dad, who received his copy before we thought to advise Lorenzo against using that address anymore. We did however, have three new acquaintances, and Arlo issued the standard invitation to dinner after carefully weeding out the e-mail addresses of Aaron, Oki and Frank. He had removed mine, of course, the day after I moved in. Nor did Lorenzo use it anymore after we advised him that he had brought us together through his bulk mailing and we were eternally grateful to him for it. We were tempted to remove Jason from the list, but we figured that he had a democratic right to be there... we just hoped that he wouldn't show up... especially if he was still shacked up with Al.

Norm, Aaron, Arlo and I all drove out to dinner together in the van... Norm's truck being once again on a hoist somewhere. The size of our group was beginning to tax the resources of Luigi's banquet tables and my axles. We joked as we drove there that the Sam Club was getting large enough to be considered a fraternity. We toyed with the idea of pooling our resources and buying a house... we even came up with a name... Lambda Sam... but then we realized that the only house we could jointly afford to purchase was still attached to its wheels and would probably become airborne if a tornado ever hit the trailer park on the other side of the fairgrounds.

We had told our three newbies to wear their watches on their right wrists again for purposes of identification. One of them, Robert, had sent us back a photo of himself to assist us even further. We did not send Robert any pictures of ourselves... for one thing, we had seen where it had gotten Sam.

Robert was not difficult to identify. We knew him already. He was a third year Engineering major who had taken some classes with Arlo, but who was also on the Lacrosse team. He was part native American, and came from the north of the state. He had quiet good looks and the oriental eyes that betrayed his heritage... as if his suntan did not. We found him standing outside Luigi's, dressed in a long-sleeved crisp white shirt and euro-fit black slacks, and he smiled when he saw us approach him.

"Bill and Vuko are already here," he told us. "I recognized them by their watches."

"Vuko's the Bosnian exchange student, isn't he?" Aaron asked.

"Yah," Robert affirmed. "I can't understand what he's talking about half the time. That's why I'm waiting out here. I was afraid he'd recognize me and ask me a lot of questions. He's always asking questions."

"Well, at least the guy is trying to learn," Arlo interjected.

"Yah, but I never know what the questions are about..." Robert reiterated. "I thought I'd wait for back-up. Are you guys ready to go in?"

We decided that we were as ready as we would ever be. We invaded the place and noticed Vuko right away. His blond curly hair stood out like a sore thumb. It had not been cut in the previous four months and fell onto his shoulders in a cascade.

"I am cordially pleasant to be invited to your engagement," he said when we accosted him and told him who we were. Talking to Vuko was like conversing with a thesaurus... one with a lot of missing pages. There were gaps in his English that you could drive a truck through, but his bearing was pleasant and he had adopted the self-preservation technique of most immigrants... when in doubt, smile and say "Yes" to every question. You had a fifty-fifty chance of answering correctly, and you showed people that you wanted to be friendly.

In spite of his hair... or possibly because of it... Vuko looked how most of us pictured an Eastern European should look. Tall and thin, but not skinny, with big thick hands and long feet... something that might have been influenced by Chernobyl. In a lot of respects, he looked more foreign to our eyes than Oki had. At least Oki had had the good sense to develop an attitude... or perhaps he had brought it with him. Vuko looked naive... and probably was.

"Glad you could make it," Arlo smiled a closed mouth smile and took Vuko's hand. "I hope you like spaghetti."

Vuko smiled and said, "Yes..." But he looked like he might not have understood what Arlo was proposing that he do to the spaghetti.

We each took turns shaking Vuko's hand and smiling at him, then Robert pointed out the only other man in the place with a watch on his right wrist. We approached him en masse as he sat at the bar, and when we had him nicely surrounded, he looked up and stared at Arlo's outstretched hand.

"Hi," Arlo smiled again. "I'm Arlo." The guy shook his hand and looked a little uncertain. Then Arlo introduced the rest of us. The guy nodded at each of us in turn, but made no move to shake hands, so we didn't either. When Arlo had finished his introductions he asked if Bill was ready to join us for dinner.

"I think there's been some mistake," he said almost apologetically, "My name is Ted... well, actually it's Edward... but everybody calls me Ted."

"Then you aren't here for Sam?" Aaron asked.

"Sam who?"

"Do you always wear your watch on your right wrist?" I asked.

"Yah," Ted nodded, "I'm left handed. Who's Sam?"

"Never mind," Norm said with a sidelong glance at Robert, "we've obviously made a mistake."

Ted smiled a sheepish grin as we started to slink away... all but Vuko who assured Ted that he was bountifully pleasured to have made his acquaintance... or something like that.

We hurried outside to regroup and found a slight bookish-looking young man with his watch on his right wrist, pacing back and forth between two parked cars. He appeared to be talking to himself.

"Bill..." we said, almost to a man, but we decided that it might be a good idea to send over an emissary rather than to descend on him en masse. He looked skittish. We sent Aaron to talk to him, since Aaron possessed a friendly openness than none of us found threatening. We didn't tell Aaron that, though... we just sent him.

It didn't take Aaron long to convince Bill to join us, but I couldn't help noticing that the young man was very nervous about being out... in every sense of the word... and especially in the company of so many witnesses.

Vuko seemed to put him at his ease... either that, or he was trying to understand what he was saying. In any event, Bill sat beside Vuko at dinner that evening and the two of them seemed to lose themselves in a private conversation while the rest of us discussed the latest turn of events in the continuing saga of Sam.

"Do you suppose we should wait any longer for Jason?" Arlo asked the table eventually.

The general consensus was that we needn't wait. This was a good decision on our part. Jason had dropped out of university shortly after the dinner that had introduced him to us. We had no idea where he had gone... and neither did anyone else we asked.

The subject of the conversation, Sams bondage photos, both thrilled and disturbed us. They were well executed photographically and imaginatively staged. It was as if they had been done by someone other than the person who had photographed the first ones. This could be explained by anyone who believed that the original Sam's were indeed self-portraits. It would have been impossible for Sam to do the bondage pictures himself, Norm pointed out, so he would have had to find an accomplice.

What disturbed us was the look on Sam's face as he waited in what looked like a dungeon somewhere. He appeared to be frightened and sometimes he appeared to be in actual pain. Whoever had tied, clamped and chained Sam to the apparatus and devices that he had been tied, clamped and chained to had known what the equipment was used for. There was enough of it around too. Sam was in a well-equipped dungeon. We just wished we knew where it was.

"Do you think we should report this guy to the police?" Norm asked.

"For what?" Robert inquired. "Bad taste?"

"What about filing a missing person report?" Norm pursued.

"Sam isn't missing," Arlo complained. "We know that he was somewhere and that he was still all right on March 15th."

"How do you know that?" Robert asked.

"The date on the picture," I supplied. "Some of them show the date the picture was taken. But other than a few that showed up from New Mexico, we haven't been able to identify a location." I didn't see any need to tell the rest of them about Arlo finding the Sam room over in Maple Ridge.

"He doesn't give many hints, does he?" Norm agreed.

"That's the problem with nude pictures," Arlo remarked. "They aren't the sort of thing you do in front of national landmarks. Even if we do find a location, the trail would probably be cold by the time we got there."

"What do you mean? Go looking for Sam?" I asked.

"Yah, I would..." Arlo answered. "I'd try to help him if he was in trouble, wouldn't you?"

"Hell, yes!" Norm agreed.

The others nodded their agreement... including Vuko.

"It's probably a moot point anyway," Arlo speculated. "If we don't get any more clues than he's given us, we probably will never figure out where he is."

Again the others nodded their agreement and we concentrated on our dinner. Inexorably the conversation drifted on to other subjects. Then the evening was over and we piled back into our cars and headed back to town. Vuko went with Bill and Robert hitched a ride with us.

Arlo, Aaron and I dropped Norm and Robert off at their residence and headed home. I fixed the coffee and Arlo fired up his computer. I knew what he was going to do. He wanted to run through the pictures again and try to view them with a fresh eye. He wanted to see if there was anything he had missed. But I thought the way he went about it was pretty interesting. He sat Aaron at the computer and told him to describe each one to him. He did not view the screen himself. Instead he took notes and marked down key descriptive words that Aaron used beside the filename of each photo.

I poured the coffee and kept them refilled as the evening wore on into the small hours of the morning. It was an interesting experiment, but it did not tell us much.

Then at two thirty in the morning, my telephone rang. It was Norm.

"Did you guys mean what you said about trying to find Sam?" he asked

"Yah, Norm..." I answered and then I wondered why he would call at this time of the morning.

"Check your e-mail," Norm told me. "I just found another Sam... and I think I know where he is!"

We pulled up the picture as quickly as we could. It showed a pick up truck with the cargo area removed. In its place was a wooden platform that had been varnished to a high luster. The truck was parked in what appeared to be a bar, and there was a guy on the platform of the truck. The guy was Sam. He seemed happy enough. He was dancing without his shirt on and the clasp at the top of his pants was undone. Along one edge of the picture the date was visible as it had been in a lot of the other pictures. We couldn't believe our luck. The date was the previous day.

"Did you say that you know where Sam is?" I asked Norm.

"I know where the bar is," he affirmed. "I was there last year."

"Where is it?" I pressed.

"It's called 'The Truck Spot' and it's a bar in Miami."

"Miami? That's the one in Florida?"

"Yah, Rick... Why is there another one?"

"Yah, Norm... in Ohio."

"Well, this one's in Florida... When do we leave?"

"What do you mean?"

"I thought you said you were serious about finding Sam."

"Yah... but Miami?"

"That's where he is..."

"Maybe that's where he is... He could be gone by now."

"Yah, but he might still be there. Did you see the date on the picture?"

"We noticed it... yah..."

"It's the best lead we've got, isn't it?"

I looked at Arlo, who was still studying the computer screen.

"Norm wants to know when we leave for Florida," I told him.

Arlo looked at me and then he looked at Aaron.

"If we take turns driving, it shouldn't take more than two and a half days," he seemed to think aloud. "But we had better get started as soon as possible. Tell him to phone the others and pack a small bag... Oh, and ask him if he has a sleeping bag."

"You're serious, aren't you?" I asked.

"Yes," Arlo answered. "Sam is a friend. We have to go. We have to try to find him and make sure he's all right. We owe him a lot, Rick."

I couldn't answer that without questioning my relationship with Arlo. To question my relationship with Arlo meant that I would be questioning my commitment to him. That was not something I could do without questioning my sanity, so I relayed Arlo's instructions to Norm and rang off.

"Thanks, Rick," Arlo smiled. "You had better get some sleep. We'll have to take the van. Aaron and I will pack what we need and wake you up when the others get here."

I took my kiss from him and a peck on the cheek from Aaron and went off to bed to toss and turn for the six hours I was given before it would be time to leave for Miami.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Fourteen

At eight thirty that morning, Arlo crawled into the bed beside me, and cuddled up next to me. I had just managed to fall asleep two hours before, and I was not even into REM sleep when I felt the unmistakable outline of his form and the parts of it that jutted out so handsomely and fitted into the parts of me that were recessed enough to accommodate them.

"It's time to get up," he soothed in my ear.

"No it's not," I contradicted. "I want to sleep all morning and make love to you all afternoon."

"I'm afraid that's out of the question..." he purred, "at least until we get a little closer to Miami."

"You mean it wasn't a bad dream?"

"Afraid not... Are you angry with me?"

"I don't know, I'm not awake yet... I could swear that I smell bacon, but I know you can't cook..."

Arlo snorted.

"Aaron's cooking breakfast for everybody..."

"Everybody?"

"Yes, everybody but Frank and Jason... We thought we should use up what's in the fridge... in case we don't get back for a week or so."

"Why? Where are we going?"

"I told you already..." he complained. "Miami..."

"Yah," I grumbled, "that's what I thought you said. I was just hoping I hadn't heard you right."

"You are angry with me..."

"Yes, I am," I lied... but not convincingly, "and I am going to make you pay for this..." I turned over and kissed his nose. "You may not be able to walk by the time we hit Miami." I kissed him again.

"I'll take my chances," he grinned, and then he kissed me back. "Now haul ass, before Norm eats all the bacon."

The sight that greeted me when I stumbled out of the bedroom was a strange one indeed. There were bodies everywhere, and each of them was helping itself to a major portion of the food I had purchased in careful preparation for a series of meals to be eaten later that week. All of my bread was now toast. All of my eggs were shattered and evidently more had been purchased or brought in from other refrigerators around campus. The bacon... what there was left of it... was sitting on a plate and Norm had commandeered one of the stovetop burners to fry up what might have been a roast, but turned out to be his idea of a reasonably-sized steak. He offered to throw another one on for me, but I decided that I could make do with the remnants of the bacon and a couple of the eggs. I picked up a piece of toast that Arlo had burned earlier and munched on it as Aaron set up a plate for me and Vuko cleared a spot at the table.

The word "surreal" sprang to my mind as I sat in the familiar surroundings of my kitchen, with the unfamiliar faces of my new-found friends surrounding me. Then I realized that one face was missing. Robert did not seem to be in attendance. I was about to mention this to Arlo, when I heard the sound of the shower. I looked at Arlo.

"We thought it would be a good idea to start off fresh," he told me. "Don't worry... we're next."

When Robert emerged from the bathroom, Arlo and I slipped in and undressed each other. We climbed into the tub together and pulled the curtain shut. We did not expect that this would provide much protection. We figured that a road trip like we had planned would undoubtedly mean that there would be little privacy, and it seemed to be starting early. The bathroom was like Grand Central Station. The others invaded from time to time to shave or take a leak. Norm came in to take a look... but that was Norm for you.

We did lock the door when we finished and climbed out of the tub to dry each other off. It allowed us a few minutes of privacy and a little intimacy before we dressed and piled into the van with the rest of them. Vuko and Bill had done a good job of washing and hiding the dishes, and we left things more or less tidy when we finally turned out of the driveway and pointed the van south.

It started noisily enough, with everyone talking at once, and the excitement of our destination seeming to infect everyone in the van, but then we hit the interstate and I set the speed at sixty-five. The chatter died down and less than an hour into the trip I happened to glance into the rear view mirror and notice that there were ten upturned nostrils flaring at me. The whole damned crew was asleep. Even Arlo was nodding in his seat beside me. I wondered if I could pull over and stop without waking them. Then we could all get a little shut-eye. But as I was wondering this, Arlo snapped himself awake and readjusted himself in his seat. He smiled at me and I motioned with a jerk of my head for him to look behind. His smile turned into a grin.

"They were up all night," he explained.

"So were you..."

"I'm all right."

He reached for my hand and I gave it to him. All of a sudden the van was ours again. The others did not exist... well, all except Norm, whose snoring was impossible to ignore.

We drove through New Jersey and Pennsylvania before anybody woke up. I was in a bit of a daze myself when we reached the Washington Beltway and headed for Virginia.

Bill was the first to awaken when I swerved to miss a limousine. He figured out our location and poked Vuko. I guess he didn't want him to miss his first visit to the nation's capital. We spotted some of the more familiar landmarks, but we did not stop. We could do Washington on the way home. Our primary mission was to find Sam, and we had to cover as much distance as we could in order to get to Miami while the trail was still relatively fresh. But I couldn't help noticing the longing in Vuko's eyes as he watched Washington disappearing.

We made it to a campground in North Carolina that first day. We had already decided against cannonballing straight through. There were seven of us. We had to get away from each other at least at night. Arlo and I rented a motel room at a place across from the campground, while the others opted for a night under the stars. They had brought their sleeping bags and enough money to last a couple of weeks, if the prices in Florida weren't too high. They had no desire to use up their reserves of cash too quickly however.

Arlo had a five digit line of credit, and could easily afford to rent rooms every night. My resources were also better than the rest. I had saved a lot of money by moving in with Arlo.

We double-locked our door and turned up the air conditioning. We had plans to get sweaty and thought it might be a good idea to do it without actually perspiring. We showered and toweled each other dry in the unfamiliar bathroom, then we pulled back the quilt on the big double bed and climbed aboard... just as the first bolt of lightning ripped the sky apart. We knew it was just a matter of time and the second crack of thunder all but obliterated the pounding on our door.

Aaron snuggled in with us that night while Norm and Robert took the other bed. We were a little worried about Bill and Vuko until we looked out at midnight and noticed that the van was moving. The rain teemed down and the lightning flashed and we all noticed a head with two socked feet on either side of it silhouetted momentarily in the middle of the van.

It is said that the safest place to be in a thunderstorm is an automobile. Sometimes it is the most fun too. I promised myself that I would talk Arlo into staying in the van with me the next night. We would let these bozos have the next motel room.

In the morning everybody showered in our bathroom. I went out in my boxers to rouse Bill and Vuko and found them curled up in each other's arms as naked as the day they had been born... except that Vuko still had his socks on. That pretty much filled in the picture that had been trying to form itself in my mind since midnight. I tapped on the window and turned away as they hurriedly pulled their clothes on.

When Bill and Vuko had showered off the scent of their passion and re-emerged to join the rest of us, we had managed to re-install the center seat of the van, which had come loose with the force of their fucking. I'm sure that it had just been improperly seated... I don't think that Bill and Vuko actually dislodged it. If they had, however, we could imagine the recall notice that might have to go out when word of their exploits got around. Norm and Robert took turns dictating the memo that the automobile manufacturers might have to use, much to Bill's chagrin. Luckily for Vuko, he did not understand much of what they were saying.

I took pity on Bill and pulled into the first service center we came to. At least over breakfast, the others might leave our two lovers alone... for a while.

The restaurant was a truck stop with as many counter seats as there were booths. The counters were constructed in a u-shaped design that allowed the waitress to serve about a dozen customers grouped around an alleyway of sorts where she kept her coffee and dishes stocked and seemed to produce them as if by magic, the moment you ordered something.

We commandeered most of one of these counters, but there were already a few other people there, so we ended up scattered about... which was okay with Arlo and I.

"Oh, man!" Norm enthused when he saw the menu. "They've got grits!"

"Of course they've got grits," Aaron observed. "You're in the south... the confederacy..."

"Please spare us the Rebel Yell," Robert cautioned from the other side of Norm.

"What are grits?" Vuko inquired innocently.

"You can't actually describe grits," Arlo told him from our spot on the other side of the counter. "You have to try them... you also have to try hushpuppies... I'm afraid it's compulsory."

"I'll order for you," Bill offered when the look on Vuko's face told us that he had got about half of what Arlo had said. Bill and Vuko were sitting directly across from Arlo and I while the others congregated around the end of the counter. When Vuko's order arrived we all watched him tentatively test the terrain. The grits brought an inquisitive look. Even after he had a mouthful, it appeared that Vuko was waiting for a definitive taste to materialize. I suppose that he did not have enough English to expect the dish to have more substance... the way most English-speaking first-timers expect something more along the lines of sandpaper... but he looked like he was expecting some flavor of some sort. He swallowed the stuff with a look of disappointment and stabbed at a hushpuppy to try to determine if his taste buds had been fucked out of whack the night before. The hushpuppies at least registered a little resistance to his teeth, but they too brought a new meaning to the word "bland."

Fortunately, Bill had ordered ham and eggs to go along with the regional specialties, and when Vuko bit into them his look of concern disappeared. I imagine that he believed that he had been put on by the rest of us. It's hard for a first-timer not to believe that all the fuss about hominy grits and hushpuppies is not just an elaborate joke being perpetrated by the South to get even with the North. It is difficult to understand how anyone can develop a taste for anything that, in essence, has no flavor.

Arlo and I headed for the men's room after breakfast. When I emerged from my stall I found Arlo talking to Bill. I washed my hands and noticed in the mirror that Bill was kissing Arlo. When I finished drying my hands Bill was gone.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"It was kind of sweet," Arlo smiled from the sink where he was now washing his hands. "Bill was thanking me for inviting him to dinner the other night."

"I thought he already thanked us."

"Yah, well, after last night Bill says he feels like a man... finally."

"Which wouldn't have happened if he hadn't met Vuko..."

"No, which wouldn't have happened if he hadn't met all the rest of us. He already knew Vuko. He just never thought he would ever be able to do the things with Vuko that he wanted to do. He thought he was the only one with feelings like that. Then he got the invitation to dinner."

"So Sam is doing social work," I suggested.

"Looks like..." Arlo agreed. "He got us together, didn't he?"

"And what Sam has joined together," I paraphrased, "let no man put asunder." Then I too kissed Arlo. When we broke our kiss and opened our eyes we noted a rather large gentleman in a red plaid shirt observing us from the other end of the washroom. He appeared to be worried about what we might have in store for him. We decided to leave the place without raping him.

We made it to Florida that night, but we were still along way from Miami when we finally pulled over. We rented two motel rooms out of self defense. After passing billboards all day long advertising upcoming Alligator Farms and Poisonous Snake Pits, no one felt the urge to camp out under the stars. Aaron, Arlo and I took one room while Norm, Robert, Bill and Vuko took the other.

The day had been pleasant enough, with everybody picking on Norm. This was all right since Norm is one of the most affable people on the face of the earth. He is also one of the most loyal friends a guy can have. Arlo would find that out at the same time that Frank discovered how bad an enemy Norm could be. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The subject of the day seemed to be sports and which one was the wimpiest. It all began when Robert told Norm that he was overweight and would never be able to play a real sport like Lacrosse. Norm begged to differ. He mentioned that Football was the single most popular game on the face of the earth. To this Bill contributed that most other countries play a markedly different style of Football which was more along the lines of Lacrosse or his own personal favorite, hockey. Vuko contributed that he did not feel that American Football was actually a sport. It seemed more like a minor skirmish between opposing armies, and with his background we could imagine that he had some pretty good frames of reference. From that point on, everyone contributed opinions about other people's favorite leisure time activities. Even Aaron, who played baseball, got involved... and got a good shellacking for doing so.

Arlo and I glanced down at our tennis rackets, which we kept between our seats and decided not to get involved.

We set up Arlo's computer that night and revisited the Internet. It was as if Sam was tempting us. There was another picture, this time of Sam totally nude on another stage somewhere. There was a banner on the wall behind him advertising the Dade County Dance-off. We called the others in to see Sam40, and it was Norm who noticed the date on the banner. It advertised that the finals would be held Saturday night and the grand prize was one thousand dollars.

We figured all we had to do was find the bar.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Fifteen

We arrived at the Truck Spot shortly after two o'clock on Saturday afternoon. It was like deja vu to step in there and see the truck, now just a part of the bar furnishings. I experienced once again the feeling I had felt in the motel in Maple Ridge. The truck drew us like a magnet and we all had to touch the platform where we had seen Sam dancing.

Then Arlo ordered a round of beer and we set the computer onto the bar and asked the bartender if he recognized the picture on it. To our chagrin, the only thing the bartender recognized was the truck. He pointed out that the picture had probably been taken at night when another man tended the bar. We pointed out the date on the picture and he nodded.

"That would be one of the amateur nights, all right. Sometimes they get two or three guys who dare each other to take it all off, but I wasn't aware they were taking pictures of it. Personally, I like to be out of here by the time that shit starts... too many fights."

We showed him Sam40 too. He recognized the bar in the picture and explained about the contest. Then he gave us instructions about how to find the place. We thanked him and took our beers to the patio in the rear of the bar. It was like a back yard with a high board fence around it, but it allowed us to take the sun while we drank.

Unfortunately Norm and Robert got a little too much sun and started to challenge each other. It all started when Aaron mentioned that he doubted that he would have had the nerve to enter an amateur striptease contest the way Sam had. I agreed with Aaron that it was not something I would ever do either, but Robert said that he didn't see anything particularly difficult about it at all. Norm bet him that he wouldn't do it. Robert replied that it was a moot pint since there didn't happen to be any amateur striptease contests in progress.

"Au contraire..." Norm begged to differ. "There's one tonight, and the grand prize is a thousand dollars."

"But that one's the final," Robert reminded him. "In order to be a contestant I would have had to be in a preliminary contest, wouldn't I?" It was not really a question that Robert asked, but more along the lines of an expression of logic. Norm, however, took it as a question.

"I don't know," he answered. "Aaron, ask the bartender if he knows what the rules are, will you?"

Aaron was already standing in the door of the bar when Norm asked him to check with the bartender. He was investigating the music that had started up. It was very loud music. Instead of going to the bar though, Aaron returned to the patio.

"C'mon, guys," he urged. "You've got to see this."

We hurried to the door and looked in. There on the platform of the truck was Vuko, and he didn't have his shirt on. He was sitting on the cab of the truck and toeing out of his loafers. We watched from the doorway, afraid to invade the bar for fear of ruining the moment that Vuko had going with Bill. Bill was seated at a ringside table... his eyes were glued to Vuko, who smiled a provocative smile at him and lowered his slacks. Of course we didn't expect him to drop his boxers... so it was a bit of a shock when he did.

Vuko was an incredibly handsome young man without his clothes on. His lack of fashion sense had fooled everybody but Bill. We drew nearer to the platform, mesmerized by the performance, and we were all standing around the stage when Bill leaped up and joined Vuko. Obviously Norm and Robert weren't the only ones who had a dare going.

We watched as Bill submitted to being undressed there on the platform. Vuko removed first his shirt, then his shoes for him. Bill wore no socks and it wasn't long before he wore no pants. Vuko's already impressive endowment was swelling as he knelt in front of Bill and lowered the boxers and tossed them to Arlo.

Bill too was a bit of a surprise. Although he was not as well endowed as Vuko, there was nothing wrong with what he had dangling between his legs. He showed a fine torso too... a little sturdier than Vuko. Bill had a barrel chest with two fine protruding nipples that sort of made your mouth water.

None of us could believe that we had been overlooking these two ever since we had met them, and mostly because they dressed funny and were quiet.

The two men did a slow dance on the stage, brushing each other suggestively and stiffening not only their own penises, but ours too. The end of the music caught them locked in an embrace reminiscent of the one I had seen them in the morning before. At that time I had been more embarrassed for them, and had averted my gaze at the first glimpse of skin. As I looked at them on the stage though, I envied them for their good looks and their intimacy.

We applauded them loudly and enthusiastically as they hopped from the platform and began a search for their clothes.

Norm tapped Robert on the shoulder and smiled at him, while I went to congratulate Vuko and Bill... and find out why the hell they'd done it.

"We need the money," Bill explained. "Vuko and I have decided to live together. We'll have to buy some stuff."

"What money?" Arlo asked.

"The thousand dollar prize," Bill answered. "We figured that one of us might win it, but we don't have a chance if we don't enter."

"But that contest isn't here..." I interjected.

"No, but in order to get into that contest you have to be in one of the preliminary competitions. Nobody says you have to win. The rules only say that in order to compete you have to strip in one of the bars that is sponsoring the contest. This is one of the bars. We asked the bartender if he would qualify us and he said he would as long as we actually performed. So now, if we want to enter the contest, we can."

Norm had drifted over for the explanation. When he heard it, he turned to Robert.

"Hey, man, now's your chance!" he grinned. "If Vuko and Bill can qualify, you can too!"

"But what if I won?" Robert answered. "I'd hate to think that I took their money away from them."

"If you win, you can give them the money," Norm protested. "C'mon man, you're chickening out!"

We all looked at Robert. Admittedly, we all smiled at Robert. He did not return our smiles. But he did go to the bar and give his name to the bartender. Then he strode resolutely to the truck and climbed onto the platform. The music started again.

Instead of undressing completely, Robert revealed himself little by little and recovered the exposed parts after a few seconds of exposure. We got to see everything that he had, and what he had was beautiful, but by the end of the piece he was still fully dressed.

I looked at Arlo.

"Not on your life!" he said. "And I'd better not catch you up there either!"

Arlo and I got another couple of beers and I bought a round for the others to celebrate their recent liberation. Then we went back out to the patio together to get away from them. We sat in the shade of an umbrella and pulled our chairs together. There was nobody else there and we took the opportunity to do a little kissing. I was happy that I had been the one to discover who Arlo was... the one to be loved by him... and I guess I was happy that he too was satisfied with the arrangement.

We were just getting into our intimacy when the music started again.

"What now?" Arlo asked.

"I guess we'd better go and find out," I suggested. "It's probably Norm."

I was only half right. It was Norm and Aaron. They were both half naked and there was a crowd of people watching them. I had never pictured Aaron and Norm as being anything but incompatible, and they proved it that afternoon on the platform of the truck. But their exuberance made up for their lack of style... and in Norm's case, grace. Aaron was laughing his head off as Norm finished baring himself and then attacked Aaron. There was no hope that either of them could be considered in any way elegant, but they both showed bodies that were meant to be seen naked on a bed... but not on a stage.

The people who had gathered in the bar were from the beach across the street. They were also tourists and had no idea that the entertainment was from out of town. They thought that it was a regular thing, and they were hoping for something better. That's what got Arlo and I into trouble.

"C'mon, you guys!" Norm cajoled as he hitched his pants back on. "We all did it!"

"Norm, you may not have noticed this," I answered, "but I have made a career of not doing what you do."

"Aw, c'mon," Aaron joined. "You guys have got nothing to be ashamed of. I've seen you both naked..."

"You have?" Norm interjected. "When was this?"

"I gave them both massages," Aaron answered. "Arlo's hung like a horse!"

"Who's Arlo?" somebody from the beach crowd wanted to know.

"He is," Norm said, pointing to Arlo, who cringed beside me. "The skinny one..."

"He's not so skinny," Aaron corrected.

Arlo's eyebrows shot up, and I almost expected him to say, "Et tu, Aaron?"

"I wanna see Arlo strip," somebody in the crowd said.

This started a chant of "Arlo... Arlo..."

Somebody else shouted, "I wanna see the Indian!"

Robert's eyebrows shot up too.

"He's already danced," Norm told them. "It's Rick's and Arlo's turn now..."

"You're out of whatever's left of your mind, Norm!" I said... but I was drowned out by the shouts of "Rick and Arlo... Rick and Arlo..." which were now coming from a much larger crowd than had been there only minutes before. Evidently the volleyball game was over.

"We aren't stripping!" Arlo yelled over the chanting of the crowd. He kept yelling it too as we were both picked up bodily and carried to the platform. We tried to climb back down but we were surrounded. I glanced at the bartender, who looked a little nervous too. Then I heard the music start.

Arlo and I stood there as the crowd yelped around us. They wanted to see us naked and that was all there was to it. A mob can be an ugly thing. I guess Arlo thought so too. Anyway he turned to me and began to unbutton my shirt. It was the wierdest sensation being undressed and being watched. I mean, it wasn't like at school where you were stripping after a game and showering with a bunch of guys, some of whom you knew were looking at you. Here it was everybody, and each one of them looked like they wanted to grab something. I tossed my shirt to Aaron. I didn't want to lose it.

Arlo let me pull off his shirt too before he fumbled with my belt. I felt it loosen and my pants slipped down a little onto my ass cheeks. I leaned against the cab of the truck and slipped out of my shoes as Arlo unfastened the clasp of my pants and lowered my zipper. My pants fell about my ankles and I lifted Arlo to the cab beside me. I kissed him and took the opportunity to whisper into his ear, "I'm gonna kill Norm!"

"No!" he told me. "I want this to happen... I want it to happen with you!"

That made it easier for me to pull off his shoes and socks and then his pants. We stood in the middle of the platform and kissed a long, deep kiss before the crowd became restless and began to chant again, "Lose the shorts... Lose the shorts..."

We lost the shorts and showed them what we had, then we went back to our embrace and danced a long slow dance in the nude on the platform where Sam had revealed himself not just to a room full of men, but a whole world to boot. Secretly I wished that somebody would take our picture. It was a moment I wanted to remember... a time I would always cherish, because it was just Arlo and I, and we were being admired... Arlo for his beauty... me because everyone in the room wished that they could be me, up there on the platform with him.

They made Robert strip again, and this time they made him take it all off... at once. But Arlo and I didn't see it. We were in the cab of the truck... and nobody bothered us in there.

We rented a couple of motel rooms after we escaped from the bar. We kept Aaron with us and let the others share the other room. I was a little surprised that Arlo didn't mention anything about Aaron's centering us out in the bar. Then I recalled what he had said about wanting what had happened to happen. I cornered him in the bathroom and asked him what he had meant.

"It reminded me of when I was a kid," Arlo told me. "When we would choose sides for baseball, I was always the last one to be picked. Sometimes they would fight over who had to take me."

"But they all wanted you today," I wondered, trying to find the analogy.

"That's what made it nice," he explained. "They wanted me. I was picked first... finally... I'm sorry you had to be involved, Rick."

"I'm not," I told him. "I like it whenever we're together."

"You really mean that, don't you?"

"Of course I do..."

"That's what makes everything perfect," he said. And then he kissed me.

"Are we going to do it again tonight?" I asked when our lips parted.

"No fucking way!" he breathed into my ear... just before he bit it. "We're here looking for Sam, remember?"

"Sam who?" I asked.

"Hey guys," Aaron interupted us from the doorway. "I just picked up another Sam. We're up to 41 now."

"Where was it taken?" Arlo asked.

"Looks like it was right out here on the beach," Aaron answered.

"He must still be in town," Arlo smiled. Then he closed the door in Aaron's face.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Sixteen

The evening was a bit cooler than the day had been, but it was still very warm as south Florida has a tendency to be. Arlo and I were perspiring a little when we joined the others for dinner that night. The mood was upbeat for a number of reasons... for one thing we were all still pretty exuberant about our performances that afternoon, and for another, we fully expected to finally find Sam that night. We had found another picture of him on the beach that had been taken the day after his striptease in the bar where the Dade County Dance-off was to be held.

"What are you going to say to him?" I asked Arlo.

Arlo appeared to have been caught off guard by my question.

"I mean you can't just walk up to the guy and tell him how much you've been enjoying watching him prancing about in the nude, can you?"

"Why not?" Norm insinuated himself into our conversation.

"I'll probably ask him where he's been and why he dropped out of school," Arlo supplied. "What would you ask him?"

"I guess I'd want to know if there was anything wrong," I said.

"Why do you think there's something wrong?" Norm asked.

"Oh, nothing much Norm... the guy disappears and starts showing everything he's got to the whole world. It's pretty normal behavior."

"Where do you think all those other pictures in the newsgroups come from?" Arlo asked. "I mean, it's not like there's anything different about Sam's pictures..."

"...except that they're pictures of Sam," I reminded him.

"So?" Arlo asked. "What difference does that make? Just because we know the guy this time, it doesn't make the pictures any different."

"It does to me?"

"Don't you think that somebody knows every other one of those people you've seen on the newsgroups?" Arlo asked.

"Of course they do... but this time it's Sam!"

"Did you know him that well?" Aaron asked.

"I hardly know him at all," I confessed. "But I did talk to him a few times and we took a class together."

"So you weren't exactly friends..." Arlo commented.

"No, what about you?"

"I didn't know him at all... but I wanted to."

"Yah, same here..." Aaron contributed.

We glanced around the table and everyone concurred. Sam was not someone we knew... just someone we thought we would like to know.

"Do you suppose that's why he did it?" Aaron asked.

"Of course not!" Bill answered. "Guys like Sam can have their pick of friends."

"Can they?" Arlo asked. "What about Jason?"

"What about Jason?" I asked.

"Wouldn't you say that he was able to get just about anybody he wanted for a friend?"

"Jason doesn't want friends," I answered. "He's too much in love with himself. I don't think that Sam is at all like Jason."

"But you don't know for sure..."

"Of course I don't. What are you trying to say, Arlo?"

"I'm trying to say that Sam isn't all that different from anybody else. When I see him, I'm probably just going to ask him what's new and see if he wants to hang out with us. It's his club after all."

"Who is Jason?" Vuko asked. Aaron explained Jason and Frank and Oki to Vuko.

"Sam is probably sick of people treating him like some sort of Rock Star just because he looks like a celebrity," Arlo continued. "Didn't you guys feel any of that this afternoon? Sure it's nice to have people watching you, but when they're only concentrating on what they can see, they miss the person you really are."

Arlo was speaking from personal experience. I knew his story pretty well by now, and I knew as well that I was lucky to have found the real person that waited within Arlo, when the only thing that had attracted me to him in the first place was a tight pair of pants.

Arlo made us all think that night... and the more we thought about it, the more we realized that Arlo was probably right. Friendship goes a lot deeper than the skin. Friendships develop because of the way people are, not the way they look.

We arrived at the Dance-off early and we all registered. When we presented the confirmation certificate that our bartender friend had given each of us that afternoon we were told to reach into a fish bowl and pull out a number. This would tell when we would compete in the program. We had to wear the number at all times... until, of course, we took our clothes off. The number also entitled us to a one dollar discount at the bar. We didn't all intend to dance again, but being registered meant that we would have access to the dressing room. This was important... if we were to see Sam go in there, we wanted to be able to follow.

The club where the contest was to be was huge when compared to the Truck Spot. It had multiple stages too. The dancers would be competing for attention, and it would not be difficult to judge which one got the most.

Bill and Vuko looked a little nervous the closer they got to actually competing, but Robert seemed to take it all in stride, and we began to wonder if he was serious about his commitment to strip. Norm tended him like a hawk and made sure that he never got out of his sight.

We split up into three groups and circulated to try to see if we could find Sam. Arlo, Aaron and I were one group. We stationed ourselves by the dressing room which was near the back door of the club. Vuko and Bill took the outside and watched the entrance, while Norm and Robert bellied up to the bar and made good use of the discount.

The contest began at eight o'clock. That was when they cut off the registration. Nobody had seen Sam register. In fact, none of us had seen him at all.

The announcer called everyone together and announced that seventy-two contestants had registered. Then he read the rules. There would be three dancers at a time competing on three separate stages. They would all dance to the same music and the judges would rate both their performance and their popularity. After each number a new trio would take their place and so on until all the contestants had danced. Only then would the numbers of those still in the running be announced. Each contestant would have two minutes to take the stage after their number was called. Those who failed to show up would be disqualified and another number would be drawn. Once the rules had been read, the announcer reached into another fish bowl and pulled out the first three numbers.

Bill was one of them. Vuko kissed him for good luck and helped him onto the stage. We all kept our fingers crossed and gathered around Bill's platform to cheer him on... and hopefully influence the judges. Bill did not look around too much. He kept his sights on Vuko as he stood there waiting for the music to begin. I guess he was shutting out the crowd, psyching himself the way he had done earlier in the day as he watched Vuko strip on the platform of the truck, before leaping up there and allowing himself to be undressed.

I looked at the other dancers. One was incredibly handsome and seemed to have a following. The other was tall and skinny. I liked Bill the best of the three, but I did not expect him to place higher than second.

The music started and so did Bill. he wasted no time in squirming out of his shirt. I guess he figured that he could pick up an advantage by showing the crowd what they wanted to see right away. It was the fastest that I'd ever seen anybody get undressed. Bill was naked by the time the hunk on the next stage had managed to riggle out of his tight jeans.

This caused heads to turn and we could feel the crowd moving in our direction. It also caused the hunk to re-evaluate his strategy. He too went straight for the unveiling. The crowd, which had been flowing in our direction, now ebbed. The string bean on the third stage was still in his undershorts. He had already conceded, and saw no need to hurry.

Bill gained a momentary advantage when he turned his back and showed an ass that was perfect in every respect. He did a handstand that revealed even more and got a round of spontaneous applause for his efforts. I could feel the crowd moving back to our camp. I hoped that the judges were into gymnastics.

From there on out, I thought that the two of them were pretty well matched. It was now a toss-up. The real problem was, we would not know for another two hours.

Vuko went on in the fifth round. He was up against inferior competition, and after the audience got over his hair and his funny clothes, he quickly became their favorite. We barely had time to congratulate him however, before Arlo's number was called.

"Are you gonna do it?" I asked.

"Do you want me to?" he replied.

"No, I don't," I told him.

"Then now might be a good time for me to go to the washroom," he said. I walked away with him. Then as we got near the washroom door, I realized that I had asked him the wrong question. I stopped in my tracks and grabbed his arm.

"Do you want to do it?" I asked him.

He looked at me.

"I don't want you to do what I want you to do, Arlo. I want you to do what you want to do." I felt I wasn't explaining myself too well. "I don't want you to wake up three years from now and look at me and think that I stopped you from finding out whether you might have won. You know that I love you, but I don't want to control you. If you want to dance, I want you to dance."

Arlo leaned over and kissed me on the lips.

"I don't want to take my clothes off for anybody but you," he told me. "I've had my thrill for today... it was finding out that you respect me."

We found an empty stall and hid inside it until they announced that Arlo's number had been disqualified. They drew another number. It was mine.

"I guess that means we really are meant to be together," Arlo decided as we headed back to the toilet to wait until they disqualified me too.

In spite of my disqualification, I felt like the grand prize winner.

It was ten thirty before we found out that Vuko and Robert had made it to the next round. There were twenty-one dancers left in the running, including the guy who had beaten Bill. We waited anxiously as the judges verified the numbers that were once again tossed into the fish bowl. By ten after eleven the field had been reduced to seven, with both Robert and Vuko included.

The next round required one of the dancers to get a pass. It was the luck of the draw that would determine which dancer would go straight to the final round without competing. We held our breath as the judges drew the first three numbers.

Neither Robert nor Vuko was drawn. This gave us some breathing space. It also gave us time to sweat. Bill worked on Vuko, rubbing his shoulders to relax him. Norm worked on Robert, praising his performances so far and telling him that he had been wrong to doubt him. But Robert was looking at Vuko, and when they drew both Robert's and Vuko's numbers out of the fish bowl, Robert quietly disappeared.

None of us saw him go except Norm. We were all too busy shouting encouragement to Vuko. But when the two minutes had passed and Robert's stage remained empty, we began to wonder where he went. So did the dancer who had assumed that he would not have to dance until the final competition... the dancer who had ousted Bill.

Robert's disqualification not only meant that he would not compete against Vuko, it meant that Vuko's main competition did not have time to prepare himself. That and the allegiance the crowd felt for Vuko ensured the outcome before the music even began.

Vuko made it to the final round... and he only had to beat one other dancer to collect the prize money.

Naturally they didn't get to it right away. They had to build up to it by presenting all of the judges and announcing what it was they did for a living. It gave Vuko and the other dancer time to relax a little. Bill rubbed Vuko's feet for him and Aaron twisted his neck and shoulders a bit. I was all for massaging his cock, but Arlo did not approve the idea.

Finally, at ten minutes to midnight, the contestants took the stage for the final time. Robert rejoined us and I saw Norm place a hand on his shoulder. They exchanged a smile and a nod and from that moment on were the best of friends.

None of us felt like watching, but we knew that we had to... if only to inflate the audience for Vuko. He was tired, and it showed, but it showed in the other dancer too. He stumbled, while Vuko remained sure footed and smiling. The crowd drifted to Vuko. We could only hope that the judges were noticing.

The competition finally ended and Vuko jumped down off the stage. He pulled on his shorts and received a hug from Bill. As it turned out, it would be his only reward for the evening.

The decision of the judges was final... but it was not too popular.

We all felt cheated, of course. We all wondered if we should have competed. Robert felt the worst of all. He would always wonder if he could have beaten the other dancers if he had stayed in the competition.

Vuko took the loss better than the rest of us. He congratulated the victor and shook all of the judges' hands. A lot of people from the crowd came up to commiserate with him, and it took us until after two o'clock to get him out of there. Vuko had made a lot of friends, and they all wanted to buy him a drink.

It was as we were walking home that we remembered that we had not found Sam either.

Our disappointment turned to outrage when we finally made it back to the motel and discovered that someone had deliberately smashed the windshield of my van.

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Seventeen

Of course I was upset. I was doubly infuriated when Robert told me that he had seen Frank in the parking lot of the bar where we'd been all night. He told me that he had seen Frank because Frank was the first person I thought of when I found the van with its windshield in pieces inside.

"You met Frank?" I shouted. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"Take it easy, Rick," Arlo told me. "Robert doesn't know about what Frank did."

I realized then that I had lost my reason for a while. Of course he didn't know. Nobody knew except Arlo, Norm and I.

"I'm sorry, man," Robert apologized. "I thought he was a friend of yours. He asked if you guys were in Miami. I told him that you were inside the bar, but he said he didn't want to go in there. He said the bar was too smoky for him, so I told him where we were staying."

"What did Frank do?" Aaron asked. "I mean besides this..."

"He tried to make me do something I didn't want to do," Arlo confessed.

"He's an asshole!" Norm added, trying to relieve Arlo of any further explanation.

"He did this because you refused to do something?" Aaron wondered.

"He did this because I wrecked his bike," I clarified.

"It didn't look wrecked to me," Robert contributed.

"It was probably insured," Norm speculated. "He probably had it fixed. Are you insured, Rick?"

"Of course, I am," I answered, "to the hilt..."

"And I have Triple A," Arlo offered. "We'd better take everything out of her and have her towed somewhere where they can fix her. We're going to have to drive her home."

"It doesn't look like we'll be doing that until at least Tuesday," Aaron calculated. "I just wonder how Frank knew that we were in Miami..."

"He didn't," Norm clarified. "But he knew where Sam was."

"Did you tell him?" Robert asked.

"No, of course I didn't. He probably found the picture of Sam dancing on the truck. He was in Miami the same time I was. We were playing football. That's when I found the truck. He probably went to the same bar."

"So, when he showed up and heard about the contest, he just figured that Sam would be there the same as we did," Robert deduced.

"Probably..." Norm agreed. "Only when he recognized you, he probably figured that the rest of us were there too, so he asked."

"How did he know that Robert was with the Sam group?" Bill asked.

"I sent everybody a picture of myself when we were going to meet for dinner," Robert reminded us. "Frank was on the list that I used to send the picture. I should have used the dinner invitation message to reply, but I didn't. Anyway, I knew Frank from school. I didn't know why he didn't go to the dinner. I should have suspected something when he parked his bike, but wouldn't go in after I told him we were all there."

"Then, of course, he couldn't go in," Arlo contributed.

"And like a fool, I told him where he could find the van," Robert realized.

"It wasn't your fault," I told him. "You didn't know... I suppose there is a silver lining here, though. Frank probably feels that he's even now."

"And," Arlo added, "there's a whole lot worse places to be stranded than Miami."

Everybody agreed with that. But I couldn't help noticing that Norm still looked a little distracted, so I clapped him on the back.

"I'll get the van taken care of... Why don't you see if you can find a pizza place that's still open, big guy! It's my treat! Ask them to send over a couple of six packs too, will ya?"

"Sure thing," Norm smiled. "But what are the rest of you going to drink?"

The wrecker arrived within minutes and we consigned the van to its care. The driver knew of a safe place to store it until the Auto Glass dealer opened on Monday. We watched it go, and then Arlo and I gave Norm a hundred bucks.

"We're going down to the beach," I told him.

"And we don't want to be disturbed," Arlo added.

Norm smiled again.

"Can I have your pizza?"

"No way man! I like cold pizza!" I answered.

"You can have mine," Arlo grinned. "I've got everything I want."

Norm grinned again and headed for his room. He met Robert at the door. Robert was on his way out. He turned Norm around.

"You'd better not go in there," he said. "Bill and Vuko are fucking... I think."

"Use our room," Arlo smiled. "Just stay away from the beach."

The beach was ours that night. We strolled along it in the moonlight carrying our shoes and leaving footprints in the soggy sand.

"We probably wouldn't want to do this if we knew what was all around us," I told Arlo.

"I think it's a little far south for medical waste," he laughed.

"I was thinking more along the lines of alligators," I answered.

"Or sharks?"

"Yah, maybe..." I grinned as Arlo stepped in front of me to the landward side. "I saw a tennis court today, but it was packed."

"We could get out early in the morning..."

"This is early in the morning..."

"Well, why don't I just concede and take my consolation prize right here?"

"I was right... You do play to lose don't you?"

"It's a strategy..." That was all he would admit.

"It works for me..." I also admitted.

"So, have you ever made love on a beach?"

"No, but there's always a first time..."

"I suppose we should put our clothes down to lie on..."

"Let's try to find someplace a little drier."

We walked up towards the breakwater at the top of the beach and found a place that seemed secluded and dry. I pulled off Arlo's clothes and he pulled off mine. We covered a patch of the sand with them and then lowered ourselves to our bed. The ocean breezes were chilly, but we cuddled together and warmed each other with our love. It is surprising how much body heat can be generated by love-making.

I accepted Arlo into me and knew the perfect feeling that only two people can know when they love each other and accept each other. The moon gave us enough illumination to see each other, and I felt the same joy that night that I had felt the first night that we made love... the same joy I still feel every time that Arlo and I become intimate.

Unfortunately, that night, the feeling was to be short-lived.

All of a sudden we heard our names being called. The voice that was calling them grew louder and louder, until it was no longer possible to ignore. It was Aaron's voice.

"We told Norm we didn't want to be disturbed," I complained.

"Yah," Aaron laughed, "he told me that."

"So what are you doing here?" I asked as I pulled on my clothes.

"I'm disturbing you," Aaron giggled.

"Why are you disturbing us?" Arlo asked and there was annoyance in his voice.

"You'll have to come back to the motel..."

"Why do we have to come back to the motel?" I asked.

"You'll see..."

"Arlo, try and find a big rock will you?" I asked.

"You mean to kill him with?" Arlo inquired.

"Precisely..." I answered. "Aaron, do you realize how close to death you are right now?"

"C'mon guys... It's a surprise!" he answered.

"I hate surprises," Arlo said and I knew it was true. Arlo liked his existence to be well-ordered and predictable. I did too.

"You're gonna love this one!" Aaron enthused.

"Why? Did Frank fall off his bike?" I asked.

"Even better..."

Arlo and I looked at each other.

"Sam!" we both said it at once.

"You found Sam!" I shouted.

Aaron looked disappointed.

"He found us," he explained. "He delivered the pizza. That's why he wasn't dancing tonight... he had to work."

"Where is he?" Arlo shouted.

"The last I saw him, he was sitting on your bed," Aaron said. By then, however, we were running back to the motel.

When we got into the room everybody was there. The guest of honor looked a little uncomfortable with his predicament, but he looked as good as he ever did in any of the pictures. It was difficult to understand his discomfort being surrounded as he was by people who had been viewing him everyday on the internet. But Arlo seemed to understand.

"I guess it isn't fair to expect you to understand what's going on," he told Sam. "We've been wondering about you for a while now, but of course, you had no way of knowing that."

Sam shook his head.

"I suppose there have been a lot of people tell you that they saw your pictures..." Arlo went on.

"No," Sam answered. "I get some funny looks from some people and I figure they know, but this is the first that anybody's ever said anything. I guess this is the first time anybody really cared enough to mention it."

"We're all your friends here," Arlo smiled. "We've been trying to figure out where you went. When we saw you dancing on the truck, Norm knew you were in Miami, so we piled into Rick's van and came down to find you."

"Why?"

The question took Arlo by surprise.

"We wanted to make sure you were all right."

"You came all the way down here for that?"

"Yah, sure we did," I said. "Why are you here?"

"I live here, man..." Sam shifted on the bed and leaned back a little. "Well, it isn't my home... but it's where I live now."

"Did you quit school?" Arlo asked.

"I couldn't swing the tuition for the second semester. I had to clear out. I tried to find a job, but there wasn't anybody hiring."

"Is that why you did the pictures?" Norm asked.

"Of course... It was a little money to see me through the rest of the winter. It just wasn't enough for school. The guy kept coming back... he seemed to know whenever I needed money. When the Christmas break came he asked me if I would go west with him. I figured I would be able to eat anyway, so I went along. Then when he came back to Florida, I came with him. I've been trying to save enough money for school, but jobs are hard to come by, so I entered the Dance contest. Then I found out I had to work."

"But the Dance-off was one thousand dollars!" Aaron interjected.

"Yah, but if I went I would've been fired. I probably wouldn't have won anyway, the way my luck has been going."

"Are you living with what's his name?" Norm asked.

"Lorenzo? Yah... He lets me stay at his place."

"What I don't understand is why you never mentioned any of this to us when you were in school," I wondered.

"Why would I? I didn't know any of you."

"That's right, Rick," Arlo interjected. "Sam never saw pictures of us on the internet. He didn't know us the way we got to know him. He didn't know who was looking at him."

"Didn't Lorenzo show you our mail?" I asked.

"What mail?"

"Our e-mail..."

"No, I never saw anything from anybody."

"Then you had nothing to do with the gang mailings?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

We explained about the messages we had sent, and the way they had been answered. Then we told Sam about the liaisons that had come about because of our meetings. We also told him that we were missing a few of the pictures and would appreciate it if he could convince Lorenzo to repost them.

That was the first time we saw Sam laugh.

"I have them all on a bunch of disks he gave me. I'll see that you all get a full set. I sure could use one of those beers though."

"Shit! I forgot all about the beer and the pizza!" Norm suddenly remembered. We each grabbed a beer and found a place to sit. After that, Sam seemed to relax and enjoy the camaraderie. Along about four o'clock he asked if we would mind if he spent the night with us. We told him he would have to sleep with Aaron, but that he could probably expect a pretty good massage. He replied that he would not mind that at all. We found him a clean towel and he headed for the bathroom.

Aaron started gulping audibly.

It was quite a shock to wake up the next morning and look over in the next bed. Sam was awake, but he motioned for us not to disturb Aaron whose head rested in Sam's armpit. Sam's arm encircled Aaron and held him about the midsection.

Arlo and I pulled on our clothes quietly and went out to hunt up some breakfast.

"You know, Rick, we could probably use Sam to install cable hookups..." he mentioned as we waited for our eggs.

"I was thinking that Mom and Dad could probably use more kitchen help at Skittlepeak," I countered. "From the looks of things, Aaron and Sam have hit it off pretty well."

"Pretty well? Sam was fucking Aaron all night!"

"I wouldn't know... I was sleeping..."

"Yah, I noticed that too..."

"Well why didn't you wake me up?"

"I didn't want to embarrass Aaron."

"I don't think it's possible to embarrass Aaron. But it does seem a shame to break them up."

"Then you'll get Sam on at Skittlepeak?"

"I don't anticipate any problems at all," I said.

"Good! Maybe we should break the news to Sam."

"Sure," I agreed, "right after lunch."

SAM copyright 1997 by Ricardo Cabeza

Chapter Eighteen Epilogue

Of course we had to wait until after our tennis game to tell Sam about our plans for him. He was still at the motel with Aaron when we returned. They had showered together and Aaron was massaging Sam when we arrived. It was a treat to see Sam naked again and Arlo snapped off a few photos of the two of them. Those pictures will never make the internet, but when I looked at them a little later on I noticed something that hadn't struck me until then. Sam's tattoo was missing. He explained that he had never had one. We pointed out that we had pictures of it. He then explained that the tattoo had been lifted from the arm of another man's picture and superimposed on Sam's image.

Arlo looked crestfallen at the news.

"Does this mean," I inquired, "that I can't write my name on your..."

"Shut up!" Arlo ordered.

When we told Sam about the job that awaited him at Skittlepeak, he could not at first believe his good fortune. He and Aaron drove the pizza truck back to work to hand in his keys and his hot bag. When they got back to the motel they had his duffel bag and a sleeping bag.

While they had been gone, however, Arlo and I locked the door and finally had undisturbed sex. It was a lot better in the bed than it had been on the beach. In spite of our precautions, sand is sand, and it does manage to get into the strangest places.

We gathered the whole gang together and we all went out to dinner to celebrate, then we went back to the motel to look at the missing photos and e-mail my parents.

The answer we got back was positive, but it did have a condition attached. Mom and Dad were a little worried that the bookings for June were down. A lot of their regulars had not called. They pointed out that they might not be able to keep Sam for the whole summer. That's when Arlo's brain kicked in again. He told them not to worry and assured them that business in June would pick up very soon. Then he and Sam went into a private conference. We didn't find out what was going on until much later.

The van was repaired by Monday at two o'clock and we decided that it might be prudent to get it out of Miami... just in case Frank was still lurking about somewhere. We all headed back to Skittlepeak to introduce Sam to his new home and my parents.

We stayed for a couple of weeks helping Dad clean the place up and get it ready for the season. During the first few days, Sam and Arlo disappeared quite a bit and they never told any of us where they were going. I began to believe that Arlo might be having an affair with Sam, but each night that he returned to our bed he was hornier than I had ever known him to be.

The Sam pictures continued too. Evidently Lorenzo had a stock of them and we watched each day to see if we could find the latest. They did not come fast enough for Arlo, and everytime we found another one, he would murmur something about why couldn't that bastard hurry up!

Then, all of a sudden the bookings started to pour in for June, just as Arlo had said they would. He grinned when Mom and Dad showed him the stack of e-mail they had received almost overnight. Then he hurried me to our room and fired up his computer.

"Sam50 must have been posted," he speculated, and sure enough the file was there... and there with a vengeance... It had hit every one of the newsgroups that Lorenzo normally posted to. "Would you like to see it?" Arlo asked.

"Sure I want to see it!" I answered.

"It's a little different..." Arlo warned me.

"How do you know?" I asked. "You haven't opened it yet."

"No, but I took the pictures." He clicked on Sam50 and the machine began to decode it.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"You'll see..."

I did see too. Sam50 was a montage of photos of Sam in various uniforms of the Skittlepeak Hotel. It showed not only Sam, but several shots of the hotel itself and at the bottom there was a short message from Sam.

"I'd love to meet you this June at the Skittlepeak Hotel," the message read. "I want to make your stay as pleasant as possible." It was signed "Sam," and then there was the address of the hotel.

"Do you think it will work?" I asked stupidly.

"It already has!" Arlo beamed. "Didn't you see that stack of reservations?"

"That was from this?"

"Of course it was, Rick! Unless you've been running an advertising campaign I wasn't aware of..."

I kissed him.

"You're a genius!" I exuded.

"Yah, I know..."

"But you can't play tennis for shit!" I had to keep him in his place after all.

It is September now. Labor Day weekend is over, and in a few weeks we will be back into full swing once again. Something tells me that it will be another interesting year.

Sam and Aaron are still up at Skittlepeak. It has been the busiest season my parents have ever experienced, and they still don't know why. They are sure that it has everything to do with the internet hook-up and they are right, but they don't know why they are right.

Lot's of people arrived asking for Sam and it soon became apparent to Mom and Dad that they had a very popular employee, so they switched him to the front desk. They also found that by training him as a lifeguard and sitting him by the pool, that the pool became a very popular place.

This was all right with Arlo and I since it kept the crowds off the tennis courts whenever we went up to help out. We got up there every chance we got, and the place was really jumping. Next year we are going to set up an internet service in the hotel and provide service to the entire town. We are also going to install another tennis court.

Arlo and I have incorporated, and we hired Sam and Aaron to run the whole show while we look for other fish to fry. Aaron has patched things up at home and drops by from time to time to see his folks, but he and Sam will share a two bedroom apartment in town by the bank when school starts.

Vuko and Bill share a room in the residence and are still very much in love with each other. Vuko's English is improving by leaps and bounds and he will be able to start a full slate of classes this year... with Bill's help, of course.

The strangest alliance of all, Robert and Norm, still seems to be lasting. Norm is still on the football team and Robert still plays lacrosse and neither one of them will admit that the other one is a real athlete. They share accomodations, but not on campus, and they continue to surf the internet together in search of another Sam.

The other member of our club who played football, Frank, is now in Tokyo living with Oki and teaching English. He had to leave after a series of photographs beginning with Frank001 began to surface on the internet this past summer.

The photographs depict a liaison between Frank and a young stripper from New York City named Jason. The liaison took place in the lockeroom of the football team and was taken from a video tape that had been made by a hidden camera. The series is now up to Frank112 and shows no sign of abating.

No one will admit that they know who made the video tape, but there is a receipt in Norm Chaisson's name at the video store. Bill works at the video store and discovered the receipt during an audit that he was helping with. It shows that Norm rented a camera around the same time that the video was made.

A check of Norm's e-mail might also reveal communications between him and Jason just prior to that time. Of course, none of us has checked Norm's e-mail. We are satisfied with the self-satisfied look that comes over Norm's face every time a new Frank shows up on the newsgroups. Norm and Arlo have become real pals, even though neither of them will admit it.

The video captures are being posted by a gentleman in Miami whose name is Lorenzo. He seems to have plenty of tape to keep him going for some time to come.

Naturally, we will continue to meet at Luigi's every Wednesday night for dinner. We will catch up on whatever has been going on during the week and we'll scarf down about a ton of spaghetti.

If anything else comes up, I will keep you posted, but right now there's a funny-looking guy with a hot ass and a ten inch dick calling to me from the bedroom. If you think I'm going to hang around here when I've got that waiting for me, you've got another think coming!

Missing some of Sam? E-mail me at cmurray@adan.kingston.net