This story is a work of complete fiction. Any resemblance to living persons or the departed, to reality is a coincidence. This story eventually includes descriptions of sex between adult males. If you are a minor, if this material is illegal where you live, or if this material offends you, please don't read it. Please donate to Nifty. Find the donation button on the Nifty web site to help you to pay your share of their expenses to provide these entertaining stories for you. Remember that authors depend on feedback for improvement and encouragement. All rights reserved.
This One Might be Different: Different-Chapter 1
I met a guy yesterday at the office. My office, that is. My name is Simon Brewster, M.D., probably the only 28 year-old single physician in Oregon with red hair. Greg came in with his partner, an obviously pregnant 34-year-old brunette woman at thirty weeks gestation. The fetal heart rate was easily heard at that stage. A small instrument made for the purpose sent out a weak ultrasound pulse and listened to the echoes from the baby's heart. The noise, amplified, made a 'whoosh' sound in the room nearly one hundred-fifty times per minute. In the next ten weeks, I figured, the baby's heart would beat another fifteen million times before birth.
I glanced up to his face and my own heart stopped for a beat or two, restarted and my face felt warm. Neither of them was looking at me fortunately, so neither saw my face nor the little jump in my under-gear. I forced my attention back to task. I didn't mess with patients or their partners. This partner might have converted a saint to a sinner with his good looks and Lord knows I never was a saint, but the thought of losing my license was only one incentive to be professional.
His name was Chris Blockwelder, a talented assembler at our local electronic plant, J and J Semiconductors. He flashed an easy grin at his partner Janie with some genuine affection. She had said they had been together for two years. This was the first day he had off work to accompany Janie to a prenatal visit.
Then the cock crowed.
"My friends teased me for my big cock in the showers in high school. That was marginally better than being razzed for having a little dick, but a trial, nevertheless. Guess the guys should have known better and looked to the long haul."
I must have looked puzzled or failed to respond.
Greg grabbed his crotch and laughed. "This big cock makes good babies too, I guess."
I tried to imagine the process, then fought to clear it from my head. I thought of garbage dumps, the Queen's jewels, turnip mash, and safely returned to task once again.
His partner slapped his arm. "Greg, you're embarrassing me."
"Janie, if he hasn't heard it, his medical education wasn't as complete as I think it was. He's seen little ones and big ones. Nature's like that, a wide variety of sizes, shapes and colors, honey."
She returned the smile and rolled her eyes. "Sorry, doc. You see what I have to live with."
I saw all right, raised an eyebrow and got out my measuring tape to measure the uterus.
I could only imagine that coupling. For some reason, I had not ever wanted to sire children. My nieces and nephews had generated quite enough noise and undirected energy for me. My urges had not flowered in the procreation line. I considered myself a masculine guy. I liked baseball and tennis, anything with balls. I just didn't fancy plunging my own dick into a vagina. So there, sue me.
Greg seemed proud of his own equipment and apparently enjoyed using it. I didn't know either of them well enough to speculate about how he felt about her other than the obvious affection one would expect as due the mother of his baby. I couldn't tell if he would be easy to live with.
The story of Greg and his partner, according to my friend Dan, was too good to be true. Somewhat alarming, his observation hit my set of man rules and ricocheted in my head in a disturbing way.
My dad had always said that if something seems too good to be true, then it probably was
That man rule, like any other pronouncement, had gathered the shine of truth with constant repetition, like agates in a rock polisher getting polished by constant collision with other agates.
Once an intense mental image enters the memory process burnished by repetition and imagination and intense pleasure, it is sometimes tough to root out.
I was a burnisher from a way back.
All the best physicians have a touch of obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Not OCD as diagnosed so often now, just the obsessive, innate care to double, sometimes triple-check life-saving or life-threatening details. Beginning in medical school. Careful docs are in demand as opposed to those that are not. Careful.
Janie Blockwelder delivered their baby boy eleven weeks later, a week past her due date. They named him Christopher James. The normal vaginal delivery wasn't complicated... from a medical view anyway. The labor lasted 10 hours and she didn't utter a peep the whole time and refused drugs and an epidural.
I couldn't quite decide whether she had no discomfort, was wary of interventions that weren't 'natural', only had minimal pain, or perhaps that she had decided that she needed to suffer, perhaps to atone for something. I had reassured her at the time that she couldn't pay me enough to give her something that would hurt her or her baby. Reassurance that went right out the window.
I knew from past experience that there was a certain cachet to being able to say at the Ladies Aid society that she had done it 'natural'...it's a bragging point for some women. Other women will tell everyone that will listen that they aren't going to be brave for anybody and cheerfully take all the painkillers and epidurals they could get. Different strokes for different folks.
Greg hung in there on several levels during labor. He stayed the whole time except for bathroom breaks and attended to her emotional needs the best he knew.
He also hung in there in the sense that while changing into scrubs in the doctor's changing rooms he displayed his tackle box. That wasn't unusual. Either the medical student, the intern, the resident or the attending took prospective dads into the medical locker room to show him where to change into scrubs when the mom was admitted in labor.
Greg whipped off his clothes in front of the empty locker that I had indicated; his shoes, socks, and jacket first. Then he ditched his shirt and pants. The grand, near-finale for me while changing my own duds was to see him remove his under-gear to flash his high-school-maligned anatomy on display for a moment while he selected the size of pant scrubs that would fit him from the stainless-steel wire racks of scrubs delivered from the laundry every day. He didn't rush to pull on the scrubs nor did he remain turned toward his locker.
He turned toward me with a shake of his head and swung one leg up on to the wooden bench between us sporting a semi-truck-sized cock swinging from side to side and said, "This is what I'm talking about."
His splendid cock hung halfway to his knee. Its length and girth were exceptional. Balls to match. His ass was perfect...not a blemish, muscular, a slim, divided bubble. I didn't say a word or gasp or exhale or sigh.
Mom taught us kids to be quiet during religious experiences.
We had large and extra-large scrubs left at that hour; the small and medium sizes taken earlier in the day wouldn't have cleared his feet or provided room for any necessary package expansion. Greg pulled on the large top and medium-large bottoms.
As it was, his under-gear had to remain off under his scrubs causing no end of attention from the nurses both male and female during the trip down the hall back to the labor room. Iron filings might have ignored the magnet compared to the glances his junk attracted.
Their professional attentions could not prevent widely dilated pupils, most gazes snapped down, glazed over, and then focused off in the distance as if suddenly recalling the serious face to the world that their professions demanded.
The pediatrician called me six hours after Chris was born. Bob (MD) was hetero, happily married, a little more OC than me even and didn't know that when I said "Hi" or "Hey Bob" on the phone, I was just hastily correcting my internal label for him which was Hetero-Bob. Even 'Het-Bob' came out close enough so I hadn't shamed myself yet.
After the mental stutter of addressing him, he told me he had just finished the official exam on Christopher and noted a thin vermilion border on the kid's upper lip.
I recognized what he was saying; the red part of the lips on a newborn, when thin enough, is an abnormal sign on the newborn examination.
A sign of maternal alcohol use during pregnancy, it is the first clue that alcohol may have affected the baby. Just the physical changes associated with the narrowed lip part and its correspondent longer distance to the nose without the brain changes is called the fetal alcohol effect. More than one medical student goes directly to a mall after this lecture and carefully studies the passers-by thinking some one of them had a mom who drank during pregnancy. Problem is, that medical student errs in not taking a measuring tape
Higher alcohol consumption during pregnancy brings the fetal alcohol syndrome, a constellation of signs which involve the newborn's brain function as well as the initial exam findings.
I told Bob that Janie had denied using alcohol during the pregnancy and that I had duly warned her of damage to her unborn child from all sorts of behaviors at the first prenatal visit including alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc. and documented the talk in her chart.
There followed the brief ob doc vs. the peds doc discussion about the topic: 'who is going to tell the parents'. Usually the ob doc wins this one. They have the rapport with the parents built up over nine months. The peds is just getting introduced to the patient and parent(s). The peds doc wants to retain referrals from the ob doc so usually defers. That's how that usually works, although the peds usually gets involved a little later since the 'patient' newborn is his or hers to manage. To recap, the ob doc informs, the peds doc manages ped doc problems.
In this case Bob's wife and Janie happened to be friends. Close friends. As it turned out, drinking buddies from college. Greg had no idea. It is a physician's duty when sorting out issues to consider the most remote of possibilities for any given problem to see if they match the facts and guide further fact-finding as needed to reach the best working diagnosis and begin therapy if available.
Naturally, I was all over it with my obsessive detective talents.
The normal, well-adjusted individual applies some common sense to risk.
An example is crossing a busy highway. If, after looking both ways on a two-way highway, one notices bumper to bumper traffic travelling at speeds in excess of fifty miles per hour in each of four lanes, one doesn't rush out to cross that highway. It is risky to do so and can result in bodily harm.
Another example is the risk to the baby associated with leaving it unattended after birth in a basket on the middle yellow line of that same highway. People tend to gasp...newly pregnant moms learning about the concept of risk do, anyway. "I would never do that! A truck might hit my baby." was the oft heard response when I presented that scenario to all my patients. I wanted to make sure they had some real idea of what risk was. Rarely did I have to explain the concept further.
I did note, however, that pregnant moms differentiated risk.
If a bad outcome rarely occurred from a certain risk, then that was, in some minds, different somehow than the bad outcome that more frequently occurred from some other risk.
The problem was that a bad outcome is a bad outcome with the same guilt, shame, anger, grief, work, and numbness for the parent(s) regardless of how likely they thought it would happen.
Janie had taken the risk. The common cause of risk-taking in this regard is alcoholism, that large collection of signs and symptoms including abuse of alcohol regardless of consequences, harm to one's self, or others, etc. It's a broad definition, broadly accepted by medical experts in this field.
By definition, Janie was an alcoholic, not because she drank so much alcohol or even so frequently. She didn't black out on weekends. She didn't have any blackouts. She wasn't jailed for inappropriate behaviors.
She qualified for the diagnosis by definition, one of whose components included deciding to take the risk of harm to another because of the urge to drink.
She and Greg were to bear some fallout.
I left the information to the first postpartum visit in the office. Greg had accompanied Janie. I welcomed them and told them I was delighted that the baby was doing well.
I mentioned that there was an issue I face regarding the baby and without assigning blame described the pediatrician's findings and reassured them that their child's future was not in doubt.
Janie cried, Greg sat quietly with a thunderous look on his face, hurting. He told me he had not known about the alcohol use. I recommended they follow-up with the pediatrician and talk to each other. They did see Het-Bob who referred them to an expert at the university in Portland and when Greg called me wanting a referral for Janie who had gone to her bed, not eating, crying constantly...I referred her to a psychiatrist in Portland who specialized in postpartum depression after seeing her and making the diagnosis, explaining her options.
I heard from a neighbor that things weren't going well.
The fall apple crop had been harvested and cold winds were beginning to replace an Indian summer in Oregon. I got a call at 3 a.m. from the sheriff's department telling me that Janie and her lady friend had been arrested for disturbing the peace in Banks, very drunk, very loud, making out in a tavern parking lot in public with a paucity of clothing. Christopher was with his dad at home. Greg had been working full-time and babysitting evenings for some time.
My jeep swung by the office in Forest Grove and as I neared the office, I saw Greg walking down the street, crying, with a bundle of blankets in his arms. Christopher was bundled up in there somewhere, no worse for the wear.
"The pickup won't start, Simon. I'm on my way to get formula for Christopher and I'm so tired and cold I..."
"Get in, Greg." Doctor's don't get to do that much hands-on humanitarian work. Sure they save lives on occasion and treat pain, worthy work indeed but contrary to popular opinion, much of the bread and butter of a physician's work is reassuring the worried well, ordering tests "just to be sure" and scheduling appointments.
I might have had an ulterior motive to this task, however. There was something about being with him and Christopher that appealed to me.
Formula, diapers, a pacifier or two along with steaks and potatoes rounding out the list...we made it back to his house, cleaned the kitchen, did laundry, had supper from the grill, drank a glass of wine and sat on the couch watching a baseball game recap when the shock came.
"I don't think she's coming back."
Greg had to tell someone and since I was sitting there, I got to listen.
"I asked her a year ago if she would like to have a threesome with another guy for fun. She went ballistic and decided that I thought she wasn't enough for me. I thought she was over-reacting to a simple idea...turns out she was already cheating on me with her friend from college. Her guilty conscience was a lightning rod, I guess. That spark transferred itself to me. Looking back, somewhere inside of her she thought she wasn't good enough for me. I don't know."
"Truth is," said Greg, "I had mansex in college. Experimented with a little bit of everything once...twice if I liked it kind of thing. I didn't fall in love with anybody, but most of them fell in love with my cock."
"Marriage for me was a way to escape all that and prove to myself that I was normal. The pregnancy almost cemented it, then boom."
"Now I don't care about proving anything. I liked cock better and had more fun liking it than being married, that's for sure. Simon, if you need to leave after hearing that, I understand."
My own shorts were pretty tight about then and I remembered that neither of them was my patient now. "Greg, I'm single for a reason."
He glanced down to my midsection then and saw the problem. He broke into a grin and whistled. "Uh, does that need to be treated, doc?"
By morning, I wanted to stay forever. We took pleasure in each other, took pleasure in being up with Christopher, took brief respite for a few hours of sleep, made scrambled eggs and bacon in our shorts, ate breakfast and each other...all before he left for work with me in charge of Christopher for the day.
The day's weather report and the sky itself was announcing snow flurries and a sudden drop in outside temps. A feeling like 'I want to stay inside by the fire and cook' came over me and all of the times my patients had described their 'nesting' times resonated in my head.
I called the office and told the secretary to cancel all my appointments that day. It was my first vacation in three years. It was my time.
I called the Sheriff's office and found that Janie was still in jail and wouldn't see a judge for two more days. I asked the deputy to relay the word that Christopher was in professional hands and that Greg was at work.
To the extent that an obstetrician and a baby that he or she delivered can bond, Christopher and I bonded. Changing diapers, preparing and giving formula, burping him, holding him, bouncing him on my knee gently and talking to him about every subject in the world...I hadn't known I had any paternal bent. I told him his dad was a stud of the highest rank not to mention a hard worker, good dad, a decent cook, and also that he'd be lucky to emulate his dad someday and find somebody nice like me someday.
Greg bounded into the house that night hungry, the weight of the world off his shoulders, a smile as wide as the world, bringing a hug and long deep kiss for me, and a deep-voiced tender word for Christopher.
I asked him if the log in his pants meant he was happy to see me and somewhere as the clothes came tumbling off both of us in the living room, he told me that was the log's precise meaning.
And then Janie walked in.
Her brother, a deputy sheriff, had talked to the judge and some internal arrangements made to let her make bail. She had headed straight for home.
Awkward described it pretty well. There wasn't much she could say, however, as she tried to scoop Christopher up to take him away. Greg told her that no judge would let her keep Christopher in view of her alcoholism and civil disorder and demonstrated capacity to let her husband give most of Christopher's care while she drank to excess.
Her face crumpled as he told her he loved her but couldn't live with her any longer and would not give up his son to her care for five minutes. He said she could have the house and any jewelry she had acquired.
The state of Oregon is not a community property state, he explained. What was hers was hers and what belonged to him was his. He kept his savings and tools and his interest in the house which she eventually bought out. He kept the pickup.
She left the house and Greg's knees buckled. I caught him before damage was done. "She's gone, Greg. We'll get through this, the three of us."
If his boss at work raised an eyebrow at receiving a note the next day signed by an obstetrician-gynecologist stating that his male employee was sick, there wasn't much she could do about it.
Any licensed physician could sign that note and I was pleased to provide the service without charge. There might have been a small payment in the line of a kiss, but no receipt was issued. I treated it as unreported income. You know, intangible benefits and all that.
That night I asked Greg if he and his son would move in with me. My house was closer to my work and his work. It was a little larger and more private. There were maid's quarters for a nanny and a large fenced back yard for Christopher to enjoy later.
"Simon, I'll move in with you. Can Christopher come too?"
The question caught me by surprise. He had just taken advantage of my asset and I wondered if I had assumed something I ought not to have. Assumed.
I told him there was room in the house and room in my heart for him and Christopher both.
"He is important to you, so he is important to me. The same giant cock that made him just fucked my ass. I delivered Christopher. I was the first human to hold him in my arms. We are connected, he and I. I really love his dad a lot. I hope he comes to see me as his other dad someday and call me his 'other dad'."
"Greg," I began, "There's something more delicate we need to sort out also. You told me once that you asked Janie if you could add a third guy for sex once and that was a negative for her. I want you to know that whatever makes you happy makes me happy.
"If you bring a 20-year-old home, just let me know in advance. We'll enjoy him together if we play safe. I'm not going to have sex with other guys without you, Greg, though and would appreciate your playing safe if you do and letting me know."
Greg looked at me for a minute and grinned. "My dad always told me to dance with the guy that brought me, Simon, but I'll remember what you said. A threesome could be hot once in a while, but since we've been a couple, I haven't thought about it."
The thought hadn't crossed my mind in the last week, that's for sure.
"Speaking of delicate, Simon," he continued, "my job as an assembler doesn't bring in the dough that being a doctor must bring in. I want to pay my way and Christopher's as well.
"I don't know if Janey will get alimony or not. She was making more than I when she got pregnant from her work as a librarian and her parents left her a small trust fund as well. Hopefully the judge won't assess alimony since I will be keeping Christopher in the best of all worlds."
I told Greg I didn't how to respond to that yet. I didn't want to make light of his question or his anxiety about the underlying issue of his being a provider. Fortunately, I knew better than to tell him sex had been known to pay the rent over much of recorded history.
The question did get me to start thinking about how we interfaced as a couple, how we solved problems, how much thought we gave to understanding each other's needs; how much give and take, how much respect we demonstrated to each other.
The neighborhood was reasonably quiet and safe. The house was located on the west-facing side of Bald Peak, a mountain range facing south and south mostly. We figured Christopher could play with drones and mountain bikes someday. The house overlooked vineyards, hazelnut orchards, fir forests, and the Coastal range of mountains just beyond which lay the Pacific Ocean, an hour and a half drive.
The master bedroom had a king-sized bed, four posters, a four-man jacuzzi, a walk-in shower with rainmaker showerheads, birch benches and bright lights. The bathroom had double sinks, lots of counter space, double medicine cabinets, high-quality mirrors, high overhead spotlights, thermal lamps, heated towel racks. Black and white predominated with red accents of rich red glass here and there. A gas fireplace in the bedroom turned on with a switch in an otherwise very real chimney.
The kitchen sported gourmet chef appliances, an overhead hood, a copper overhead loop for hanging pots and pans, two large upright freezers, two large upright refrigerators, tons of storage and counter top space, double supersized ovens, two large microwaves, a garbage disposal unit, two large dishwashers, a large appliance garage, walk-in cold pantry and a walk-in dry goods pantry.
The house also had a good-sized mud room between the back door and the rest of the house. We had both wind and solar alternative energy sources. I had spent extra for a large diesel generator and diesel supply in addition for those power outages in the winter time. We had a large propane tank which supplied our needs which lasted for six months each fill.
I had spent serious money furnishing the house, although the outside wouldn't have stood out from any of the neighbors from the front which had security fences and berms with tall hedges over which the house stood tall enough to enjoy the valleys below and the mountains in the distance. I kept my Steinway. He brought his guitar collection.
His leather collection stayed in several boxes for exactly two weeks and one Sunday afternoon I found him going over it on the living room floor. A little sheepish, he said he'd been talked into getting the hides in college for a fraternity thing, but he hadn't worn them since.
I tried to force my tachycardia to slow down. It didn't work. With a frog in my throat, I asked him if he would be willing to model the cowhides and to my surprise, he was bashful about it.
"To bring leather off successfully, one has to dress with an attitude while it's on and I'm not sure how you'll like that, Simon."
"Try me. I'm flexible. How bad can it be?"
The look he gave me should have been a clue. He marched into the bathroom and came out dressed in a leather jacket, leather cap, leather shorts, and a hole in the front from whence sprang his giant cock encased in a giant cock-ring, semi-hard. Dark glasses completed the outfit along with leather sandals. He wasn't smiling and leaned up against a wall. He had a small whip in his hand.
"Simon, front and center. Now."
I thought of the correct response, I felt it. "Yes sir!"
"Good boy. Kneel and crawl over here on your hands and knees. Head down!"
"Yes sir!"
"Lick my cock with your tongue only."
"Yes sir!"
"Now suck... He began to laugh, then his voice trailed off.
"I can't do this, Simon. It's not me, it never was. It isn't you and I don't want this kind of a relationship, not even in play."
"All right! I was beginning to wonder if my knees would recover. Taken the damn leather off and let's eat supper or you or fuck or something."