Warning:
This story contains scenes of a sexual nature between two men. If reading or possessing such material violates the law in your jurisdiction or you are under the age of 18, please leave this site and read no further.
The author retains all rights to this original story. Please do not publish ir reproduce it without explicit authorization from me.
Disclaimer: This stort is entirely fictional and any resemblances to real persons or events are purely coincidental.
This story is about the natural human desire to love the person of your choice and to find equality. There is a desire in all of us to have children and this story fictionally addresses that.
WINNING BY THE NUMBERS, Chapter 3 : Awakening
Finally it began to cool down. As it had many years in the past, the weather went from hundred degree temperatures one week to an ice storm the made the roads impassable the next. James was at my place as the storm hit. SMU was closed the next day as was the medical school. He would only have had a short walk on slippery sidewalks but my commute was beyond walking distance in good weather. I could have bicycled, but never on ice. Because of my pay, I bought groceries once a month and stayed stocked up. The Tom Thumb on Cedar Springs, about six blocks away, had their free turkey deal that year if you'd saved your receipts, and my holiday food was in the freezer. The power went out from falling trees but my heat and stove ran on gas.
I was a freak for candles and oil lamps so light was on the romantic side and the reflected light off the ice during the day made it brighter inside than it normally was. It took four days for it to melt and the busses to start running the streets again, with Thanksgiving falling right in the middle. We would both have been free for all but two days without the storm.
The bright morning after the storm hit drew us both outside. My dog had to do her business anyway, so there wasn't much choice. It turned out to be safer walking over the grassy areas with the ice crunching under your feet than trying to maneuver the slick walks and busting your ass, Lulu led the way, when she sprawled out her six pound body with her four legs spread askew on the sidewalk, we stuck to the grass and she joined us. I had her favorite tennis ball in my pocket and a Frisbee in my hand. The crisp air seemed to carry them both further than they normally flew with the same force. Retrieving them was more difficult.
I tossed the tennis ball for her from the grassy area where guys had lain days before in running shorts soaking up the sun. When she hit the frozen surface of Turtle Creek, she skidded all the way to the opposite bank and the ball kept rolling. James was hooting and hollering "hooo hooo hoo" and Lulu's eyes were bigger than I'd ever seen them. After she'd sprawl out, she'd shake herself as she stood up just like coming out of water, but only ice flew from her back.
Damn the ice! "Where are the ducks?" I asked. The creek was always full of ducks.
James pointed under the bridge and sure enough they were all bunched together under it out of the weather. I was starting to get that mechanical shiver going from the chill and the lack of fat over my skinny bod when James grabbed me a twirled me in the air. We fell and rolled in the crunchy ice a moment and the shiver started to set my teeth clattering. He hugged me tight and bit on my bottom lip, saying "We better get you back inside before you freeze, babe."
Lulu tagged along with that green tennis ball firmly in her teeth, giving each of us a growl to say "my ball, my ball" when we reached to take it. Inside the door, she disappeared and hid it somewhere. We settled into my grandma's old antique couch, sipping some brandy and staring at the space heater like it was a television.
The phones were still working. Wanda called and announced "I'm walking over to see you; I'm bored out of my skull from being trapped in this ice." Her family lived toward Austin and she'd moved to the area during college just as we had. She lived two blocks away in the same cheap rent district in another apartment owned by my landlord. As long as we'd worked together she'd been a redhead, a very attractive petite bosomy redhead. You could never be sure of a ladies natural hair color, unless maybe you compared the carpet to the drapes, as they say, and I was never going there.
Twenty minutes later she bopped in the door without even knocking, giving me that look that said "you knew I was coming, so why should I knock?" We had been naked. I had a limited amount of clothes James could fit into and he'd been there two days. He'd had a lot of his own clothes in my closet, but since he'd planned on going home over Thanksgiving and getting him mom to do his laundry, it was all packed back in his dorm room. I'm only domestic on a survival level like throwing in a couple of things with my load, but he'd always been welcome to use my washer and dryer. He was wearing one of my tanks that hung mostly between his pecs and left both his quarter sized nipples showing to the sides along with my sweats. Wanda settled back in one of the wingback chairs with her legs stretched out straight in front of her and both hands fisted together stretching down as well. She looked James up and down, wide eyed and with the curiosity that killed the cat.
"Well, who is this fine specimen, Dave?" she asked.
"Wanda, this is James. James, this is Wanda" I replied doing my best proper introduction.
"Let me hear your story guy" she inquired adding "I don?t play on your team, so don't be nervous; I'm just another nosy friend of Dave's" not assuming him to be gay or straight. I eased toward the kitchen and brought her back a glass of wine I knew she liked.
"I go to SMU" James replied trying to keep it short and sweet. I'd never mentioned him to her thinking it might be inappropriate that we met through my job or that I'd had any sexual contact with the candidates.
"I hear a little West Texas twang in your voice and you look familiar" she responded. There are fewer shy women in Texas, probably due to having all the cowboys hitting on them so much.
"Yeah, from out west of Abilene" but he didn?t say where and added "I play ball so you might have caught me on the news or in the paper if you were paying attention. I don't get covered a lot." She did that glance from him to me and back again and he spoke up saying "Dave and I met when I was a donor on your project" with a grin spreading across his face and turning bright red. Damn that's a cute blush, I thought.
She began to laugh and covered her mouth with her hand for a second. "Guys have all the luck. The women I work with are sooo clinical. There's no nudity or measurements to take and eggs are taken in a surgical procedure. I've got to talk Reed into some measurements. It would be so much fun. Karlisle is your name, right?"
"I guess you were paying attention if you remember my name" James replied.
"Actually, I'm quite a sports fan. I just don't meet many women who share my interests. Do I smell a bird cooking Dave?" It would have been hard to miss the smell of the turkey and I was surprised it took so long for Wanda to mention it, but she was distracted.
"I don?t just have the bird cooking, but all the fixings, too. I have a big hungry football player on my hands that can't get home to momma for the holiday. I have to feed him." I drug her by the hand to the kitchen and showed off my efforts. Lulu came out of hiding to follow and James fell in behind us.
"You know you have to feed me, too, now. I never grocery shop and was going home myself before the storm hit." Wanda would be staying for dinner. Just then the refrigerator started it's hum, letting us know the power was back on. I don't know the point of turning all the light switches off when the power is out, but I'd guess it was off because the lines went down during the night.
Wanda walked home with a goodie basket before the sun went down, to stay safe. We'd put a dent in that twelve pounder and she thanked me saying she'd see me Monday and nice meeting you to James. It was not to be. Another ice storm hit Sunday night. Thank god I was on salary or it would be a sorry Christmas with a shrunken paycheck coming up. The board of director's check was a miracle.
James and I spent the next few days mostly in bed. I was really getting into rimming his beautiful ass and he got so loud as I did it, I'm surprised no neighbors came to complain about the noise. The old apartment house was built in the twenties in a sort of deco style with hardwood floors and arches, and those skip trowel rough plaster walls. Before I had drapes up and a few throw rugs down it echoed inside; but I never heard any noise from my neighbors. They did something right back then. If sex burns off calories, James and I both lost weight.
The porn tapes were in my apartment because I'd had a candidate scheduled the day after the ice storm hit. Reed had bought more and there was a wider variety. We tried a few moves but what makes a great camera shot doesn't necessarily make for great sex. I'd always been more of a top and so had James. Finding out we enjoyed being on the other end of the stick was amazing. I'd get so turned on when I felt him getting close to cumming; I'd cum at the same time no matter what we were doing. I think it was happening to him too, we were just in sync.
The semester ended several days before Christmas for James and my two classes at work were done at the same time. I was so glad I choose to study viruses. Optical microscopes gave me migraine headaches. The electron microscopes used for viruses had a view screen like a television or a computer monitor. Viruses could be used to insert genes at specific points on chromosomes or to extract sections and map the code. Gene therapy to repair defects was just a theory.
We were building quite a 'library' of sperm donations with extensive portfolios that included pictures and family histories. I was going to need help working with candidates. It was secondary to my main duties doing the DNA testing and interviews. Wanda was racing past me in terms of egg collection versus sperm donations. Eggs were collected a day after an injection in a quick surgical procedure. The doctors did that part of the work and Wanda basically did screening and testing. A problem there was eggs couldn't be frozen unfertilized like sperm. They could be frozen fertilized as embryos and stored somewhat indefinitely.
Neither of us was sure where this was going. If we were selecting for gay and lesbian genes, we couldn?t morally impose those characteristics on parents desperate to have children. For the embryos to be used we would have to do a full disclosure of the facts and only work with willing couples or single women. For men, there was the possibility of using surrogate mothers. All options were very expensive and few invitro procedures were being done. It seemed we were building an embryo bank as well.
Dr. Smith retired at the end of the semester. His heart failed the day before Christmas and he never got to enjoy his retirement. He would have remained on the board of the foundation with Reed, Wanda, and I but we would need a new member in January at the first meeting. Actually, we'd need two new members because the foundation was structured in it's charter to have five members on the board so all decisions could be made by a majority. Dr. Reed was the chairman.
He did an amazing job of soliciting funds. I'd find out in January how much was in the trust fund account, but guessing from the number of times he came back smiling saying "they gave me a bundle" after meeting with potential backers that it was a large sum. I knew we were paying a hundred dollars to sperm donors and a thousand to egg donors. A lot had been paid out already. Our staff salaries and his and Smith's had mostly been paid by research grants he'd gotten. He'd gotten a lot of grants, but how he spent the money was up to him as long as he published the papers with the study results. That money was his nest egg, his personal fortune. He had a considerable income from his patient load in reproductive medicine and his salary for his teaching position. Why he drove that ugly sixty eight Volvo was beyond me. Even his apartment was in the neighborhood near Wanda and I. After my one visit there, I thought mine looked nicer.
James left two days before Smith died to be home for the Christmas break. The medical school was closed for the same period and I went home to visit my family, too. We were only sixty miles apart and arranged to meet for New Years Eve and got both his friends at home and mine together for a party that night. I got a call from Reed late on Christmas Eve about Smith's death. Oddly, I'd been named as a pall bearer and had to be back in Dallas on the afternoon of the twenty-eighth. We'd never been close or even social but the obligations imposed by the dead must be respected. I got back to moms at midnight.
I'd taken off my muddy boots and left them just inside the door when I came in. She had a fit the next morning when she saw them sitting there on her clean floor, reminding me of the boot brush on the porch that looked like a porcupine. "The porch light wasn't on and I forgot. I haven't been here in a while. I was tired and it was late. I'll clean it all up." I pleaded. She left me alone after I said all that but her frown never faded.
My cousin Mitch came by that afternoon, yeah, my first, the one I'd been as close a a brother to since we were kids. He didn't ever knock on the door but stood out in the drive by my truck all antsy and shit with his thumbs stuck in the pockets of his jeans, kicking around rocks with his boots and looking forlorn down at the ground the whole time. He'd graduated like me with a useless degree from A and M in agriculture no less, three years before and a year ahead of me. He never looked up but as I came up to him he said "Got a coldbeer man?" that West Texas way where it is just one word, not two and all slurred together.
"Sure thing Mitch, I got two cases." It was a dry county and I was a boy scout at one time, 'be prepared'.
"Throw 'em in the truck and I'll grab my ice chest. We're going down to the river" he told me. The river was the 'Texas' Colorado that flowed through family land on its way to Austin and then down to the gulf. He'd gotten married in the spring and the spouse was at home all prego and bitching about everything. She was due in a month. I never talked to her even once. He wanted me to be the best man but I wouldn't even go to the wedding. If you've been fucking a guy for twelve years and they have stolen a chunk of your soul, you'd have to be crazier than hell to show up at his wedding. I'd have fucked it up big time with my mouth after a few drinks and the wedding night would get cancelled. I loved him too much to let that happen. For the life of me, I'll never understand how a bottom guy who loves getting fucked can get married, except maybe to a guy.
"Motherfuckers around here would kill me dead if they knew I was queer. Hell, she won't want dick more than once a month anyway and I can do that just thinking about you or Johnny Ray" he told me at the time.
"Fuck Johnny Ray. He did the same thing you're doing with a girl he only polished belt buckles with once at a rodeo dance" I said. At least they had each other to keep happy back there and I was in another world in Dallas. I didn't even talk the same way at home. It was just a part of me.
We pulled up under some pecan trees that stood tall in Indian days before any of the family arrived in 1840 and walked to the waters edge. Sitting there on the bank with the sound of the water rushing over the rocks and a few coldbeers made the world right for a moment. Bass jumped and left their ripples in the still pool above the rapids and turtles basked on logs along the waters edge. Only a few weeks back, the scene was ice everywhere. But today was eighty and extra sunny below the bare branches of the trees. The winter rye grass was six inches tall and covered the ground like a carpet of green.
Mitch burst out balling like a baby and I held him in my arms until there were no more tears to shed. "I fucked up bad, Dave. I wish I could run away or die" he said.
"I tried to tell you. Everything will be all right. You get Johnny Ray and any other buddies you want, and we're going to party New Years Eve" I told him.