Testing Richard

Theater just might have been the most fun thing I did while in college. Acting, writing music for productions, working through rehearsals, all of it was fun to me.

The spring of my senior year we did the Lion in Winter. I had just done the lead in the last production, so I was rather surprised when the head of the drama department approached me and asked if I’d consider taking the part as Richard in the play. I was flattered and told him so. Why me, I asked. I knew immediately the answers he gave me weren’t the real reason. I listened and wondered. Since he and I played tennis most everyday throughout the year, when he finished I asked him for the real reason.

"Richard is gay," he muttered, "You’re probably the only one who will take the part."

I took the part.

Having done three years in the Army right after high school, I was an older college student by age standards for that day. Three years doesn’t sound like much difference now, but then it did. I wasn’t involved on campus very much considering that I was working two night jobs and carrying a full course load. The contact I had with other students was pretty much limited to the classroom and play rehearsals.

After reading the play I began to construct a character profile for Richard built around a brutal personality. As rehearsals moved forward, I worked on Richard’s brutality, his aggressiveness, his desire to create an intimidating persona. I didn’t tell anyone but to develop Richard, I used the image of a small college football player who never got a scholarship offer to a major university. Pompous bluster ruled the day for Richard. It worked for me, and the director liked the Richard she saw.

All of it was designed to carry the character within the play until the fateful lines from Richard’s brother that identified Richard as a man who "likes to play with boys."

My interaction with other cast members and production staff was rather limited, but fun nonetheless. I knew most of them only casually, but I liked them. I could tell that Richard’s sexuality was a question for some of them in so far as how it would all wash out and how was it that I was able to play a gay man and whether or not my comfort with playing a gay man might be because I was myself gay. No one asked, but they wondered. No collection of people in a small southern town wouldn’t.

No one knew me well enough to ask though. Or at least they didn’t, until Beth.

Beth was one of the born again Christians that felt the drama department should praise the lord, her Lord. She was as much an enigma to me as I was to her, but it was Beth who had the courage to carry the question straight to me after a late rehearsal one night.

She and I sat alone in front of a long mirror pulling off make-up after a mock dress rehearsal. We didn’t speak, there seemed to be no topic we might hold in common.

Out of the blue, Beth asked, "John, may I ask you something?"

"Sure," I told her, expecting an invitation to next Sunday’s prayer service.

"Are you gay?" she asked directly, turning to me for my reaction.

I held her gaze through the mirror before answering, "I’ve been happy most of life, yeah."

"I mean, are you a homosexual?" she went on not missing a beat.

I turned to her then and gathered a response.

"Beth," I began, "I’ll be honest with you. It’s sometimes hard to know how to answer that question. If someone asks me that hoping that I will tell them I’m straight so they can think I’m okay, then if I say I’m straight, then by inference I’ve slammed gay people. So I don’t answer the question for those people out of respect for gay people.

"Are you one of those people?" I asked her.

"The Bible says that homosexuality is wrong," she answered.

"Okay, Beth, I see," I told her, "Then I won’t answer your question."

"But homosexuality is wrong," she went on, assuming I was gay, "And it’s not natural."

"Not natural?" I asked.

"Yes," she said with surprising candor, "A man’s penis belongs in a woman’s vagina, not a man’s anus."

The smile on my face must have cracked my make-up. "You mean a man’s cock should fuck a woman’s pussy, not a man’s ass?" I asked her for clarification and fun.

She hardly blushed and it surprised me.

"Yes," was all she said.

"How is that more natural?" I asked her.

"In many ways," she went on quickly, "One evidence is simply that it feels better, feels more right with the way things should be."

"How should I know?" I pressed her, "How should I know you could be any better or natural than any man I might meet?"

"Because in the name of Jesus I can show you," she said pulling her t-shirt over her head, "In the name of Jesus I can save you as the shepherd saves the one lost sheep."

"Praise Jesus, Allah, and Jehovah," I murmured as I watched her unzip her pants.

Beth stood naked before me by the grace of some unforeseen god, I knew that much. Whether it be by the grace of the God of Ignorance, I didn’t know, or by the grace of the God of Narrowmindedness, I hadn’t a clue. But no matter, now Beth stood in front of me naked and looking quite nice.

"Can a man look like this?" she asked.

"No way," I agreed.

"Can a man’s breasts rise like this and have the nipples get this big?" she asked cupping her breasts and tweaking her nipples.

"Never," I agreed.

"Can a man have a womanly mound like this?" she asked running her fingers through her untrimmed pubic hair, "Can a man have a slit for another man like mine?"

"Biologically impossible," I agreed.

"Join me in my nakedness, John," Beth told me without a hint of a smile, "And let me share with you the glories of a woman’s body. Brother Grimes showed me the way, yes, and I can show you. You don’t need other men, John, not with a good woman around."

Bless you, Brother Grimes, whoever the fuck you are, I said to myself as I pulled off my clothes. Beth’s eyes locked on my erection the moment my jeans hit the floor.

I see your instincts are normal even if your lifestyle is sinful," she told me in a sermon-drenched voice.

"That’s me," I admitted, "Pure sin, yep. I’ve been a sinner all my life."

We all have," she said as she settled back into an office chair slowly raising her legs. "We all came from here," she said running her finger lightly over her pussy, "We all came out of here and it’s the men who want to go back inside. That’s just natural."

I hadn’t the faintest idea what the fuck she was talking about but her pussy was obviously wet and excited. Her lips were thick and swollen, shining in the dim light from the hall.

"I see from your hard penis that your body knows what it needs," she said simply, an almost clinical observation. "Would you like to put it inside me in the name of the Father?" she asked with a hooded-eye smile.

I moved up closer and began to rub my cock up and down her pussy. She moaned as I quietly chanted, "In the name of the Patriarch, Bob Dylan, Mother Jones magazine, and Jerry Garcia, I christen my penis, the rod of my sin, in a true woman of salvation."

"Just shut-up and put it in," she murmured.

So I did. I began to fuck the sweet Jesus out of Beth right there in the office chair. On about the third stroke the damned office chair began to roll around the room, but rather than stop, I just put my hands on the chair arms, capturing Beth’s legs on my arms, and followed the friggin chair around the room.

"Isn’t this good?" Beth asked between gasps, "Isn’t this better than a man?"

"I don’t know," I told her and kept on fucking.

"But it is good," she said haltingly, "It is good, I can feel me about to have a Christian orgasm, yes, I can."

I just kept on fucking not caring at all what a Christian orgasm was.

"Saint Peter forgive me!" she shouted and came in one glorious hoot of glory.

My orgasm followed closely. Why not, I wondered to myself, the missionary position is the only approved in her user’s manual. I filled her blessed pussy with all the cum my body had to offer, Praise Jesus.

We both wilted, me onto the floor in front of her.

"John," she smiled down to me, "Wasn’t it better than a man?"

"I don’t know," I told her again.

"But, John," she began.

cut her off with a wave of my hand.

"Beth," told her, "I’ve never been with a man so I don’t know if you’re better."

Beth drew her knees together and clutched the crucifix on the chain around her neck.

"But," I smiled, "You do have a very hot pussy, Praise Allah and David and B.B. King."