A Life Well-Loved

As we left his office I couldn't tell who was more crestfallen, me or Chik. Weights were such a defining facet of my existence that I couldn't imagine life without them. Chik knew that, even before a word was spoken between us, and for him that was the hardest part of hearing the doctor's words he later told me...simply knowing how lost I would feel in the absence of lifting.

When we got home I immediately put the following ad in the paper, "Weight set for sale, 1 regulation bar with collars, 326 lbs regulation metal plates and bench. Make offer."

Before the week was out I had a buyer. He was a handsome young man about Chik's age, very well-built but clearly more interested in bodybuilding than developing functional strength judging from the way he filled out his clothes.

"Damn!" he observed, "You've obviously put every one of these plates to good use! You look as big and strong as a bear!"

"Thank you, I sure tried to," I said with a smile, flattered by his assessment.

He made me a reasonable offer and the deal was done. I apologized for not helping him load his new purchase into his SUV.

"Why are you selling all this, if you don't mind me asking?" he inquired when he was done.

"My neurosurgeon," I replied, "He tells me that to continue with them will be crippling for me. I love being strong...but I love being able to walk more."

"Really! Crippling?" he asked, looking shocked.

"Really," I replied, "So learn to respect the harm those things can do you...and be VERY careful with them. And most importantly...know when it's time to put them down and pass them on to the next young buck. Otherwise you could end up like me...forty seven years old and just waiting for the day when a surgeon has to go in and reconstruct your lower back."

I saw my caution sinking in.

"Yes, sir. I certainly will...and thank you," he said, sticking out his hand.

I took it and he couldn't resist testing my grip with a mischievous grin. I laughed at his boyish curiosity and responded with only as much force as I needed to ensure that his wince was genuine. He wrung his hand in front of him when I let it go.

"I stand corrected," he acknowledged, his curiosity satisfied, "I should've said STRONGER than a bear! Thanks, mister."

"Take care, now," I said and pushed the button to lower the garage door as I saw him drive off with them.

My new life as a 'normal person' was officially underway. I knew there was no other path forward and that it was the only thing to do in Chik's best interest as well as my own, but I felt like I had just sold someone an offspring and couldn't stop the tears from welling up at the vacancy it left. I wiped my forearm across my eyes and cursed myself for my moment of emotional weakness.

That night when we turned in Chik took me in his mouth, probably to ease my devastating sense of loss.

"Fuck me, Papa," he moaned once he had me fully erect and then slid his mouth back down on my member.

"We've got work in the morning," I half-heartedly protested.

He lifted his head from my dick with a slurp and said, "We can manage it."

Probably a little too eagerly in retrospect, I reached for the lube and handed it to him. He slathered my raging hard-on in the stuff till it sounded like his hand was sucking it.

Straddling my left leg with his back to me I watched his surprisingly round, firm, lily-white butt cheeks yawn open to reveal his little pink pucker in spasms of anticipation. My cock, hard as steel by then, ached for it.

My eyes were glued to his sexy show as he reached back and slowly smeared his winking button with the dab of lube he'd squeezed into his right hand. He began to penetrate it with his reedy fingers.

"Let me," I said as I gently brushed his hand aside and worked my much thicker thumb in to prep him.

He groaned and clutched at it with his tight ring as I methodically worked it in and out of his soft warmth.

Knowing how much I loved the view when he rode me reverse cowboy, he got his feet under him between my legs while he propped himself up on my thighs. He then reached a hand back to tease me by swiping my cock head up and down in his cleft before lining me up at his hole. Next he eased back against it and allowed me to revel in the sight of his tightly spread cheeks conforming to its width.

His ass was so small that, in spite of being open wide, his cheeks still formed a slight doughnut around my glans as my drooling urethra kissed his quivering sphincter. A groan escaped him as he pressed back harder.

I took him by the hips and pulled him toward me with just enough force to see his ring stretch out and slip over my corona.

"Oh-h-h-h-h...Papa!" he whimpered with a catch in his breath.

I let him adjust to my penetration and patiently waited for him to take me deeper. My slight upward curve always challenged him in that position and, as eager as he had me for the velvety grip of his tiny chute, I didn't want him to feel any more pain than was absolutely necessary.

Before long he began his slow descent, inching my throbbing organ deeper and deeper into his tightness. He paused at about the halfway point and lifted his ass slightly, causing his hole to tug outward on my thick stalk in spite of the liberal coating of lube he'd applied to it.

"N-n-n-h-h-h-h," he whimpered again, looking as if he was working up the courage to take the rest of me in one fell swoop.

"Beautiful!" I observed in a lusty moan.

A moment later I heard him let out a guttural growl and watched as his butt slowly disappeared below my belly.

"It hurts," he said in a breathy whisper as he sat on my pubic pad, quaking ever so slightly.

"I know it does, sweetheart," I consoled him, laying a hand in the small of his back and gently rubbing him.

A few seconds later he slipped his fingers under my scrotum and hefted it up over his, using his thumb to press the length of his hard cock down into it.

"That's nice," I sighed.

"So much of you," he said as he contentedly fucked my balls, "Sometimes I worry I'm not enough."

I swelled with joy at his praise and thrilled to the feel of his chute beginning to milk me.

"Well, don't...you're everything I could want," I assured him.

With that he let my balls tumble back down between my legs and placed both hands on my thighs. He slowly lifted himself until only my cock head remained in his grip and then slowly sank back down till he was seated on me again.

"Aw-w-w-w-w, yeah...more!" I growled.

He did it again.

"More?" he playfully asked.

"Much more!" I urged him.

As he rose again I reached down to pinch my dick off and desensitize it to his reflexive clenching. I watched as he slowly established a rhythm, hating to even blink for fear of what I might miss as he brought all but the head into view from his tightly stretched opening only to swallow it whole time and again.

By the time he reached maximum intensity we were both singing so loudly I was afraid one of the neighbors might call the police, thinking they were hearing domestic abuse. As I watched him impale his slight body on me I wondered if they wouldn't be right. But nothing short of cops actually breaking down our door was going to interrupt us at that point.

The odor of ass sex, faint in the beginning, grew steadily stronger the longer and more vigorously he reamed himself on me. When it became unmistakable my animal lust took over.

His frenzy had reached a point by then that I told him to grab hold of my cock and wrapped my calloused hands around his tiny waist. With the ease you would expect of a man still used to warming his body up by hoisting more than he weighed, I began lifting him completely off my hard-on before letting him slam back down onto my pad.

I saw the veins that normally studded it bulging out in stark relief from its surface the closer he drew me to orgasm. His hole soon began gaping open as if surrendering to the punishing penetrations of my cock head and I could feel him coming on my balls in a steady drip. His moans and grunts merged into a single, sustained song of impassioned lust.

"Let go!" I roared out while lifting him up one last time.

He released my cock from his grasp as I brought him crashing down on it with only as much force as I dared in order to achieve the deepest penetration possible. I let fly with a boisterous growl as I launched a copious load up his tender, aching, cock-stuffed chute.

As it shot up into him he rested back on my belly to conform with my curve and ease the pain he'd been enduring. My spurting member flexed and throbbed in the powerful grip of his tunnel. I slid my right arm up over his chest and drew him close enough to nip at the nape of his neck while I finished coming.

When I let him go he sank back down on my still hard member and jacked himself off to come in earnest with me still inside him. He quickly erupted in a convulsive orgasm, writhing on my hard-on and putting the perfect finishing touch to what could only be described as the one of the most intense fucks we'd ever had.

"I'd be so lost without you," I sighed as the fireworks subsided.

I kissed the top of his head when he finished coming and then lifted him off my dick.

He awkwardly turned to face me, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, and collapsed onto my belly and chest. Slipping and sliding on the thin film of his ejaculate that smeared between us, he threw his arms around my neck and rammed his tongue in my mouth.

"You'll never be without me, Papa!" he assured me after releasing me from his kiss.

I threw my arms around him in return and held him tight, our love being the one constant I clung to in hopes of navigating the changes that lay ahead.

*****

The gradual decline of my body weight began immediately, but was imperceptible to the naked eye at first...a couple of pounds here, another there. I didn't really have to consciously diet to make it happen. I had always eaten in proportion to the fuel requirements of my pursuits. Once the physical exertion of the lifting was out of my life the food intake naturally diminished.

I worked with varying degrees of success to maintain the health of my back over the nine years that followed while Chik climbed the ladder of success that landed him the title of Chief Loan Officer at his bank. My body slowly shrank until I weighed barely more than 220 pounds and, while it retained some of my former muscularity in the shape of the build that remained, it had none of the imposing bulk he'd been so smitten by when we met.

As hard as I tried not to, I couldn't help occasionally worrying as I melted away that the man I'd grown to love beyond measure would feel cheated of the thing he prized most and go searching for it elsewhere. He was maturing into a dashingly handsome man who, by 2006, was sporting a beard of his own and had solidly fleshed out to nearly 160 well-distributed pounds.

He persisted in his efforts to prove my fears mere foolishness. All through those trying years that found me having to constantly reevaluate who I was and how I saw myself as a man, he constantly reassured me that he never saw me as anyone other than the man he fell in love with the night he first showed up at the Tower.

He was unfazed by the episodes when my back made it impossible for me to sexually assert myself with him as I could be depended to in previous years. By never looking back or expressing any longing for the man I was in the past, he made all the difference in me eventually coming to terms with my ever changing present and uncertain future.

In February of 2011 I had the scare of my life when I tried to get out of bed one morning only to discover that I was unable to stand on my own.

All those years later Chik bravely stepped up to rescue me. He frantically dialed the neurosurgeon's office and patiently but firmly demanded that they work me in immediately. Once he'd succeeded in that he shouldered the difficult burden of getting me up and out to his car and then rushed me there.

The surgeon was as shocked as we were by the unexpectedly severe turn of my condition. He pronounced that the drug therapy had run its course and said the time for my surgery was upon us.

Chik stayed by my side through the entire ordeal, both the five-and-a-half hour surgical procedure and the four challenging months of recuperation that followed. At one point my body weight dipped below 200 pounds during the recovery because of the appetite suppressing effect of all the pain meds, and I was in shock every time I saw my gaunt reflection.

"So what?" Chik would say with a grin as he groped my cock and balls, "It just makes all this look that much bigger."

I cursed myself through the process of learning to walk again with nearly no feeling in the bottoms of my feet from the neuropathy the doctor warned me would be a likely side effect of the surgery. How could a man who once cleaned and squatted a barbell loaded to more than 300 pounds be reduced to having to learn to walk again?

I was devastated and he knew it. We almost never went out in public as I mastered walking without my feet slapping the ground beneath me. He patiently waited for my confidence to return, never once pressing me to get out before I felt ready.

"As long as I'm with you I don't care where we are," he would assure me.

I was nearly fifty seven to his thirty seven. I knew deep down that I had to find it again if he was to have the life he deserved, and that was my main motivation. By the summer of that year my weight had rebounded to 220 pounds and, to watch me, you would never guess the concerted effort I had to put forth in order to walk without keeping a watchful eye on my feet.

Chik was thrilled to be back in circulation with me at his side. I had encouraged him for at least two months prior not to wait for me, but he wouldn't hear of it. He was perfectly content to be my rock and the crutch upon which I leaned while I slowly recovered my sure-footedness.

We'd been together sixteen years at that point and I only loved him all the more. He, of course, had proven his love for me beyond all doubt.

Our sex life was no longer the torrid affair it had been for much of our first ten years together, but who could possibly sustain that? We had settled into something far more valuable than earthshaking orgasms...faithful and loving companionship. On the occasions when we had sex it was still an electrifying soul-to-soul connection, but its frequency had markedly waned without giving either of us any cause for concern.

*****

Sometime in 2014 I began to notice a change in Chik. I think the first time I felt really alarmed was in early September when Bret and Steve invited us to one of their pool parties, which we'd never missed.

"What time you want to head over?" I asked him.

"Oh...I don't know, Papa...I'm just so tired. Would you mind if I skip this one?" he asked.

"Not a bit, honey. I'll call and tell them to look for us next time. There's no place I'd rather be than with you," I said.

My heart raced a bit in my chest, but I chalked it up to his work and let it go at that. I'm sure now that it was my biggest mistake. His episodes of fatigue gradually increased in frequency over the year that followed, but I trusted his judgment that they were nothing to be concerned about.

On Friday, June 26, 2015, seventeen days after we'd celebrated our twentieth anniversary as a couple, same-sex marriage became United States law. My parents were both gone by then, as was Chik's dad who never did come to accept our relationship.

He called his mom, though, and told her we were heading straight to City Hall to legally wed. He asked her for her blessing and to witness the ceremony. She was thrilled to grant him both.

We picked her up and she waited with us for more than two hours until the deed was finally done. Afterward Chik took us all to the most expensive restaurant in town and we dined on meals fit for royalty. When we dropped her back home she invited us in for coffee.

We accepted and, as we were leaving, she did something I never expected.

"You're officially my son-in-law, now," she said, taking my silver-bearded cheeks in her hands and pecking my lips with a kiss, "I just want you to know how grateful I am that our son landed with you after that awful ordeal with his dad. Walden might never have come to realize this before he died...but I have...and I want you to know that I believe from the bottom of my heart you're the best thing that could have happened to Chris. I couldn't be more proud of the man he's become with you by his side and I love you more than you'll ever know for the way you've cared for him."

I got a lump in my throat as I hugged her and said, "You can't imagine what it means to me to hear you say that, Mrs. Henderson."

"Mom," she corrected me.

"Mom," I complied, "And I want you to know how grateful I am to both you and your late husband for bringing Chris into this world. I'd have gone through life as a rudderless ship without him."

She kissed me again and then Chik said, "I'm sorry, Mom, but I'm so tired after today. I think I should probably go to bed. We'll call you soon."

She said she understood and I hugged her once more on our way out, telling her, "Goodnight, Mom. Sleep tight."

My ready acceptance of her new name seemed to thrill her. She was actually no more than ten years my senior, but it really touched me that she had at last welcomed me into her family so completely that she even insisted I call her Mom. I told him how happy she had made me as I drove us home and it brought a tear to his eye.

Once there and in bed, with a spark of humor that harkened back to his impish youth, Chik turned to me and said, "How about consummating our marriage with your blushing bride?"

"Are you sure?" I asked "You seem so tired."

"I'm certain," he bravely affirmed.

He orally stimulated me until he had me fully erect for our wedding dance. I led as gently as I could manage, and in missionary position...both of us gazing into each other's eyes in our passion, thrilled by the knowledge that our union was at last legally recognized.

*****

We didn't manage to reach our first wedding anniversary. By the time I finally convinced him that he had to see his doctor about the chronic fatigue his cancer had already advanced to stage four. He fought valiantly, but was gone not quite four months shy of reaching that milestone with me.

I took early retirement in hopes of helping him stage a comeback, but shortly thereafter it became obvious that he was losing the battle. Forgive me not reliving those dark days just yet. I'm still not ready. I will share that Mom and I were both at his side for what turned out to be his final lucid moments when he briefly rallied from the delirium in which he rode out.

I started to step out of the room so she could have some precious time alone with her son, but she insisted that I stay. Knowing now that I would never have had another opportunity to let him know I was still there for him, I'm forever grateful that she did.

He thanked her for her unwavering love and support and then professed his love for her in return. She assured him that her love would be with him always in an effort to still his fear of the great unknown.

He then barely managed to lay his hand on mine and weakly said, "I'm so sorry, Papa...looks like I've done it again."

"Oh...Chik...please don't feel that way," I said fighting back my tears, "you've done everything right, baby...for more than twenty years...everything, I swear. They've just gone by so fast."

Then he faintly spoke the last words he ever intended me to hear from his lips, "I wouldn't trade them for a hundred with any other man I've known."

*****

I look out on our patio from where I sit at our breakfast bar, sipping my coffee, alone, seeing the first rays of the morning sun streak through the dirty glass of the sliding door that leads out onto it. Time was when that glass would've sparkled from Chik's loving care, so dangerously transparent you might have accidentally walked through it thinking it wasn't there.