Arena Stage Ch. 02

"Have a nice wait," Gil said, with a smirk on his face, as he rose from the cushions. "When you get tired enough to want to go home, go take a look. I'm outta here until nine. If you want to stay around until I'm back and then want to go do something, the offer's still open."

I thanked him through pursed lips and then watched him saunter off up the dock and onto Water Street and over toward the bars near the Gangplank restaurant. He looked mighty fine from the back, moving like he was totally confident, in self-assured strides. I regretted more than somewhat my pledge of constancy to Mr. Masters.

I sat there for the better part of an hour, on the fan tail of the yacht, Boxoffice. I'm sure many thought that was a funny name for a ship. But it made sense for Leonard Handelsman. He'd probably paid for it from the big box-office returns of his plays on Broadway.

Then I started thinking about Mr. Masters and Handelsman. Handelsman had been so deferential back there in the meeting room at the Arena Stage, and the longer Mr. Masters had been there, the more self-assured he'd become. There was about a decade and a half between them; I couldn't imagine when they would have met. Then I noticed an album out on a table near the door into the salon. It was open, as if someone had been reviewing it out here. It wouldn't be something you'd leave out on the deck of a ship, with all of the salt-water breezes around, even though this area was covered. I got up and picked up the book and brought it back to bench seat and started to scan through the pages.

It was a scrapbook history of Handelsman's Broadway productions. And there, in the first few pages, where Handelsman started his rise to acclaim, there were playbills and photos that answered my question. Handelsman's start was the height of Mr. Masters's stage hits. The playbills and photos alike explained it. Mr. Masters had given Handelsman a leg up. So, it stood to reason that Handelsman was giving payback now. Just what a young, rising start would do for his mentor. But the photos were a bit more disturbing. They were group photos, but there, always, were Mr. Masters and Handelsman together, touching. Nothing for sure, of course, if you didn't know Mr. Masters intimately yourself. I recognized those expressions, the possessiveness of the way Mr. Masters held his arm around the young Handelsman's shoulders, the way he put his hand on Handelsman's forearm.

So, I wasn't that surprised when I heard the faint, but not unfamiliar sounds wafting up the corridor leading toward the bow on the other side of the salon.

Slowly, silently, not really wanting to do it, I entered the salon and started working my way down that corridor. Immediately after the salon, there were staterooms on either side. Two on the left. Just one at that depth on the right. No doubt the owner's stateroom. The sounds were more distinct now. They were coming from the open door beyond the stateroom on the right.

It was a small cabin. Not much more room available than for the sling suspended from an iron hook in the center of the ceiling. Handelsman was in the sling, his head pointed away from me, toward the outside wall, his legs trussed up in hoops high on the chains nearer to the door that attached the black leather sling to the hook in the ceiling. He was naked—and in great shape for a man in his forties. The soles of his feet were moving back and forth, his head was lolled over the far end of the sling, and he was moaning deeply—the way I'm sure I moaned when Mr. Masters was fucking me.

Mr. Masters was standing, between Handelsman's spread and trussed legs. The sight was as mesmerizing as it was horrifying to me. There was a good rhythm going to it. I could see Mr. Masters's butt cheeks expand and contract in rhythm to the movement of Handelsman's feet. And with each contraction of Mr. Masters's butt cheeks, representing the slide of his cock deep inside Handelsman's channel, Handelsman emitted a moan.

I turned and retraced my steps, walking smartly, but silently. And I didn't stop when I got to the fan tail. I moved on to the gangplank and crossed it and walked across the concrete apron on the quay and up a little grassy rise to where there were park benches, set inside the sidewalk on Water Street, pointed toward the yacht basin.

There were few others around, it having gotten a little nippy out as night had fallen. The lights in the rigging of the boats tied to the piers and view beyond to the Haines Point park, separating the channel from the Potomac River, and the lights of the runways to National Airport across the river should have been cheering. But I wasn't in a cheerful mood, and the lights were bleary as they reflected off the tears welling up in my eyes.

It wasn't just the betrayal. A man of Mr. Masters's importance and standing doesn't betray. He just lives, and everyone around him adjusts. And it wasn't the hypocrisy of demanding constancy from me and not exercising it himself or even the horror of what it could mean when he had unprotected sex with me and was fucking other men. It was more because of my weakness, because of my own irrational connection to him. I wasn't blinded by Mr. Masters's self-centeredness or some of the realities behind his "great man" façade. In fact, I loved him all the more for it. He was one of the great men of the theater—and he had let me into the center of his life.

I realized it was jealousy I felt. The obvious prior relationship with Handelsman. The swift and easy way they just drifted matter-of-factly back into a sexual relationship. Leaving me to cool my heels on the fan tail of that son of a bitch's yacht. I felt so, so small.

"You OK?"

I turned and looked up. It was the black giant, Gil whateverhisnamewas. Gil Johnson, I guess. He plopped down beside me and turned to me.

"What are you doing up here? Isn't it warmer down on the ship?"

"I . . . I couldn't." I was having trouble saying anything.

"They're fucking, aren't they?" He asked, obviously not the least bit surprised. "They just walked on by you and went in to Lenny's special room and started fucking, didn't they?"

"Yes." I tried not to make my answer sound desperate. But there was no way I brought that off.

"You didn't know, did you?" He continued. "You didn't know anything about Masters's and Handelsman's prior history before you came down to Washington, did you?"

"No," I squeaked. He put his arm around me then. And I let him. He was warm. And he smelled nice. I could feel the strength in his arms. And apparently something about that conveyed to him, because his next question was directly related.

"Hey. Firm shoulders and biceps. And I saw you move back in the meeting room. Dancer are you?"

"Yes, yes I am . . . or was," I said.

"Masters make you give it up?"

I didn't answer, which gave him the answer. Instead, I tried to redirect. "You move like a dancer too. You a dancer too?"

He laughed. "No, I'm a kick boxer. Reaches a similar result, but that's a whole other bag, I can assure you."

He was putting me in my place. Just like they did back in Tatesville. But I'd come a long way since then. I just let it roll over me.

"But you work for Handelsman," I said. Trying to get a little of my own back.

"Yeah he gives me my paycheck. But it's not a bit like you workin' for Masters, I can assure you of that too."

Masters was fucking Handelsman. So this big black guy was fucking Handelsman too. I was feeling weak in the knees. My body wanted him. And Mr. Masters had thrown me a curve.

He might have had me nailed right then and there, but he veered off the subject.

"You dancin' in this production?"

"No. I said. I haven't danced in a production for three years."

"Since you started workin' for Masters then?"

I didn't answer. Which, again, was an answer.

"You're hard bodied, though," at which he took the opportunity to give me a good feel here and there, "so you've been practicin'."

"Just recently," I answered. "I . . . I'm thinking of going back to it—to dancing on the stage."

"Does Masters know?"

"No." I said it softly, but he heard me.

"Do you think he'll let you go back into it?"

"I don't know."

He turned my head toward his face then, and he put his lips to mine. I let him do that, but he became more aggressive and moved to slipping his tongue in past my lips. I broke away from the kiss and turned my head to where I was looking away from him, up the channel, toward where it joined with the mouth of the Anacostia River into the wider Potomac. While he was kissing me, he'd placed one of his big paws on my basket. I didn't have to tell him that I found him attractive.

"He fucks you, doesn't he?" Gil asked softly.

"Yes," I answered. But my face was pointed away from him and the answer was caught in the wind.

"What was that?"

"Yes," I said louder and I turned back to him. I'm sure he could see the tears in my eyes.

"Whenever he wants, right?"

"Yes," I answered. But I couldn't leave it like that. "He's Creighton Masters. He's a lion of the theater."

"Big cock has he?" Gil asked. He was smiling a sloppy grin. I should have taken that as mocking, but the way he said it encouraged me not to. It was like he was chipping at ice here, trying to get me.

"No . . . yes." I was flustered. "I meant that he is a legend in the theater, and my whole life is the theater. He's big and I'm small. Insignificant. And without him, I'd be even more insignificant. But yes . . . yes, he's got a cock to match his fame."

The smile stayed in place. "I got a big cock too. A legendary cock. I'd like to fuck you."

That moment had passed. He'd had me there for a few seconds. But that was way back in the conversation. Maybe it was because he was being so cocky, so sure of himself—although, god knows, how I was reacting to his paw cupping my cock and balls gave him every reason to be sure of himself. Being cocky and sure of himself, and I'd just been brought to the brink of that by Mr. Masters back there in Handelsman's "special" cabin.

I pulled away and stood up from the bench. But my legs weren't in on the program. They didn't carry me right away. Maybe I thought Gil required some sort of explanation. Because in other circumstances . . .

"I can't. Sorry, I can't. Mr. Masters requires exclusivity."

Gil laughed. Obviously my attempt at an explanation had hit his funny bone.

"Your Mr. Masters is back there banging the wadding out of my Mr. Handelsman, and you're worried about him demanding that you be exclusively his?"

"I don't expect you to understand," I said. I was feeling better now. The spell was broken. I was passed whatever I was being tempted to do.

"What's to understand?" Gil asked in an incredulous tone.

"Mr. Masters is Mr. Masters, and I am me. It nice that you have a different arrangement with Handelsman, but that's between you and him. Now, could you just go on back to the boat? That's where you sleep, isn't it?"

"Yes," he said. "I sleep wherever I want on the boat. But I usually sleep in the master's cabin with my dick up Handelsman's ass. So, who do you think that makes the master?"

"Who signs the checks?" I asked.

He stood up now too, and I could see that what I'd said had gotten to him. But he didn't strike out. He just started walking off in that sexy lope of his, down the grassy embankment, toward the Boxoffice.

At the bottom of the incline, he turned and looked up at me. He was standing between streetlights, shadowed. I couldn't tell what expression was on his face.

"After what you've seen, you're going to sit there, waiting for Masters? In the chilly air?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Why?"

"Because he told me to."

I heard a harsh laugh, and he turned and took a step, but then stopped and turned again.

"That's a difference. Even if Lenny tells me to wait, I don't if I don't want to. But I'll tell you something else. I'm willing to wait for you. Just don't take too long."

And then he was gone, walking up the gangplank of Handelsman's yacht.

I felt relieved when Gil was back aboard the Boxoffice. It was a crazy night. I don't know what I would have done if he'd walked back up the grassy embankment and told me to follow him—that we were going to fuck.