Hardly Blackmail

New York City, 1898

I had only made it as far as the wide mosaic-decorated corridor from the dressing rooms to the baths in the Hells Kitchen Turkish bath when the two men caught up with me. This was as much a male bordello as a Turkish bath, so there was no impediment to them having their way with me there on a bench against the wall. It hadn't been established whether I agreed to this, other than I had been giving the eye back to them in the locker room and posing in the nude for their assessment. But I would have said yes if they'd given me the chance. As it was, all of us thinking of this as a forced encounter made it more arousing for us. Other men passed by while I was being held down, slapped around a bit, and fucked, and they'd just pause to ogle before moving on.

I had let the two flirt with me--and talk suggestively and touch me--in the dressing room as we all were stripping down to go to the baths. I didn't have anything more than a water bowl, pitcher, and cloth for cleanliness in the nearby lodging house where I stayed, so a weekly visit to one of the Turkish baths was in order. This was one that men went to for more than a bath. That's why I had come here too.

They were both Italians who worked high in the new skyscrapers, twenty stories or more, being constructed around Central Park. Neither spoke much English, but the language of men's stares and hands were usually sufficient at these baths. Here the unspoken rule was that if you let them touch you, you'd let them fuck you. Wanting to be fucked was the main reason for coming to public baths like this one. Letting two studs like these have me without explicit permission put me in high heat.

They were both handsome, not much older than my twenty-one, hard-bodied, open and boisterous, all smiles and touching in the dressing room. As we stripped and took up our towels it was obvious that they were hard for it too.

I flirted with them, intending to give way to pleasure sometime during the evening, but not necessarily with these two. I'd take my time and make my choices. I knew I had the looks and body to be choosy. When I strutted out of the dressing room and down the wide corridor toward the baths, they followed. Then, when I realized they were zeroing in on me, I moved faster and they gave chase. They caught me easily. There was a brief struggle and a bit of slapping around and holding down and showing that they were stronger than me, and I surrendered and let both of them have their way with me. They had beautiful, hard bodies. They were boisterous and exuberant. They were young and hard. As we struggled they went increasing into impressive erections. So did I.

They pushed me over onto my back on a bench against the wall. One spread my legs and buried his face between my buttocks cheeks, while the other was at my head, my head arching over the end of the bench, with my mouth at the perfect angle for him to slide into my throat. Once in, he grasped my wrists in a powerful grip and kept me from opposing fucking my throat. At the other end, the other muscular Italian wrapped arms around my thighs and feasted on my ass. His tongue was replaced with a searching, opening finger--and then another and another. I writhed in their grip, but it was more from ecstasy than from any sense of opposition. I had come to the baths to be fucked. It was the most excitement I got in life.

I panted and moaned from the hard cock sliding in and out of my throat and the fingers penetrating and spreading my ass channel.

When the Italian below me had opened me up to his satisfaction, he stood, grasped my ankles and wishboned my legs. He moved into position below me and then, with a slow, shallow penetration, followed by a strong upward thrust, he was inside me, fucking me with vigor. I cried out, but more in passion than in violation. Other men passed us, coming and going to the baths, but this was a bordello, they did no more than paused to watch three beautiful bodies in copulation.

The two set up a rhythm of the taking and I settled down. I turned my head at the sensation that not all of the voyeurs were only pausing to watch. In this I was correct. Across the hallway, sitting on a facing bench against the other wall, I saw an elderly man. He was rich-looking man, fully dressed in an expensive suit, whereas most men who had made it this far into the baths were nearly naked. He had wavy gray hair with strands of black in it. His face was covered with a salt-and-pepper mustache and beard, which caused his pale blue eyes and the tongue darting out to flick at his full lips to be accentuated. He exuded money and power and command. He was sitting forward, watching the taking closely. His chin and hand rested on the top of a gold-headed cane pressed to the floor between his spread thighs. His other hand held a riding crop which he flicked against the side of the highly polished leather boots of his right leg.

I realized that if he'd been sitting there before the Italians and I had arrived, he must have realized that I was as much into the pursuit of the Italians and of my being caught and taken down onto the bench and of being taken as roughly as they were handling me.

He was devouring me vicariously as much as the Italian high-rise workers were doing. My eyes concentrated on his hand rubbing on the gold head of the cane and the suggestive stroking of its shaft with his hand and the flick of the riding crop and I knew at that moment that he would be a cruel lover. I also assumed at that moment that he would be a master of me if he wanted to be and there was opportunity. It didn't take long for me to realize that he was flicking the riding crop to the cadence of the Italians fucking me--for both of them did fuck me. They exchanged places to enjoy the full servicing, and I let them. It was what I had come to the baths to receive. I just hadn't figured it would happen as quickly as it did.

When the Italian construction workers were done, they went off to the baths, arm in arm, boasting of their exploits in some language not English--presumably some variation of Italian from whatever village they had so recently immigrated from. They moved with grace as they no doubt did along the steel beams, high above the earth, that they were building in New York.

They left me there, stretched out and moaning, on the bench as if I was nothing to them other than one of many opportunities to get themselves off.

The older man was gone too, and I lay there, panting and purring for a while before rising, retrieving my towel, and stumbling toward the baths. Neither of the men had been monsters in the cock department, but submissiveness was something I only recently had found the excitement of.

And it did raise excitement in me--as did watching the old man flick the riding crop against the leather of his boot. The sense of being helpless in the cruel control of another. That was a new arousal for me in a lifestyle I was only beginning to acquire and enjoy.

The Italians were not in evidence when I got to the large, vaulted ceiling room with the large pool and the glittering mosaic columns, walls, and ceiling, much of the tiles being in light colors that captured and danced from the reflection of the large pool. The floor of the pool was in mosaic tiles too, with gold highlight. It all was very much what a New Yorker's impression of what Turkish opulence was about.

I swam in the pool, which was not as crowded that evening as I had found it before. It was, however, populated with men of all varieties interacting with each other. Some were just sitting and talking with each other for companionship. Some were on the make. Some were fucking. None of the activity was disturbing anyone. What caused men to gather around and ogle was if a young man was being taken by an older man with control and experienced technique.

Being young and fair and in good shape, I received more than my share of ogling and propositions, but I was still recovering from the Italian workers in the corridor. I usually didn't give it away for free, but I didn't usually have men as handsome and hard-bodied as the Italians to give it to.

The times before I had come here and swum and posed and smiled for the men and eventually there would be one who talked to me about a fee and not just a roll in the hay. Most of the men coming here--the young guys and the older ones--were looking for a for-fee hookup. That's why I had come to this particular bathhouse. I needed the money as much as that I couldn't get much of a body cleansing at my rooming house.

When I came here, I'd usually pair off with an older man in the pool--a man who I thought would have the experience to arouse me in the using. We would move to one of the couches dotted around by the pool. We would embrace and kiss and fondle and then he would lay me on my back or on my belly and, capturing my eyes with his in an assurance that he'd give me a good fucking, would cover and mount and penetrate and fuck, showing me that I had guess correctly--that he knew how to use me.

Men would gather around to watch, which I didn't mind. Then he would put some money in my hands and drift away. On some nights another man, one who had watched, would put money in my hands and he would fuck me too. And then, on a good night, maybe another one and another one after that. I would lay there for a couple of hours, legs open, my eyes following the men passing by, offering myself tacitly to whatever passing man took my fancy.

Taking cock and collecting money in a leather bag kept next to an ankle. Most of the men who did this were not the handsome, young men with beautiful bodies, but I didn't mind being fucked and the extra money it brought me was quite welcome.

It didn't happen that way this evening, though. Not long after I'd entered the baths and taken a dip in the pool and was resting--still panting a bit from the two Italians--at the wall of the pool, my head in my arms on the lip of the pool and my eyes scanning those on the couches, when I heard a deep, bass voice from behind me say, "There you are, you little tart."

I turned my head toward the voice to see that the "maybe he would master me later" was now and that, yes, he would be a cruel lover. The older man with the wavy gray hair, beard, and mustache, was close behind me and moving closer. He was a well-built man for his age and he was hirsute, covered with curls of salt-and-pepper hair. He was solid and sexy. A heavy gold chain encircled his neck. I had just a moment to register that I had seen him before before he backhanded me cross the face, snapping my head around. Instinctively I turned it again, but he slapped me again. He had seen how the Italian construction workers had manhandled me and assumed I wanted it that way.

And then he was upon me, pulling my body up to where my belly was on the lip of the pool. He was hovering over me, covering me close. He grabbed my wrists with his hands and forced my arms over my head, pressing me into the tiles of the terracing around the pool. He wasted no time with me. He obviously had already been in thick erection, as he mounted and thrust up inside me, and started an immediate vigorous pumping. He stretched me as no man had done before and there was something else, some other sensation in his stroking inside me that was new and exotic--and punishing. I only later discovered that he had a ring pierced into the head of his cock, something called a Prince Albert, rumored to function as a hook to secure a gentlemen's penis either down the left or right leg of very tight trousers that were made famous by Queen Victoria's husband.

In this case, it was a device that awakened and energized the muscles of my passage walls that caused them to ungulate over his stroking shaft and grab at the punishing ring.

I did not oppose him--indeed, as old as he was, he was much stronger than I was, and was a man in command, a master. I had never been fucked this masterfully before. When he sensed that I would leave my arms over my head and spread to the side, he moved his hand. He used the right one to slap my buttocks smartly to the rhythm of the fuck and the left one to grasp the back of my neck and hold my head down. His right hand went between my legs. I writhed under him momentarily as he grasped and squeezed my balls before returning to slapping my rump.

Ah, the demonstrated expertise in technique of older men. It's why I let the older men fuck me. What they may lack in vigor and muscular beauty, they made up for in expertise in technique. In this case, the man still had the vigor.

He fucked me hard and long and he breeded me, tensing and jerking three times as he released his seed. And when he was done--seemingly not caring whether I had come, although I had done so before he did--he thumped me on the head, swam away, and was gone.

I lay there panting and whimpering. Men had gathered around us to watch, but none volunteered to take up where the graybeard had stopped. None, I'm sure, thought they could do as well as he had. At length, and with a groan, I slipped down into the water to cleanse myself, rose silently out of the pool, and, with men's eyes following me, went silently to the dressing room, dressed, and left the baths. I was exhausted.

Outside the baths, I turned toward my Hells Kitchen lodging on West 50th Street. I moved slow, painfully. I had been assaulted and violated, I suppose, but I never had been as aroused and completed as I had been by the graybeard--and that after the attention by two beautiful, if rough, Italian gods. I had gone to the baths for excitement--that I had gotten excitement beyond my imagining was something for me to savor rather than regret.

On West 49th Street, a black growler carriage drawn by two handsome black horses stopped beside me. I heard a voice and looked over to the window in the carriage door. My heart started to beat faster and I'll admit something else got a little harder when I saw the face of Graybeard at the carriage window. At the side of his face I saw the gold knob of his cane.

"Come inside the carriage, young man," he called to me. "Take a ride with me."

I was in shock. I was both drawn and repelled. I'd never been taken that often or hard in one evening. I knew if I got into the carriage he would use me hard and totally. I wanted to get into the carriage.

What if he fucked me in the carriage as it made its way through the New York streets? Just the thought of that made me leak.

"No, sorry, I can't," I pleaded. "I... I... I'm here where I am expected." I turned, ran up the steps of a tenement and entered its front hallway. Of course it was not where I had been headed, nor was I expected here.

I stood, peeking around the edge of the curtain of the side glass of the entry door, not going out again until the carriage had moved on. I trudged on another block to my own tenement, my mind racing on all of the possibilities of what might have happened if I'd gotten into the carriage with Graybeard.

How would be fuck me in a moving carriage? I was sure he had the positions and technique worked out. I shuddered. I had wanted to get into the carriage with Graybeard.

* * * *

His name was Georgios Drakos, and he was my uncle's banker. My uncle was in talks with him over a loan the business needed to expand.

"And this is my nephew, Warren Vanderlien," my uncle, Horace, said, gesturing past my parents in his office in the decorative glass panels works my uncle owned in the Garment District. "He is a glass cutter. Learning the family business."

Uncle Horace had already introduced my parents to the banker. I had just drifted by his office and had been called in when Drakos had said, "And who is that?" My father, Henry, Horace's brother, was a section manager at the works that made cut and stained glass panels for windows and lamps. My mother, Kathrine, was one of the art designers. As Drakos had been told, I had started in the department that cut the glass pieces. I would be working my way up. Uncle Horace had no children. The health of the company was as much in my interests as anyone's.

"We're hoping Mr. Drakos's bank will lend us the money that will enable us to expand," Uncle Horace said before sending me on my way to my job.

The Greek-origin graybeard banker turned his eyes, full of both amusement and lust. "You have a fine-looking young man," he said, nodding at both my parents and Uncle Horace. "I would appreciate a tour of your process here. Perhaps, if the young man isn't needed elsewhere, he could accommodate himself to me." Drakos was clutching and stroking the shaft of his gold-headed cane as he had done in the corridor of the Turkish bath while he watched the Italian construction workers fuck me. He made sure I saw the movement, especially of him polishing the golden knob with a gloved hand. If my parents and uncles saw, they quite evidently didn't see the signaling that I saw.

"Most certainly," Horace said, quickly seeing that the man had been taken with me and thus was giving us an opportunity to win him over. "Warren, be of service to the gentleman."

Drakos remained a gentleman during the tour--perhaps because my father, Henry, accompanied us, and he reserved himself to touching me lightly here and there as would be natural during a walk-through of the process, but I knew that this would not be the end of it. And I knew that he could feel my trembling to his touch--and that I did not draw away. If he was going to cover me, though, he was going to have to give us the loan we needed--and on very good terms.

That evening, when I left the office to go to my lodging on West 50th Street, where I was trying to pull away from my family's more commodious brownstone near Lincoln Square as I had moved into a lifestyle I didn't want my family to know about, the black Growler carriage with the two fine black horses and silent coachmen was there, waiting for me. The black curtains of the carriage door parted, and the face of Graybeard--Georgios Drakos--appeared.

"Come into the carriage. Take a ride through the park with me," Drakos said as the carriage door opened. "I think you will be more amenable to riding me now."

I climbed inside.

"Perhaps you came to tell us we were getting the loan?" I asked into the darkness of the carriage.

"All in good time, young man. All in good time."

* * * *

"Please, please!" I cried out within the darkness of the Growler as it jolted along wherever it was cruising, but even I didn't know whether I was begging him to stop or to use me more cruelly. I was naked. He was not, although his shirt was unbuttoned and pulled open to expose his hirsute, muscular chest, and his erection had been freed. I was bound, facing the front wall of the carriage, my arms raised and spread, wrists bound in leather straps above the seat back on the carriage wall. My body streamed down across the seat. My knees were dug into the front edge of the leather bench seat, but as the riding crop raised and snapped down to sting my back, rump, thighs, I lost traction and just collapsed across the seat, my toes digging into the rough carpeting between the seats.

The switching stopped, and Drakos grabbed and spread my buttocks with his hands, his thumbs digging into my ass, spreading me open there too. In the darkness, he grasped my ankles and raised my legs, hooking my ankles on his shoulders. I screamed out to the darkness as he started forcing himself in me, the thick coldness of the metal of his cock ring forcing my sphincter muscle to open to him and the thick shaft following, stretching, breaching and withdrawing, moving in and then out.

"It's pleasing to me that this is the way you want it," he growled. He had misconstrued my response to the Italian workers in the Turkish bath.

I writhed under the invasion, panting and moaning, groaning and begging, as he plowed me, increasing in girth and intensity and vigor.