Journey Thru Abilene Ch. 05-06

Chapter Five: David

Rapier was an interesting setup. Abilene is much like any other small city of about 100,000 people. The vice is there; it just isn't out in the front room. In the case of Rapier, the club was located in the heart of the red-light district of a few blocks around North and South 1st Streets. But out front was what would ordinarily be taken as a local neighborhood bar that was still barely breathing but was being bypassed for trendier bars in safer areas of the city. The sparsely patronized sports bar was out front and patrons entered from the street into a small vestibule, with one door to the left, leading into the front bar, and a door straight ahead, entering a corridor running the full width of the bar and its back storage room and then, passing through a doorway covered by a beaded curtain, to a door on the right at the end of the corridor.

When you entered the big room on the back of the building, you were entering the gay underbelly of Abilene's tenderloin district. This was one of three gay men's clubs in Abilene owned by David Patton. It was the most established of the three, and it's where Dave Patton himself held court.

"This is the guy I was telling you about," Clem said as he brought Gordy into the bar for the first time after they had worked on the same construction site but had been let off for the day at lunchtime. The club was nearly deserted at this time of day. A florid, beefy man in his forties was sitting at a table, wearing his obligatory cowboy boots. faded jeans, and plaid shirt. His ten-gallon hat was hooked on the back of another chair at the table. He was smoking a cigar and had piles of business receipts and a calculator strewn in front of him on top of the table.

"Cute," David Patton said, looking up at Gordy. "Cute blonds we have a lot of, though."

"Not ones who can suddenly get wild like this one does," Clem said.

"You danced a pole before?" Patton asked, giving Gordy a second speculative inspection.

"Yes, sir," Gordy answered. "In Galveston most recently. I've worked behind a bar too, but not serving liquor yet."

Patton looked hard at him again. "How old are you if you can't work a bar?"

"Nineteen," Gordy answered.

"That young? Sort of fresh, are you?"

"Not that you would fuckin' notice if you work him right," Clem answered.

Patton looked at Clem now. "Gotta respect your picks, Clem. You haven't done me wrong yet. Usual finder's fee?"

"OK with me."

Gordy blushed. So, Clem was into recruitment. Maybe that was the extent of interest Clem had in him. That was deflating. Gordy felt like walking out. But he needed a nest egg of money. He needed it as fast as he could get it if he was going to be able to push on west soon.

"You been ridden before?" Patton had turned his attention back to Gordy.

"Yes, sir."

"Hard?"

"Yes, sir."

"Often?"

"Often enough, sir. Even before Galveston. Back East, in South Carolina. I couldn't bartend, so I serviced the patrons to make my way."

"Bottomed for them, did you? Men? You worked in a bar fronting a house then?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, then, let's put some music on and you strip down and dance that pole up on the stage for me. Convince me." He motioned to the bartender and called out, "Gimme some pole music."

Gordy began to strip down and Clem took a seat at the table beside Patton.

"Oh, and what's your name, little darlin'? . . . um, yes, very nice. A great body. Love the tattoo."

Gordy didn't answer right away. He wanted this to be a watershed of some sort—or maybe just an interlude he could later separate off with the other shitty portions of his life, which so far were most of it. He sensed he was at the nadir of his existence. "It's Glade, sir," he said, having spied a can of Glade air freshener spray sitting on a nearby table. He liked the mystery of the word immediately. "You can call me Glade. Just Glade. No last name." That part, at least, represented Gordy's life. He'd never known a real surname, so he might as well not have one at all.

Clem gave him an amused look, but he didn't say anything.

As Gordy walked over to the stage and climbed up on it toward the pole, both Patton and Clem gave him appreciative looks. "Tight little buns," Patton muttered. "Sweet tattoo. Nice that it's the only one. Provides focus."

"About the tattoo . . . ," Clem murmured. But Gordy was already up on the stage now and the bump and grind music, turned on by the bartender at Patton's direction, was being turned up louder. So Gordy couldn't hear what Clem told Patton. But he knew what that would be.

They watched him go through a routine, impressed enough that both men at the table had their dicks out and were working them up. Glade—as he now thought of himself—withdrew into his own world, concentrating on the beat of the music and the pole dance moves he'd learned in Galveston. Concentrating on getting this job that Clem said paid so well—so well that Glade could get a place of his own, not have to do any more construction work—although that had helped really tone his body up—and save money for the onward journey.

The next thing he knew, the two men were up on the stage with him, trousers off; shirts open to bare, muscular chests, hard-ons pressing at Glade—Clem's poking at a butt cheek and Patton's at a thigh.

"Watch this," Clem said in a deep, throaty voice. He laid a palm on Glade's tattoo and Glade shuddered and jerked, emitting a deep moan. "Oh, shit," he cried. "Fuck me!" He raised an arm and hooked it around Clem's neck and brought their lips together. He reached out with the other hand and grasped the cock pressing at his thigh—Patton's cock—and began to stroke it. It wasn't all natural. Glade needed this job and was resolved to do whatever he had to do to get it.

"See, just fuckin' palm and rub him there," Clem said as he pulled away from the pole.

Glade's back was pressed against the pole and his arms were raised over his head, his hands grasping the pole. His knees were hooked on Patton's hips. Patton was crouched between Glade's thighs, holding Glade's waist, the thumb of his right hand careful to continue stroking the rose tattoo, as he thrust up, penetrating Glade's channel, and fucked the young man hard and deep. Glade kept crying out for more of it, rougher and deeper.

Needless to say, Glade got the job.

* * * *

Glade was sitting at an outdoor café several blocks away from Rapier, eating his lunch, when the young guy paused beside his table, tray in hand—yes, in cowboy boots and hat, but with more of the lean, but muscular, worn jeans and dusty shirt look about him that seemed more authentic Western than most of the men Glade saw about the town. There was at least one diner at all of the other tables.

"Mind if I sit here?" the young cowboy asked. He was dark-haired and deeply tanned. Maybe partly Hispanic. He also had a very nice smile.

"Sure, sit. I'm about finished."

"Please, don't let me rush you off," the young man said. He was maybe a couple of years older than Glade, but younger—and not as hard looking—than most Glade saw, and serviced, at Rapier. Still, there was a familiar air about him.

Glade had taken to eating meals as far away from Rapier as possible. David was a good boss, but he was becoming increasingly attentive—and possessive. He always seemed to want to know what Glade was doing and where he was going—and with whom—when he wasn't dancing the pole or working in one of the rooms upstairs at Rapier. David didn't seem to mind other men fucking Glade as long as there was money in it for him, but he was getting increasingly territorial with the rent-boy in other venues. He'd even strongly suggested that Glade should move into his house. The young man was putting him off on that, but he was considering doing so. It would help him save faster.

Even while he was considering it, though, he was struggling with himself. He'd been at Rapier for a couple of months now. Each passing day seemed to be more like settling into this life rather than getting on a bus west.

The young guy had sat down not across from Glade, but beside him, at the table. He tucked right into his food, while Glade toyed with the cherry pie slice he'd gotten for dessert. He knew he should just polish it off and leave, but the guy was giving him sideways glances. He had a great face and hazel eyes. A smile that looked like it easily could segue into a warm laugh. And Glade kept bothering that notion that he recognized the guy from somewhere. The construction projects? The young man looked like he was manual-labor hardened.

Then the young man burst the bubble. "You're Glade, aren't you? I've seen you at Rapier. My name's Kevin."

Glade pushed his plate forward on the table with his fork, gave a disgusted sigh, and started to rise from the table. Kevin reached over and arrested his movement with a hand on his forearm. His grip was like steel.

"Please don't go. I could have paid for your time at Rapier. I do want to fuck you. And I'm not just here by accident. But I want to do it different from the others—not in one of those rooms at Rapier. I'll pay you as much, and you can keep it all. You won't have to give any of it to the house."

"I'm sorry, I have to go," Glade said. But he wasn't moving a muscle. The young man had stood too. His shirt front had parted to show a well-muscled, tan chest, with a gold-chain necklace. The bulge of his jeans backed up his stated interest and caused Glade's breath to catch.

"You don't like me? I'm not as good as all those fat middle-aged men fucking you? You're not interested in young, vigorous cock. My money stinks?"

Glade had been fucking so many toads and this man was a prince.

They fucked in the backseat of Kevin's old Ford convertible, the rust spots belying any claim to being a show car, out by a lake near Dyess Air Force Base southwest of town. They really got going well when, Glade sitting on the cock and facing Kevin, Kevin's hand strayed to the rose tattoo. Kevin was every bit as hard bodied as Glade thought he'd be and as vigorous and deep reaching as Kevin said he'd be.

Barring the times Glade was at work, Kevin owning a vintage car repair shop and working on his own time, they fucked almost continuously for two weeks, Glade never asking for a cent, just being taken with a younger, more power hitting, and companionable lover than anyone Glade had known since Beaufort.

They were talking about moving in together, saving rent money for both of them, when David Patton asked Glade again about moving into his house. Glade was caught off guard and was naïve enough to tell Patton that he was thinking of moving in with someone else—that he'd found someone he liked.

Two days later Kevin was out of the picture. David Patton called Glade into his office at Rapier and gave him the news, saying that Kevin had decided to move to another town. David also declared that Glade would move into his house—if he wanted to keep his job.

David had offered Glade a cigarette when Glade first came into the office, and although Glade didn't usually smoke, he was nervous enough on seeing the serious look on David's face when he came into the office that he took the cigarette. It wasn't just any cigarette, though, and Glade was feeling a little more spaced out the more he dragged on it—and he was mellow enough that he took the news on Kevin without getting violent. David had a paper towel laid out on his desk top too, with strands of white powder lined up on it. There was a straw in David's hand when Glade entered and a residue of white powder on his nostrils.

When Glade was mellow, David offered him the straw and, cupping the back of Glade's head with a hand, push Glade's face down toward the paper towel. Glade hadn't done this before—and he did everything he could do not do it subsequently—but David had found a new way to keep Glade under a modicum of control.

After Glade had taken a snort, he just lay back in his seat and watched as David lifted his legs over the arms of the chair, knelt in front of him, unzipped and pulled off his trousers and briefs, and, after playing with Glade's cock with his mouth until both men were hard and panting, crouched over Glade and fucked him in the chair. David didn't want Glade going wild in the fuck; he just wanted the young man lying there, taking the cock, and acknowledging David as the master. Glade did just that.

"Now I own you completely," David muttered when he was done. "When you go home tonight, it will be to my house—and my bed. And we won't be hearing any more about any Kevin."

That was, Glade thought, the low point of Glade's life in Abilene, although he could have gone lower. He could have lost himself to the drugs, but he fought them hard enough and didn't take them long enough for them to take over his life. But he was owned now. And he'd let himself be maneuvered into that position. The night after he'd moved into Patton's house and found that he had no bedroom of his own—that he'd be sleeping in Patton's bed—Glade stole away down the block from the house and called Josh Caldwell in Beaufort, begging for his old position back if Josh sent him money for the trip. Glade had enough money saved now, but he needed some sort of sign of commitment from Caldwell. He didn't get it.

"That ship has sailed, Gordy," Caldwell answered. "I have other cuties to play with now. That business with the Marine officer was the last straw with you."

"The Marine officer?" Glade asked. He hadn't realized that Caldwell knew anything at all about Dean Horton.

"Yeah. I had a couple of boys rough him up and put him on the plane for where he was going. He was leaving you anyway. And still you took off on me. So, I'm not trusting you again."

Stunned, Glade just clicked off the phone. Dean hadn't just left him without a word. He'd been beaten up and driven out town. Glade gave a deep sob and then he steeled himself. That's when he decided he wouldn't be going any farther down. That's when he dropped his plan to go west—and also his plan to save more money before he did so. That's when he decided he was going north. Dean's assignment had been to Billings, Montana. Glade didn't know where that was other than knowing it was north of where he now was. But he was sure a bus could get him there. He had no idea whether he could find Dean now—or even if Dean would remember him. But at least now Glade had a solid goal. To go north rather than west. His next call was to check out bus schedules.

Chapter Six: 9:30 Bus from Abilene

Sometimes Glade thought he was born with a "fuck me" sign painted on his butt. But then, he acknowledged that he seemed to have been born with that young and vulnerable look that turns some men on and had to admit that he loved being touched—especially in that sensitive spot below and to the left of his navel, where a blue rosebud was tattooed. But it wasn't the tattoo that pulled men in. Men wanted to fuck him before they learned the power of the tattoo.

The tattoo lifted their arousal for him, though. Ever since Glade, or Gordy as he then was named, started having sex, if a man touched him there, Glade hardened right up and softened to anything the man might suggest. Glade would just lay down and open his legs to the man and let him do whatever he wanted. It didn't help that, no matter how much Glade fought it, he loved being cocked. The first, dominating man who found Glade's sweet sex spot, his old boss, Josh Caldwell, had the spot marked with a tattoo for reference. Thereafter, If Glade really, really liked the guy, he'd move the guy's hand there himself to short-circuit any early indecision on his part.

These thoughts ran through Glade's mind as his bus ate up the miles north from Abilene. This was a history and these were impulses he knew he couldn't change or escape just by getting on a Greyhound bus.

Something got into his head that if only he could go north, he could start a whole new life and that this weakness in him—these urges, this vulnerability to the wants of other men—would just go away.

Just before Glade got on the bus in Abilene, David tried his last ploy. He pulled Glade around to the side of the station and embraced the young man in close to his chest. A hand sneaked up under the hem of Glade's athletic T, and David pressed a thumb into that blue rosebud tattoo. His lips clamped down on Glade's, and the younger man involuntarily danced on David's pole for a few moments. First one leg went up around David's hip and then another, and then he was dry humping Glade up against the wall—and the young man was loving it.

Glade was saved by the loudspeaker calling the "all aboard" for the 9:30 bus from Abilene, though, and he managed to break away from David and head for the bus without a look back. Instead, he looked up along the windows in the bus and saw that two cowboys were eyeing him real close. He wondered what they could have seen in the shadows at the side of the station house.

He climbed up into the bus and found a seat near the back on the side away from the platform. He didn't want to see David out there. Glade was fighting with himself, telling himself that life with David and in his sleazy little clubs weren't what Glade wanted. That he wanted something more from life. But he was afraid if he saw David out there, looking oh so forlorn, as David was so good at when he wanted something from Glade, he'd lose his resolve to leave Abilene.

The bus started out, and Glade felt a sudden sense of freedom. It was going to work. He knew it was.

As the bus moved out into the dusty countryside outside of Abilene and headed north, Glade looked around to see what there was in the way of travel companions. A Hispanic family, a man and his wife and three children, the oldest a sullen-looking teenage boy of fifteen or sixteen, was sitting near the front. From the way they were dressed, Glade thought maybe they were field workers moving north to start the harvest up there and to work their way back to Abilene again over the season. A couple of elderly ladies, both dressed out in their Sunday best—off on an adventure. A young woman who always seemed to be huddled close to the window and asleep. And the two cowboys Glade had seen in the bus window from the station platform.

The cowboys must have been together, because they were sitting side by side on a row about two thirds of the way back until the bus got started and then one moved to the window seat in the same row on the opposite side of the bus. One was older than the other, wiry with ropy muscles. Clean shaven, graying at the temples, with startling pale blue eyes in a deeply tanned and weather-lined face. Piercing eyes when he stared at you—eyes that told you you'd better do what he asked if he told you to do something. The other, younger one, was dark-complexioned, probably half Hispanic, equally tanned, but chunkier than the older one. Not fat by any means, but heavily muscled. Both were in checked flannel shirts and worn jeans, with fancy leather cowboy boots and big fancy silver belt buckles. Both had tattoos running up their arms and the hint at the neckline of more on their chests. And both occasionally were looking back at where Glade was sitting and then whispering to each other.

Buses weren't popular anymore as a means to move long distances, but what with the cost of gas and the overall economic conditions in the States at the moment, Glade thought they'd probably come into their own again. He had chosen the bus because he never had owned a car, couldn't afford the plane fare, and there were no rail connections between Abilene and Denver that didn't go hundreds of miles out of the way and that didn't, in the long run, take longer—and cost more—than the bus.

Glade didn't know why he picked Denver as his next destination—he ultimately was headed further north than that. He just knew he had to take this journey slow, just to be sure. He just had seen posters of Denver sitting right there next to the snow-capped Rocky Mountains and it looked so prosperous and clean and open that it had become somewhat of a Holy Grail to Glade in his last couple of weeks in Abilene, the symbol of a new, cleaner, less-complicated life. A place that wasn't Abilene.