Make a Decision

The long-anticipated posthumous biography by five-times tennis grand slam finalist Todd Littlepage in which he promised to dish the dirt on his homosexual affairs reached the bookstands today, and it delivers. Of note, it gives Littlepage’s background on the March 1998 automobile accident on the Florida Keys causeway during the ATP Lipton Tournament in Miami Open in which promising young tennis phenom, Sean Steele’s, career ended with—

Sean switched the TV set off and sat there in the dimming light, not concentrating on much of anything. The one-bedroom beach condo on the ocean he’d retreated to a week previously had once seemed compact and cozy. Now it felt claustrophobic and stifling. He stood and shuffled over to the glass door out onto the balcony overlooking Crescent Beach. The sun would be low in the sky behind him. It cast a shadow down onto the beach from the foliage-covered dune between him and the ocean. As far as he could see, there was only one person out on the beach. This was a section of the beach with mostly private vacation homes lining it and didn’t get much foot traffic on the sand.

The young man, slim but muscular, with unruly wavy sunny-blond hair, was flying a kite. He had a surf board out there. He’d been on the beach every day Sean had been here in the second-floor condo in the Fifties-style wooden-sided gated condo complex he’d owned for years but had rarely used. The young man had surfed part of the day and flown his kites when the wind was favorable. Yesterday Sean had even seen him on his surfboard out beyond the wave-break line, flying his kite and letting it pull him on his board parallel to the beach.

Sean had a decision to make. He’d come here to make it. But he wasn’t any closer to making it now than he had been when he’d run away from St. Louis—run away to hide.

He turned, with a sigh, and picked a nearly full bottle of bourbon off the counter between the kitchen and the living-dining room and a blanket out of the closet next to the tiny inset of a foyer between the kitchen and the powder room, and hobbled down to the beach. He spread the blanket on the rise of the dune toward the ocean and sat, thinking over the decision he had to make, watching the reflection of the gathering sunset to the west behind him on the Atlantic Ocean, and watching the young blond man in his skimpy Speedo flying his kite between the dune and the surf.

* * * *

Sean knew it was a dream because everything was out of focus and moving except for the grimacing face of a handsome young blond guy hovering above his face and of a kite floating higher above. They were on sand and pounding surf was surging in Sean’s ears. The young man was saddled on Sean’s hips and was sheathing and riding his cock. They moved in coordinated slow motion with the rest of the scene swirling around them as if they were on a carousel. Sean had a sense of gripping the young man’s waist between his hands, and he was rocking his hips, moving in and out, in and out, of the blond’s passage, the young man raised enough, supported on his knees, for Sean to have clearance to thrust. Someone was moaning. He sensed it was him, but it was detached from his sensations.

This segued into the rocking of a car as it raced, faster than it should, down a narrow roadway between two large bodies of water. For some reason he was angry and hurt and kept yelling at the driver. He knew the driver but he couldn’t give him a name. He was older and laughing. Laughing at Sean. This dream sequence was strangely familiar. Sean had dreamed this before. Something was going to happen and he didn’t want the dream to go there. He usually was able to pull himself awake before he got there. Would he this time?

No. He reached for the wheel of the car and the car swerved and soared out over the low wall between the road and the water. When the car hit the water, Sean exploded . . . again and again. The blond who was riding his cock cried out and went wild, closing his claws on Sean’s shoulders and digging in to hold himself steady. Riding, riding, riding.

* * * *

Sean woke up with a headache, awakened by the young man uncoiling himself from beside Sean in his bed, in his condo, rolling the spent condom off Sean’s cock, moving briefly to a seated position next to Sean in the bed, where he muttered, “Fuckin’ A, that was one big cock,” and then standing, tossing the condom in the trashcan next to the bed, and padding off to the bathroom next to the bed.

Sean lay there for a few more minutes, trying to figure out if moving caused more or less pain in his head, and then, with a grunt, he reached down and extracted his briefs from the pile of T-shirt, shorts, and briefs tossed around at the side of the bed, stood, and pulled them on. He’d come up with a red Speedo too, which wasn’t his. He was by no means fat, but, at forty-one, there was no way his hips were slim enough for this to be his.

The young blond guy who had just flounced out of his bed and into the bathroom—the guy on the beach the last several days. He was blond and slim hipped. And hadn’t he been wearing a red Speedo the last time Sean had seen him? When was that? Just now? Well, not now. Twilight had been falling when Sean last saw that blond guy and went down to the beach. It was light now. So, yesterday? Shit, it hurt to think.

He moved out into the living area. He had to pee bad, but someone was in the bathroom off the bedroom. He’d have to go to the powder room by the foyer. He limped in that direction—the permanent, perpetual limp. The limp that had ended his first career. He passed the counter separating the kitchen from the living area right outside his bedroom door. An empty bourbon bottle lolled on its side on the counter. Hadn’t that been full last night?

That at least explained the throbbing headache.

His feet got entangled in the blanket bunched up on the foyer floor, and he almost went down before he got into the powder room. The blanket didn’t belong there. The last time . . . hadn’t he taken that down to the beach—along with the bottle of bourbon—at twilight?

It was all starting to come back together, even though it didn’t make much sense. What was dream and what was reality? What had he done? Did he enjoy it? Of course he’d enjoyed it—and it hadn’t been that long. It was wrapped up in that decision he came here to make. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this stuff while he made the decision, though. The monsignor had made that clear.

He had to get rid of this headache, and he had to get coffee and some food going. He kept aspirin in the medicine cabinet in the powder room. So, that was a start. What available home remedies were there for a hangover? He certainly had experience with them. Water, Aspirin, ginger tea. In the kitchen, he put them all to work. And something to eat. He didn’t have it bad, but, shit, he’d been wiped out enough not to know what he’d done and where he’d done it. But that wasn’t true. He could figure out what he’d done, where he’d done it, and who he’d done. He just couldn’t remember the pleasure of doing it. Not that he was supposed to get pleasure from that.

“Fuck, you’ve got a big dick, Sean.”

He’d just turned the burner off from under the scrambled eggs and the toast had popped in the toaster. The young guy—the name Pete moved about in his head, and as it did, Sean felt the pain subsiding. He must not have drunk the whole bottle of bourbon himself last night. Pete was standing there in the bedroom door. He’d put his Speedo back on. His body was gorgeous. He couldn’t be much more than nineteen or twenty.

God, make him at least nineteen, Sean thought.

“You take what you get. That’s what I was given,” Sean answered. “Coffee? It’s Pete, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Pete. Coffee, yes.” He reached out to take to take the steaming mug. Their fingers touched and remained touched for a few seconds longer than necessary. Sean was about to speak, but couldn’t at first decide what he wanted to say. Then he blurted it out.

“How old are you, Pete?”

The young man laughed. “I’ll be twenty in November.” It was then late June.

“Thank God,” Sean murmured.

“You always ask guys you fuck how old they are?”

“When they look as young as you, yes.”

“You like fucking young guys?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Unfortunately?”

“It’s complicated.”

“And you ask them how old they are after you’ve fucked them?”

“Usually before. The problem is that I don’t remember the before with you.”

“You were pretty messed up. You’d put down most of this bottle before I got the courage to come to you down on the beach. But it was pretty obvious from the way you were watching me that you wanted me to come to you—that you wanted to fuck me.”

“Sorry. I hadn’t meant to drink that much. And I hadn’t meant—”

“I wanted you to fuck me. You’re one sexy hunk. And you can keep it up. We did it on the beach and then you brought me up here and we did it here on the living room floor and then again in the bedroom.”

“And I enjoyed it—I enjoyed you?”

“You certainly acted like you did. I like older men. I’ve been watching you watch me for nearly a week. I wanted you to fuck me. But I’ve got a question. What are these? Are these what I think they are?”

He held up a black shirt and white collar that had been folded and placed on top of the bureau in the bedroom.

“Those are what I wear for work,” Sean answered. “A clerical collar and a priest’s shirt.”

“You’re a priest?”

“I’m not sure anymore. But, yes, that’s what I have been.”

“I’ve been fucked by a priest?”

“I’m sorry. You know what condition I was in. I don’t really remember—”

“Hot damn, I’ve been fucked by a fuckin’ priest. A new notch for my bedpost. A big-cocked priest who really knows how to fuck. How many priests know how to lay a guy out and fuck them like you did me?” He laughed. “Come to think of it, probably a lot.”

“As I said, I don’t remember—”

“You don’t remember what a good time we had last night?”

“No, sorry.”

Pete put his mug down on the counter and came around into the kitchen, coming up close to Sean. “So, you’re saying you’re sorry you fucked me?”

“Yes. No, no I’m not sorry. But I should be . . . I think . . . I guess.”

“But, you’re not sure?” Pete was in close now. He put a hand on the small of Sean’s back and went up on his toes, offering his lips for a kiss. Sean leaned down and took the offer, at first tentatively and then, as Pete yielded to him, opening his mouth, Sean’s tongue invaded and they were deep kissing. His hand went to Pete’s lower back, and Pete moaned in the kiss, as Sean’s fingers went under waistband of the Speedo. They didn’t have far to go before they were pressing into the crease between Pete’s butt cheeks and then, as Pete raised up on his toes, to the rim of his opening. The middle finger went inside Pete, and the young man groaned.

Pete’s hands were busy moving, first Sean’s, and then his own, waistbands to hook under their balls. He frotted their cocks together and they rocked against each other as the kissing continued.

Pete pulled away from the kiss and whispered, “I want you to fuck me again. Now. I want you to know you’re doing it and to get the pleasure out of me of doing it.”

“I’ve got a breakfast fixed,” Sean murmured.

“Now. Fuck me now. Put that big priest’s cock inside me and fuck me now.”

“Not on the bed. Not in my bedroom. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t take a man to my bed until I decide.”

“You fucked me on your bed.”

“I didn’t do it consciously. It wasn’t a conscious decision.”

Pete asked nothing about the “decide” thing. “Fuck me anywhere you fuckin’ want to. Just do it now”

“Up there. Above here. A loft. The ladder is around there, against the wall.”

“Hurry,” Pete entreated. “Oh, are you hurt? You’re limping. Come to think of it, you were limping last night.”

“It’s not important; it’s just the way it is,” Sean said as he helped push the now-beautifully naked young man up the ladder. It, of course, was important. It was vitally important. It had everything to do with everything. But this wasn’t the time or the place to talk about that.

There was a single bed pushed against the wall in the loft.

“Shit. This bed’s got restraints.”

“Christ. Yes, it does. I forgot.” Todd had given him this condo. They’d spent time here. Todd always wanted to do it in the loft. And he liked being bound.

“Fuckin’ cool. Do me that way.”

“Are you sure? I could do anything I wanted if you were bound.”

“Do anything you want. Take the decisions away from me. Have you done a guy like this before?”

There was Todd—Toddy’s decision. “Yes.”

“Shit, yes. Do me that way.”

Sean did him that way. He raised the young man’s arms over his head, his wrists bound with restraints at the corners of the head of the bed and he fucked Pete slow in the missionary position, his knees pushed under the smaller, younger man’s buttocks and Pete crying out how thick Sean was and how deep he was digging. Then Sean turned him over onto his belly, switching restraints, pulled him up on all fours, mounted and penetrated him from above, and rode his ass hard, reaching even further up inside him.

“Shit, you know how to fuck a guy! Fuckin’ A cock you got on you.” Pete called out after the climax.

When they were done, the breakfast was cold, and Sean had to fix it all over again. The good news was that his headache was gone.

As he worked, Pete, naked, roamed around the compact living and dining area, looking at the knick-knacks and picking up and looking at the photos.

“Hey, this looks like the tennis player, Todd Littlepage, the one who died a few months ago.”

“It is,” Sean answered. “He’s quite a bit before your time, though.”

“I follow tennis. I’m at Flagler College, up the road in St. Augustine. Tennis scholarship. So, I know something about the players. And this other guy. Is this you?”

“Yes.”

“You played tennis professionally? You both look like this one’s taken at a tennis match.”

“Yes, but I had to give it up.”

“The limp?”

“Yes, the limp.”

Pete stood there, in anticipation, as if he thought Sean would give him an explanation. But Sean didn’t. Pete shrugged. “Perhaps some other time.”

“Do you want there to be another time, Pete?”

“Shit, yes. You got a cock and a fuck technique to die for. If you’re not doing anything today, we could go back down to the beach. If the surf’s good, I could go out on the board for a while and then we could come back up here and get it on again—up in the loft. You could tie me up again and do stuff to me.”

“You liked it that way?”

“Shit, yes.”

“Is that what you do every day, Pete? You didn’t have anywhere else to go last night? No one is missing you?”

“No one is missing me. During the school year I have a room at the college. I bring in enough from the scholarship and working here and there to feed myself.”

“But it’s summer. What do you do in the summer? I’ve seen you out there every day. Where do you spend the nights?”

“Are you making an offer?”

“No, sorry, I’m not. I’m here to see if I can avoid that. But I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got a tent on the yard of a house down the beach. The guy uses the house for his vacations. I watch out for the house during the summer and he lets me pitch my tent in his yard. It works out fine. I’m on the beach all day because I want to be on the beach all day.”

“And that’s all you have to do for him to be able to pitch your tent in his yard?”

“No, that’s not all I do for him. I do what I want to do. But you don’t gotta worry. He doesn’t have the cock you do. And he don’t tie me up like you did. You asked me if I’d want you again, and I said yes. So—”

“We’ll see. As I said, I’m here to make a decision. And sleeping with young guys like you is part of the decision. Yes, I go one way. No, I go the way I thought I’d chosen. I have to decide whether I can give that up—entirely.”

“You don’t fuck like you’ll be able to give that up. Once you get going—”

“As I said, we’ll see. Now, before this second breakfast goes cold—”

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry now,” Pete said. He reached down, scooped up his Speedo, and deftly pulled it up his legs into place. Then he was at the door.

“Pete,” Sean said.

But the young man had the door open. “Let me know what you decide,” he said, “or don’t. I want the cocking, but I ain’t gonna beg for it.” and then he was gone.

* * * *

When Pete was gone and Sean had eaten his breakfast, he walked out of the kitchen area and over to the small table that served as the dining table. Pete had placed the framed photograph of Todd and him at the Australian Open in January of 1998 on the table. The photo didn’t belong there, exposed, out in the open like that. It needed to be in the back of a bookcase shelf where Pete had taken it from.

Sean turned toward the bookcase to return the photograph to its rightful place in his life—there, somewhere, because it had been part of his life, but in the shadows. But then he sat in a chair at the table and stared at the photograph. He let a finger brush over the face of Todd Littlepage, ten years his senior, at the height of his professional talent in this photo and at the beginning of Sean’s own career, which had had so much promise but that had been so brief. It had only been a couple of months now since Todd had died. Sean hadn’t mourned his passing yet—indeed Todd’s death had brought nothing but pain and exposure to Sean’s life—but now a tear did drop on the photo.

They looked so happy in the photograph, and indeed they were. They were at the height of their affair, when it was all so new and so glorious for Sean and when, unappreciated by Sean, Todd was between lovers. Todd, already a top-ten men’s tennis player was at Nick Bollettieri’s Florida tennis academy over the winter holidays of 1997 to instruct and impress the students, and Sean, twenty, was there to polish his skills to take a run at his first major, The Australian Open, in January of the coming year. Todd’s off-course specialty was deflowering virginal young, male tennis players, the best-looking ones he could get, the better—and he was into bondage. Sean was a handsome young man, susceptible to hero worship.

Todd fucked Sean for the first time on Christmas Eve when Sean had drunk enough to be susceptible to the man he worshipped. He convinced Sean that he’d feel less guilt and reticence if he was powerless to stop it—even if he was consenting to it—if Todd tied him up. Sean had, indeed, felt more open to it with his wrists and ankles bound to the four corners of the bed, and that set a standard for their coupling. It was a reciprocal fetish. Todd was versatile, and he liked to be tied up in sex too. Todd fucked Sean again on Christmas Day, and he fucked him on New Year’s Eve and on New Year’s Day, and they went off to the Australian Open arm in arm, Todd smiling and Sean purring. When Todd’s conquests were fully indoctrinated in taking cock bound, Todd wanted to take them all the way—to teach them in binding him and fucking him and liking that.

Sean shone at the Australian Open, making it into the semifinals in his first grand slam event and becoming the darling of the tennis media as January 1998 began. Exhausted from enjoying his new boy toy, Todd went out in the third round. But Todd enjoyed more than enough glory and he certainly enjoyed fucking Sean and being fucked by Sean, so, as this photo showed, both men were in heaven in Australia.

For Todd, though, it mostly was about the conquest, and by the Lipton ATP tournament in Miami two months later, he was off the peak with Sean while Sean was still soaring in the stratosphere, believing that this could be a lasting relationship. It wasn’t, although in subsequent years even Todd knew there had been more to their coupling than just his usual virgin conquering.