More Contact than Tracing

I hadn't been bumped out of a job because of the arrival of the corona virus in Florida in March—well, first noticed and acknowledged in March—but I suppose it would have happened anyway. I had been a masseur—and more—at Andy's Fit Gym on New Haven in Melbourne, with no problem in finding clientele, when the police shut us down right at the beginning of March. Two weeks later the other gyms were being closed down too because of the virus, so I've been saying that's what ended my employment. The unemployment office accepted that, but I wasn't a "sit and wait" kind of guy. I was out looking for another job right away.

I don't hide that I'm gay—it would be a little hard to do so anyway with the way I dress and the earing and the nipple rings that show through the tight, thin-material T-shirts I wear, not to mention the pink strands I run through my long, blond hair, which I usually have tied in a pony tail, but that I let down for sex. I do have muscles where they belong, but I pride myself in my tight, willowy figure. And on top of that is the way I walk—like a dancer, thanks to years of classical dance training before I did the practical and took courses in massage. Guys—well, a lot of tops—like the dancer look. I was turning tricks before I learned how to do massage.

My gay look was my advertisement into the fun life—or the life that was fun before this pandemic thing—a life that usually was pretty lucrative for me. I didn't suppress it.

I thought being obviously gay would make getting a job in the regular world harder, not that Melbourne was harder on being gay than anywhere else, but because everyone else was put out of work by the virus and was looking for a job too. The only new jobs opening up, something that just happened starting in May, were in the contact tracing field. In trying to get control of this virus thing, the public health people were hiring people to trace down the recent contacts of everyone going into the hospital with the virus so that they could be notified that they'd been exposed to covid-19 and given guidance on quarantining so that the spread could be stopped, or slowed down at least.

They were paying well and I had taken a lot of credit hours in hygiene in studying to be a masseur—I hadn't had to go to school to train now much further to take a massage if a guy wanted to and would pay for it, but that's neither here nor there—but I didn't really think they'd give the job to an openly gay guy. But I was wrong about that. It appeared that a lot of tracing that had to be done would be in the local gay community, which was large, and they jumped at the chance of me handling cases like that.

"Another gay guy would open to you better than to a normal person," the recruiter had said to me. I let that slide. I wanted the job.

All of that is to explain how I found myself on the front porch of a crowded-in bungalow on Ventura Circle, off Hollywood Boulevard, in South Melbourne on a Tuesday afternoon in early June, just a week after completing my contact tracing course.

A big bruiser of a hairy guy in just athletic shorts and flip-flops answered the door, gave me the full head-to-toes lookover, and smiled broadly. He was like six-foot-five big, and he was muscular, a real body builder. I could have melted on the spot.

He also looked a bit familiar, like maybe I'd seen him from afar now and then at Andy's Fit Gym. He certainly looked fit and like he spent time in gyms. He wasn't bad looking in the face, if a bit thuggish. All of the hair had migrated from his head down to his chest and belly, though, where it swirled, an auburn brown with a smattering of gray in it. I gauged him to be in his late forties—a guy I wouldn't mind asking me for post-massage special services. Not the guy I was trying to trace, a Clint Colburn, who would be in his mid-twenties—my age.

I was wearing a surgical mask. The guy answering the door was adjusting a regular cloth one on his face as he looked me over.

"Hi, I'm with the Public Health Department. Joshua Meadows." I flashed him my grand-spanking-new set of city credentials. "Does a Clint Colburn live here? I need to talk with him if he does. This is the last-known address we have for him."

"Clint isn't here now," the guy answered—a good, deep, resounding bass voice. "You want to come in, though? My name is Bill Buxton. You look familiar. Have we met before?"

"I really shouldn't. Social distancing and all. I could wait out here for him to return if you don't think he'll be gone long."

"Nonsense. I'm fine if you are. I've been sheltering since early March. Not too hard for me since I work at home and don't go out much at all—except to the gym. This isolation is starting to get old, even with me, though, and it's good to see another face. Well, part of another face."

We both laughed—not a belly laugh—more of an irritated "this is a new joke going around a couple of times too often" obligatory laugh.

"It drove Clint right up the wall—batty," the big guy continued. "Hey, that's where I've seen you, isn't it? You're the massage guy at Andy's Gym who uses the satin gloves, aren't you? Is that where you know Clint from?"

He'd pegged me. Well, he hadn't pegged me like some of my massage customer paid me to do. But it was clear now where we'd seen each other before.

"Umm, yes, I worked at Andy's Fit Gym," I said. "I'm not calling on Mr. Colburn as a friend—I've never met him—but because I need to talk with him. I'm working with the Public Health Department now. I'll just—"

"No, no. Come on in. As I said, if you're good, I'm good. I've been nowhere for months. I'm clean—in all ways. I got checked out since the last time I did it. It's all good. I really need someone to talk to for a few minutes. This. isolation is for the shits. And I get nothing back socially from designing the Internet cartoons. I get some jollies back, for sure, but no one who talks to me. Come in, come in. I'll spring you're a beer or too."

For an "I'm good alone" guy, he was gushing a good bit. I guess the isolation really was starting to get to him. It would really get to me if I hadn't found a job where I could be on the move like this.

He'd withdrawn into the darkness of the house's interior. I was compelled to follow him—down a hallway with a living room, dining room, and kitchen off doors to the right, and into a larger room on the back of the house, with a wall of glass doors overlooking a small, screened-in pool and a tiny yard packed with foliage that was enclosed by an eight-foot fence. All very private and confining. A desk complex covered the outer wall to the left, a door on the wall across from the glass overlooking the pool probably led into the back of the garage. Several computers, with displays pulsating on them, covered the long desk. No doubt the work Bill Buxton—I had remembered the big dude's name—did at home was done here. A gym bench and a set of barbells were set out in front of the glass wall.

"I heard they closed Andy's Gym," he said from the kitchen area beyond an island as he opened a refrigerator and took out a couple of beers. "As you can see, I've had to set up here at home. I stopped going to the gym early in March—before they closed it. I think all of the gyms are closed by the covid-19 thing now."

"Yes, they're all closed, but they're going to start a phased reopen soon, I understand. A couple of the braver and more resistant ones have already opened, with restrictions. Andy's won't open again, though."

"So, I heard," he said as he handed me a beer. He didn't let go of it for a long second and gave me a meaningful look. Normally at this point, if a guy was trying to make me, he'd make sure our fingers touched in the exchange of the can. Not here. We were both conscious of the social distancing thing. He even stood back and leaned forward to hand over the beer rather than use the opportunity to close the distance. Moving into a hookup in the age of the pandemic was coming with new rules in technique. "You didn't get arrested in the closing of the gym, did you?"

He knew, then, that the gym had been closed in a vice raid, not because of the corona virus. "No, I wasn't working the night they raided the place."

"But if you had been, you might have been arrested? As I remember, you offered services at the gym that went beyond massaging. Here, sit down over here. I'll go to the couch. Eight feet away. Two more feet away than needed. Cheers." He took a swig from his beer, so I did too—and I went over and sat on a sofa, which faced the chair he sat in. He spread his thighs when he sat down. His athletic shorts were loose. I could see almost all the way up the inside legs of them and he was tented. "I heard you did marvelous work with those satin gloves."

"Well, no. I didn't get arrested," I said. "But I had to change jobs. I work for the Public Health Department now. That's why I need to see Clint Colburn who is listed as living here. When do you think—?"

"Oh, Clint's gone. Gone, gone. I don't think he's coming back. Too bad; he was a fun lay. This isolation was too much for him. He's a beach guy. He's got to have people around him. He went down to Miami for the spring break crowd and hasn't come back. I don't expect him to come back. I guess you could say I'm between live-ins."

"Yes, well, that's what I have to see him about. He was here on Melbourne Beach last week and some of the guys he was in contact with are in the hospital now. I need to let him know that."

"If he came back, he hasn't come here," Buxton said. "I haven't seen him for over a month. We've had no contact since then. As I told you, I've been to the clinic since then. Got checked for the virus as well as other things. I'm clean. I'm good to go." He gave me a pointed look, and I looked away and took several gulps of beer, emptying the can. How was this supposed to safely go in the age of covid-19?

He saw that I'd finished my beer, stood, and put his hand out. "Here, let me get you another brew. As I said, it's good to have at least some contact with someone else in this pandemic. People are different. I'm used to spending most of my time alone, so it hasn't hit me hard—not as hard as some others. Clint, though, now he went right up the wall when he couldn't have anyone else around but me. I mean our sex was fine; he took my cock like a trouper. But that Clint, he had to have variety. Are you like that, Joshua?" He was returning from the kitchen with my second beer, and, once again, built in a little pause in letting go of it when I reached for it.

"Do I like variety?" I asked, a bit confused and getting a little warm "down there." The guy was a hunk and a half and if he kept talking like this, I'd think he was thinking I was easy. Well, I was, and I'm sure we both knew it.

"No—well, yes," he said, "but I meant do you need to have people around you all of the time? Is this social distancing thing and being pressed to stay home and in isolation all the time getting to you?"

"Yes, I guess a little, it is," I said. "I'm a bit of a social butterfly." I gave a little laugh. It sounded a bit nervous even to me.

"Well, I think it might being done a bit too much and 'one size fit all.' The elderly and those with underlying deceases, yes, certainly, but young, healthy, fit guys like us. I don't think some contact is taking risks, do you?"

"I haven't thought of it much, but you could be right," I said. He wasn't nearly as young as I was, but he certainly was fit. He was a real hunk. It was flattering that he was saying I was fit too. I did like to keep in shape, but it wasn't a he-man shape like he was in. Why was I thinking these things? It was just making me go hard. I hadn't had it for as long as Buxton had said he'd gone without.

"Like sex, for instance," Buxton continued. "I haven't heard that this gets transmitted through sex. Have you?"

"Well, kissing. That would transmit it for sure."

He laughed. "Kissing's for sissies. I mean bump and grind. Cock in ass. Pounding away. The virus doesn't get transmitted that way, does it? I haven't heard that it has."

The worst thing about wearing these masks was that you couldn't gauge what people were really getting at by seeing their facial expressions. I couldn't tell whether Buxton was just being airily philosophical or if he was trying hard to make me. My cock was hardening up and my breath was getting a little wheezy, so my body was thinking he was aching to cover me.

"No, I haven't heard that the virus is transmitted through sex."

"Not through fucking, right? Cock in hole. I mean it doesn't have to be missionary, face to face. Doggie is just as good."

"Not that I've heard—that there aren't safe sex positions."

"And if you're a public health official now, you've taken courses where they would tell you it was transmitted that way if it was, right?"

"Yes, I guess so."

"They covered the sex positions in your course—that doggie's fine?"

"Yes." This was moving fast. I needed to either lie down and open my legs, leave, or change the subject. I still had half a can of beer, though. I took a swig and changed the conversation, at least for the moment. "You said there were different kinds of people in responding to sheltering. You're the kind who can stay home alone better than Clint Colburn is, I take it."

"Yes, I guess I am. It gets to me a bit too, but I haven't really changed my lifestyle all that much. More care in grocery shopping, I guess—text it in and pick it up at the curb—but I'm not much of a shopper beyond that anyway. I'm pretty much a computer animation programing guy, and that's a do it yourself by yourself kind of occupation. And I've done it here, at home, alone for years. So, no change there for me. It's nice when a guy like you comes by for a little bit of a chat and whatever else we get into, though."

"Computer animation programming? What's that exactly?"

"Animated cartoons. Stories in moving cartoons . . . for the Internet. Go over there and sit at that computer and I'll show you what I mean. I'm working on a segment of the ongoing Schlange story."

"The Schlange story?" I said, rising and drawn to the long desk with the computers blinking a stream of graphics. He rolled a desk chair back, gestured for me to sit, and when I did, fiddled around with the keyboard, starting up an animated cartoon.

"Yes, the Schlange is a monster who feeds on the essence of young men down through history. Animation lets me show things that real life can't do. Here, look at this scene."

* * * *

The scene is the inside of a moving carriage in the dark. The detail is quite good, very realistic. Buxton is masterful at setting the mood.

I am to find that that's not all Buxton is masterful at.

The background music portends that something threatening and evil is afoot. Again, it was all rendered quite professionally and it pulls me in immediately and totally. What can be seen in the sole spot of light inside the carriage is a young, handsome man, dressed in gentlemen's clothes from the eighteenth or nineteenth century, somewhere in Europe. I'm not told it's in Europe. What is shown just subtly conveys that.

When the handsome young man's presence is established, a voice is heard emanating from the darkness of the bench on the other side of the carriage. "Here, Jacques, drink this. It will sooth you. You look totally spent and in deep fever." The voice, speaking in English, but with a slight accent, is melodious and has a sing song quality to it. Still, the malicious intent comes across to me, if not to Jacques on the monitor.

I hear the rustling of a silky material. A hand, blending too well with the darkness to be sure of the detail, the arm covered in shiny black silk, emerges from the darkness. In the hand is a flagon. Reflected light flashes off the gold of a thick signet ring.

Jacques takes the flagon and drinks greedily, if decorously. I am shown a glimpse of what is in the flagon by driblets at the corner of the young man's lips—rich red wine. Jacques obviously finds it delicious to the taste. He can't get enough of it. He drinks deeply and, when he hands the flagon back, he murmurs a slurred "thank you."

"And bread. Eat a bit of bread." Once more the hand appears from the darkness, offering the young man a fine, thinly crusted roll.

Jacque takes the bread and tries to eat it slowly but ends up swallowing a large chunk of it, demonstrating that he had etiquette training, but that he evidently is famished and the bread is delicious. He quickly devours it. He's too polite to ask for more. His "thank you" is even more slurred now, giving me the hint that he's been drugged.

The food and drink have made him drowsy and he sinks back into the cushions of the carriage and closes his eyes. For a moment all I hear is the sound of the carriage horses clopping on the road, the sound of rustling cloth, and a low wheezing from across the darkness in the carriage.

The scene changes. Jacques is in the same position, but he is naked now, his body hard, perfectly proportioned. I hear the sound of rustling of material, and from out of the darkness across from the young man in the carriage, the palms and fingers of hands reach out and caress his body. The hands are green and scaly. They move across his skin, searching out and exploring every crevice and crease and curve of his body—violating him. The wheezing from across the carriage increases a bit in volume. Jacques is moaning and moving languidly in consort with the touching.

He is going to the debauching willingly, if in an impaired state of mind.

The overreaching sound of rustling material changes to moaning—by Jacques, but also, in harmony, from across him in the carriage. Jacques reaches out toward the other side of the carriage and the revealing light follows him. He touches a strong, heavily muscled bare, muscular belly, green and scaly like the hands that have been caressing Jacque's naked body. It is Jacques who is being shown taking the initiative. He moves his hand across the navel and down. The revealing light follows him. He encounters the bulbous head of a cock and pulls it toward himself. The scaly green shaft reels out longer and longer toward Jacques's spread thighs, finding and entering his channel.

Jacques is the one who is pulling it inside himself, needing both hands to encircle it and dilating impossibly open to handle the penetration. The shaft is buried deep, longer than would be possible for a man to take and survive. But Jacques is surviving. His cock is engorging too, growing monstrously large, throbbing.

Other green, scaly tentacles reach out from the dark toward Jacques as well. Tentacles wrap themselves around his thighs and widen the spread of his legs. Tentacles wrap themselves around his waist, holding him in place, horizontally suspended above the space between the benches. Tentacles entwine and immobilize his arms. A cock bulb crowned tentacle pushes its way between the young man's lips and slithers down his throat.

The cock inside his channel is seen to move, being withdrawn and penetrating again, an impossibly long length of it coming out and then being buried again. It is slick with juices. Jacques is moving his hips on consort with the fuck. He is engaged, moaning deeply, but otherwise docile within the enveloping grip of the monster.

The monster holds the young man there, wheezing and pulsating, fully possessing and fucking the young, naked, handsome man.

The depiction is both quite so fantastic and so real that I am shuddering, my body pulsating in the rhythm of the horrific, yet mesmerizing, fuck being completed on the screen, my cock in full erection and straining at the material of my basket. My hand goes there and traces the sides of the engorged shaft through the material of the jeans.

"It's a sex film," I mutter. "A gay fantasy sex film."