Return to Lake Manitou

"The change was last minute," he was saying. "Luckily I have a summer home on the lake and was here. I'll be having a reception for you all tomorrow evening at my house. But for now, perhaps we should start with some readings from stories of yours. Perhaps you'd like to go first, Mr. Taylor. Clay, is it?" He was looking at me, with a bit of knowing amusement in his eyes.

I'd already seen that two of attendees were older women, who seemed to be there together, and another one was a judgmental-appearing priest, with collar. I pushed the portfolio aside of the gay male experience stories and picked up the "Taylors in Rochester" folder.

My story was one of my father and the teenagers he ran with here on Lake Manitou. The story was both nostalgic and melancholy, as it depicted a simpler, more innocent time of a group of children who were raised together on a resort lake and were on the cusp of breaking up and going out into the world. The main character was a best friend of my father's who disappeared into the lake one evening when the friends had gone too long into nightfall playing on a pontoon on the lake. One minute the youth was there and the next not. The others were distressed at not being able to find him, being sure he had drowned in the lake. My father was especially distressed as they had had an argument over a girl before the best friend slipped into the water, claiming that he might as well be dead if the girl didn't pick him. The friend had swum to shore, but the kicker of the story was that less than a year later he'd shipped out to the Vietnam war and had been in a patrol boat explosion on the Mekong River and drowned. He'd impregnated the girl they'd fought over before he left, and she'd drowned in the lake later—perhaps not by accident.

The story went over well. What I didn't realize was that while I was reading it, Sayeed had slipped a story out of the other portfolio and at least scanned it. I noticed that and also noticed that he got more touchy feely after that. I didn't particularly mind. He was a sexy man.

Ross, the symposium leader, who I had known as Trent, had also noticed the other portfolio. He took me aside at the end of that session and told me that my story had been excellent, borne out, he said, by how supportive the group's critique of it had been.

"I rather hoped you had another sort of story. I watched Sayeed, who I know well, and he seemed more interested in the material in that other folder than the one you read."

"Yes, well, those other stories are much racier," I acknowledged. "I gauged the audience in deciding what to read."

"Perhaps you'll let me read the other ones," he said.

"Sure, why not?" I said. He'd fucked me very well. If, after reading my stories, with him obviously appearing in some of them, if it helped him fuck me even better, that was fine with me.

Except it didn't work out anything like that. When I went to his reception at his vacation house on the lake the next evening, I was introduced to Mrs. Trenton and their two children. Ross returned my stories that evening, telling me that this was where my writing talent really lay and that he'd like to work with me separately on developing that facet of my writing.

"And will your wife be there with us?" I had spat out and walked away from him without waiting for an answer.

That revelation hit me like a ton of bricks and it bowled me over so much that, in anger and the need to lash out somehow, I let Sayeed guide me back to his room in the guesthouse and bang the shit out of me. It proved to be a very good antidote, as he had Middle Eastern techniques that sent me spiraling right up into fuck heaven.

When I went back to my cottage, though, it was with the intention of not showing up at the symposium again but to turn the cottage repairs over to the Clover Home Maintenance people as I originally had intended and beat a hasty retreat to Chicago. I'd been burned by being too forward here. I needed to ratchet it back.

* * * *

There's a small island in the middle of Lake Manitou. There's nothing much on it because it can only be accessed by boat in a couple of small coves that are too shallow for much more than a pontoon or a row boat and it's too small for anything but the campfire cookouts my dad once mentioned and that I heard a few of the people he'd once run with at the lake reminiscing about at my aunt's funeral.

It actually was my aunt they had been talking about and what a champion swimmer she'd been in her youth. She apparently swam out to the island and back to the dock of this cottage nearly every day of the summer and once or twice had made it all the way to the other side of the lake and back. It was hard to imagine the aunt I'd known doing this—being capable of doing it; being in the shape of doing it.

I'd taken a break from packing up some glassware and come out to the dock with a beer and had found myself looking at the island, gauging the distance, thinking of my aunt doing that swim, and wondering if I could do it. I had been a competitive swimmer in college. I wondered if I was as good as Aunt Claire had been as a teenager.

Could I make it to the island and back? After I'd left—after I'd closed down the cottage and left never to return to the lake again, I knew I'd always wonder if I could do it.

I went back to the house, changed into a Speedo, came trotting back out, and, moving fast in case I changed my mind, jogged out onto and to the end of the dock, dove into the lake, and started swimming toward the island.

I was nearly there when I felt the side of a rowboat glance off my leg and strong hands were pulling me up, out of the water, and into the rowboat.

Juan, the guy from the boat rental at the top of the lake, fucked me in the boat as he let it drift into one of the island's secluded coves.

"Yes, fight me for it," he said with a growl and a laugh, as he manipulated me around, much stronger then I was. "It's more fun to do it by force," he added.

The struggling at first at been instinctive not fully comprehending that it was a guy I'd let fuck me before, but then it became a rejecting response to how easily I'd let men take me here at the lake—how little respect they were giving me, at least in my perception.

So, I struggled, and I lost, winding up going on my belly at the bow, hands and hair dragging in he calm waters of the cove, belly lodged into the bow of the boat, Speedo off, and Juan on top of me, mounted on my ass, hands gripping my hips, cock inside me, and my assailant murmuring, "Sweet. Tight. Such narrow hips. Take it, take it."

I took it. And when he was finished in the rowboat and lifted me out of that, waded up onto the small island and onto the moss under a tree, put me on my back, slapped my legs open, knelt between my thighs, put my ankles on his shoulders, and penetrated and fucked me again in a missionary position, I took it then too.

Afterward we lay there in each others arms. All of the fight was out of me. He had fucked me well. Thoughts were racing through my mind of what my father and his summer friends had done on this island that he never told me about and stories were weaving in my brain.

"A friend at Clover told me you were thinking of selling your cottage and leaving the lake early," Juan murmured.

"Yeah, I am."

"You're not getting it good enough here? I expected you to come back for me. I didn't think I'd have to come looking for you. But I did."

"And that goes against the grain?" I asked. "You're God's gift to submissives like me? You aren't used to having to pursue guys like me?"

"Yeah, that's right. But you . . . you're worth the pursuit. I'd only begun what I want with and from you. Why do you want to leave?"

Then—why not?—I told him about Ross Trenton and how I'd let myself begin to care and to be duped.

"Fuck him. Take your pleasures as you want. So, he uses you and has a straight life. You say you think he can help your writing. Use him yourself. Use his writing knowledge. Use his cock if you want—but save some for me too. Stay in charge of your summer at the lake. Let Trenton juggle his own life. Use him. Use me. Oh shit. Fuck. Yes."

I'd moved down his body and taken his cock in my mouth—taking charge, using his big one. When he was hard again, I worked my way up his body again, straddled his hips, impaled myself and rode him to a shared liftoff.

Later, he murmured. "It will be dark soon. You want me to row you back to your cottage?"

"No, I want to swim back. I'm having a little competition with my aunt. And I want to know that I could take her on."

"With your who?"

"Don't bother to ask."

Back at the cottage I came out of the shower feeling sexy again, cock in hand, stroking it. I picked up my cellphone and called Clover Home Maintenance. Making sure that it would be the black, studly Guy they'd send, saying, "He's already assessed what needs to be done and I think he's the one to do it," I made an appointment for him to come out and ream my chimney. Then I lay on my bed and stroked myself off thinking Guy doing just that—reaming my chimney with his fat, jet-black shaft.

I dozed. When I woke from that, I muttered, "Fuck it," picked up my cellphone, called a surprised, but pleased Ross Trenton and arranged a few consulting sessions at my cottage. If we had time in those sessions, we'd do some work on my toning up my stories. If not, I'd just be getting my body toned up.

Fuck it. I'd make the most of my return to Lake Manitou.