The Trainer (40 page)

“Now I’ll introduce you,” Chris said.
“Michael, this is Ron. Ron, meet my student, Michael.”

This time, Ron did stick out his hand.
“Sorry to be so hard on you, kid,” he said, shaking Michael’s hand
firmly. “Chris here’s told me you haven’t been brought up on formal
manners. That’s part his fault, but then he hardly knew you were
coming out here, did he?”

Michael shook his head. “I didn’t even think
of telling you where I was going—and I got dressed and left without
seeing anyone.” He snuck a peek at the tattoos, and figured them to
be flames. Nice work, too. He looked back up to avoid being
distracted.

Chris shrugged. “It was only a matter of
time before I brought you here. But I would have instructed you on
what to wear, first.”

“I just came from a meeting. Um—Gay Men’s
Leather Association.” Where they discussed flames. Michael wondered
if it would be appropriate to bring that up.

“Ah. Well, you’re here now. Were you
planning to go home with the two who keep glancing over?”

Michael looked over at Dave, and Ron looked
with him and laughed. “Well, what do you know?” the older man
asked. “They’re old buddies of mine. Trained them both. You
remember, I told you about them.”

Chris nodded. “Yes—you thought the bottom
had potential.”

“Still does. But they’re in love—why ruin a
perfectly good relationship?”

Michael looked at the two of them, and then
at Chris. He didn’t dare to ask the question out loud. Chris
laughed and nodded. “Yes, he’s in,” he said, punching Ron on the
arm. “Or rather, he knows that we are.”

“Hey, watch it, squirt, I’ll have to hurt
you!” Ron threw a feint and Chris weaved and caught Ron’s fist. It
looked playful, yet Michael still had a fading bruise on his upper
arm. He winced and swallowed hard.

“Anyway—” Ron said, backing off and leaving
Chris alone, “those two are all right. Kinda twink, but not bad.
Very eager. You could go home with worse. Or much better.” Ron took
one long gaze over Michael’s body and nodded. “Yeah, I think you
could do better.”

Michael had never been so frankly appraised
in his life. The earlier cruising at the meeting or even in the bar
had all been sport, in fun. But Ron swept him up and down like he
was a piece of meat—or a piece of merchandise, period. Like a
client. He wished that he could just break away and go back to Dave
and his slave boyfriend and have another beer and maybe go to their
place and get his cock sucked. But it would be rude to initiate his
exit. He had to be dismissed. He looked at Chris, and knew
instantly that Chris wasn’t going to let him go. He felt
disappointed, ashamed, confused—

And he felt an erection.

Oh shit, he thought. “Please,” he said. The
word caught in his throat, and he had to cough to get it out and
continue. “I need to take a piss.”

Chris gave a brief nod and said, “Bring back
two beers.” Michael shifted nervously, and Chris smiled as he
tucked a bill into one of the pockets on his shirt.

Michael didn’t remember where the bathroom
was, but he just hugged the wall until he found it. Inside, he
fumbled for his zipper and forced piss through the hard-on. Dry ice
sizzled and shot white smoke up into the air. Next to him, a man
with long blonde hair and a bushy mustache gave his own cock a
shake and licked his lips. Michael looked at him—big, beefy,
tattooed—nothing like what he usually liked.

“Where?” he croaked.

One of the two stalls had an “Out of Order”
sign on it. Of course, the classic. It smelled of piss that men had
poured into it anyway—the walls were dank and covered with
graffiti. But Michael didn’t care. He stepped up onto the rim of
the toilet and braced himself against the walls. The blond bear
liked that. He grinned and pulled a condom out of his vest pocket,
and hurriedly slid it over Michael’s dick. Then, he headed for
Michael’s crotch like a dog for dinner.

Michael almost cried out as the warm suction
began. He threw his head back and gasped, and thrust his hips
forward. The guy took his whole cock in, an enthusiastic—no,
starving—cocksucker, just eating Michael alive from the crown on
down.

It didn’t take long. Michael’s body was
tense with holding the precarious position over the toilet. The
bushy guy had plenty of room to maneuver, so he used it, pulling
his head all the way back and slurping his way all the way down to
the base again. There were no fancy moves, only honest sucking and
swallowing, and Michael felt the orgasm build like an approaching
subway car, rumbling and tearing its way through his body. He shot
into the rubber with such force he almost lost his balance, but the
guy kept sucking until it was all out, and the cock had begun to
shrink again.

“Thanks, man,” the stranger said, backing
out. “Anytime, for you.”

Michael nodded weakly and stripped the
condom off. He dropped it into the toilet and zipped up before he
got down. Taking a deep breath, he exited and washed his hands.
Realizing that his eighty dollar cap was missing, he ran back to
the stall—it wasn’t there. But it was on the floor in the next
stall, and the men in that one obligingly handed it out to him.

It would all be very funny if it wasn’t
so—intense. Michael wiped the hat off and went to the bar and
ordered the two beers.

“Someone’s been a bad boy,” Ron said when
Michael came back. Michael stared at him in horror. “Yeah, you
can’t hide anything from me in my bar,” the leatherman added. “I
could see eyes following you all the way back here. Must have been
quite a show.”

Chris took his beer and sighed. “You keep
going out for fast food, Michael. What do I have to do to get you
into a four star establishment?”

“Jeez, what does a guy have to do to get a
little privacy?” Michael asked, blushing again.

“Don’t suck cock in a leather bar!” Ron
said.

“Or get it sucked,” Chris added. “I don’t
believe Mike has ever sucked cock.”

“That can be remedied,” Ron leered.

“I sucked cock,” Michael found himself
saying. “Back at school. Before SM. I had a buddy, this jock named
Charlie. Charlie Campbell.” He couldn’t stop talking, but the two
men were listening to him. “He—he was on the soccer team. Nice
body—but we were buddies. One night, we got drunk—and we were
watching these videos—”

“Great!” Ron shouted. “And you did him?“

“Yeah.” Michael wished he had a drink, and
suddenly, there was a cold bottle being pressed into his hand. He
looked at Chris and thanked him with a look and took a long drink.
“I sucked him off, and then he did me. And for the rest of our time
there, we kept—doing that. We never really talked about it. Never
really planned it. But the videos would come out, we’d have a few
beers, and then I’d do him. And he’d do me.”

“But always you first,” Ron said.

Michael nodded.

“And after a while, you really didn’t need a
few beers,” Chris added.

Michael handed the beer back and didn’t
answer.

“Fuckin’ classic, man,” Ron said with a
laugh.

“I think I should take Michael home,” Chris
announced. “I think that’s enough fun for the night. Ron—it’s great
to see you.”

“You too, kid. Say hello to Brian if you
ever talk to him. Good luck with the training, Michael. You’ll need
it!” Ron raised his beer in a farewell, and then turned into the
crowd and went stalking. Chris shifted his head in the direction of
the door, and Michael followed wordlessly. They walked over to the
main avenue to hail a cab.

“I’m sorry if I ruined your date,” Michael
said finally. “I know I shouldn’t have come over.”

“No, technically you shouldn’t have, but
it’s all right. And you certainly didn’t ruin a date, Michael.
Ron’s not my lover.” Chris seemed amused at the possibility.

“Oh.”

“He’s my brother,” Chris said. “My big
brother.”

“That’s the truth,” came out before Michael
knew what he was saying. He blushed and felt like he should duck,
but amazingly, Chris threw back his head and laughed out loud.

“Mike, let’s get you home before I have to
spank you.”

And if there was anything left for Michael
to say, it vanished from his mind and he rode home in a pure and
amazed stupor. He never did get to ask about the tattoos.

He slept on his belly and moaned in the
early morning hours. He awoke in the dark, pushing his ass up, his
dick as hard as a rail, his hands clutching the pillow. He gasped
and lay shaking under the covers until the sun rose.

The evening at the bar seemed to be a
turning point. Oh, it wasn’t that Chris became a buddy and
lightened up, or even that he was more forthcoming with those
little personal details like having a brother nearby who was older
and into this SM stuff. But it did seem that Michael felt more and
more like a person when Chris talked to him and less like a vaguely
stubborn object that needed a kick before it would work
properly.

It was also a turning point for how Michael
saw Joan. The memory of standing on the side, waiting to be
recognized, the sensation of sweat trickling down the back of his
shirt, the humiliation of being spoken about to his face—all these
things were the most simple and obvious parts of a slave’s
existence, yet they filled him with such complex emotions! God, how
could he have ever really known how it felt?

There were times when he wanted to kick the
walls and throw furniture around, partly because goddammit, they
had been right, and he was wrong, and he hated being wrong—and
partly because of the self pity that sometimes threatened to make
him give up.

Years, he thought, skimming through his old
notes. I spent years learning the wrong way. And then, I waste
months here, holding onto it. It was embarrassing. It was also
frustrating.

But every morning, he got up at dawn and ran
with Chris, and then applied himself to everything he was told to
do, whether it was doing the movement dances with Joan, listening
in on the wrap-up interviews with Lorens, or folding laundry and
discussing sports with Vicente. In evening sessions, he would ask
Chris questions, and take even more notes, and then review them
before going to sleep. Most of the time, he barely had energy to
masturbate before sleeping—and the wet dreams took over for him
when he didn’t. It was like being a teenager again.

One morning, he was sitting in the dining
room, lingering over breakfast. He heard Chris’s footsteps
approaching—he had long since learned how to tell the difference
between Chris and Anderson—and without thinking, he pushed back his
chair and rose.

Chris looked a little surprised. Michael’s
mind seized up—he wanted to laugh it off, to say that he thought it
was the Trainer approaching. But he couldn’t say anything. Chris
nodded and began to inform him about what the agenda was for the
day, and they went to work without mentioning it.

* * * *

“Did you have someone special when you left
England?” Michael rolled over onto his stomach.

“Do you mean a boyfriend? Oh, no, there was
never enough time for that.” Joan giggled, and her body shook. They
were together in the slave’s room. It was at the end of the hallway
on the first floor, near the kitchen, and consisted of two single
beds with two footlockers, with one shared closet. Michael had been
sent there, to sleep, in order to experience the Spartan quality of
the experience. But being with Joan made it seem more like summer
camp. He did away with her need to be on formal terms with him, and
found that to be far more interesting than sleeping in a single
bed, which seemed narrow and kind of juvenile.

“Not enough time? Why not? You weren’t a
slave then.”

“No, but there was always quite a bit of
work to be done—the family was always occupied. If it wasn’t
school, it was music lessons, or helping at my aunt’s candy
shop—and I did a bit of rugby too, when I was younger. Also, I had
decided quite early that I wanted very much to do the service.”

“Wait—the aunt in the candy shop—that’s
Edith?”

She was pleased that he remembered. “Yes,
that’s right. And when I go home, her husband, Henry, will retire
from service and run the shop with her, after they take a tour of
the world. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? A tour of the world!”

“You’ve already had one. Japan, America... I
haven’t been anywhere.” Michael pulled at the ever-stray lock of
hair in front of his eyes.

“Well, with all honesty, I would have rather
not gone to Japan. It’s a lovely country with some perfectly lovely
people—but it always seemed too crowded. And it was very hard at
first—I couldn’t bear the food, and the tea wasn’t exactly what we
were used to at home.” She smiled nervously and sighed. “I did get
used to it, though.”

“What made you get used to it, Joan? Was it
that you knew you might not be acceptable for service without it?
Did it make you unhappy?” He sat up and folded his legs under him.
“I don’t know if I could do that—go to a foreign country and live
with strangers and learn a whole new way of life, just so I could
possibly be useful sometime in the next ten years.”

“I’m very sure that His Lordship knows I’ll
be useful, or else he wouldn’t have sent me,” Joan said
confidently. “And better someone in the family get the experience
overseas than some hired stranger, right?”

“But you didn’t like it,” Michael
insisted.

“Well, no,” she admitted. “But I knew it
would only be for a year. And if I had failed—oh, that would have
been a shame. Mum and Dad would be very disappointed, I think.”

“So—you’re doing it for them?”

“No, not exactly. Not any more in the sense
that a boy follows his father into the same university or the same
branch of the services. It was something they did—I saw them, and
it made them happy. They were so proud—and the service made
them...” She paused, turning over words in her head, and then
shrugged. “I don’t know. Special in some way. Apart from the rest
of the world. Now, I get to be special, too.”