Don't Wanna Be Lonely Tonight

Chapter 1“f**k!” exclaimed the duchess. I remember Herbert Givens, one of my English professors, saying it was crucial for a novel to have an attention-grabbing first line. He elicited chuckles from the class when he offered the line about the duchess as an example. I’ve always wanted to use it. So there it is, even though it has nothing to do with what happened between Russ and me. When I say “what happened” I make it sound as if there were some kind of incident. It wasn’t like that at all. I guess I’d better tell you about where and when we met. Or should I tell you about me first? Maybe you’d be smart to leave now. What? You’re still here? Okay, it’s your funeral. So let me introduce myself. I’m Baxter Crouse, Ed.D., known to my friends and occasional lovers as Bax. Yeah, I’d been an English major at Earlham, loved books, loved talking about books, but I didn’t want to do graduate work in English. Didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being pressured to publish. Didn’t want to read a lot of freshman compositions, either. So I went to the University of Winnemac in Mohalis and took a graduate degree in academic administration. “Scholars” look down on people like me, but we do useful things at a university. When I met Russ I was thirty years old and assistant dean of students—or assistant vice president for student affairs, if you prefer—in the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Zenith. I spent most of my time working with students who were disgruntled or were disciplinary problems. Zenith is hard enough to get into that there weren’t as many disciplinary problems as you might think, given we’re an urban university, but maybe because of the IQ’s and SAT’s of our students, there was a fair number of disgruntled ones, or so it seemed to me at the time. The dean and others in the administration knew I was gay. That wasn’t an issue when I was hired. All they asked was I not be too much of a flamer. They obviously didn’t know me then. A flamer, I’m not. Looking back on it I think I may have been leaning in the other direction, being too unbending so as not to appear soft. Maybe that was why at first I developed a reputation for being something of a bad ass. But I’ve mellowed. All of which is neither here nor there so far as meeting Russ is concerned. I’d been at Zenith for five years, during which I’d enjoyed the job, most of the time. They must have been happy with my work, for after the fourth year, I was promoted to associate dean. Along the way I made some friends, both among university personnel and in the Fair Hills neighborhood where I lived. I liked Fair Hills. I rented a small apartment there which was only three blocks from the Zenith Rapid Transit station where I could catch a train that would whisk me downtown in twenty minutes and let me off at the university. Fair Hills had its own little town center with an art cinema, a good browsing bookstore, and a nice variety of restaurants and pubs. In that time I’d discreetly had a few s*x partners, but we tended to drift apart after a month or so. I think I was always looking for something more, though I probably couldn’t even have told you what that “more” might have been. I just hadn’t found it/him yet. Well, anyway, when Helene Goodman called and invited me to dinner, I was pleased. I’d met Helene and Jim when I first came to the University. She’s a pianist who teaches at the Zenith Institute of Music, which has nothing to do with the University. In fact, it’s a hundred blocks east of downtown, closer to Fair Hills. Jim, however, is a member of the U of Z English Department and we’d struck it off from the beginning. Thus I became one of the people who were occasionally invited to their parties. They both loved to entertain, and one never knew whether the invitation would be for a cocktail party, a buffet for a crowd, an intimate sit-down dinner, a wine-tasting, or an after-theater affair. I’d asked Helene what the dress code was, for she hadn’t given me any idea about what to expect. She’d said something like “one step up from jeans.” So I wore a pair of khakis and a blue oxford shirt with my cordovan loafers. I took along a rather expensive bottle of cabernet. I don’t think the Goodmans knew it, but I’d found out where Jim bought his wine. It was at a little shop near campus. So I went in one day, identified myself as a friend of the Goodmans, and asked for advice. After that, whenever I needed to take a hostess gift, I could trust Phil, who owned the shop, to suggest something he knew they’d like. As it turned out the dinner was intime. There was only one other guest—who was simply the most attractive man I’d ever met. The Goodmans lived in a converted warehouse on the west end of downtown in a recently gentrified area that had suddenly become upscale. When I got off the elevator and stepped into the vast living space, Jim met me and we shook hands. He took the bag with the wine from me with a nod of appreciation and said, “Come on in. I want you to meet our other guest.” The other guest was a lean six feet tall, with wavy auburn hair. His eyes, I discovered as we approached each other, were not green like those of most people with his hair color. Instead they were a rich brown. He was beautiful, elegant. “Baxter Crouse, this is Logan Smith.” I drew myself up to my full five feet eight and three quarters inches, advanced toward the man and put my hand out. Though it sounds like something out of cheap fiction, I swear I felt a jolt when we shook hands. His eyes searched mine briefly, and then he smiled. “Nice to meet you. Everybody calls me Russ.” “Glad to know you. I’m Bax.” Oh, please, God, let him be gay, I found myself praying. Let him be single, too, I added. Just then Helene came out with a glass of wine for me. We hugged and exchanged air kisses. “Thanks for the bottle,” she told me. “Jim’s introduced you to Russ?” “Yes, he has.” “Well, loves, I must get back to the kitchen.” She smiled. “You three talk guy talk or whatever.” “Russ’s my broker,” Jim said after we were seated, sipping our wine. “Oh?” I wasn’t proud of my conversational abilities at that moment, but I was still looking at Russ, feeling lucky my tongue wasn’t hanging out. “Yes,” Russ said, “Harvey Sloane, Jim’s previous financial advisor, was moved up to vice president of the downtown branch of Pierce-Thompson, and he assigned Jim’s account to me.” I was thinking about what a sexy voice Russ has when Jim said, “He’s done very well for me in the short time he’s had the account, too.” As we chatted over wine and nibbles while Helene worked in the kitchen, I found myself registering all the tidbits the stunning guy was letting drop. It was apparent Helene and Jim were matchmaking again. They’d tried, without any lasting success, a couple of times before. This time, even without knowing anything about their newest candidate for my affections and my bed, presumably, I wanted the match. I had to assume he was gay. Why else would they invite the two of us together? He had to be gay. During the dinner-table conversation, Russ asked about Jim’s current classes and his ongoing research. The subject eventually shifted to a currently fashionable novelist whose latest work the others had read but I hadn’t. Obviously, Smith read books. A big plus so far as I was concerned. Later, during a lull in the conversation, I looked at the man across the table from me and said, “I’m puzzled. If your name is Logan, where does Russ come from? Your middle name perhaps?” He grinned. “Helene and Jim will have to forgive me, since they’ve heard this story.” He looked at each of them and they smiled at him. “When I was in elementary school my hair was lighter and the other kids called me “Rusty.” By the time I got to college I just asked to be called Russ. I’m not fond of Logan, which is my mother’s maiden name, and don’t even ask what my middle name is!” During the meal I did my best to follow and contribute to the conversation, but I really wanted to know more about this man sitting across the table from me. Oh, yes, I was clearly smitten! Sounds old fashioned, smitten. But Logan Smith left me feeling exactly that way: thunderstruck, overwhelmed, gobsmacked. Smitten. It was a Friday night. Helene wouldn’t have wasted a Saturday night on two single men. We had all worked that day. So, remembering Mom’s dictum that three hours was long enough to stay anywhere for dinner, at ten I reluctantly rose and prepared to leave. I still didn’t know nearly enough about Mr. Smith, but good manners prevailed. When I indicated I’d be going, so did he. We offered our thanks and goodnights to our hosts and went down in the elevator together. “Where’s your car, Bax?” he asked. “I came on the Rapid.” “Oh, then you must let me take you home.” “That’s not necessary. I can find a cab.” We were on the street in front of the converted warehouse. “Not necessary, maybe, but I want to take you home.” “Isn’t it out of your way? Didn’t you say you lived on the West Side?” He grinned. “You still don’t understand, do you? I want to go home with you.” Light dawned, albeit slowly. “You want to come home with me?” “Yes! There’s so much more about you I want to know.” I could relate to that. I wanted to know all about Logan Smith. His favorite music…the length of his d**k. I laughed. “I’m sorry, I’m a little slow. Where’s your car?” * * * * As we drove east on Monarch Avenue toward Fair Hills, I said, “I’m embarrassed.” “Why?” he asked, without taking his eyes off the still-busy street in front of us. “Helene and Jim are wonderful people, but I hate it when she tries matchmaking.” “She’s done this to you before?” I sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid so.” “Look, Bax, I’ll just drop you at your house and keep going. I thought there was some kind of spark between us, but obviously I was wrong.” “No, no! I’m always embarrassed when I think Helene is pushing me at someone. But I confess I find you very…interesting.” This time he looked at me briefly and, with the faintest of grins, said, “A neutral sort of word, interesting.” “Okay then, I think you’re sexy as f**k! And it’s not just your body that I’m attracted to. Is that plain enough for you?” He chuckled. “Oh, yeah. That sounds good.” We sat in the two large, shapeless but very comfortable leather chairs in my living room, having kicked off our loafers. His, I noticed were Italian. He wore bone-colored slacks that must have been tailor made. On the ring finger of his right hand was a gold ring with a dark topaz stone which, though it wasn’t as dark as his eyes, reminded me of them. Obviously he made good money in his job, and obviously he was a little vain about his appearance. When I offered a drink, he said maybe later. We never got to the drinks. We talked for hours. I found out about his life, his enthusiasms, his previous lovers. And eventually, the size of his d**k. It was two A.M. before either of us thought to look at his watch. I invited him to stay the night. He accepted without any pretense that he really should be going home or didn’t want to inconvenience me. We both knew we were going to bed together. As we were undressing each other, he hesitated and then asked, “You aren’t a bottom, are you?” I grinned. “Not normally, but I wouldn’t want you to go home unhappy.” “No, no! I’m a voracious bottom, and I was hoping you’d…” “Say no more, Mr. Smith.” In the nude he was truly stunning. It’s trite to say, but his pale skin really did remind me of alabaster. He must have been one of those people who had to avoid the sun. His torso was hairless except for his pits, his pubes, and the wonderful rivulet that flowed south from his navel.