I recognized her from across the street and waved. She smiled and waved back. He nodded. I nodded in response. The traffic light took its sweet time about changing. We continued nodding and smiling at one another as vehicles flew between us.
That dude, I surmised, could break me in half.
When the light changed, they stepped to the curb together, waiting as I crossed the street. I noticed that they were holding hands. Good. If I’m in this for them, it’s best that they are in this together.
She stepped forward, holding out her arms. “Oh my God, Jefferson! I can’t believe it.”
I stepped into her embrace and bent to kiss her cheek. “Long time coming, Julia. Nice to finally meet in the flesh.”
“Likewise.” She hugged me and stepped back, smiling. “Jefferson, this is my husband, Brogan.”
I extended a hand. Brogan took it in his own massive hand. “Jefferson, heard a lot about you, man.”
“None of it good, I trust?” He laughed slightly, revealing a wide mouth full of sturdy white teeth. I smiled back, allowing my hand to rest in his grip.
Julia and I have been correspondents since she dropped a line a few years ago to let me know she enjoyed my blog. We traded notes on parenting and sexuality, writing and books, easily making jokes with one another. “If you’re ever in Oakland, we should get together,” she wrote. “Brogan would really like you.”
Seeing them now, in my city, I thought that I should get to Oakland more often.
We went into a restaurant and settled into a corner table surrounded by windows. As we looked over brunch menus, Brogan ordered a pitcher of sangria. “Anything for the two of youse?” he joked. We placed our orders and relaxed into conversation. Julia and I did most of the talking. Brogan seemed to be assessing how well we got along. Our correspondence had already established a nice rapport between us, and now that we were talking in person, and I saw her eyes behind round lenses, her straight hair and her easy smile, I began to rethink the surprise I had in store for my new friends. See, I had decided that I wasn’t going to fuck Julia.
I was going to fuck Brogan.
Julia had laid the groundwork for my decision. Brogan had never been fucked by a man, nor had he been submissive to a man. He was curious to try it, but whenever the situation arose, the other man was either more interested in having sex with Julia or in being submissive to Brogan. It was easy to see why this was so—Julia was lovely and Brogan was broad and muscular. He looked the part of the dominant he was. How could anyone expect such a burly man to be submissive?
But I’ve been around enough to know that our sexualities don’t always conform to our appearances. I’ve dominated Amazons and I’ve been flipped by slight fey boys. Now, faced with a straight dominant man, I intended to take care of him as no one else seemed capable of doing. After all, his wife had been so sweet in bringing us together.
After brunch, we walked out into a hot summer afternoon. We had been talking about the injuries sustained by Brogan’s teenage son years before in a car accident. He had come to live with Brogan then, as the boy’s mother wasn’t able to care for him. Brogan was describing the nature of his son’s ongoing challenges when he interrupted himself. “Look at that,” he said. “That’s a beautiful cathedral.”
“Isn’t it?” I agreed. “I pass it every day. Never been inside.”
“Would you mind if we stopped in?” Brogan asked. “It’s really lovely.”
“Brogan left Ireland twenty years ago,” Julia explained. “But he’s still a good Irish Catholic kid.” We crossed the street and entered the cathedral. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. People sat apart from one another in the pews. An altar boy waved a thurible, his back to the congregants. Julia’s eyes rose to the clerestory. “Ooh, such beautiful stained glass,” she marveled.
“I can’t believe I’ve never been inside,” I said, looking up.
Brogan touched Julia’s arm. “Hey, I’ll be back,” he murmured. “I want to light a candle.”
Julia kissed her husband’s cheek and watched as he walked up the aisle. “Brogan lost his mother not so long ago.” She paused. “Complicated relationship, but . . .”
“Aren’t they all?” I took Julia’s hand. “I like him. You were right.”
She smiled. “Yeah, and I can tell he likes you. He’s nervous, a little, but he’ll be okay.” We watched as Brogan searched for a candle, but there didn’t seem to be any remaining. He gave up his search, bowed his head for a few moments, and then crossed himself. He returned shaking his head. “Nothing?”
“No, I could ask someone, but . . .” He raised a shoulder. “It’s the thought that counts, eh?”
We left the cathedral and walked the remaining blocks to my apartment. I turned on fans, apologizing for the heat wave and the few boxes still remaining from my recent move. I offered them a drink before noticing through the bedroom door that one of my curtains had fallen. “Darn, that’s a bother,” I said. “I think we’re going to want to fix that before . . . well, we should fix that.”
“Here, let me look.” Brogan slipped off his shoes and climbed onto my window ledge. “Well, here’s your problem, man. The curtain rod wasn’t installed correctly. Do you have a drill?”
I retrieved my toolbox. Julia and I drank water as Brogan hung the curtain rod. “This makes him happy,” she said quietly. “I’m sure it’s good for his nervousness. He loves to fix things. One reason my dad is always glad to see him.”
“There, that’ll hold.” Brogan hopped down from the window ledge and returned the drill to the toolbox. He looked around the bedroom, as if searching for his next chore. I pointed out his water and he quickly downed the entire glass. He tugged at his t-shirt. “It really is warm, isn’t?”
“Perhaps we’d be more comfortable nude,” I suggested. Brogan grinned and pulled off his shirt. Julia followed suit, pulling up her tank top to bare her small firm breasts. Soon, we were nude and looking at one another. “I can’t tell you how delighted I am to have such lovely company,” I smiled.
“Yeah, likewise,” Julia nodded, taking me in.
“I think . . .” Brogan began. “Say, you’re a bourbon man, right? Do you think . . . ?”
“Of course, how rude of me not to offer. Please, make yourself comfortable and I’ll bring drinks.” I returned with three tumblers to find the couple in bed, propped up on my pillows. Julia scooted to one side and patted the bed. I put down the drinks and lay next to Julia. I stroked her thigh as we talked. Brogan made short work of his drink, so I brought in another round.
Julia remembered something and skipped out to the living room. She brought back a Tarot deck. “It’s a gift for you, for having us over. Would you like a reading?”
“That’s really sweet. Thanks!” We sat cross-legged on the foot of the bed. Brogan helped himself to another drink as Julia lay out my cards. As she read my life, I thought how nice it was to have grown-up Californians as friends. Drinks, Tarot cards, casual nudity—the left coast had opened a branch in my Manhattan apartment. My friends were refreshingly not New Yorkers. Julia even had pubic hair.
As Julia put away the cards, I asked for a tour of the tattoo that covered Brogan’s back. He lay on his front to accommodate his wife’s turn as docent of his body. Julia explained that the central figure covering the length of his spine was the feminine embodiment of wisdom, and each of the brightly colored rays emanating from her body represented a branch of knowledge relevant to the education life had brought to Brogan. I touched a bare area of his back. “I see that the tattoo isn’t complete.”
“Life isn’t complete,” Brogan said in his subdued brogue.
Brogan the good husband, Brogan the good father, Brogan the good son, Brogan the good helper . . . my heart was genuinely warm for this good man. I was going to fuck him so well. But I know that fucking a straight man can require a circuitous approach. He took comfort in the rapport between Julia and me. I would start there.
Julia took my kisses softly, closing her eyes. Mine, open, watched Brogan watching us. She reached to hold his hand as I flicked her clit with my tongue, my nose inhaling the scent of her moist hair. I wanted to get her off even as she suspected, I believed, that her body was a stepping stone to his. Julia reached out and kissed her husband.
I turned my body slightly, taking his cock in my mouth. He moaned into his wife’s mouth.
We were in no rush. We were adults on a hot summer Sunday afternoon, two Californians and one Southerner. Manhattan was just the place we met. What we wanted wouldn’t happen in a New York minute.
I lolled his soft cock in my mouth, holding it in my cheek, savoring it under my tongue. I braced for the pulsing moments of arousal, followed back when he again grew soft. My own cock was pleasantly flaccid. There was no urgency to any of our touch.
Or was there? I knew this was a new branch of knowledge for Brogan. I knew he was nervous. And now, he may have suspected, this would go as it had in the past: I would fuck his wife and he would be left unknowing.
“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I guess I’m just nervous . . .”
I took his cock from my mouth. “It’s so hot.”
“You have been drinking,” Julia added. The excuses for a soft cock were laid out for Brogan, inventoried and forgiven. “Let me see if I can help,” Julia went on. She took her husband’s cock from me and returned it to a more familiar mouth.
Brogan grew hard. “You’re my girl, you are,” he murmured. Julia cooed, taking him deep.
Brogan stood and walked to the other side of the bed. He spit in his palm, greased his cock, and slid into his wife’s pussy. I moved to put my cock into her newly vacated mouth. There was no pressure now. This was a threesome, pure and simple. Brogan with his wife, his wife blowing another man. Still, I was determined: I was not fucking Julia. I was fucking Brogan.
Brogan gave Julia a good, solid fucking, and she came into my cock. “Good girl,” I said, He fucked on, nodding his approval to me. That’s right, he thought, let’s dom my girl. That’s where these two men would meet. These two men who knew how to satisfy a woman, his woman, the woman he loved.
I could meet him there.
We rested afterward. Brogan lay on his back in the center of the bed, nursing a bourbon, Julia curled up in his arms, nursing her own. I sipped my bourbon, taking in the scent of our sweating bodies. We were talking easily when, without a word of warning, I bent forward to kiss Brogan. He responded with surprise, but didn’t say anything. I pulled back, smiled into his eyes, and kissed him again. My tongue traced his lips, found his teeth and swirled in his mouth. “Boys,” Julia whispered. Brogan opened his mouth, surrendering to mine.
I locked my eyes on his, my hands massaging his hole, working with lube and condom. I could do those things in the dark, and frequently have. Every gesture told Brogan he was safe, he was in good hands, and, for now, he was mine.
I entered him easily. His eyes widened. Julia whispered into his ear, but what she said didn’t matter. It was her voice, my cock, his mind, his body. Brogan flashed on new, brightly-colored branches of knowledge.
I took his long blond hair in my fist and pulled. He didn’t resist. He submitted to me as so many had submitted to him.
Julia smiled at me, joyous in her husband’s bliss. I cupped her face in my free right hand. I took back my hand, balled it into a fist and hit her husband in the chest. He grunted and tensed his arms in reaction. But then his mind relaxed his body. He gave over. I punched my fist firmly, methodically, into his well-developed pectorals. I was harsh, wanting my pelts to be felt, to resonate in all his muscle. His eyes were wide on mine. He felt my fists, my cock in his body and he was gone, deeply gone.
Julia held his arm, anchoring him in their shared reality. I knew this. He wasn’t mine, not truly; I was there for them, and they were in this together. That was good.
Brogan was relaxed as we dressed later. “You need to come to Burning Man this year,” he told me. “It’s not what it used to be, but there are still paths, ways to experience it. I can show them to you.”
“I’ve never been and I’m not likely to go this year. But I’d love you as my guide.” I put my hands on his shoulders and put my lips to his.
“You’ll come see us,” he said. “You’re a good lover.”
“We’re just getting started,” I assured him.
Julia looked on, smiling.
A few days later, they were back home in Oakland. Their son was glad to have them back and life was back to normal, Julia wrote. She thanked me for having them over and I thanked her for visiting. That was great, I wrote, and I really enjoyed how sweet Brogan had been when we parted.
“Well, that was then,” she replied. “He was cursing your grave when we were on the plane. His chest was murdering him.”