bulge between his legs, and a funny little hat. His hands were large and his fingers were
long. Kadin imagined he had a nice thick cock. If Kadin had met him at the picnic area
back when he was still single, he would have had Dr. Stern on his knees begging for dick.
“I do not like what I see here,” Dr. Stern said. “Your PSA levels are elevated.
Seven. We should talk about treatment to prevent the onset of anything serious.” He put
down the clipboard and looked at Kadin. “I’ll explain the procedures and you can decide what to do. I think in your case, it’s a choice between radiation seeds or radiation
treatment. Or you could just opt to remove the prostate altogether.” His voice was even, a
clinical monotone, as if he were reading from a book.
Kadin smiled. He hated medical talk and he’d been against the prostate testing in
the first place. But he knew enough about prostates from listening to other people to
know that a PSA level of seven was elevated, but not dangerous. “Or I could just not do
anything and live out the rest of my life just like this.”
The doctor gave him a look, and said, “I’m not sure I understand.”
“I’m eighty-five years old,” Kadin said. “By the time this develops into something
serious, I could be ninety.” He’d just read a report about this in a magazine and he knew
this was a very slow-growing cancer. If the level had been higher, he would have done
something. But with a PSA level like this, he wasn’t going to go through anything that
wasn’t absolutely necessary. Gregory needed him. The love of his life might drift away
forever if he wasn’t there every day to keep him grounded.
The doctor smiled. “I have to tell you everything and give you all the options. It’s
my job.”
Kadin smiled and stepped down from the examination table. “And I thank you for
that,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have lunch with Gregory.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Dr. Stern said. “I’m on my way to lunch, too.”
On the way to the sunroom, Dr. Stern asked, “How is he doing?”
“Very well this week,” Kadin said. “I’m seeing an improvement. I’ve been
reading him stories from a blog I’ve been working on. They’re really events from his own
life, and he seems to be responding well.” Dr. Stern frowned. “You know he’s not going to get any better, and that
eventually he’ll get much worse. Sometimes our imaginations can get the best of us, and
we start to think they are improving when they really aren’t.”
They’d been telling Kadin this since the blasted disease had been diagnosed, and
he was tired of hearing it. “I like to look on the positive side,” he said, then smiled and
looked the other way so he could roll his eyes.
When they rounded the corner and stepped into the sunroom, Gregory’s head was
bent over the table, and he was working on his drawings. There was a red pencil in his
right hand and he was drawing something on the blank inside cover of the coloring book.
The doctor and Kadin leaned forward to see what it was, and they were both surprised to
see Gregory had just sketched a perfect drawing of the interior of the sunroom, complete
with potted palms and wicker furniture.
Kadin gave the doctor a superior look and smiled. “Is that drawing my
imagination?” he asked.
* * * *
When Gregory didn’t show up for work at his law firm the next morning, Kadin
wasn’t surprised. But when he reluctantly drove over to Miles’s house at lunchtime to see
if there was anything he could do to smooth things over with Gregory’s parents, he was
shocked to find out they’d all gone back to Atlanta early that morning. Miles stood there
shaking his head and told him he’d been just as shocked as Kadin. He also seemed
embarrassed that Gregory hadn’t given Kadin any formal notice that he wouldn’t be
returning. They weren’t supposed to leave for a couple of weeks. Evidently, Miles hadn’t
been home the night before and Gregory’s parents hadn’t said a thing to Miles about what had happened—or about the love bite on Gregory’s neck. He was still as friendly as ever.
He even gave him Gregory’s address in Atlanta so he could write to him.
After that day, Kadin felt as if something had been ripped from the inside of his
body. Food didn’t taste the same anymore. All he wanted to do was sleep; his nights were
spent drinking bourbon until he couldn’t walk straight. The back room of his office,
where he’d fucked Gregory over the work table so many times, now caused his stomach
to turn. He only smiled when he was with his children, and sometimes even then it was
forced.
A few weeks after Gregory left, Kadin took a year off from work and moved out
to his house on the edge of town. He spent his days and nights renovating the old place
with his own two hands. The physical work calmed him and tired him out so he’d sleep at
night, and being there made him feel closer to Gregory. He even painted the second-floor
shutters black and the first-floor shutters white, just as Gregory had suggested the first
night he’d brought him there.
Kadin wrote him letters, one letter every day for a year. But he never received a
reply. And at the end of that year, he dropped the last letter into the mailbox and decided
to move on with his life. He went back to work and began practicing law again; he
frequented the picnic area on Friday nights to have anonymous sex with other men. He
also put the newly renovated house up for sale. He’d done a magnificent job. There
wasn’t a stick of furniture in the house, but the hardwood floors gleamed and the
windows sparkled. He attached two elegant, crystal finials shaped like pine cones on both
newel posts of the semi-circular staircase in the center hall. When the sunlight peeked
through the front windows in the early morning, the crystal finials glittered with all the colors of the rainbow. It was beautiful, but he didn’t want to live there anymore.
Everything reminded him of Gregory and the summer they’d spent together.
When potential buyers came to see the house, they were all impressed with the
work Kadin had done. They all made offers. But Kadin turned them down. He turned one
young couple away because he thought the wife was obnoxious. He turned another
middle-aged couple down because he didn’t like the kind of car they drove. He wasn’t
about to sell his home to people who drove a foreign car.
It turned out to be a good thing he didn’t sell the house, because a few years later,
his ex-wife was killed in an automobile accident and he received custody of his three
children.
The children brought the house to life again. Kadin filled it with furniture and
stepped into his role as a single parent without complaint. Suddenly there were sticky
fingerprints on the crystal finials, bicycles left out on the front lawn, and lights blazing in
every window at night. There was always a pair of shoes lying in the upstairs hall, or a
jacket hanging from a doorknob. He hired a full-time housekeeper who worked six days a
week. She prepared the meals, did the laundry and minded her own business.
Life was full, but there was still something missing. At night, when the children
were in bed, Kadin would sit on the veranda and watch the stars, always wondering what
had become of Gregory. He’d sip his bourbon and smoke, fantasizing about how one day
he’d see Gregory walking up the front path with a huge smile on his face. Then he would
finally put out his cigarette, turn off the front lights, and go up to bed alone. He still slept
on the same old mattress where they’d first made love. He settled into a regular routine and he focused all his energy on his family and
his work. The only real diversion he had was when he went to satisfy his strong, virile
needs at the picnic area north of town on Friday nights. He didn’t have to think there; all
he had to do was pull down his zipper and stand still.
The night in 1956 when he met Eddie at the picnic area and took his phone
number, he never expected to call him. Kadin never took anyone he met at the picnic area
seriously. But Eddie was different. Kadin liked his submissive nature and his willingness
to please. He also liked the fact that Eddie wasn’t interested in anything permanent. He
only wanted to bend over, spread his legs and get screwed.
But more than that, what Kadin liked most about him was that he was a real
person, not a ghost.
Kadin was a strong young man with needs and desires he couldn’t ignore despite
his broken heart. So he called Eddie the first week after he met him and set up a date at a
motel thirty miles north of Savannah. Calling Eddie was better than lurking around the
picnic area in the dark hoping to meet someone. And it was better than sitting home on
the veranda and wondering what had happened to the love of his life. It had been five
years, and he still got an erection when he thought about touching Gregory’s soft, firm
skin. When he masturbated in the shower every morning, he closed his eyes and pictured
Gregory’s soft lips wrapped around the head of his penis. He had no way of knowing
what had happened to him. His old friend Miles had been transferred and he’d moved to
the West Coast a year after Gregory left town.
Eddie was thrilled Kadin had actually called. He told him he had to attend a
costume party early that night and that he’d meet him at the motel by nine o’clock sharp. But he showed up at five minutes to nine, wearing nothing but a short, black leather coat
belted at the waist, and a pair of black pumps with six-inch heels. Kadin’s eyebrows went
up when he saw him standing there in the door dressed like that. He rubbed his jaw and
laughed, then asked, “What kind of a costume party was this?”
Eddie moved into the room and Kadin shut the door. He sat down on the edge of
the bed and crossed his legs. They were smooth and silky and the short coat rode up so
Kadin could see the sides of his ass. “The kind of party where a big, strong guy like you
would be a huge hit,” he said. He spoke softly, with a Georgia accent—almost a stage
whisper. “It was a private drag party, but I didn’t want to show up in drag because I was
meeting you, so I decided to just wear high heels and keep it toned down.”
His leather coat was a man’s, his hair was still combed like a man and he wasn’t
wearing makeup or jewelry. But when Kadin looked down, he saw Eddie was wearing
long, fake fingernails. They curved down like claws and were painted vivid red. “I see,”
Kadin said. Though dressing up as a woman had never occurred to him, there was
something very sexy, in a naughty-kinky manner, about the way Eddie looked. Kadin felt
a twist between his legs and his dick began to grow. He imagined in a series of flashes all
the dirty things he wanted to do to him. When he looked down at Eddie’s shaved legs and
saw the high heels on his feet, his eyes glazed over and he licked his lips.
Eddie smiled and uncrossed his legs, then stood up slowly and untied the belt on
the black leather coat. When he opened the coat and let it slide down his shoulders to the
floor, he was naked except for a skimpy pair of see-through, black lace panties. His dick
was average in size, and it poked through the lace. He crossed the room and reached for
Kadin’s large hands. He walked well in the high heels; he didn’t stumble or stagger once. Then he lifted Kadin’s arms up and slid his fake fingernails up beneath his white cotton
shirt. He gently ran his fingertips around Kadin’s hairy chest, and he scratched his
stomach and his nipples until Kadin’s erection started to stick out in his pants. When
Eddie saw the bulge between his legs, he pulled his gentle hands out from under his shirt
and reached down to unzip him. When his fly was open, he inserted his hand and tugged
back and forth on the shaft of Kadin’s dick.
Kadin’s heart was beating fast and his face felt hot. The more Eddie stroked his
cock with the red fingernails, the more Kadin wanted to fuck his brains out. He reached
down with both hands and squeezed Eddie’s lace-covered ass hard—so hard, Eddie
jerked forward and fell into Kadin’s chest. He massaged his firm ass cheeks in circles,
spreading them apart and shoving his thick fingers into the lacy fabric.
Eddie sighed and lifted his other hand to Kadin’s wide neck. He scratched it a few
times with his red fingernails and said, “Fuck me, stud.” Then he pulled Kadin’s cock out
of his pants and ran his nails up and down the shaft with a feather touch.
“Oh, baby,” Kadin said. “I’m going to split you wide open now.” The red nails on
