"Have a lovely evening out. You deserve it and it's about time you did it."
I tucked the sheet under Raymond at the side and gritted my teeth. I was getting irritated at everyone saying that to me. Raymond's night nurse, Chester, had said it when I'd come into Raymond's bedroom to say goodnight to him. Raymond's lawyer and president of the Asheville Gay Men's Chorus that both Raymond and I had belonged to before Raymond entered his last, bedridden months and that Raymond was a principle patron of had told me that when he'd insisted I come to the choir's Valentine's Day concert this evening and then on to his party afterward.
Raymond had backed him up. In that gaspy voice he'd now acquired, Raymond said, "A young man from Atlanta we want as the choir's new director will be at the concert and party, checking us out. I want you to check him out for me and let me know if he's worth the money we're offering. I want you to be nice to him, and I want you to enjoy the evening. You've run yourself ragged taking care of me."
We both knew why I was sticking so closely with Raymond these last few months as cancer was pulling him down into the depths. We'd been together for twelve years, but I hadn't taken the relationship seriously for the first four. He'd fallen in love early, and I'd fallen in like initially. But that hadn't kept me from catting around for the first four years. He was thirty-eight years older than I was. It had taken a dust-up and the fear that he'd throw me out that made me realize I loved him too. And I'd spent the next eight years trying to assure him that I did. This was my last chance.
Even his doctor had told me I needed a break from this, and when finding out that Raymond wanted me to go this concert, had virtually ordered me to go. I gave in to them all, but I knew I'd fret the entire evening and would have to pretend to have a good time.
People lifted their eyebrows when they first learned that Raymond and I were a couple. They assumed he was an old fool and I was a gold digger. It took them to know us to know we were as good as marriedâand had been at least for the last eight years of our twelve-year relationship.
The arrangement had started in New York, where I was a wet-behind-the-ears, but randy gay young man trying to make it as a song and dance man on Broadway. Raymond, a rich businessman, was one of those "Broadway Angels" who made it possible for plays to get to the stage. I was good, but so were so many other young hopefuls trying to break into Broadway. I'd made it into the chorus line of a musical by being willing to go on my back and open my legs for men important to the production. That wasn't a real problem for me; I was randy and needy. I gauged men by their cock size and backswing more than by any other factor in those days.
I was nineteen and Raymond was fifty-seven. He was a handsome, confident, elegantly dressed fifty-seven, though. And he could keep it up and quickly reload seven-and-a-half thick inches. The play's producer, who was bedding me, invited Raymond to an after-rehearsal party one evening when he needed to gin up more money to keep the production on the tracks. He asked me to be very nice to Raymond and offered Raymond the use of one of his bedrooms. Raymond took me to the bedroom and was seven-and-a-half inches good to me for a half hour. Then he offered me a ride in his limousine around the park and he was seven-and-a-half thick inches good to me in a missionary on the backseat of his car. The limousine took us to his Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment, and Raymond was seven-and-a-half inches good to me in a doggie fuck on his bed.
He kept me. He claimed it was love at first fuck for him. He used that as a joke line among select friends, and it always drew a laugh and, I must say, some licentious looks in my direction from contemporary-age friends of his.
I was impressed with his wealth, his seven-and-a-half inches, and his ability to reload quicklyâeven at fifty-seven. He also always treated me well and with near reverence. He wasn't shy to say he was a lucky man to have me. He claimed never to have fallen out of love with me. I knew I learned to love him for much more than his moneyâor even his seven-and-a-half inches that he had still been able to harden until the last few months of his inevitable fading away. But because of those first four uneven-commitment years, I had forever maintained a guilt and a need to prove my love and devotion to him.
All of the forces at play had to mobilize to get me to leave him even for an evening to check out the new choir director prospect. We were in that stage where he could go at any moment and quickly entering the stage where release would be a blessing for him.
The concert was fine, packed with romantic songs and references and making me nostalgic for when Raymond and I both were in it, me as a tenor, Raymond as a low baritone. The men in the choir were all supportive of us. For them, the thirty-eight years' difference in our ages meant nothing. They could see and understand that we were devoted to each other. It had been a good move to come to less hectic and demanding Asheville from New York City after Raymond had retiredâofficially, although he still had his hand in the management of his companies. Or he had until he'd been taken ill. Now I was taking up the slack there too. Luckily, he hadn't let me just be his kept boy toy these twelve years. I'd been given responsibility in his businesses. I knew them almost as well now as he did. It was clear I would inherit themâand that our employees would accept me. Raymond had done that for me. All I could do for him now, I thought, was to be loyal to him to the end.
The choir director prospect from Atlanta was even finer than the concert had been. I didn't meet him until the after-concert party at Aaron's house. He was at the concert, but I wouldn't have been able to pick him out in the audience there. He was young, in his mid-twenties. He was much too young to fit his rĂŠsumĂŠ. Aaron told me, when I asked, that he had been a child prodigy, accumulating accolades from his early teens and graduating from college and his music training before he reached twenty. He was, Aaron said, the assistant director of the Atlanta Gay Men's Choir now and obviously was underutilized in that position. Aaron told me we wanted him here in Asheville and to be very nice to him. And then he introduced us.
Jason Ward was a hunk and a half. He did look like he was in his mid-twenties, and he looked like both a movie star and an athlete. He was solidly built, trim but muscular. He dressed elegantly; spoke with refinement; had sensual, dark looks and a ready smile and eyes that concentrated and captivated the one he was speaking to; and his voice enveloped me in a rich, resonating baritone.
The effect he had on me was that I went hard for him. That wasn't unusual for me in engaging with a man I could imagine lying under. Being attached and loyal to Raymond hadn't kept me from being aroused by a desirable man, and Raymond had understood that. In our more active years, we'd made a game out of it. When he'd seen me being attracted by a man, we'd talk about what attracted me later, in bed, as he was covering me, and he'd bang the hell out of me while whispering a scenario in my ear of me with the other man. If Raymond had still been up to it, my report on Jason to him would have led to such a night in bed.
That didn't mean I'd actually been unfaithful to Raymond after those first four, uncommitted years in which I was still sowing oats even though I slept in his bed. I think that Raymond would have endured my going with other men, especially as he got older, as long as I slept in his bed, and thus how freely we went with imagining me doing so and Raymond being the voyeur, but I was determined to try to give him the same commitment he'd given me after he'd taken me back. Thus far I had managed that.
Once introduced, Jason stayed with me, even with others drifting by to speak with him and try, not to subtly, to convince him to come to Asheville. He was attentive, witty, and knowledgeable, although we spoke mostly in general terms and didn't get into the nitty-gritty of music. I felt like maybe he was being grilled enough by others on that and I kept more to the delights of living in Asheville as a gay person. I assumed he was gay himself to be involved in gay men's chorus. He certainly responded to me in the natural way of one man being interested sexually in another man.
I found myself hoping he was gay and then checking my thoughts. I mustn't stray from my loyalty to Raymond, I thought. Although, if I was to construct the perfect man lover in my mind, Jason would fit the bill. If Raymond had still been up to our games, I would have climaxed left and right while he was fucking me but whispering about Jason fucking me.
At the end of the evening, I asked Aaron if I could use his telephone to call a taxi. I'd found the batteries in my cellphone were dead. But before Aaron could speakâhe, strangely, looked at Jason rather than me when I asked thatâJason broke in and said, "Nonsense. Don't spend money on a cab. I have a rental car. I'll drive you home. I'm ready to leave too."
At the door, while Jason was saying his good-byes to those still at the party, Aaron said, "Be nice to him. I think you know what I mean by that. We want him here. And have a lovely evening. You deserve the break. Raymond and I have discussed this; he wants you to have this evening."
Before I could respond to that, Jason was there, at my elbow.
