Blind Date Foolery

"Damn it, interact."

"What's the matter?" Maddie asked, plopping himself down beside his boss, the producer of the gay male social media service "HookUp," Stan Cross, who was seating in Dodger's Stadium during a Los Angeles Dodger's baseball game with the visiting St. Louis Cardinals. Stan had a pair of binoculars, trained on the stands across the field, pressed to his face.

"This filming of our April 1st program isn't going well at all. And I wanted to use the new studio van for this."

"The new outfitted van with the cameras can be used anytime. What's wrong here? Here, let me look. I know where their seats are. Sorry I'm late. Traffic from the north was a real bear today." Maddie took the binoculars, picked out the two guys turned from the game and filming up to higher seats from two different locations and followed the direction they were triangulating on. He saw them. Two guys sitting next to each other, both looking distracted, neither really all that interested in looking at what was happening on the field, which wasn't much, this being baseball, famous for its long lulls of "nothing's happening." One of the guys, the white one, was being really fidgety. Nothing was happening between these two guys in the stands either, which, Maddie fully understood as a problem.

For its April Fools Day Internet offering this year Stan had gotten the idea of matching two guys with some sort of shared esoteric kink on paper—preferable two guys who didn't look like they'd click—and put them together in blind dates they didn't realize were with each other. The program was an unabashed pornographic one. At the base was an Internet dating service, where guys answered questions about what they were and did, how far they'd go, and what they were seeking in a hookup. They also had to send in photos. The program staff matched them up for a paid date. Maddie, one of the assistant producers, was in charge of doing this and had arranged this matchup based on Stan's idea for an April Fools program.

The guys got paid $500 for showing up for a restaurant or other public venue date and preapproving having that part of the date filmed. They received a further $500 if they went on from the restaurant for further in-public activity, whether it led to anything or not. More, $1,000, was theirs if the date ended up in sex that was filmed and preapproved for broadcasting. They got bonuses on top of that based on how well the sex film did in the ratings. Guys signed up for the service with the knowledge of what the deal was and that it was going to end in a subscription film if the two hit it off. What they didn't know was who they were matched with until they got to the initial meeting venue.

The two guys Maddie was looking at through the binoculars, handpicked by him to be here today, couldn't have looked more different. The black guy, cataloged as Edward, although that wasn't his real name, was tall, thin, and elegantly dressed despite this being a baseball game. He looked every inch the successful white-collar businessman, particularly sharp looking because he obviously had made it in the professional world that didn't comfortably accommodate people of color. He was, from the aspect he exhibited perhaps thirty-five or maybe a little older. Maddie knew he claimed to be thirty-seven. Maddie knew so much more about him too.

Although he looked very much out of place at a Dodgers baseball game, he looked the more comfortable of the two being there.

The guy sitting next to him, visibly uncomfortably so, with the file name of Chuck, was white. He was younger than Edward, maybe in his mid-twenties, and buzz-cut muscular, blue-collar Marine in aspect. He obviously was a serious bodybuilder. Where Edward was tall and willowy, Chuck wasn't, being short and compact enough for his bodybuilding probably being a compensation for his height sensitivity. Of the two, he was dressed and looked more in keeping with attending a Sunday afternoon baseball game than Edward was. But he'd arrived late—possibly also because of the heavy traffic coming in from the north that day—and didn't settle in comfortably with the game and his surroundings before he disappeared again.

The hook of this April Fools Day version of the program was that the ticketed seats on either side of these two men, so uncomfortably sitting side by side and never getting around to interacting as Stan Cross had wanted them too—and had assumed they would—was that both men thought they were here on a blind date with someone who was standing them up. The seats next to them were empty. The date each expected hadn't shown up. They—Edward and Chuck—were meant by Stan to be told after the filming had caught that they each were stood up, that two dates had been ticketed together at the game just for convenience, and, since the men's dates hadn't shown up, they could choose, for money beyond the $500 for showing up to date each other.

The surprise if they bit, and Stan had assumed they would because of the money involved, is that they'd just happen to have matching sides of a serious and rather rare fetish.

The premise would be two guys not looking like they matched, but who did on paper, adjusting to an unexpected blind date and seeing where, in an April Fools Day version of the game, that would go. If they didn't click and, especially, if they did click and wind up having sex, they would be told of the April Fools angle and, if they'd had mutually satisfying sex, given bonus money.

But Stan's plans went bust. The young white bodybuilder, Chuck, got antsy and got up and left before anyone could get to him to pose the substitute date arrangement offer.

"What a pisser," Stan said, rising from his seat in disgust. "I guess the joke's on me on this one. I don't know what we'll do for an April Fools Day program now. Maybe you can think of something, Maddie," he said, as he took advantage of the stands going wild and everyone jumping up from their seats when a hit ball careened up into the stands to depart.

Maybe I can, Maddie thought, as he watched his boss depart. Maybe I already have, he mused, a smile forming on his face.

* * * *

Dr. Tyrone Price, known in the HookUp files as "Edward," left the ballgame quite some time after the game was over and the stands were nearly deserted. It wasn't so much that he'd become interested in the game itself as that he'd exchanged looks and signaling with the usher for his section. He stayed around as the crowd thinned with the hope that he could recover a hookup from the failed matching program meeting. The possibility fell through, though, when the two men got together in a cinder-block-walled corridor in the concessions area and Price got across the kink he wanted to feed. The usher disappeared almost immediately. It wasn't an unusual reaction for the black doctor to receive. The attraction for him that the HookUp arrangement had been was the assurance he would be matched on the basis of his fetish.

When he got out to the parking lot, it too was nearly deserted—with the exception of one guy standing next to a red Mustang convertible. The game tickets had come with parking spaces, the spaces being in the same lot just as the tickets had been in the same section. Price recognized the fidgety short and built white guy who had briefly been sitting next to him at the game, who had seemed to be upset by something—possibly that his date stood him up because the seat on the other side of him hadn't been filled—and who had left the game not more than a half hour after having arrived there—late. Price half thought that the guy had been upset to be seated next to a black man.

The Mustang had two flat tires on the side Price could see.

"I see you've been flattened," he called out when he reached his white Mercedes-Benz Metris panel van.

"Some bastard dumped a bunch of nails right here," responded Jerry Chatham, registered in his HookUp file simply as "Chuck." "I've called a tow truck, but their taking their fuckin' sweet time getting here. Sorry," he added, "this just doesn't seem to be my day."

Tyrone walked over to Jerry. "I'm not in a hurry to go anywhere. I'll wait with you until the tow truck arrives and give you a ride somewhere if nobody shows."

"That's nice of you, thanks," Jerry said. "Aren't you the guy who was sitting next to me at the game?"

"Yes, Tyrone Price," Tyrone said, extending his hand.

"Jerry Chatham here," Jerry said, taking Tyrone's hand in his and giving a surprised look when the black doctor folded his thumb to rub it in Jerry's palm. It was a reflex action by Tyrone; he had done it out of habit. It was reflexive action to do it when shaking hands with a guy who aroused him, which Jerry did now that Tyrone got a good look at him. It was a signal of a seeking top. Tyrone was embarrassed he had reflexively delivered the signal, but his interest was piqued upon seeing Jerry's reaction. He seemed to know what it meant but he'd been too surprised to react either by dropping the hand or gripping and thumb before he'd naturally withdrawn from the handshake.

"You sure you have time to wait?" Jerry asked.

"Positive. I was supposed to meet someone on a blind date at the stadium, but he didn't show up."

"He?" Jerry asked, giving Tyrone a sharp look.

"Yeah, a guy," Tyrone answered, cutting through the usual preliminary crap. He was intrigued by the looks of this guy and it seemed he knew signaling. Tyrone decided to take the chance. He'd let it sit there. If this guy was a player and wanted to move into dealing, he could take up the next step in connecting. Jerry did just that. He reached for Tyrone's hand again and wrapped his fingers around the black doctor's thumb.

"The date wasn't being arranged through HookUp, was it?" he asked.

"Yes. Yes, it was."

Jerry laughed, and then, after a short pause, with Tyrone looking down at the finger grip Jerry had on his thumb, he too laughed. "You too? You had a blind date set up for the Dodger's game and your date didn't show? The empty seat on the other side from me—like the one beside me? We both got stood up through HookUp?"

"Yeah, it looks that way. And too bad. They assured me they'd hook me up with a guy whose fetish matched mine—and that's hard to come by."

"You have a specialized sex fetish?" Tyrone asked.

"Yeah, I do." And then Jerry told Tyrone what that fetish was.

"That's a coincidence," Tyrone said, giving Jerry another lookover and a smile. "You a giver or a receiver."

"A receiver."

"Interesting," Tyrone said.

The two continued to chat until the tow truck showed up and loaded up Jerry's Mustang. The truck driver volunteered to drop Jerry where he could get transportation.

"I can drive you where you want to go," Tyrone said. "I have free time. I was planning on being on a date."

"So was I," Jerry said with a tone of regret. "I'd be grateful for the ride."

"I have something you can ride," Tyrone said, looking pointedly at Jerry. Jerry laughed.

"Come on in my van with me," Tyrone said.

They got in the van and watched the tow truck driver finish loading the Mustang and drive off. The parking lot was nearly deserted. There were a few cars dotted around here and there, but no people were on the move anywhere close to the lot. Tyrone smiled at Jerry and reached back and slid the panel open between the passenger compartment and the back of the van.

"Take a look back there," he said. "I was all set up for my HookUp blind date."

"Holy shit," Jerry said, slowly letting out a deep breath.

Tall, willowy, black Dr. Tyrone Price fucked short, muscular white bodybuilder Jerry Cheatham with his gloved fist in the back of Price's white Mercedes Matris delivery van. The floor, sides, and ceiling of the van were heavily covered with sound-deadening carpeting. A wedge was bolted to the van floor, the higher edge toward the back doors of the van. Restraints ran from the door sides of the back of the front seats to the wedge and from the corners of the back door.

Both men were naked, the only article of clothing on either of them was the greased black leather glove on Price's right hand. Cheatham was spread-eagled on his back on the wedge, his bulbous buttocks on the high edge of the wedge and his arms and legs spread, with wrists and ankles bound in restraints. His cock was in erection, although it was nothing to be proud off. The ball gag in his mouth barely contained his yelps and yodeling and his eyes were bugging out as Dr. Price, slim, hardbodied, and in magnificent thick and long erection, knelt between Cheatham's spread thighs and worked his gloved fist, in to the wrist, in Cheatham's channel.

After Cheatham had shot his load in multiple, long-arced spirals, Price withdrew his fist, positioned himself between Cheatham's knees, mounted and penetrated the bodybuilder's now-yawning channel, and fucked him to a shared paradise.

If this had been how the blind date had spun out while still under the management of HookUp, both of the daters would have given it a glorious experience 5 on a 1 to 5 scale, both would have earned wads of cash, and HookUp would both have its April Fools program in the can and a bonus video for a short list of high-paying subscribers.

Sitting in a bar three blocks away from where the white Mercedes van was rocking on its shocks, the HookUp producer, Stan Cross, was crying in his beer about a lost April Fools program opportunity that was every bit the tragic loss he thought it was, while his assistant producer, a mischievous glint in his eye, was busy working the phones to set up the next opportunity.

* * * *

"Good, good. I think this is going to work. I just wish you hadn't . . ." Stan didn't complete the sentence. Maddie knew what he almost said, though. He knew too that Stan didn't want to admit that he'd been holding the file back on the big bruiser who was sitting in the restaurant, with Stan and Maddie sitting in the restaurant's office and monitoring the HookUp meet. There were two cameras on the table where the two men sat across from each other and monitors for what the cameras saw were set in front of Stan and Maddie.

This was Maddie's plan for an April Fools program, although he hadn't told Stan all of the plan. He hadn't told Stan he'd picked the Hispanic bruiser José Alvarez specifically as one of the bland date men. Alvarez was a power top and Maddie had seen his file on Stan's desk enough to know Stan was smitten with him. Stan was always threatening to go on a day with one of these hunks himself and go all the way. The April Fools part of this segment of the meeting, though, was that the other man, a trim and movie-star handsome independent businessman, Craig Littlepage, ten years older than Alvarez and very much Anglo-Saxon, also was a power top.

Both men knew that, though, and both were in on the April Fools joke that they weren't really there on

their

blind date.

Their waiter at the restaurant for this arranged HookUp date just happened to be another guy who recently had sent in an application to be matched up by HookUp. His name was Ryan, and he was a willowy, sweet young twenty-three-year old with frosted hair that he kept up in a man bun when he was working and who was a bit limp wristed and "oh my" and "aren't I just the cutest thing you've ever seen." He was, in fact, quite cute, and huggable, and quite obviously fuckable too.

When he'd come on duty and been introduced to Stan and Maddie and the two cameramen and told that a HookUp meeting would be conducted at the restaurant with him as the waiter, he almost giggled, saying, "What a coincidence. I just applied for a blind date matchup myself."

"Did you?" Stand and Maddie said, almost in unison, both trying to keep a straight face.

"Do a good job here—acting like this is just any other table you're serving and not taking notice of the camera—and we'll see that you get a really good matchup," Maddie said.

"I prefer a really forceful top," Ryan said.

Maddie almost answered with a "We know." He also knew that Ryan had studied dance, was double jointed, liked to be manhandled, and was a screamer in sex. They'd already gotten a match for him. The match for him was the good-looker, but a bit older Craig Littlepage, one of the guys supposedly there to hook up with someone else.

As José and Craig worked their way through the appetizers and were recorded as dancing around introductions and feeling each other out for the cameras, the date started to go a little sour. The matchup didn't seem to be as apparent to either of them as the science of the fit had seemed to think. The two noticeably weren't melding well. In contrast, Craig and the waiter, Ryan, were hitting it off very well. Ryan was trying not to become the third man in the scene, but Craig was doing everything to draw him in. José visibly was noticing this and not taking it well.

By the serving of the salad course, Craig and Ryan knew more about each other and their shared likes and dislikes than José knew about Craig or that Craig chose to share with José. The flashpoint was when Craig made a derogatory remark about Mexicans to Ryan and Ryan wasn't able to stifle a giggle. José didn't bother to stifle his displeasure, though, and, voicing a few choice words—in Spanish—he rose from the table and was gone.

Craig and José had just been playing programed parts in the disintegration of their date, of course.

Ryan looked thunderstruck. "Oh, this is terrible. I hope this wasn't anything I—" He had been trying so hard to make the evening wonderful for the two men and for the cameras that were whirring away around the fringe of otherwise empty tables. He was ever mindful that he'd been promised a good date for himself if this came off well. But it hadn't come off well. The big Hispanic bruiser had stormed off. Ryan was a little scared of him. The guy was a thug, Ryan thought. Not handsome and personable and oh so interesting like Craig was. But the date had gone bust. Ryan was close to tears.

"There, there, it's not your fault," Craig said. "Don't get upset. Here, sit down and share the meal with me. The studio is paying for it."

"I couldn't do that," Ryan said. "This isn't my date. I'm the waiter."

"You could bring the meal in but then sit down and eat it with me and we could talk. It's not our fault that Mexican left. The camera guys could knock off early and—"

"No, I think we can make a good segment out of this," said Jim, one of the cameramen—one who knew what this was all about. "HookUp sometimes broadcasts dates that don't work out well. It would be a fun thing for you to sit in for the other guy, I'm sure. Let's do it that way. I'm sure the pay could transfer over to you. Didn't I hear you say that you've signed up for one of these dates?"

"I'm just a waiter," Ryan lamented. "I don't think my boss—"

"Give me a minute. Let me check with him," Jim, the cameraman, said. "We'd really like to salvage something from this."

"Well, if you think—" Ryan started to say, but Jim was already gone. Ryan sank into the chair that José had vacated and Craig reached over and lay a hand on Ryan's forearm and stroked him lightly with his fingers.

"You signed up for one of these blind dates?" Craig asked. "Does that mean that you would—?"

"Yes, I'm gay," Ryan answered.

"A submissive bottom?" Craig asked, hope obvious in his facial expression.

"Yes."

"Sweet." Craig gave Ryan a broad smile and pressed a knee between Ryan's knees under the table. Ryan reflexively pressed his legs together on Craig's knee. They gave each other a dreamy look.

Craig, of course, knew exactly what this all was about and where it was meant to lead.

Jim appeared in the office. "It appears to be a go," he said to Stan and Maddie, who were sitting there monitoring Craig seducing a very willing Ryan at the restaurant table. The three of them watched as the two men got up from the table and headed toward the kitchen, followed by the other cameraman.