CHAPTER 1
My name is Kevin Maitland; Kevin Connor Maitland to be exact. I live and work on what is usually known as the Near North Side in Chicago. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the geography of one of America's largest cities, Chicago sits at the south west tip of Lake Michigan. It is essentially a rectilinear city, with streets running either north-south or east west. Each street, whatever its length, always retains the same name, so that you always know where you are on the "grand plan" as it were. You may, of course, be miles from where you want to be, because the streets can be very long, but blocs are numbered in a very regular manner so that you can easily find places. All in all it is a very logical layout and numbering system, which beats New York's hands down. Chicago was, for many years, America's second city, but with the growth of Los Angeles on the west coast, it has fallen to third place. Nevertheless, Chicago is a huge city with lots going on. It's a great place to live and I love it.
The downtown area, the centre of the city is called the Loop, which takes its name from the fact that a superannuated, overhead city transport light railway rattles in a loop around the area. To the east of The Loop is Lake Michigan; south of The Loop are the poorer suburbs and many industrial plants; the Near North Side begins just north of The Loop, where North Michigan Avenue, Chicago's most prominent north - south thoroughfare, crosses the east-west orientated Chicago River and becomes what I personally consider one of the finest streets in the USA with some fine shops and shopping malls and some great architecture, both ancient and modern. Chicago has long been famed for the most advanced and adventurous architecture in the USA, ahead of New York and other cities.
To the immediate west of North Michigan, the quality again drops off rapidly, but to the east in a sort of triangle formed by the avenue itself and a road called Lake Shore Drive, which follows the shore of the lake as it runs north at a somewhat western angle. The upper part of this triangle is a nice place to live. There are some fine apartment houses and a few newer, smaller hotels in private hands, which offer their clients something more individual than the large chain hotels, most of which are present in downtown Chicago or around the airport at O'Hare, out further west.
This triangular subdivision, I suppose I should call it, ends just north of one of Chicago's iconic old hotels, the Drake. Here, North Michigan Avenue meets its definitive end as it merges tangentially with Lake Shore Drive, which continues its northern course along the lake shore to the east. On its west side, looking out over Lake Michigan are large apartment blocks, forming what is called the Gold Coast. This is one of the best residential areas of Chicago proper, as distinct from its many far flung suburbs. Just a few streets over to the west, the quality again drops off dramatically: the beauty, if beauty it is, is but skin deep!
Why am I telling you all this. Not because I am a city tour guide, but because I work in the office of small real estate agency, Boardman's, which concentrates its sales efforts on precisely this rich area and a little further north. I am what, in the language of the profession, is called a "negotiator" which is an upmarket name for a salesman and I joined the Boardman agency aged nineteen, as a trainee negotiator.
I had no real academic qualifications to speak of on leaving school and had taken a job in a supermarket, but then I got the chance of this job in the property business, so I jumped ship and took it. Boardman's has a series of branches all over the Chicago area, but I had the luck to be sent to this Gold Coast branch, as it was called, which dealt with property in the area I have just sketched out above. Initially, I was sort of the odd-job boy, the only male employee, in an office staffed by some six ladies of indeterminate age, all of whom were determined to "mother" me.
Why was this? Well, even though I say so myself, I was an attractive (I still am!) young recruit, with nice manners and well spoken and these ladies simply adored having a man about the place. Alas, they did not know that I was totally gay, a confirmed and practicing homosexual from the moment I left high school and I wondered what their reaction would be when it finally, as it inevitably would, became common knowledge where my sexual inclinations lay. Well, in the event, it was a non-event. They just accepted me for what I was; a handsome looking, nice mannered guy.
I was not, and am not today, an effeminate type. On the contrary, I had always been a keen sportsman and gymnast at school and I know that my body, and, dare I say it, my cock, were the envy of most of my school friends. So my lady co-workers did not feel they had an effeminate type in their midst, which I think they might have found embarrassing. Anyway, I was totally accepted for what I was by all of them and we all got along together with no problems.
At the time I joined Boardman's I was already living alone in a rented room. My father had caught me in my bedroom, in the act of fucking my first male conquest. I must have been mad to think that I would get away with it, but he walked in on us as I was battering my partner's arse as hard as I could. My father is a very straight laced type and could not believe that I, his only son (I have two older sisters) could be gay. Anyway, there was an enormous bust-up, which resulted in my leaving home, accompanied by a flood of tears from my mother and sisters. But my father was adamant; no homosexual, not even his own son, was going to sleep under his roof. We went through a long drawn out dramatic row together, the outcome of which was that my father might just as well have uttered those immortal words "Never darken my doorstep again". He did not actually say that, but he made it quite clear that I was no longer welcome and should leave. So that was that and away I went, to the sound of my mother's entreaties to let her know where I would be staying. Aged nineteen I was out of the family home, on my own and had to paddle my own canoe, which quite frankly, I really did not much mind.
My life at Boardman's was very pleasant. I was soon taken out on sales presentations with one or other of my female colleagues and I quickly saw what was needed. As I have explained, the Boardman office where I was located had, as its sales territory, all this northern part of Chicago, of which the jewel in the crown was the near North Side and the Gold Coast. But there was also lots of other, less desirable real estate a little back from the lake, all of which was eminently saleable, albeit to a somewhat different type of clientele. And sell them we did as greenbacks were greenbacks whether from wealthy lake front buyers or from more modest types looking for a starter home, not too far from the downtown area, to renovate.
I was first allowed to take out prospective buyers alone, when the office was overwhelmed with requests to see properties for sale. I quickly discovered that in joining a realtor's office, I had fallen on my feet, for I had a natural ability to talk to clients, listen to what they wanted, and show them what we had on our books which might meet their requirements. Once started as a salesman proper, I found I had the knack of twiddling the prospective clients around my little finger as I have that much desired, but difficult to acquire, attribute called empathy: clients truly thought that I understood their problems and desires. And who is ultimately to say, for I was successful in the gentle art of "closing the deal": getting clients to sign on dotted line and thereby earning my commission. So I very quickly became a good salesman. Realtors are notoriously poor payers of basic salary, but shell out lots on commission, so you have every incentive to sell. So sell I did; I earned loads of commission and was soon making a very good income.
