Lighthouse in the Desert

I heard the hum of a well-tuned engine out in front of the restaurant and turned to the window to see who was gliding in. The car, a beautiful, new silver Porsche 911 Carrera, didn't make it as far as a marked-off parking space before it stopped, at somewhat of an awkward angle, taking up two spaces. I paused with the thought of whether he'd parked that way on purpose to preserve his precious bodywork or if the car had given out on him. A gorgeous hunk—maybe in his forties but still in very fine shape—got out, took leather driving gloves off his hands, popped the hood, placed the gloves precisely on top of the fender, and fiddled inside the engine compartment. So, maybe it was car trouble after all. I thought the gloves defined his smart dress quite well, and the fact that he took them off to dip into the engine signaled how well he took care of his things—but that he didn't shy away from dirtying his hands. The fancy cowboy boots were a nice touch.

He was a man's man.

That he was driving a $100,000-plus car didn't seem strange to me, even though we were out here in the Nevada desert on a lonely strip of Highway 95 between Mina Nowhere to the south in the direction of Las Vegas and Luning Nowhere to the north in the direction of Reno. We got a lot of nice sports cars pulling into the Lighthouse Restaurant, Motel, Gym, and Club despite being in the middle of Nowhere. We were the only full-service gay men's support facility in western Nevada between Las Vegas and Reno. It might look like we were Nowhere, but we pulled in men from Nellis Airbase to the south, Yosemite National Park to the west, and Hawthorne Army Ammunition Depot and the Walker River Indian Reservation—and even as far as Lake Tahoe—to the north. We had rooms. We had food and entertainment. We had rent-boys. We could make whoopy for a man's man. Some guys made a weekend of it.

I watched as the hunk mussed around in his engine compartment for a few minutes, shrugged, and then lowered the hood, turned, and walked—no, more strutted—toward the restaurant entrance. He was a man's man and he wanted everyone to know it.

I wasn't alone in watching him saunter in. He was tall and muscular, handsome as the devil, and moved like he owned the world. If he owned that Porsche, he did, in fact, own a large chunk of the world. He was wearing a white dress shirt that fit his muscular torso like a glove and tailored dark-blue trousers. The gold threads in his obviously expensive silk tie reflected the light of the unrelenting sun overhead. Dustin, Chris, and Carlos had all gathered at the front windows to watch his progress. All were as good a grader of manflesh as I was, as the duties of all three—Dustin Stevens, Chris Drew, and Carlos Sanchez—were to serve men in every way, including, by day, as waiters in this restaurant. We didn't really need three waiters in the restaurant, but we never knew when one of the guys would be culled off to ride a cock in one of the motel rooms.

The man approaching us was premium manflesh—just what any of us rent-boys were happy to go into one of the motel rooms with—and he seemed to be well aware of that. I was one of the four "servers" at the Lighthouse, but I was the senior one—both in experience and authority. I served as "host" in the restaurant, but also as manager of the motel and brothel end of the business and as the stage talent on Friday and Saturday nights in the club. I sold what I displayed. The club, in back of the restaurant, was in business Thursday night through Saturday night, but a guy and a motel room could be had any time of day or night of the week.

I wasn't in charge of the whole operation. That would be Andy Marsan, who we all called Sarge. He ran the kitchen as well as all of the financial business. There was a revolving staff of two or three Hispanics or Native Americans to help him in the kitchen. And then there was Ian Hogan, another muscle-bound former sergeant, but not called Sarge like Andy was, who ran the gym attached to the north side of the Restaurant/Club building. The motel rooms, seven fronting Highway 95 and seven on the other side, facing a parking lot and a ten-stall parking building, where, for a price, patrons could park their cars behind vertical strips of rubber that hid the cars from view, ran off to the south from the restaurant/club building. Only three of the motel units were open to transient guests, units 1 through 3. Units 4 through 7, on the front, were for short-term service, with Dustin, Chris, and Carlos each having a room to use. The fourth room was used for blow jobs and quickies and sleep by the room attendant and young part-time rent-boy, Jacob Grimes. He was just out of high school up in Carson City and didn't have the experience the other three had. He was just the small, pretty-faced kind of guy some customers liked to dominate, though, and it wouldn't be long before he'd be riding the cocks like the best of rent-boys.

The three rent-boys/waiters had personal rooms on the motel's backside. Two of the other rooms there were used by the kitchen staff for sleeping, and the two other rooms were storage. The gym manager, Ian, had his own studio unit off the back of the gym, where he also was available for patrons wanting to be covered by a power top. All and all, we were a complete man's delight complex.

As the senior talent, I had a fancy circular room in the tower immediately above the club's circular bar, but that wasn't where I slept. Sarge's apartment was above the restaurant. I slept with him there.

The tower was a replica of a lighthouse. That was the complex's distinctive element. Rising above the restaurant building and from the middle of it, the replica lighthouse tower, complete with a bulbous revolving light at the top—a red light—could be seen for miles away in the flat-earthed desert. It was purposely phallic. "We service dick here" was its message.

The front of the long line of motel rooms, restaurant, and gym were painted white with a series of rolling blue waves running from south to north. The effect of driving through Nowhere in the desert and coming upon a lighthouse with rolling waves depicted along the base was certainly arresting. Everyone knew about the lighthouse north of Mina on Highway 95. Not everyone knew it was a gay cruising club in addition to a restaurant and motel, though. We'd rent motel rooms to anyone, making sure on each changeover that the condoms were retrieved from floor or trash basket, and our restaurant was the best place for anyone to eat for fifty miles in any direction.

Enough guys across the whole region knew we were in business, and what business we were in, though, that this was a lucrative operation even though being in the middle of Nowhere.

The commanding hunk hit the door with a big grin. The three waiters scattered about the room, looking like they were keeping to their own business, but I knew they were keeping tabs on the guy as he talked to me at the host's desk. We weren't exactly busy. If we relied on the restaurant traffic for business, we'd be out of business, and we very definitely were in a profitable business.

He won me over as soon as he came through the door. He grinned, looked me over from feet to the top of my sunny blond head, and said, "Nice." Before I could ask him if he could afford me, which he clearly could, given his car and his clothes, he added, "A lighthouse? In the desert?"

"Sometimes we put a tea cup with water and half a peanut shell floating in it out front for the lighthouse to monitor," I replied. It wasn't an off-the-cuff response. We got the "A lighthouse in the desert?" question a lot. "It's good for business. People notice it. Also, you notice that this stretch of highway between Vegas and Reno has a lot of this 'eye-opener' stuff on it. More in the 50s than now. Most of it has fallen down."

"Speaking of fallen down," he said. "I'm having car trouble."

"So, you didn't stop here just to taste lighthouse cooking?" I said. I was actually disappointed. I had assumed he had stopped here to taste the off-menu goods, and, although Carlos was the one who was up at the moment on walk-in traffic, I was already scheming to take this one myself. I'd already checked out his crotch, and he had distinct possibilities. I liked them big. If I was going to sheath one, I wanted to feel it. I could pull rank and expect no more than a bit of quiet grumbling from the batter who was up. But if he only stopped because his car stopped . . .

"I might have," he answered. "What are the chances there's a garage anywhere near here and AAA towing services?"

"You're in luck," I said. "There's a guy in Mina, just south of here who tows for AAA, and his father has a garage, Cassidy's Garage. He's a good, reasonable mechanic too. So, you're really in luck. I'll call him for you, if you like."

"I like, thanks." He'd looked directly at me and emphasized the "I like." I liked that a lot myself.

I placed the call. "Butch will be over in just a bit," I said. "Business isn't all that brisk for towing in Mina."

"Butch? I heard you call him Butch. From Cassidy's garage. Butch Cassidy?"

"Yeah, his parent were fans," I said. "Wait till you see the tow truck. He named it Sundance. And there he is now."

"Thanks," the man said. "I'm Travis, by the way, from near Reno. Travis Tyler."

Your name should be something more Greek; you're a gorgeous god, I thought, as he sauntered back out to talk to Butch at his car. The three waiters drifted close to the windows again to watch him. "I'm up next," Carlos called over to me.

Damn, I thought, Carlos remembers. "Yes, you are. I remember," I answered. "The very next guy who comes in after this one is yours." This was met with some of that harmless quiet grumbling.

We all watched as the man—Travis Tyler—talked with Butch. He stood real close to Butch; I knew that Butch would really like that. We may be at the end of the earth out here in the middle of a desert, but the lighthouse business had attracted some like-minded permanent residents.

After they'd jabbered a bit, the hunk went around to the trunk of the Porsche, opened it, and took out a small suitcase. I could hear the sigh from the guys across the restaurant when he did that. I tried the name in my memory banks but came up with no association—certainly of a past patron. Butch got back into Sundance and started maneuvering it around at the tail of the Porsche. Luckily, there was plenty of room. It was early afternoon. This was Friday. The patrons wouldn't start arriving until 7:00 or after, and then only those who wanted to eat dinner here before partying in the club in the back. And most club patrons parked in the back anyway. The closeted ones paid extra to park in the covered slots with screening on the entrances.

Tyler left Butch to get the Porsche on the flatbed and glided back into the restaurant.

"He has to take it to the garage to see what's wrong," Tyler said. "He said you'd have motel rooms available here. Do you have a vacancy until I can get the car back, Collin?"

I checked the reservations book, although I didn't really need to. There were the three rooms at the end in the front. None were booked for tonight yet. The other four rooms could be made available for anyone who stayed later than our 2:00 a.m. closing and were too drunk to drive—and who didn't mind the lingering smell of male sex in those rooms. And, as they invariably were the guys who had created the smell in the first place, we never got complaints.

"Sure, we have a room. Carlos," I said, turning to the three waiters standing across the room with their tongues hanging out. "Could you take Mr. Tyler to unit 1, please?" I was reluctantly giving way to Carlos's rights. He was a goldmine for us, and I wanted to keep him happy in that role.

Carlos was Johnny on the spot, picking up Tyler's suitcase, grinning at the man, and wagging his tail like a puppy. Tyler put a hand lightly on the rent-boy's back as they walked off and I could see Carlos trembling. You wouldn't know he was a hardened and lucrative rent-boy, although he wasn't the most experienced one here, I acknowledged. That would be me, followed by Dustin.

My eyes narrowed as they walked off, though. There was a new, mysterious wrinkle here. Tyler had addressed me as Collin. That was my name, Collin Greene, but I hadn't given Tyler my name. So, he'd walked in here knowing my name. It's wasn't just anyone who was named Collin. I didn't wear a nametag. There was no plaque here proclaiming who the restaurant host was.

I gave it twenty minutes and when Carlos hadn't returned, I went into the office between the restaurant kitchen and the club area, turned on one of the monitors in the bank of TVs above the desk, and dialed in the camera pointed at the bed in unit 1. Sure enough, they were both naked on the bed. Tyler was doing Carlos in a missionary on the bed and Carlos looked like he was having a special time, clutching Tyler's shoulder tips with fingers that flexed to the rhythm of Tyler's thrusts and moving his hips with the stroking of the cock inside him. His face was turned toward the camera and displayed a dreamy, well-fucked look. The point of penetration could clearly be seen. Tyler had an extra thick one and he was moving it with power, penetrating all the way—a very long way—and bringing it back to the tip before burying it again. Carlos clearly was in heaven. For a rent-boy to be having a special time was really something. Carlos liked big cocks, and Tyler was taking him in long slides, in which his cock came almost entirely out of the little brown Hispanic's hole before sliding deep inside again.

Tyler was a fucking god. He had a body that was as magnificent as I had fantasized when I first saw him. He had a piece to admire and he had a technique, holding Carlos expertly in his embrace, and fucking him hard and fast and deep, that marked him as a real pro at it. They'd been at it for a while. As I watched, Carlos fairly collapsed within the man's embrace, letting his arms dangle and turning his head to the side again after they had French kissed and letting his tongue hang out and his eyes glaze. He'd let himself go totally open to the man, which rent-boys were counseled not to do. Tyler just continued pumping him until I saw him tense, pull out, rip the condom off, rise up Carlos's torso, and arc his cum onto Carlos's face.

I wished I had offered the "free-service for the right to broadcast the video to select patrons" deal with Tyler before turning him over to Carlos. We would have made a fortune off this.

I sat down at the computer on the desk, opened a tab on the patron in unit 1, marked billing for one night, and added in a full-service fuck. I'd run his card when I'd assigned the unit. Now I'd check his credit to make sure he could manage what I was fairly sure would be a big tab here. I'd like to be able to discover more of who he was than his credit standing. There was some reason he was here. He knew my name.

Most of all, I wanted to have a turn with him. I wanted to have that silly, fully taken look on my face that I saw on Carlos's face on the TV monitor. That didn't happen to me much with a john anymore. There were so many fat toads we had to serve here that when a prince went through, we all sniffed the air and raised our tails.

* * * *

Although Andy Marsan—Sarge—put up all the money for the Lighthouse business, we worked on it together, he and I. Six years ago I arrived at Begram Airbase in Afghanistan, a raw recruit for the military police unit there, and Sarge was already there and had been for two tours, functioning as a sergeant. Ian Hogan also was there as a sergeant. Both of them took me under their wings, both of them trained me, and both of them bedded me, but only Andy saved my life. The Taliban launched an assault on the base one night when we were standing guard at the entrance shed. We fired back, but when they cut the shed to shreds with automatic weapons fire and we'd done all we could, Sarge pushed me down on the floor, covered my body, and took a couple of bullets before it was all over and the Taliban had been repulsed.

Since then, it was all about Sarge and me. He'd had enough. I'd had enough before I even got to Afghanistan. We came out of the service together and started up this business. I would have gone anywhere with him, if he wanted me. He said and demonstrated that he did. The restaurant building and motel wing were already here. We made it an attraction by building the lighthouse, making it unabashedly look like an erection, and putting the club on the back of it. When Ian came out of the service, we tacked on the gym for him.

Sarge recovered from the bullets to the back, but not fully. He moved around with sort of a shuffle and he wasn't as athletic in bed as he was when we were in Afghanistan. But we managed, when we could both get into the mood and when I hadn't already been used to capacity. Especially on Thursdays through Saturdays, there was a lot of work for Sarge to do and manage and a lot of work and fucking for me, so we usually just fell into bed sometime around 3:00 a.m. and did no more than cuddle on those nights. We tried to fuck a couple of times of week, and, in doing so, I'd learned all of the cowboy positions there were, I'm sure, Sarge taking his one comfortable position in sex—on his back and stretched out—and me riding his cock. He had a very nice cock. He'd gotten that bad back from saving me. I'd ride his cock in a cowboy whenever he wanted me to.

So, how that came into play was that it was Friday afternoon and we were ginning up for club night and I found Sarge in the office doing paperwork. I casually dialed through the motel room monitors—we had cameras showing various locations in the rooms, primarily the beds and the showers, and we'd put them in for security of our guys to make sure they weren't being murdered by johns, but, yes, we sometimes indulged in watching the sex. We didn't do anything more with the films and erased them within days—unless we'd made deals in advance with particularly good-looking or studly johns to broadcast them out to a select number paying patrons. We didn't want to get into the sort of shit or suffer the possible consequences of having done so without permission. Of course, when we'd spied a great performer when we were flipping through the dials, sometimes we'd offer them contracts to perform on film. More than sometimes the stud was happy to do it.

I stopped trolling when I brought up coverage of the bed in unit 1 of the motel—the one I'd rented to Travis Tyler while his Porsche was being fixed. I hadn't told Sarge yet of my concern that Tyler already had known my name when he'd first arrived.

They were on the bed, Tyler and Dustin. Dustin was the more inventive and experienced of the three regular rent-boys we ran. He was giving Tyler a special ride now, and Tyler's experience was really showing through too. Tyler had fucked one of the rent-boys, the Hispanic Carlos, as soon as he arrived, and now, just a few hours later, he was fucking the New York former dancer, Dustin. He was moving through the staff quickly.

They were doing what we referred to as the crab. Tyler was lying on his back, and Dustin was suspended over him, facing up at the ceiling—and the camera, for that matter. Dustin knew to reflect in his facial expressions how good he was getting it, and on this day Dustin's face said he was getting it really, really good.

Dustin's feet and the palms of his hands were planted on the mattress on either side of Tyler's body, Tyler was holding Dustin's waist in his hands, and Dustin was rising and falling on Tyler's cock in rhythm to Tyler thrusting up into him. This took considerable athletic prowess and flexibility on the part of both of them, and they both were handling it masterfully. The expression on Dustin's face, clearly captured by the camera, revealed that Tyler was in deep and fucking him good and hard.