Gabe's Roadhouse was a rural gay leather's club northwest of Richmond, Virginia, where I and Vivian lived. It was located there, on Port Conway Road, because it was across the Rappahannock River from the extensive A. P. Hill army training base, where rigorous basic military training for the U.S. Army was conducted on a base named for a Confederate general. When a guy went through the toughening and isolated training at A. P. Hill, he came out with the body of a god and randy as hell, with competing urges to beat up someone and to fuck someone. That was why a sex club would be located nearby. That the appetites of some of these guys, isolated under intense conditions just with other guys, went toward other guys was the reason Gabe's Roadhouse was there.
The base was far away from everywhere. When you got sent here for training, you were in the sticks. Gabe's flourished because it was a rough place for the young army guys, pent up with vinegar from their training, to let loose. Guys willing to help them do that came from far and wide, many in leather and on motorcycles, to help the young, fit soldiers do that. That's why I was here. Not just because I wanted to experience it, but I wanted to write about it too--to write about raw emotions and the results of having those.
It hadn't been easy to find out about this place. They didn't exactly want the army to know about it.
I sat in my rental car in the high-fence-enclosed parking area behind what had once been an old farmhouse for several minutes after arriving from Richmond and practiced my scowl in the rearview mirror. I knew I looked the part, although it was a disguise--a mask of my real self, which was more the jet-set sophistication of the entertainment industry, my part being on the literary end of it. I was nicely bulked up for this; I spent a lot of time in the gym and a lot of guys said I looked younger than my thirty-five years.
It had been an effort to pull my ensemble together, the hardest part was in finding the black leather chest harness, with silver studs, with four strap-down straps to hold up the really hard-to-find tight black-leather trousers, with a codpiece, which dipped so low at the waist that the suspender straps were necessary and the waistband tickled the root of my cock. I was wearing a billowy white cotton shirt, open to the navel and ready to be discarded on whim. Accessorizing all of this were calf-high black leather boots, a black-leather biker's hat, a riding crop, and the swaggering scowl I was practicing in the car. All I lacked was the motorcycle.
I walked into Gabe's like I owned the place. The club room was on the first floor of the building and was entered from behind, off the parking lot. I had to wade through motorcycles to get to the door, so I knew it was a good day at the club. It was a good day, indeed. The place was crowded, a band was wailing away, and the dance floor, tables, and bar were well filled, if not to capacity. I had no trouble separating the soldiers from the bikers. The bikers were all in leather and heavily tattooed. I had a few of those, but they were the "can be scrubbed off" variety. The soldiers couldn't have come off base in leather, so they wore mainly jeans and T-shirts. Some were in their army fatigues. They also were mainly smaller and submissive looking, although still fit, because soldiers who knew about Gabe's and came here were not generally dominants. They came to be used, not to use.
One reason a place like Gabe's was a success near a remote military training base like this was that the rigorous training on the base conditioned the guys to focusing on taking discipline and pain. Many of those on these bases wanted something entirely different from the discipline they were getting every day when they were allowed off base. There were others, though, seeking a different release other than the joy of having the punishment and training to stop--those who wanted sexual release--who just wanted an extension of what they already were receiving on base. They wanted to be controlled, used, punished. Those men came to a place like Gabe's. And those who wanted to provide this discipline and pain also heard of Gabe's and came here to use others.
I was working on a project about both kinds of men. As with all my work, I wanted it to come across as being authentic.
I started to move into the area with tables, picking out a table with two soldiers sitting and looking around. There was a cloud of smoke over the room; the clinking of pool balls off in a section that had once been the house's dining room competed with the sound of the band in the corner of the club room. When I saw that one had a book and was putting it back into his backpack, though, I veered off and went to the bar. I recognized the book as
In the Silence
, an adventure thriller by a midlist author, Miles Martins. I wasn't ready to discuss that, which the two soldiers apparently had been doing before breaking off and looking around at the other tables, so I tried a different venue. The soldiers with the book was looking at me like he thought I'd come over to their table, but I just turned away.
The name of the soldier at the bar was Roy, he told me when I let my fingers brush across one of his nipples under his thin T-shirt and he turned a smile on me. He was young, redheaded, and short. He had a somewhat bewildered look on his face, like this was his first visit to Gabe's and he wanted something but didn't know how to get there from here. I gave him what he wanted. I could tell that my mere touch of him intimately was like a jolt of electricity to him. I dropped my hand to his hip, which effective held him in place. I knew I looked good to him and that my having taken the initiative relieved him on how he was going to get started with this. He was mine for the taking--unless something spooked him and he bolted away.
His eyes went big when I angled in beside him at the bar. I obviously was the man of his dreams--the reason he came here, although he hadn't known when he'd finally had the courage to enter Gabe's whether or how to get across the barrier to his dream. I took him there.
"Has anyone offered you a drink yet?" I asked. He had a beer, but it was approaching empty. "Are you old enough to drink that?"
"Yes, I am," he said, defensively, which told me that maybe he wasn't. "I have a beer." He lifted the glass to show me that he did.
"But you bought that yourself, right? No one's bought you a drink. You haven't been claimed yet, Right?"
He gave a little tug at the "haven't been claimed yet" remark, knowing that we were into negotiations now.
"No, no one bought me this, and, sure, I'd like a drink. My name's Roy."
"Mike, here. I like the looks of you, Roy." I signaled to the bartender for my first beer and Roy's second. "You dance, Roy? You'll dance with me?"
