Ravens Roost

It was a mistake to have come to Central Virginia, but not, I think a mistake to have stayed. Stuart had seemed so right when we found ourselves in New York as we both were completing our English doctorates at Colombia, but in the four months between when he had taken a position in the English department at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and when he had enticed me to come down to occupy another opening, he had changed.

In New York, Stuart, hailing from a small town in Indiana, had been all "oh my gosh" awed by the big city and enthusiastic about everything—especially by our love making. He had been completely submissive to me, and I loved to hear him moan and sigh as I covered him and he moved his hips in rhythm with me. Everything in New York was new and "terrific" with him, and I enjoyed opening him up to new discoveries and sensations—and to new, increasingly exotic forms of love making.

But Virginia changed Stuart. I don't know, maybe it was the smaller environment combined with his "position" at the University. But he suddenly was more urbane—or wanted to come across that way—and assertive and snotty. I shouldn't have just moved into the apartment with him that he had picked out and where he had established himself before I got there. I should have established my own ground and made him come to me.

He suddenly wanted to lecture me rather than learn from me—although I'd been out in the world and experienced life for several years before going back to graduate school, and he'd merely plowed on in school, chewing his way through his family's small fortune fed by a Coca-Cola distributor franchise.

It was the same way in bed. No longer did he take my lead, let me call the shots, and move slowly and deliberately toward a mutual climax. He now wanted everything at once—and forceful and rough. And he wanted me to take him in other places than on the bed. And I got the distinct impression that what I was doing to adjust just didn't completely satisfy him. I wondered what he'd been doing for the four months he'd been in Charlottesville before I arrived.

I think I found out at a Winter Wonderland charity dinner sponsored at the Boar's Head Inn in February by the Whitehall Hunt Club.

When the invitation came, it had taken me by complete surprise. The charity was a worthy one—the county SPCA—but I couldn't fathom how and why two new University assistant English professors had been invited. Stuart told me, however, that the University was so entrenched in Central Virginia society that all events built in a smattering of faculty representation and that we could expect such one-off invitations from time to time. He also said we should snap this one up, as the Boar's Head was nearly the ritziest venue in the region.

Stuart was beyond anxious to rub shoulders with the First Families of Virginia and to become "in" with them.

I found that the invitation wasn't all that random, though, when Stuart took me over to meet the master of the Whitehall Hunt, who Stuart already obvious knew.

Dabney Belcastle was a striking man. Tall and slim and what I would call distinguished gray. I gauged him to be in his mid fifties, and he quite obviously was in his element here.

As Stuart introduced me to him, I felt that his sparkling blue-gray eyes penetrated deep into me and that he understood all that I was and had ever been. His smile was captivating, and when he said he was delighted to meet me, I felt that the declaration was totally genuine.

"I'm so glad to meet you at last, Paul," he said. "Stuart has told us quite a bit about you. A scholar of Southeast Asian literature, are you not? I admit that I was surprised that the field was deep enough to study as a separate discipline."

"You would be surprised," I answered. "The cultures in that region go much deeper than ours do. They have a rich heritage of literature. I'm finding the field fascinating."

"And I find that, in itself, fascinating, in return," Belcastle said in a rich baritone with a light British accent that sent chills of interest up my spine. I gave him an intense stare to try to discern whether he was mocking me ever so lightly, but his smile wasn't mocking at all, and his returned stare screamed of interest that went beyond literature.

I would have liked to talk to him at greater length, but Stuart was already turning my attention to the hulking, dark-complexioned man at Belcastle's side, who he was introducing as a painter, Hank Hemings, and with whom he was sharing a knowing look that explained so much to me about the strain and stiffness in my relationship with Stuart since I had arrived at the University.

Hemings was even taller than Belcastle was, but he had the same look of authority and domination about him. The look he gave Stuart as we were being introduced was one of possession, and the look Stuart returned was of the possessed.

Hemings was built large but perfectly proportioned. His light chocolate skin spoke of early New Orleans society, where the beautiful people mixed and matched frequently and without hesitation, but Hemings's features weren't the least bit negroid. He had the same patrician visage and carriage as the man standing beside him, Belcastle, did, and, if anything, the two, juxtaposed like that, almost looked like they were cut from the same cloth.

But whereas Belcastle was willowy elegance and high culture, Hemings was all muscular power barely sheathed, barely tamed or civilized. It looked like he could turn animal very quickly and no one could stand between him and what he wanted. Just the way he and Stuart exchanged looks, I knew where Stuart's sudden taste in rough and al fresco sex was coming from.

Hemings was certainly not anyone I could compete with for the affections of any man susceptible to what Hemings could give—and I certainly had no interest in competing with him that way. When I had mastered Stuart, it was with a concern for mutual enjoyment and fulfillment. With Hemings, I could tell that it always would be all about Hemings's needs and wants—and a deep, seething anger.

Although we continued living together—and even making love—for a couple of months after that, life and sex with Stuart was never again as free and natural and fulfilling as it had been in New York when we were struggling graduate students and I was showing Stuart the ropes of living and loving in the Big Apple.

That doesn't mean that we stopped encountering Dabney and Hank. After the Boar's Head dinner, we found ourselves on the guest list of whatever event Belcastle was involved in, and he soon had both of us pulled into his Hunt Club. I was from Long Island and had played polo and Stuart was a farm boy from Indiana, so we had no trouble with the horse riding, although the vagaries of riding the fox hunt in Central Virginia took quite some adjustment and a steep learning curve. I took to it well, but Stuart wasn't competitive, which meant he lost interest almost immediately.

Hank never rode. He spent his time working on the winery that Belcastle was establishing at his family estate, Castleton, in Whitehall. And, increasingly, Stuart decided to spend the time with him while Dabney and I were riding the hunt. I could tell that Stuart's eyes were swimming in Hank's cum when we returned from hunting the rolling meadows at the base of the Blue Ridge, but that was OK with me now. Because now Dab and I had something going as well, and quite often the hunt had ended with me fucking Dab in the backseat of his Bentley convertible before we returned to Castleton.

I don't know whose idea it was in the beginning. Part of the beauty of it was its spontaneity and the natural "rightness" of the feel of it. The fox had been lazy that early spring day and had been quickly found twice when storm clouds started to roll in from the west over the Blue Ridge, and Dab called an early close to the hunt. I'd left my car back at the winery at Castleton and so was riding with Dab in the Bentley. I sat in the car while he talked with the groomsmen loading our horses in the Castleton horse van. When he climbed into the car, I turned my head to him. I was in a joyous mood. I had ridden well, and the trees were blossoming forth with their spring color. The world was gorgeous—and even the thunderheads rolling in over the mountains spoke of majesty and God's gift to the world. My mind was spinning a short story and I was itching to get home and to my study so that I could begin to let it free in the computer.

But Dab had other ideas. No doubt playing off my jubilant expression as I turned my head to him, Dab leaned over and kissed me—the first such intimacy we'd ever shared. The kiss deepened as I, at first, opened to him, and then took command. He had a hand on my throat and he worked it down my riding shirt, unfastening buttons as he went, and ended with his hand on my basket, receiving the assurance he sought that I wanted him.

"Is there someplace we can go?" I croaked as we came up for air and both guiltily looked over to the horse trailer to assure ourselves that the groomsmen were fully occupied with loading the horse.

He didn't answer, but he turned back in his seat and put the Bentley in gear. The convertible purred as he backed out and drove out onto the county road. He drove toward Castleton, but when we got to the drive up to the manor house, he drove on—as he did when we got to the entry drive to the winery. I remember being thankful that he hadn't turned in there. I had no doubt what we would find Hank and Stuart doing there.

He drove on, along the white-painted cross-slatted fencing that marked the boundaries of Castleton, and came almost to the foot of the Blue Ridge, where he turned right into what he cursorily told me was the "back forty," and rolled slowly down a dirt track road almost into the mouth of a deep ravine cutting into the towering mountains. We crossed a stream coming down from the ravine, with the Bentley's wheels making a rumbling noise as we bumped over a small bridge's loose boards, and then we were in the grassed yard of a pristine white-painted old farm house that only appeared small because of the scale of the mountains it was set against.

"Used to be an overseers' cottage," Dab muttered.

He drove around the side of the house and parked next to a well-tended flower garden undulating around a small pond.

Dab stopped the car and got out and started taking his clothes off. Without comment, I did the same on the passenger side. Both of us neatly folded our clothes when we were naked and placed them on our respective seats.

Dab was smiling at me across the roof of the Bentley and then he ducked his head down below the roof and looked at my midsection through the car windows. The gasp and his strangled "Oh my God" utterance didn't hurt my libido one bit.

He pushed the driver's seat in onto the steering wheel and rummaged around in the backseat of the car and came up with a full-length luxurious fur coat, which he wrapped around himself and entered the backseat.

I laughed at the incongruity of the fur coat out here in the wild foothills of the Blue Ridge and moved into the backseat and on top of him.

I made slow love to him, covering his body with kisses and caresses as I opened the fur coat and revealed his lithe, lightly muscled, but well-toned body, and he moaned and sighed for me. He murmured what he liked and what he liked better and let me know in his whisperings that he wasn't used to being taken this slowly and prepared this well. He gasped and his hips began to roll and he moaned deeply as my lips reached his rim and spread him, and my tongue invaded.

He was gaping full open to me, when I finally moved my knees between his thighs and spread them and slowly entered him. Still, as open as he was, I was stretching his channel walls to the edge of his endurance, and he cried out and began to pant heavily. He refused my offer to desist or to go more slowly, though.

And then he was clinging to me and digging his fingernails into my shoulders and his teeth into the hollow of my neck, and we began to move our hips in consort as I stroked him in long and deep slides and he whimpered and began to sob and shot his load up my belly.

I pumped on, and he moved his hands to cup my buttocks and to help maintain the rhythm of the stroking. As I ejaculated deep inside him, the clap of thunder exploded over the car and nearby lightning flashes illuminated our world and the clouds opened in a torrent of heavy raindrops.

There was nowhere for us to go now but to ride out the storm here in our own little luxurious, fur-lined world. And so I fucked Dab again. And then again. And I was as lost to him as he was to me.

I did write a story when I got back to my apartment that night, but it was a far steamier story than the one I had intended to write, and I just left it in an electronic file when I was finished for my future enjoyment alone.

It wasn't more than two weeks before the storm clouds entered our four-cornered world. In the end, Stuart was no real problem. He was so obsessed with himself that he rode out losing both me and Hank with little difficulty and moved on to an undergraduate football player.

But Hank was another matter. Stuart and I drove up to the Castleton manor house one afternoon because the winery was almost finished and Dab had wanted to toast his new venture. As soon as we got out of the car, though, we heard all hell breaking out inside the house, with guttural exclamations of fuck this and bastard that, that could only be coming from Hank. As we reached the bottom of the portico steps, Hank burst out of the front door and clumped down the stairs right past us.

"Hank!" Stuart exclaimed and put his hand out.

But Hank roughly brushed the hand away with a "Git outta my way. I've had fuckin' all of this I'm gonna take." And he slammed into his truck and roared down the entrance road in a cloud of dust.

Stuart gave a primeval cry and bounced back into my car, having grabbed the keys from my hand, and he was off down the road in Hank's wake.

I entered the house and found Dab sitting, hunched over and dejected, in a chair in the foyer.

"What was all that about?" I asked.

There was no answer other than a distinct sob coming from his Dab. His shoulders were shaking. I went to him and knelt at his side.

"He's gone, Paul. Hank's gone," Dab stuttered out.

"He said I asked too much, that I wanted to control him . . . just like . . . oh, God, how could I have been so blind? How could I not have seen it?"

"Just like what, Dab?" I asked, while I tried to sooth his emotional pain. It didn't look like Hank had struck him, and I'm sure there would have been visible damage if he had done so.

"I can't say . . . I just can't . . ."

"Then don't, Dab. You don't owe me any sort of explanation. Hank may be right. Some creatures are meant to be free to make their own way . . . and their own mistakes."

I had enveloped him in my arms and was rocking back and forth. And one thing led to another, and in the space of only a few minutes we were in Dab's bedroom and tearing at each other's clothes and I was on top of him on his bed and pushing my cock into his channel as he willingly raised his hips to me and we were making love in his bed for the very first time.

When I came back downstairs, my car was back and Stuart was hunched over in the passenger seat and sulking.

"Did you catch up with Hank?" I asked when I climbed into the car. But Stuart was silent. I hadn't the least bit of doubt that he knew what Dab and I had been doing in the house. I didn't feel an iota of remorse, though, as he and Hank had been at it long before Dab and I had coupled. I knew in that moment that I'd be moving my clothes and stuff out of the apartment tomorrow. But this was just saving me an unpleasant surprise scene. I'd already promised Dab that I'd move into Castleton the next day.

Opening day at the Castleton winery was marred somewhat by one last remembrance of Hank. The day was glorious and a good-sized crowd had floated through, when the atmosphere was shattered by the sounds of sirens and four cop cars sliding up to the winery from as many different directions. They had come for Hank, who apparently had finally blipped across their radar. But Hank hadn't been here for weeks.

Dab knew Hank was in Richmond now, and I found it curious that Dab didn't pass that information on to the police—that Dab somehow was still held under Hank's sway. I wondered what that influence was, but I had told Dab I wouldn't pry into that, and so I didn't. Still, I followed the policeman out of the building and told them what I knew about where Hank may be. Dab didn't need Hank showing up more panicked and angry—and desperate—than the mood in which he had left Castleton.

It was all wine and roses—and mostly roses—at Castleton between Dab and me into the late fall. The winery was a huge success, and Dab and I still rode to the hounds twice a week. My classes were going well at the University, and Stuart was even talking to me again—and using every excuse he could to let me know what a stud lover his young football player was. I pretended to be a bit jealous just to keep him as a functional colleague, but I was, of course, delighted that the young man had taken Stuart off my plate. I was doing quite nicely in that department with Dab, who fit me like a glove and was a whole hell of a lot more experienced and giving in sex than Stuart would ever be.

Then at Christmas time the mysterious grant came in to the English department at the University, and all of the senior professors turned green at my good fortune. It was called a Crawford Prize, and it was pegged to a three-month, all-expenses-paid spring study in Jakarta of eighteenth-century Indonesia literature. A dream come true for me. And it didn't matter if I couldn't find any record of a Crawford Prize. My department chairman was pleased, and he held the full check for the stipend in his hot little hands, which included a companion grant to the department, so it was left for Dab to save me from myself and tell me he wouldn't let me go.

But Dab was all in favor of it, and so, come early April of the next year I was bundled off at Dulles International Airport for a nineteen-hour flight into a region I had studied for years and never actually visited before.

I will never forget the happiness in Dab's face as he stood in the center of the concourse in his fur coat and bid me good-bye while I waited for the line to bring me to the security checkout machines. And I'll always appreciate the brave front he put up in seeing me off—because I never saw him again, and he knew that this would probably be the case.