Parker and I met on an early June afternoon under the Spirit of St. Louis in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. We were both there to study about Charles Lindbergh's use of the plane to take the first trans-Atlantic flight in 1927. Having established we both were students of the period between the two world wars—and figured out so much more about each other in a very short amount of time—we agreed to meet in the museum's café in an hour. I think we both were more interested in getting to know each other better in such a meeting than in honing in on our shared interests in the history of the period. I readily admit I was ready for something—maybe not a full-blown relationship, but something physical for a short time at least.
Parker was sex on a stick.
As it was, our interests in the period were somewhat different and our levels of study definitely didn't match. Parker Stevens was a lecturer in political history at Bridgewater College, a four-year liberal arts college in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He was working on his PhD across the Blue Ridge Mountains at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. I was still an undergraduate, working on a bachelor's degree on social history at Randolph-Macon College, north of Richmond. Parker was studying the isolationist movement in the United States that Charles Lindbergh was a prominent leader of. I was just researching a paper on how his trans-Atlantic flight opened up interest in commercial flight between the wars. Parker was intense and I was sort of just drifting along.
The convergence of Lindbergh in our interests was tenuous, but my interest in Parker wasn't. He was sex on a stick.
I guess the two Lindbergh interests related, but that wasn't the basis of the mutual interests that had the two of us eyeing each other and striking up a conversation under the Spirit of St. Louis plane hanging in the museum's exhibit hall and then agreeing we wanted to meet for a drink and snacks at the café. We both were able to discern as we moved around under the airplane and pretended to be looking it over when we actually were looking each other over that we were both actively gay and that he was a top I was attracted to and I was a submissive he was attracted too.
We were both athletic. Parker was a tennis player and good enough to have been on the very good University of Virginia team as an undergraduate. I was on the college swim team and had almost made it to the Olympic trials. We were both fit, although Parker's "fit" was muscular and mine was more streamlined. He was at least four years older than my twenty-one. He was all Nordic blond to my darker Mediterranean aspect. He was outgoing and commanding, while I was shyer and more yielding. I didn't see how any of those contrasts wouldn't make us a good sexual fit, though, and I already was fantasizing him fitting in me.
It, of course, had been his idea that we meet in the café. I had automatically agreed to that. I was delighted he suggested it; I never would have but I would have spent the rest of the afternoon, as I drove south on I-95 to Ashland to pack out my dorm room and decide where to go over the summer, thinking what could have happened if the two of us had hooked up.
"So, what do you plan to do this summer, Drew?" he asked. "You're going back to Randy-Mac for your last year, I guess, and then you want to go on to UVa for graduate work?"
"Yes, that's the plan. I'm glad you give a good recommendation for the UVa history department. The swim program there has expressed interest in me, and I'll have another year of eligibility left after college. I'll need some scholarship money to swing grad school."
"And this summer?" he asked. We were sitting next to each other at a small table in a remote part of the café. He'd touched me on the forearm and the thigh a couple of times and gave me long, lingering looks with bedroom eyes, so I was pretty sure something was building here. That was OK with me—more than OK. I had no trouble with casual lays when the vibes were right. The vibes definitely were right with Parker, and I hadn't had any for too long.
"I don't have anything yet. I thought I'd just write some papers ahead for next term. That's what I was doing here. I got everything packed up at school early, so I came up to the museum here to get some research done for a paper. I don't want to go home—to Norfolk—because my folks are in the middle of a messy divorce. I can always do what I did last summer, lifeguard on the beach in Virginia Beach."
I didn't go on to say that there were a couple of guys who probably would put me up there for the summer so I wouldn't have to go home. They'd do it in exchange for sex, though, and I didn't know how knowing that would go over with Parker. I might be more promiscuous or less interested in commitment than he was.
"You don't want to do anything this summer that built up your academic résumé to apply to graduate school at UVa?"
"That would have been nice," I said. "But the summer internship I was looking into fell through."
"There's something at Bridgewater this summer—a course on the Roaring Thirties, with some scholarships still open. I'm the assistant to two professors running that."
"That would sound great if I could afford housing for the summer. I assume the scholarship is for tuition only."
"I think I could help you with housing," he said. "I have an apartment in Bridgewater." He was more than touching my arm now—he was gripping my forearm and giving me "that" look.
How many bedrooms; how many beds?
"That's certainly something to look into," I said.
"And today," he continued. "Are you planning to go back to Ashland from here this evening?"
"I was sort of hanging loose on that. I'm all packed up at the college and I brought some things in a duffel bag in case I decided to stay a night or two here. I haven't made any arrangements, though. My bag's in a locker here."
"I'm not going back to Bridgewater for a couple of days," he said. "I have a motel room over by Dulles Airport. You could . . . we could . . . you know . . . We could take the Metro into D.C. and do some partying tonight. I know the places."
"That sounds good to me," I said. "If you took charge. I haven't done any clubbing in the D.C. area." If this was going to go anywhere, he'd have to take charge of it. I didn't initiate sex.
"Oh, you can bet I'll take charge," Parker said. "After a couple of bars we can go back to the motel, and if we've hit it off, we can fuck—if you take cock. How does that sound to you?"
There it was, clicking right into place. "That sounds just fine."
He did take charge. From there on out everything was done on Parker's command.