He was a beautiful young man. He'd been in the games shop fronting on Madison Avenue in the Pinch district of Memphis, Tennessee, about half dozen times in the last two months. He always came at the same time, about 7:30 p.m. It was late, even in the summer, for a beautiful nineteen-year-old young man like this to be out alone, especially in the red-light district of Memphis, and Sam, the proprietor of the games shop, had asked the young man about this. That's how he knew Ryan Reynolds was only nineteen--a really good age for the clientele Sam had on the other end of this store, the less-conspicuous enterprise opening behind this one onto Monroe Avenue.
Ryan was a race mix of white and black. But he had all the really nicest attributes of each: curly black hair, light-coffee skin, but otherwise Greek good looks and physique, small of stature for a young man his age but really, really finely honed of slim, willowy body, with a good chest and narrow waist and hips. Sam wouldn't have had trouble guessing the young man was a dancer just by his looks and how he walked. To Sam's experienced eyes, Ryan had submissive written all over him. He hadn't been sure when the young man first came into the store that Ryan understood or as yet accepted where his preferences were centered, but how he acted in the store and what he wanted to look at as he became comfortable being there indicated he was at least working that out.
The young man always came to the store with a pair of ballet slippers tied together and draped over his shoulder. He obviously had an Xbox at home, because he'd gone straight for the Xbox games in the front display room of this store, which offered both video games and comic books. He'd linger at the more expensive action games, but the few times he bought anything, it would be the cheaper, $10 games.
He'd seemed a bit lonely and, over the visits, Sam had sounded him out on his circumstances, using the opening of coming in at the same time of day and always having those ballet slippers.
Sam learned that, at nineteen, Ryan was a year out of high school and was working--he worked on a tree removal crew--rather than doing any more school. He was the one who went up into the top of big, old trees they were taking down and did the rope work. The dancing lessons he been taking for some time made him flexible and dexterous enough to work up at the top of the trees. He wasn't afraid of heights, which helped tremendously. He lived at home and he couldn't afford more schooling. He didn't particularly like book study anyway, and wasn't that good at it.
He was a dancer. He lived to float across stages.
He didn't have parents who were around in the evening. His dad, who had been black, was a long-distance truckdriver, or so Ryan had been told. He'd been at long distance for as long as Ryan could remember. Although a variety of big bruiser, muscular black men visited Ryan's mother at their small bungalow on Court Avenue, Ryan couldn't tell if any of them was his father or not. He could say that they were men he increasingly fantasized about himself, though, as he matured into having his own sexual urges. There had never even been a mention of a marriage between his mother and any of these men.
His white mom was a ballet instructor at the nearby Ballet Memphis, on Madison Avenue, south of Overton Park. Not having anyone to take care of Ryan when he was younger meant she brought him to the dance studio with her. It had been natural that he joined the classes himself, and he had the right body and talent to be a male dancer. Her position made his tuition free.
She taught there in the evening, arriving as Ryan's late-afternoon ballet class was letting out, and she and Ryan ate dinner near the theater before he came back to the Pinch District area and she started her evening classes. Ryan would be in bed when she got home, but she often didn't come home alone. Often in the morning, when Ryan got up, there would be a muscular black man, half naked, sitting at their kitchen counter, drinking coffee. His mother was particularly drawn to black men. In time, so was Ryan. Ryan looked forward to those mornings, as seeing these men got him horny. This is how he'd gotten clued in that he liked men. He hadn't done anything about that yet, though. The men who came to his house were sniffing around his mother, not him.
Ryan and his mother lived not far from Sam's games shop, which was between where Ryan was taking ballet lessons as part of his mother's compensation package and where the Reynolds lived.
Once Ryan had gotten comfortable with Sam, a big black bruiser like those who visited his mother, their limited small talk while Ryan was perusing the games and comics in the front room of the store became freer and more open and Sam sensed that Ryan's interests in coming here went further than video games. Evidently, someone had told the young man about the room behind the front display room, which was another display room. Back there was an adult bookstore that also had more racy video games--specializing in gay ones.
With each successive visit by Ryan, Sam got stronger vibes that Ryan was interested in men. Sam most definitely was interested in Ryan. He was a delicious little piece. The ballet shoes also fed Sam's greater interests as well as the more expansive games shop business in the building that ran from Madison Avenue back to Monroe. Behind this front showroom was the adult section showroom. But behind that was an area of peep show booths and then a couple of dressing rooms that could, for a price, also be undressing rooms. Then, discreetly fronting on Monroe, was a gay porn theater, with a stage set up for stripping and pole dancing.
Ryan, all grace, beauty, and willowy body and moving around the games store with ballet slippers draped off his shoulder, had given Sam an idea--and hopes. To liven up the porn movies, he occasionally brought in a stripper or pole dancer. Sam hired male dancers. Sam also fucked male dancers.
The guys who came to the movie house liked them young--the younger the better, although they didn't want to get into trouble. Nineteen was a perfect age for them--they were developing into the bodies of men and the interests, uncertainties, and speculation about their sexuality, but they were still malleable, flexible, and more curious than wise. From the second time Ryan appeared in the store, Sam started cultivating the young man, with the hope and plan to put him on the stage in the movie house and maybe even more.
Sam wanted to fuck Ryan. There was an innocence and purity about Ryan that Sam wanted to debauch.
From the second time Ryan was in the store he increasingly showed interest in what was behind the beaded curtain doorway that led into the adult section of the store. On the third visit, Sam invited him to go back and take a look. On the fourth visit, he gave Ryan some freebee time in the peep show booths. Ryan stayed in the booth as long as Sam let him. By the end of that visit, Sam knew that Ryan was interested in men. He didn't know if Ryan had done it with men, but he'd be just as happy if Ryan hadn't yet. He was most interested, of course, if Ryan would do it for men, starting with dancing the pole for them. And he most certainly was interested if Ryan would do it with
him
.
* * * *
"I might have a deal for you. You might even have been thinking about wanting to do it yourself."
Sam had come up to where Ryan was looking, while sort of trying not to show he was looking, at an animated gay pornographic comic book in the adult section of the games store. Sam had let Ryan pass into the room fifteen minutes earlier after the young man had looked at the Xbox games in the first showroom. Sam had watched what games Ryan looked at and he had one of them--a new, expensive one, "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice"--in his hand. Also in the hand was a small, shiny red-silk jock strap.
"A deal for me?" Ryan asked. His eyes went to the game box. He took in the jock strap too, but it was sort of bunched up and he didn't appear to have any idea what it was. He certainly didn't act as if it was threatening in any way.
"You're always coming in with those ballet slippers hanging over your shoulder. And you've said you stop in here after dance classes. Have you had a lot of dance classes, Ryan?"
"I've been taking dance since I was five," the young man said. "My mother's a teacher at the school. It's something we can do together."
"You do it at the same time?"
"Well, no, not usually. When there are productions we're together. There aren't many male dancers. They always need me. But usually my classes are in the late afternoon, after work. My mother teaches classes in the evening."
"So, she's not around in the evening."
"No, not usually."
"And you're free then to do what you like?"
"Yes. It used to be that she'd check up on me in the evening, make sure I was home and doing homework and stuff. But she's loosened up since I got out of school and gotten older. The evening's when I like to play with the Xbox games, though so I don't go out much, or anything."
"But you like it too, don't you? Dancing, and being in productions?"
"Yeah, I like dancing. It's something I can do, and do well, that other guys aren't doing. But I'm also into sports," he said, somewhat defensively. "I played soccer and basketball at school and was on the swim team. The dancing helped me with those. I play pickup ball still when I can. I like moving around at the top of trees, high off the ground too. Maybe I'd be in the circus if there was one around here."
