I wondered what he could tell about me that no one at home or the office—at least I hoped and always had thought—knew. He had introduced himself as Hal when he'd appeared beside me in Business Class and I'd stood from my aisle seat so that he could get over to the window. He'd had a friendly smile, and if I hadn't been busy during the first two hours over the Atlantic from New York going over the papers for my discussion in Birmingham at Smythe and Withers the next day, I'm sure that he would have wanted to chat.
I didn't like to work on business matters while I was flying, but there were hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in this bid we were making for providing a revolutionary model of catalytic converters to the British automobile manufacturers. Smythe and Withers were the manufacturer's agents, and my company was bidding against a French firm with a design of its own. We were well versed in the automobile industry, but almost nothing had been able to be gleaned about Smythe and Withers. I was my company's premier negotiator, but I didn't like to go into talks knowing so little about those I was negotiating with. As soon as I could use my laptop, I got busy trying to pull something more up from the Internet on that firm than I already had.
It was a frustrating hour and a half, and I perhaps had at least one more drink from the accommodating stewardesses and stewards than I normally would have if I wasn't distracted. Finding nothing new, though, I sighed with frustration and closed my laptop with a click.
"Working on an important presentation?" I looked over to the window seat. I had lost all realization that there was someone else there.
"Yes. One that's both important and frustrating," I answered. For the first time I focused on him. He was a few years older than I was and considerably better put together. We hadn't exchanged much in the way of a conversation, but he had one of those upper-crust British accents that companies like mine liked to have their chief operating officers to have to fool their stockholders into thinking they knew what they were doing and would do it every so civilly. He was debonair, perfectly groomed, and designer dressed. His face was tanned and Hollywood-star chiseled, with those distinguished, precisely trimmed gray sideburns that spelled casual wealth and near-effortless success at anything he endeavored to do. He certainly seemed to exude self-confidence.
And there was that big smile he gave me whenever I looked his way.
Almost as a flood of revelation, three awarenesses hit me at once that took me away from business, which only served to show how focused I'd been before in finding out whatever else I could about this Smythe and Withers firm. But I could afford a side diversion now; there wasn't anything else I could do up here at altitude. I knew everything that was needed to know about the French firm, and I felt good about their end of the negotiations. They always sent the pompous ass, Jean Claude Dupre, to such bidding wars—and he always seemed to screw up his presentations and upset the very people he was pitching. I wondered what sort of power he had in that company not to have been shunted aside already—although, since "Dupre" was in the company title, I could guess at his leverage.
The first awareness was that increasingly my drinks were being delivered by a flouncy steward with dark eyes and hair flopping disingenuously over one eyebrow. The other one had a silver ring in it. But when he was serving me, all of his attention was planted on my seatmate, Hal, who rewarded him with the same warm smile I was getting.
The second revelation came as I followed the steward's gaze over to Hal's lowered seat tray, where the steward was placing a fresh martini and taking an empty martini glass away. There were two other objects on the tray that almost took my breath away—and seemed to be what was twitterpating the steward as well. One was a paperback novel, with a familiar screaming title on the cover in gray and scarlet letters. I'm sure that most people had no idea what was inside the covers of John Rechy's
City of the Night
, but I had every reason to believe that it was a classic—and explicit—gay novel. And my seatmate, Hal, had it sitting out in plain sight.
And not only that. He also had a foil condom packet sitting there and was fondling it—that's the only appropriate verb I could use for the play of his long, sensuous, manicured fingers as they played with the packet.
It was obvious that Hal was projecting a clear message. I assumed it was for the steward, who was almost beside himself with interest, but, when Hal turned his smile on me and when I noticed that his thigh was right up against mine when there was more than enough room for us to be separated in our seats, I couldn't be sure it was the steward he was signaling or that I could resist his suggestion.
And the reason I couldn't be sure was that Hal was just the sort of man I melted to. But secretly. It was something I'd never shared with either my family or my company. I led the perfect trophy blonde wife and two preciously beautiful children wealthy suburban life. And my company was perhaps one of the most conservative in the United States when it came to anything close to gender bending.
But I was instantly interested in Hal—perhaps even more than the steward who was virtually drooling over him was. What I found shocking was that Hal seemed to know that I was. I wondered, almost in panic, what had given me away.
But when Hal climbed—none too quickly—over me when the plane's interior lights had been dimmed and people had gone quiet and spoke in hushed tones to the steward in the aisle and both disappeared for nearly a half hour, I worked hard at convincing myself that it wasn't me that Hal had set his net for, but the steward. This impression was helped along when I noted that the condom packet no longer was on Hal's tray and didn't resurface for the rest of the flight.
The swishy steward's back pressed against the wall over the toilet in the confining Business Class toilet, his bare knees pressed into Hal's chest and his head bent forward by the curve of the plane's fuselage. His tongue is hanging out and he's making little yip, yip sounds as Hal, expensive trousers and briefs around his ankles holds the little bleach blond against the wall and thrusts a manly cock up into a tight hole. Again and again and again. A side-angle camera angle that shouldn't have been possible in the space showing the long, ribbed-condomed cock pulling nearly all the way out and then slamming home again. Repeating. The blond steward shuddering with each thrust. The camera focuses to the floor at Hal's feet, picking out the torn, now-empty, condom packet. Welcome to the mile-high club.
I shook my head, realizing that I had dozed off, if only momentarily, in a reverie. It had been long enough, however, for me to go hard. When Hall returned, his zipper was at half staff and his shirt wasn't tucked in as neatly as it had been when he'd left.
In Birmingham, as I struggled, half groggy from the effects of the trans-Atlantic flight, out to the taxi queue, I was completely disarmed and flummoxed when the rear passenger door to a black limousine opened in front of me, Hal leaned out of the door, and I heard him say, in a rich baritone, "Shall I give you a lift to your hotel room, then?"
* * * *
Hal proved to be an expert lover. He seemed to understand instinctively what I wanted—to be dominated and driven hard, but expertly. He took the initiative in everything, which was exactly how I liked to have my sex with men.
It started in the back of his limousine. As soon as my luggage was stowed in the trunk and I'd entered the back of the car, Hal pulled me close to him. He called out for his driver to take the long route to the hotel I identified as the one I was booked in, the Radisson Blu Hotel, and only then turned toward me.
"You don't mind that we take the long way, do you?"
"No," I said, breathlessly, hoping that this meant what I was taking it to mean.
