The Second Oldest Profession

I

I'm not saying older guys can't be pretty, but WhiteStallion10 wasn't. He was sort of tough-looking, with a narrow face, flat cheeks; a lean, strong jaw; a wide, red mouth with a slightly crooked upperlip that seemed inclined to sneer; and sandyblond hair, cut military short with a pronounced widow's peak. His cobaltblue eyes were intense and vibrant. In some of his profile pictures, they seemed almost cruel. Close-set above a long, narrow, slightly hooked nose, they reinforced the overall impression of his supreme contempt for the whole Abercrombie-and-Fitch Syndrome, for prettyboys in general.

At a mere thirtyeight, he was younger than Chief Pierce, but I was too smitten with him to care. Still, he was twenty years older than I, and he himself deemed the age gap sufficiently exciting. A person younger than I could not've been on that site—though the age of consent in New Jersey is a simple, unequivocal sixteen—but I guess he wanted to make sure our relationship, should we have one, was pornographically viable.

He stood six-two and weighed onehundred-and-ninetytwo pounds of lean, lithe, deftly chiseled muscle—at least in his arms and throughout his torso, which is all he displayed of himself on the site. His skin had that pale Nordic complexion that is almost colorless in Winter, especially in, let's say, Norway, Yorkshire, or Siberia, but which had darkened—solely by work-related exposure to sunlight, since he wasn't one of those faggy blokes who used a sunbed—to a kind of apricot pink.

To add some color, he had tattoos—their dispersal completely contemptuous of the wonderful natural symmetry that prevailed throughout his tight, hard physique. The word STABLE was positioned vertically on his abdomen, in an Old English font, in the customary viridian ink, but cleverly split up: its first two letters above his navel, the remaining four beneath it, so that, through the lightbrown fuzz around his navel and the dusty line of his treasure-trail, he boldly suggested he was a saint of formidable masculine ability, while the whole word led your eye to a place of great phallic weight and eptitude just below. He claimed to have a ten-inch cock, uncut, and the very notion that a body that hard and sculpted and a face that rugged and unpretty would drive this formidable flesh-missile into your ass constituted its own thrill.

He had other tattoos, too, but not too heavily inked: a wolf in Prussian Blue on his left deltoid and a sultry female vampire in scarlet and black on his right; and, around his right nipple, his constellation of Sagittarius in a pattern of blue stars linked by black lines. Most people figured out it was probably his zodiac sign without being able to identify which one on sight.

Much to my mother's horror—I actually shared this fact with her over dinner, one evening—I liked men who, if they had any complexities at all—poetic or otherwise—at least didn't air or share them; men who had an inflexible sense of what they wanted, sexually or socially, went after it, and either received it as their due from willing lovers, or pried it out of those who got off on a little coercion.

WhiteStallion10's profile stated his wants clearly and unapologetically. He liked guys who were the opposite of him: since he was White, he generally liked swarthy guys, but had a marked preference for Black guys in particular; he was tall, athletic, and muscular, so he was looking for guys who were short and slightly chubby; he was really masculine, so he was looking for fem guys; he was in his late thirties, so he was looking for guys in the eighteen-to-twentyone range; he was a daddy, despite his being a little young for the designation, so he was looking for a boy; he was really dominant, sexually, so he was looking for boys who were not only submissive by nature but who really got off on being dominated.

Dark chocolate skin, chubby, short—I checked off on all counts—though the fem and the submissive parts were works in progress and owed their tentativeness not to any innate recoil on my part—far from it—but to my youthful inexperience.

I had learned about this site through Chief Samson Pierce, who had an account there as FirePlugger. It was a hook-up site in general, not a daddy-boy one in particular, but, like I said, it worked best for people who pretty much knew what they wanted going in.

WhiteStallion10 made contact first. With a handle like MammyBoy, I'd instantly caught his attention. I hadn't had the guts to post any pictures of myself, but I answered the profile questions as to age, build, preferences, and so on with ferocious accuracy, either because I wasn't yet wise enough to dissemble or because Chief Pierce had once told me that directness and honesty were among my most endearing temperamental qualities. WhiteStallion10 asked me to check out his profile and pictures and bounce him a message back if I liked what I saw. He also wanted to know why there were no pictures. I told him I was shy but that I bounced very nicely, thank you.

I like shy guys

he responded.

The bouncing joke had me smiling and stroking. I'm anything but shy. Don't have anything to be shy of. But I like shy guys, because they're usually good at pleasing a master. I need to see a picture, soon. I'm choosing to believe you're adorable. Why that handle?

Because it suits my love handles

I answered, a little worried that another cute comeback may turn him off.

The next morning brought his return serve

Love to sink my fingers into soft flesh while I ram arse.

If I hadn't made the transition ere now I was finally in love with WhiteStallion10.

II

Career day had come and gone, at my highschool, in a great whirlwind of commerce, art, and technology. I sat it out, watching the other kids dream big. It was hard explaining to teachers and counselors—and my mother—that the only career I wanted was either not on the map, or had been there for so long it didn't require peptalks from its most accomplished and intrepid representatives.

My mother was a successful lawyer with a practice in both Lesterville and Atlantic City. We were extremely well off. I'd never had to work a day in my eighteen years. Naturally, she wanted me to do something with my life—mothers generally want this for their kids, I'm told—but every suggestion she deployed against my apathy met with a trite but effective counterstrike.

"You're eighteen years old, Dane," she reminded me, as if this were some kind of curse. "Have you given any thought to your future?"

"I want to be a housewife."

My mother, Molly, gave a short derisive laugh, as if only half convinced I was being ironic. As a single Black mother, who'd started out on a farm in Augusta; legally distanced herself from a loutish, abusive man, my sire; worked in diners, sung in gentleman's lounges, and put herself through law school, she was in no position to have her only child tell her he basically wanted to be Mammy. I'm a little taller than Hattie, and less spherical—in several places—without being remotely svelte. I don't want to end up on

Tom & Jerry

or sleep with Tallulah Bankhead. And I'm sure I lack a good deal of Hattie's trademark sass.

My mom uncoiled herself from the hanging chair in the smaller and cozier of our two dens, where she usually liked to unwind, swinging in its snugly-cushioned theatrical egg and reading some romance novel or mystery on her Nook.

"You're serious?"

I examined the hardwood.

"Dane?"

I flicked her a glance. She flicked one back—vaguely accusatory. She began pacing, one hand backward on her hip, which was how she did it in court, the other hand usually tapping her monogrammed silver pen against her chin—a gesture that was, reputedly, the terror of prosecution attorneys all over the Tri-States. Missing its favorite prop, her other hand now merely fondled her ear, as if its lobe held a private stash of persuasive rebuttals she could milk for extemporaneous inspiration.

Though she had remarkable fortifying powers, Margaret Beatrice Deenam—sometimes known as the fortysecond element—was not a leaden woman. I'd always known her to be more Athena than Aphrodite, but she had one nerve that had never healed and was always primed for an easy hit: the one relating to Negro clichés.

"What brought this on?"

"It's been stewing for a long time."

"So when did you buy the pot?"

"Sometime in Junior High. In the caf. During lunch. At least the dealer was Black."

"Excuse me?"

Since she was an intelligent woman, with excellent hearing, I didn't reheat the irony.

"Do you have any idea," dramatic pause, "of the kind of hell your ancestors went through?"

"Only in February."

"This isn't a game, Dane."

"Just a crossword puzzle."

"I learned early—"

"Allright, now, Joan."

"If you think you can spend the next four years sitting on your fat Black ass, instead of going to college—"

"Glad you brought up the derry. That's just the kind of thing some men are willing to pay for. In fact, I did find a situation right here in town. A nice Caucasian man."

"In

The Cedars

?"

"No," a roll of eyes, a dismissive wave. "Close to the river, but safely within the bounds of propriety." This was a bluff. I didn't have his address yet.

"It's all in the details, they tell me. And how did you find this—uh—situation?"

"The same way all kids lose their souls, mom. On the internet."

"I was too liberal with you."

"And my fat Black ass is grateful for that."

"You expect me to be okay with the fact that my baby's going to be a maid for some White man? You could be in Harvard or Rutgers this fall."

"You followed your dream. Why can't I follow mine?"

"Dreams are supposed to propel us upwards," her hand corkscrewed through the air with such dramaturgic aplomb I expected it to divorce her wrist and fly out the window like a chocolate dove, "not," having evidently resisted these avian ambitions, it paused midflight, fingers fanned and harping the air, then plummeted, "drag us down into the muck." Her proudly lifted head jerked back, perhaps to reinforce the generally ascendant nature of dreams.

I looked around the rattan couch, the Moroccan rug, lifted and examined the soles of my shoes, "Muck? What muck? Have you been bringing your work home again?"

Molly took a deep breath. Her mighty bosom heaved high then settled slowly into place under her Ann Klein blouse, above her slinky waist. Down she went on the couch, "Baby, you can't be a maid. You just can't."

There was real panic there, but I didn't want to see it.

"Just for the summer. I promise I'll do Rutgers in the fall. Or Laagerfeldt."

I crossed my legs—which, given the ambient pudge, was always a challenge—and stared out the window, down the sloping lawn to the silver rivulet marking our property's northern edge. A floating mallard left a glittering orange wake in the evening sun.

The fortysecond element probably didn't know I had a thing for older guys. In addition to her wanting me to forge some kind of future for myself, she wanted me to have a decent steady boyfriend, preferably of highschool age, though a college guy—a college student—would not've raised any hairs on her neck.

Happily-married fortysix-year-old Fire Chief Samson Pierce would not only have raised those finely-calibrated hairs, the raised hairs would've mated and generated more raiseworthy ones in preparation for future amatory crises in my life.

As you may've guessed, Chief Pierce and I had a thing going; nothing major, no penetration as yet, but we were certainly headed in that direction, he being indomitably fascinated with my sexually-submissive nature, but there was a wife to consider. True, I'm a more traditional gayman, the kind with a very low tolerance for any kind of sexual morality, but he was an excellent fire chief and I didn't want to wreck his career. Wasn't it bad enough that Lesterville had a gay mayor? It seemed wasteful somehow, for me to trifle with the careers of men, especially since I had no desire to cultivate one myself. A career, that is—not a man.

"May I ask the name of your employer?"

"No." I still couldn't face her. The mallard gliding along in his ducky world was a less stressful visual. "You'll check him out."

"If you met him on the net, I need to. Back in your grandmother's day, a maid placed herself on the books of a reputable agency before accepting an appointment."

"Oooo. How thrilling."

"Have you interviewed yet?"

I shook my head, "Only via email."

"It sounds sleazy. I can't let you do this."

"Find me a reputable agency that handles this kinda thing."

"I'm not sure I know what this kinda thing is."

"Let's keep it that way."

"What if he's a serial killer?"

"In Lesterville? Seriously?"

"You're being naïve."

"Probably because of my liberal upbringing."

"Why couldn't I have been one of those lucky parents with a child who wants to grow up to prosecute criminals," eyebrows raised, "not date them?"

"What's more shocking, mom? That I want to date a man who's into role-playing, or that he's a poor man who's into role-playing?"

"That he's poor, of course. But that's hardly the point."

III

His real name was Nigel Greenwood. He was from London, had come here fifteen years ago to be an actor, failed at being an actor, married an American girl—for love, not a greencard—and finally become a permanent resident. The girl he'd married—a mulatto, incidentally—had found him a little chauvinistic for her tastes, but had managed to push the marriage along, entirely—to hear him tell it—because of his massive cock, which she couldn't get enough of. But, in the end, his reductivist approach to her femininity overcame her sexual addiction and they parted amicably. His wife had been a social worker with a master's in sociology and he was a construction worker. It played better in romance novels. He still worked construction, and I wondered, during our first meeting, if he was telling me these things to indicate he wasn't in for another daily grind of baulked expectations with a brainy chick.

Like I said, I'm not exactly the slimmest pencil in the box, so I prefer looser clothes in darker colors. Since the fortysecond element does extremely well for herself, I've always had the benefit of the top designers. I wore my hair relaxed rather than straightened, slightly lower than shoulder-length. When I visited Nigel the first time, I wanted to dress pretty, so I wore a loose, tan Perry Ellis shirt, almost a long blouse, its cuffs rolled up twice, with a lace-fringed woman's tanktop peeking out above the shirt's naughtily undone first button; a pair of baggy, black-linen Ralph Lauren slacks, its waistline hidden away under the flow of my shirt; men's slip-on leather shoes by Prada; a white-gold slave bracelet with a tiny orange sapphire set into a star at the midpoint of the chain, and a matching, slightly larger stone set into the simple ring, which I wore on my forefinger; and a generous splash of Euphoria by Calvin Klein.

I already knew he was blue-collar and probably wouldn't appreciate these refinements, but I didn't count on his living across the river, in Stevenson, in the kind of hood the fortysecond element would've forbidden me from driving within five blocks of. My shiny new teal-blue Prius instantly seemed out of place. The exterior of his small two-storey house looked as if it hadn't been painted since the Reagan years. Slats of wood were missing from the porch roof. The lawn looked as if it hadn't been mowed since late last winter—it was now July—and doctors and caregivers would've forbidden anyone over seventy from negotiating the flagstone path leading from the sidewalk to the front door.

I have to confess my longing to meet him, my wondering how far we'd go, even on that first meeting, blinded me to the possible dangers that would've been obvious to a more experienced person. I should've met him in a neutral setting, but when he suggested I meet him at his house—more than suggested, simply instructed me to meet there—I didn't feel it was a sub's place to tell her dom where their first meeting should take place.

He was cool without being cold. He offered me wine and found a way to indicate that I would be the one fetching the drinks around here, if things worked out. He let his eyes move appreciatively over me, and the first thing he said to me, after he greeted me and welcomed me to his house was, "You look lovely."

So did he, in his blue, plaid, cotton shirt with its sleeves torn off, exposing his long, muscular, nicely-veined arms, with an ethereal spray of golden hair shimmering over the thick rippling sinews of his forearms; the front of his shirt open enough to display his chiseled, tattooed chest with its faint fuzz of dirtyblond hair. His tight, liberally faded jeans clung to his lean, muscular legs and profiled his hulking package. Heavy, steeltoed construction boots furnished a fitting and stimulating conclusion to his outfit. He was less pretty in person, but he was raw sex walking, and noone even vaguely attracted to men would've turned away from him because he didn't quite have the face of a model. Another force that radiated from him in unbridled waves was that of his deep, earthshaking masculinity. It charged the air around him and made it spark.

Fifteen years in America hadn't eroded his accent. He sounded as if he'd stepped off the plane from London yesterday. Like a few other Englishmen I'd met, from more than one social class, he could be completely studly and completely charming at the same time, as if he could move from mucking it up on the football field—what we call soccer—one moment, to escorting an English—or Arab—heiress to lunch the next. He could do suit-and-tie, his casual attire seemed to suggest, but he was sure a fem sub like me wanted to see her man in his most relaxed state, this side of boxers and a three-day shadow.

The interior of the house was clean, but even the superficial tidiness seemed to've been achieved by his shunting things out of sight rather than his putting them in their proper places, or even developing such places for items that had been lying around homeless for months or even years. He definitely needed a woman to take care of him.

Despite his rough outfit, he had scrubbed himself down. His meager, darkblond, military-style hair smelled freshly-shampooed; his body smelled of soap; and he had applied tasteful amounts of both deodorant and Old Spice. Not exactly Hugo Boss or Lacoste, but if that's what I wanted, I knew exactly where to find it. I relaxed into his homely smells and quiet hospitality. My pud was hard, and that was a good sign. He had turned me on before I'd even met him, and he'd only confirmed his command of my hopes and fantasies the moment he'd opened the door.

He placed my white wine in front of me, in an actual wine glass, and uncapped himself a Heineken.

"Cheers," he said, letting his eyes wander over my body again. "You really do look great. I know that's the sort of thing a guy's expected to say, but I mean it. I don't lie to my girls."

It was wonderful how comfortable that designation made me feel. I experienced no need to correct him. He didn't make the term sound as if it denoted weakness, stupidity, subordinacy. In fact, it sounded absurdly romantic, in a commonplace domestic way that required no assistance from cruises and twilight cocktails on the beach.

His skintone seemed even more pale and pink than it did in his photos. Much as these intoxicating images had already flooded and continued to flood my mind, I couldn't now imagine his working under the sun for more than half an hour without burning, but I knew it was rude to ask caukies questions about their lack of coloring.