Page 15 of Wedge

It’s forty minutes of dark interstate and my own bad ideas, and then the strangest part of the trip: the subdivisions. Tidy cul-de-sacs, basketball hoops in driveways, porch lights burning for kids who have been asleep for hours. Then the last of the houses fall away, the pavement gives out, and my tires crunch onto gravel.

The club sits alone in the middle of a dark field, a long, low building with one red sign glowing over the door. The gravel lot is full of nice, boring cars. Minivans. Sedans. A Subaru with a Coexist sticker. Out in the dry grass, crickets are going strong.

When I walk in, I mentally groan. Cheerleader foam party. Women dressed in super short pleated skirts, hair in childish pigtails, and the damned sticky foam all over the dance floor, the whole place smelling of bubblegum and chlorine. I bypass the dancers and head downstairs where the action is. The bass thins out on the stairs, and the air turns warmer, thick with sweat and cheap vanilla candles. Moans come from behind curtains and somewhere a woman begs whoever is fucking her to not stop.

I step to the edge of the room, just watching for a bit. A young, slender brunette prances past, clad in nothing but pride, her husband stalking behind her warily. She pauses in front of me for a moment, runs her fingers over my chest.

“Hey,” she purrs.

“Hey yourself,” I reply with a smile. She’s really too young. I don’t do barely legal women, but I won’t be mean.

Her husband takes her hand and tugs her away, and I give a small huff of relief. Another woman eyes me from across the room. She’s older, somewhere in her forties. Still working hard at it. Sexy. A few people are on a large mattress, tangled together in a mass of naked bodies. Wet pussies, soft breasts.

My cock doesn’t twitch. Not even a little. It didn’t twitch for the first woman, either.

And I realize this is not where I want to be. I’d actually rather be at the gay bar than waiting for one of these women to wake my cock up. Upstairs, the foam machine coughs out another cloud, and a cheerleader’s pigtails bob past the stairwell. I have never felt less at home.

Well then.

Back home, I pour two fingers of cold Scotch and sink onto the couch, a Sopranos rerun murmuring in the background. I ponder the last week. What the hell is going on with my head? I got hard as a rock today on the golf course, thinking about Adrian having a sex dream about me. I have never felt attracted to a man before, but today I definitely did. That vulnerable young man had me leaving pre-cum in my briefs.

Am I actually bi-sexual? I can get off with women. That’s all I’ve ever known, in fact. I am surrounded by gay men: Ben and Geoff, Gavin and TJ, Caleb. Hell, I’m not attracted to Gavin, and we’ve been naked in locker rooms plenty of times and he never moved the needle. And he has a fantastic body. All the guys I was stationed with in Iraq, none of them got me going. I had plenty of opportunities before. Why now?

Do I want to explore this at all? I sure as hell am not going to scare Adrian with this shit. Never mind that I told him as much this morning, out loud, in the middle of a fairway. Smooth, Stephen. A mid-life bi-awakening is not the time to be messing with a vulnerable young guy’s emotions. If I’m going to explore, I need to do it far away from him.

I shift to a porn channel on the TV and find a gay movie. I fast forward through the dialogue until they strip down and one of them goes to his knees. Guy with a full beard and a cock in his mouth. Okay, that is hot. I pull off my shirt and yank down my sweats and briefs and slide my hand over my cock. Pre-cum rolls out, and I use it for lube. Guy on the screen uses his hand and mouth, pulls down on the guy’s balls. I mimic that move, grunting as the pleasure flashes over me.

I don’t try to prolong things, no edging tonight. The guys on the TV change positions, the blond one bending forward over the back of a couch, ass in the air. Bearded guy pours lube over the blond’s hole and shoves a finger in. Damn. My body is vibrating. When the bearded guy shoves his dick into the now open hole, I cum. Violent sprays up onto my chest, my abs… another jet hits my chin, goddamn, that’s good.

I sit, sated, for a good twenty minutes more, watching the guys go at it. Grunting, hips pounding, strong hands, powerful bodies getting each other off. I laugh at myself. Thirty-eight and watching gay porn for the first time. And wanting it.

I get off again as I watch the blond rail the bearded guy, pounding him into a mattress, legs wrapped around his waist.

Afterward, the apartment is silent. An ambulance screams past on the street below. The Scotch has gone warm in the glass. I turn off the TV, and my heart slows while my brain finally asks a steadier question than the panicked one from earlier. Not why is this happening. Because it is happening. Hell, it has happened. No, the question now is what do I do about it?

I know Gavin and Ben used to go to a gay bathhouse here. Guess I know where I’m going after this tournament.

8

ADRIAN

Last night, I took care of my hard-on in the shower before climbing into bed. No wet dreams this time, no waking in a puddle of cum.

I can look at Stephen today without much guilt. Only a little. We meet in the clubhouse for breakfast, the windows still gray, the whole room warm and smelling of coffee and bacon. The buffet surpasses anything I’ve had before, even at a Holiday Inn. A guy in a tall white hat makes omelets to order, flipping them in the pan like he’s been doing it since before I was born. The crescent rolls are the fancy kind that flake all over when you bite them. I settle down with two plates again.

Stephen just chuckles. “Don’t overdo it. We do have to be able to walk.”

I cough on my bite of scrambled eggs. I glare at him, then reply, “Just drink your coffee, old man. Let the young buck eat in peace.”

“Oh ho, someone is feeling good today!” he laughs.

When we hit the driving range to warm up, the grass is still wet, and the mountain peaks are pink on the tops. I fill my lungs with the cool mountain air and take each club Stephen hands me, letting my body send the balls streaking out into the grass. I’m loose and dialed in. Hitting every target he picks out.

Just before ten, he calls time, and I hand him my driver. He passes over a bottle of white electrolyte water, and I take it without comment, slugging it down. When he noticed I prefer the white, I do not know. I never said a word. Yellow was fine. He seems to see everything.

Today we are back on the mountain course. The Ridge. After yesterday’s easy Meadow, it feels like an old rival, fairways climbing and dropping through the pines, greens tucked into little pockets of flat ground. But it doesn’t scare me the way it did in the practice round. Now I know where it bites. The air smells of pine resin, and every few holes, the trees part and the whole valley opens up below us, like a postcard.

I settle in fast. Stephen calls the numbers and hands me the clubs. I trust him without thinking twice about it now, club after club, and my swing cooperates like it actually wants to make this easy for once.