Perfect Freedom (75 page)

He was immediately in motion. As he rounded the newsstand, he got his first full-length look at her and, with a shock that almost brought him to a halt, he realized that she was unmistakably a boy, wearing sports shirt and slacks. The momentum of pursuit carried him on while his mind raced to adjust to facts. He was being led to a door marked men. He had heard of things happening in men's rooms that sounded pretty disgusting but his tastes had lost a good deal of their refinement in the last few weeks. His erection was straining to be let out.

The door the boy had been heading for closed behind him. Following him into the big antiseptic room, Lance couldn't deny that he found it a bit alarming. Danger lured him on, not any danger in the pretty youth but the danger of discovery. A man was standing at the end of a long line of urinals. The boy had stationed himself at the opposite end but others might move in closer to him. Lance knew that his erection was too big to produce in front of a urinal without everybody seeing it. He would be committing a public indecency. Crossing the few yards that separated him from the act, he felt an army of Vanderholdens watching him, wailing and rending their garments and sprinkling ashes on their heads with shame at his descent into further depravity.

When he reached his destination, the boy eased himself over toward him so that their shoulders touched. It took Lance an incredulous moment to accept the fact that his companion was unabashedly, if discreetly, masturbating; the motion of his hand was imperceptible except from Lance's vantage point. The instrument he was manipulating was startingly substantial for such a feminine kid, bigger than Jim's. Maybe Jim had filled him with misplaced pride about his own. It was too late now to avoid finding out.

He struggled with a tangle of shirttails and shorts, and produced the evidence. He took a small backward step to avoid contact with porcelain and edged around toward the boy so that his back was partially turned to the other urinals. He felt reasonably safe from observation although his position might look odd for the ostensible purpose of his being here. The boy made a murmur of admiration. Lance saw that he had nothing to fear from comparison. An impulse to thrust it forward to touch the other was abruptly curbed by his catching movement out of the corner of his eye. The man at the other end was going through the motions of completing his business. Lance dropped his hands to shield his nakedness and prepared for an outraged denunciation.

His heart was racing as the danger passed. He heard footsteps receding and the sound of the door opening and closing. A hand pushed his hand out of the way and moved on his erection, taking bold, expert possession of it. His orgasm was instantaneous and his knees buckled as his ejaculation splashed out into the urinal. A hand moved purposefully beside him and another ejaculation jetted into the air in front of them. It was followed by the sound of the door opening and closing again and approaching footsteps.

With panicked haste, Lance wiped himself with his handkerchief and bundled himself back into his trousers. The boy's composure seemed unshaken as he unhurriedly followed suit.

“Going to Chicago?” the girlish stranger asked. The hum of ventilators and the rush of water made private conversation possible. The new arrival stationed himself halfway along the row of urinals.

“Yeah,” Lance said.

“I'll see you on the plane. Be sure to get a seat by yourself. First class?”

“I think I'm supposed to have some sort of compartment.”

“Perfect. My God, Lance. Your cock. I'll give you the best blow-job you've ever had.”

With that blithe boast, the boy turned and moved toward the door with graceful assurance. He had said his name. People had recognized him long before he had set foot on a stage, so it gave him no satisfaction. It simply added to the danger. He was courting blackmail. He felt very daring, beyond any hope of rejoining the ranks of the privileged few. He was sinking deeper into the mass of corrupt humanity. Lance followed the boy slowly, letting the distance grow between them. By the time he was out, his astonishing partner had disappeared among the loitering passengers.

When the flight was called, an escort presented himself to usher them on board, followed by a uniformed attendant carrying their belongings. His mother would have approved but Lance found it irksome. He felt as if he were being isolated from the contamination of his fellow passengers. He didn't see his pretty playmate and wondered if the ostentatious VIP treatment would scare him off. He should have expected difficulties when he was in the mood to open more doors.

Makeshift compartments had been rigged up for them at opposite ends of the first-class cabin. They had each been allotted two seats with the arms removed and curtains hung around them, so they had adequate beds and a degree of privacy, but the accommodations weren't suitable for the athletic display Gerry expected of sex so Lance was able to give her a quick good-night kiss without fear of reproach and went a few rows forward to his curtained space.

An attractive stewardess was waiting to get him settled. His attempts at a flirtation were repulsed by smooth professional cordiality. He dropped into a seat across the aisle from his improvised compartment; there was no need to make himself difficult to find. The stewardess told him that there would be only five or six first-class passengers, so he could take all the room he wanted.

Once airborne, he read
Variety
until box-office figures began to make him sleepy. The handful of first-class passengers snapped off lights and retired for the night. He rose and stretched, stepping across the aisle to his compartment. He experimented with the curtains for privacy. They closed around him adequately, although anybody brushing against them might open gaps through which he could be seen.

His seats had been made up like a bed, with sheets. It looked inviting. He wanted to take his clothes off. He had never heard of anybody getting undressed on a plane but he couldn't see any reason not to. He would be more comfortable—and more easily available to a visitor.

He was beginning to wonder whether either of them would dare act on the boy's brash offer. It would be even more dangerous than what they'd done in the men's room. The stewardess might pop her head through the curtains at any moment to see if he were comfortable. Was he ready to let her find him naked with a pretty boy on his knees in front of him? He could see the headline in some tabloid: VANDERHOLDEN NABBED ON PLANE FOR HOMO OFFENSE.

He stripped to the waist, opened his traveling case, and pulled out a sheer silk dressing gown. Throwing it over his shoulders, he wormed his way out of the rest of his clothes. Being naked in these odd surroundings completed his erection. If Pam ever stopped making him feel that it shocked her, he might get over his impulse to produce it for anybody who seemed interested.

He turned out all the lights within his control except for the pinpoint reading light and stretched out on top of the sheet with his dressing gown on but unfastened and carelessly draped over his midsection. Returning to
Variety
to check the fortunes of people he knew in out-of-town shows, his attention was caught after a few minutes by something displacing his curtains from the outside. They billowed slightly as if someone were feeling for the opening. His grip tightened on the newspaper while his eyes followed the movement of the curtains. His heart was beating rapidly with apprehension; they were running an insane risk. The curtains parted. The pretty boy slipped between them and closed them behind him. Nothing had deterred him.

Lance didn't have time to notice what he was wearing before he was wearing nothing at all. A slim, willowy body was outlined in dim light. Lance started up with a residual instinct to resist but made amends by running his tongue along the considerable length of the erection that swung against his face in the cramped space. The boy uttered a little yelp as Lance let his dressing gown fall off to free his arms. He lifted them to encircle a slender waist and sank back, bringing the boy down on top of him. The insubstantial body lay on him lightly and went limp with a sigh of surrender. Soft yielding lips were pressed to his. His experience with Jim provided little for him to draw on now.

He opened his mouth to a skillfully provocative tongue. Making love with him was almost the same as making love with a girl. His hands strayed over smooth delectable flesh, soft and with no pronounced muscles or hair. The slim but somehow voluptuous body coiled around him with knowing eroticism. The chest pressed to his wasn't much flatter than one or two women he had known. His hands moved down and found richly curving buttocks. He stroked them with pleasure. He was doing nothing that he mightn't do with a woman, only he was doing it with a boy.

The boy drew back with lingering little flicks of his tongue, a rapturous smile on his soft lips. “Oh, God, I wish we really could,” he whispered. “Your cock, darling. Utter bliss.” It was obvious what he wanted and Lance was glad that circumstances forbade it.

The boy snaked his way down over him, worshiping his body with his mouth as he went, and slid to the floor to make good his boast.

Lance sat up, the ardent worshiper at his feet. He shifted so that the pinpoint of light picked out the contortions of the lips that felt so eager for him. The boy's face looked rapt and ecstatic. He couldn't imagine a cock inspiring such adoration in himself.

His eyes moved to the flimsy barrier that hid them. Through a gap in the curtains he saw a light in the ceiling of the cabin outside. Thinking of how easily they could be observed set off the strange drumming in his veins. He was naked and visible to anybody who passed, having his cock sucked by a naked boy. An immediate orgasm shook him, the convulsions of his hips a tribute to the voracious mouth. His ejaculation was eagerly received and swallowed. Jim had never carried it this far. Neither had women. It was amazingly satisfying. He saw that the boy was providing his own satisfaction, holding a towel in front of himself.

Lance shook off a postcoital lethargy. He couldn't accept pleasure without attempting to reciprocate. He pulled the slim body up onto the improvised bed and slid down and took the boy's place on the floor. He moved the big cock to catch the light. It looked gentle, prettily formed and somehow effeminate. Lance was reminded that until he was almost fifteen he'd thought that women had them too. If they did, he wouldn't hesitate to make love to them.

He opened his mouth and directed the cock into it and used his lips and tongue to simulate welcome as he had learned to do with Jim. He rolled his eyes up and saw the glitter of ecstatic eyes gloating down at him. He saw himself as he'd seen his partner, his mouth stretched to receive him, prostrate in abject worship. He cringed from the gloating eyes and his stomach knotted in protest as he steeled himself for the dreaded conclusion that he'd been spared so far.

Violence seethed in him. He wanted to sink his teeth into the hard flesh that was sliding into his mouth again. He dug his fingernails into quivering thighs and raked the boy's chest and flanks with them. The slight body swayed and lurched, buffeted by ecstasy. Lance's mind exploded with half-formed images of tumultuous bodies, priapic and dangerous, clamoring for satisfaction, himself in the center of them being taunted and tormented. He caught an intimation of the absolution he craved.

He realized that he was erect again. He heard muted cries above him and his mouth was flooded with thick pungent fluid. He forced himself to swallow it. His stomach turned over in rebellion and settled. It was disgusting but he'd done it. He was an ace cocksucker. He was always surprised to discover that he was good at anything.

Lance returned to New York with his name, Bryan Singleton, and his Chicago telephone number, and a tendency to take second looks at the effeminate boys who had been flirting with him. If any of them had been as pretty as Bryan, he might have welcomed the opportunity to find out if a boy could make a satisfactory substitute for a woman. Bryan had left him wondering what it would be like if he could ever bring himself to take one as Jim had taken him.

He made the most of the last few weeks of his summer freedom. Once Pam and the baby returned to the city, he was planning to become a model husband again.

He said a dutiful farewell to his latest girl friend the night before Pam was due back. No more dates. No more parties without his wife. Probably no more boys, although it seemed less important to make hard-and-fast rules about them since a boy would hardly be a threat to a marriage.

Pam returned full of plans for another baby although in bed she continued to act as if she would just as soon know as little as possible about how it was to be accomplished. He loved having little Angela back and looked forward to having another one, maybe a son. That might give a whole new interest to life.

His good intentions persisted mostly because the resumption of a normal married life kept him too busy to make straying easy. The casual women he'd been having weren't worth the trouble of a complicated double life. If he was occasionally tempted by a guy, circumstances were never right for him to do anything about it. Fragmentary fantasies haunted him from time to time but fantasies weren't for real life. The door Jim and Bryan had opened for him threatened to lead to a radical confrontation with some new appalling reality. Despite his determination to reject everything he'd been taught and accept the promptings of his nature, he couldn't accept being a faggot and, except for some dimly remembered moments with Bryan, he had no reason to think he was one. He had just barely come to terms with the profound changes in his life and wasn't ready to face so soon another reassessment of his place in the world.

He still had so little to hold on to. His theatrical success had been too easy to have any real substance or provide a sense of direction. He looked back on the first months of his marriage as the most exciting of his life, unexpectedly faced with poverty, living from hand to mouth in a tiny apartment, losing himself in an anonymous crowd of young hopefuls. When the show closed, he might once more be one of the unemployed, forced back into a couple of cheap rooms with the burden of babies, but the show gave no signs of closing. He had a strong feeling that he was waiting for something.