Winning is Everything (37 page)

74 

That evening, filled with trepidation and anxiety, Ron strolled down the beach to Dale Kirkland’s lavish beachside manor. He had little idea what he might expect from the huge man, but for his part, he was absolutely bent upon finding some way to make the film producer like him. He had an instinctive gut feeling that he and La Gorda could work well together, given the opportunity, and that this was too solid and promising a contact for him to lose by virtue of his being judgmental or prudish. Besides, he figured, it was probably about time that he, the Prince, the destroyer of women’s hearts, tried something new. Ron arrived at the garish pink palace, rang the doorbell, and sealed his fate.

The door was opened by a tall, suntanned, exceedingly muscular blond fellow in a tight light blue T-shirt and white tennis shorts. “Hi!” said the blond, extending a hand of welcome. “You must be Ron!”

“That’s me,” said Ron, shaking hands.

“Name’s Brad,” said the blond. “Brad Murphy. Come on in. Mr. Kirkland’s still getting dressed. Probably be down in a minute. Can I get you a drink? I whipped up a whole batch of rum punches.”

“Sounds fine,” said Ron, walking into the living room as Brad went over to the bar. “When’d you get here?” he asked as he sat on one of the large couches.

“Flew in from Miami this afternoon,” said Brad. “That’s where I live. Boy, was I glad to get away. We’ve had nothing but rainy weather last week and a half.”

“How do you know Dale?” Ron asked.

“Mr. Kirkland?” The blond shrugged. “We just met this afternoon when I got here.”

Ron was confused. “Wait a minute … I don’t—”

“Aha!” cried Dale Kirkland as he bounded into the room. “I see you two have met,” said Kirkland, pointing outside. “Look at those stars, look at that moon, look at this major cutie I imported from Miami today just for you!”

Ron was beginning to catch on. He smiled and shook Kirkland’s pudgy hand. “Nice caftan,” he allowed.

“You like it?” Kirkland whirled in place, showing off his tent. “I got a million of ‘em. I keep five elves busy full time in my Beverly Hills attic, sewing these clever creations together. They are, you might say, one of my trademarks!”

“What are the others?” asked Ron.

“Being constantly surrounded by beautiful men!” Kirkland said proudly.

“Cheers!” Ron raised his rum punch into the air in a toast.

“Where’s my punch?” Kirkland wanted to know. “Hey!” He pointed an admonishing finger at Brad, suddenly erupting. “Dummy! Where’s my drink? What is this, a funeral? I pay the goddamn bills, don’t I?”

“Left it over here on the bar,” Brad said sheepishly, slinking over to get Kirkland his drink.

“Okay! Fun is fun and life is sweet and how was your day down here in the dull ole Caribbean?” Kirkland asked Ron.

“Fine, fine,” said Ron. “What about you?”

“How would I know?” asked Kirkland. “I was on the horn all day, talking to L.A., London, New York. Deals. Deals. Deals. Money. Money. Money. Took me two hours to get Brad-the-beauty down here. Came all the way from Miami.”

“I know,” said Ron.

“Just for your pleasure!” said Kirkland. “You might say he’s been sent for as kind of this evening’s entertainment.”

“Oh,” Ron said quietly, piecing the last pieces of the puzzle together.

“He’s cute, isn’t he? And strong! Hey! Brad! Dummy! Come ‘ere! Show Ron your biceps. Flex for our guest.”

Brad walked over to the coffee table in front of the couch where Ron and Kirkland were sitting. “You want me to take my shirt off?” he asked.

“Not now, dummy!” Kirkland yelled. “Just flex. Save the rest of the beefcake for after dinner!”

Brad flexed for Ron.

“Real nice,” said Ron, never having been one to get overly excited by the sight of a straining armpit. “Must take a lot of time to get so strong.”

“Five days a week,” said Brad, offering his hardened arm to Kirkland. “Wanna feel?”

“Sure,” said the movie producer, taking a squeeze of Brad’s arm. “May as well have a little hors d’oeuvre, no?”

“How ‘bout you?” Brad swung his tightened arm before Ron’s face, offering his bicep.

“No … thanks,” said Ron with a small laugh. “I don’t want to spoil my appetite.”

“Sit down, dummy!” said Kirkland. “Just have a seat over there. Relax. Evening’s young. Behave yourself! Go! Go to the bar …” Kirkland drained his punch. “Here!” He thrust his empty glass at Brad. “It’s time for La Gorda to relax!”

“How
you
doing?” Brad asked Ron with a nod to his drink.

Ron realized it was going to be a long evening and needed to stay somewhat on top of things. He cupped his hand over his rum punch, saying, “Fine for now, thanks.”

Brad went over to the bar and Kirkland leaned over closer to Ron. “So! What do you think of my little import?”

“You had him shipped all the way from Miami?” asked Ron.

“For your amusement,” said Kirkland. “He’s only two hundred and fifty dollars a day plus carfare!”

Brad delivered the rum punch to Kirkland and took a seat.

“Don’t sit down!” screamed the fat man. “Go upstairs. In my bathroom. Bring down my shaving kit. It’s on the bathroom sink. I got a little something for all of us!”

Ron sat in uneasy silence, certain the subject of drugs was about to come up.

“Thanks, you blond Hercules, you,” Kirkland said when Brad returned. “Why don’t you drop to the floor and peel off a fast dozen pushups?”

“Good idea!” said Brad, assuming the position. “Sure could use the pump. I haven’t worked out in three days.”

“Heavens!” Kirkland slapped his hands to his face. “She’s falling apart!”

Kirkland opened his shaving kit, removed a plastic vial of pills, and took out three large white tablets. “These should do the trick!” he announced.

“What now?” Ron asked fearfully.

“Just what you need!” announced Kirkland. “You seem a little tense, nervous. I’m perceptive. I sense it. This will relax you, calm you down. Nothing unpleasant about it, so help me.”

“What is it?” Ron asked, looking into Kirkland’s open palm.

“Quaaludes,” said Kirkland. “A major muscle relaxer. Will make you feel like you’re floating on top of the world.”

Ron decided the one thing he needed to do if he was going to get involved in this evening’s activities was to relax. What the hell, he figured, the only thing at stake was the loss of his mind, his self-control, his self-respect. He put out an open hand to Kirkland. “Well, for God’s sake, let’s have one.”

Kirkland, Ron, and Brad had a quiet candlelit dinner, poolside. Chicken curry, salad, and a lot more rum, and Ron tried more than anything to be charming, knowing this was his moment to shine; but he was so drugged, it took all his energy just to put a forkful of food into his mouth.

Food,
however, was Kirkland’s best event, and he kept shoveling plate after plate after plate of curry and salad into his face. “I eat very sparsely when I’m in the tropics” was about his only contribution to the dinner conversation.

Kirkland served pineapple soaked in rum for dessert, and afterward, when he saw both Brad’s and Ron’s eyelids fluttering, he realized he’d better get the after-supper program going or he was going to have nothing but a slumber party on his hands.

“I got it!” He raised his voice, clapped his hands.

Ron and Brad both snapped open their eyes.

“Why don’t we all go upstairs to the master bedroom, relax there for a while? I bet we could find some fun things to do!”

“Sounds fine,” said a sleepy Ron.

“Lead the way!” Brad waved a relaxed, well-muscled arm in the air.

Kirkland stood up from the table and bade his young dinner guests follow him.

Brad tucked in his T-shirt as he stood up from the table. Kirkland lifted the skirt of his caftan as he climbed the stairs. And Ron gritted his teeth and sucked in his breath as he followed.

75 

The master bedroom was as pink as the rest of the house.

Brad went to a corner of the room and dropped to the floor, pumping up with another twenty-five push-ups, and Ron wondered if perhaps this wasn’t the moment to tell Kirkland that although he was more than willing to give it the old college try, the closest he’d ever really gotten to a homosexual experience was when he was ten years old and his aged grandfather had kissed him on the lips to wish him a happy Hanukkah. Kirkland seemed so intent upon watching Brad dipping up and down, though, Ron decided to just wait and see what might happen next.

“Why don’t we all get comfortable?” asked Kirkland, the P. T. Barnum of porn.

“If I get any more comfortable,” said Ron, “I’ll be asleep!”

“Maybe it’s time for Brad to take off his shirt,” said Kirkland. “Show us what he’s got. What about you, Ron?”

“Why don’t I take off my sandals?” asked Ron. “Show you my feet!”

“I have a better idea,” said Kirkland. “Why don’t you both take off your shirts, and why doesn’t Brad remove his shorts and you take off your slacks?”

This was it, Ron told himself, wondering how far against his principles, his customary practices, he was going to have to dip.

Without saying a word, Ron casually slipped off his sandals, calmly unbuttoned his shirt, sheepishly unzipped his pants, and stood there in his paisley boxer shorts.

Brad picked up his cue and pulled off his T-shirt and stepped out of his tennis shorts. Wearing only an athletic supporter, the blond “Mr. Tortola” crossed to the full-length mirror on the closet door for an inspection, posing as if in a physique contest.

“You look great, kid!” Kirkland told Brad.

Brad looked glumly at his reflection, complaining, “I’m too pale.”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow!” said Kirkland. “There’ll be so much sun, I promise you skin cancer by lunch.”

“I sure hope so,” Brad told his image.

“Okay, boys,” said Kirkland. “Come to Mother.” He sat down in a wing chair and lit a marijuana cigarette.

Ron and Brad walked over to Kirkland, standing before him like soldiers at inspection.

“Okay.” Kirkland took a puff of the joint and passed it to Brad. “First thing we gotta do is get you costumed correctly, Ron. You look like Sam Shlep in those underpants. Brad … go to that middle drawer in the bureau and pull out another jock strap.”

Brad handed Ron the lit joint and again went to fetch as he was told.

Ron looked at the joint and figured, what the hell; the sun, the rum, the Quaalude, the drunken pineapple had all added to his downfall, why not finish himself off, go out in a blaze of glory? He put the joint in his mouth and sucked the smoke in deeply.

Brad offered Ron a jock strap. Ron looked at the flimsy elastic article, wondering what possible thrill anyone might possibly derive from so tattered, gamy, and foolish a garment as this house for testicles hanging from Brad’s hand.

“Put it on! Put it on!” Kirkland clamored, taking another puff from the joint.

Well, kid, Ron told himself. Now or never. May as well show ‘em what you got. Ron casually removed his boxer undershorts and began stepping into the jock strap.

“Holy shit!” Kirkland said with a short, appreciative whistle, unable to take his eyes off Ron’s manhood. “Brad, baby, I think we just struck gold.”

“Aw, he’s all right.” The worldly body builder shrugged. “I’ve seen bigger!”

“Okay, boys. Hey …” Kirkland sucked in another toke off the joint. “How ‘bout this grass, fellas? What a rush, huh? Strong stuff, let me tell you!”

Ron, too, felt an incredible rush of energy or something to his head. This time he could feel the effect of the marijuana almost immediately. This time he was able to recognize its euphoric, disorienting quality.

“This is what I’ve decided I want to do,” said Kirkland, suddenly talking to Ron and Brad like they were children. “Let’s play a game of make-believe, okay? Here’s how it works. We make believe that I’m Caligula, the nasty emperor of Rome, okay? And you are two of my young gladiators entering the ring for the first time. You’ve come to wrestle each other. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“But I’m not a wrestler,” Ron protested, his head swimming in confusion from the evening’s accumulated mixture of drugs. “Why didn’t you say you like wrestling? My roommate, Kip, went through Lehigh on a wrestling scholarship.”

“No!”
Kirkland looked aghast. “And we let him off the island? I must have been crazy. Wrestlers are my favorite sexual fantasy. All my hustlers are wrestlers!”

“Really?” Ron observed, looking over at Brad. “Okay, tough guy … let’s wrestle for Caligula!”

“Oh, goody! Goody!” Kirkland clapped pudgy hands with little boy delight. “But don’t hurt each other. I want this to be friendly, erotic … not painful.”

“’Not painful’ sounds fine to me,” said Ron, holding his hands out to meet his sparring partner.

And so they wrestled.

Well, rolled around the floor was really more like it. Brad was clearly the stronger of the two, the better wrestler, and he maneuvered Ron down to the floor, got on top of him, and had him pinned in seconds flat.

“No! No!” Kirkland complained. “Too fast! Too fast! Let him win now,” he yelled to Brad. “Let Ron win!”

Again they scuffled around the floor, shifting from arm and head locks to quarter-, half-, and full-nelsons and not-so-friendly slaps to the body.

Brad let Ron get the upper hand, let himself get pinned, and Holy Emperor Kirkland got so excited he suddenly snapped open a bottle of coconut oil and anointed his wrestlers while they rolled over the floor, oiling their backs, arms, chests, rubbing the moisturizing lubricant into their skins.

Ron and Brad were soon glistening from both sweat and oil, and Kirkland-Caligula got so very excited by this erotic display of muscular tension, he dropped to his knees. He was too embarrassed by his obesity to get undressed, so he just raised the skirt of his caftan to his waist, and pouring the last of the coconut oil from the jar, used the tropical-smelling goo as lubricant.

While Ron and Brad wrestled, Kirkland hovered over them on his knees, masturbating, telling his boys what good gladiators they were, telling them how pleased was their emperor, Caligula.

When Brad tossed Ron over onto his back, and was once again sitting on him, Kirkland reached forward, touched Brad on the shoulder, and said,
“Now,
Brad … go down on him. Give that straight boy the blow-job of his life. Show him how a male hustler does it. Make Caligula happy!”

Brad looked up at his provider. “Yes, Mr. Kirkland,” said the blond gladiator, rubbing his way down Ron’s coconut-oiled, slippery body, toward his opponent’s privates.

Brad pulled off his and Ron’s jock straps and went to work, toying with his own hard-on even as he slipped up and down the full length of the Prince. Kirkland moaned louder and masturbated with a more ferocious intensity.

And Ron lay on his back with his eyes closed, projecting through his mind some fast-developing images of the most succulent breasts, the softest thighs, the tastiest lips he’d known over his years as a womanizer. He played his recorded memory of the Prince’s Greatest Hits in his head and grew hard. He was neither hating nor enjoying what Brad was doing to him. He merely thought of it as work.

Ron’s sudden arousal got Brad breathing heavier, and the body builder’s heightened excitement drove Kirkland crazy.

The fat man reached into his box of drugs and pulled out an amyl-nitrite capsule. Snapping it open between chubby fingers, he brought the inhalant to his nose and breathed in the heart-accelerating fumes. As the intensity of the popper rushed through his bloodstream, Kirkland shoved the broken capsule under Ron’s nose and shouted for him to inhale. Then he handed the fading popper over to Brad, who gladly accepted it, breathing” in the sexual stimulant.

Moments later, as Ron reached an orgasm, and Brad’s enthusiasm came to a climax of its own, Kirkland too, sensing an incipient eruption of the juices of life, screamed out some primal gurgle, and jumping to his feet, celebrated their triple orgasm by shooting the dividend of his evening’s investment all over his two gladiators.