Free Best Gay Erotica 2011 by Richard Labonté Page B

cowboy hat—and wish he were on top of me thrusting away. When I attended his concerts with my country-boy lover Matt, who’s an enthusiast of all things Nashville, I’d watch Tobias swagger the stage, finger his guitar, gift us with that resonant baritone and those macho bad-boy lyrics and imagine him pushing me over a sawhorse and ramming me with the yee-haw vigor of the Virginia farm boy he used to be. It would be a heady pleasure to be filled up by a man that burly, that much bigger than I. I might even let him come inside me before I turned on him and put him in his place.
    But Tobias has, alas, put music behind him for politics. That’s his fatal misstep, his hamartia , as Aristotle put it when analyzing Oedipus . That’s what he’s doing in DC tonight: using the good looks and charisma that made him a country-music superstar to network with Republican hangers-on and sycophants; a long way from his Wytheville roots, his glamorous years in Nashville. Now he’s a member of Virginia’s General Assembly, a busy senator moving back and forth between Richmond and Washington, a power broker planning the move from state to national politics. The five middle-aged men sitting with him and guffawing by the fire are probably congressmen. All
quite wealthy, judging by the cut of their business suits. And all right-wingers, no doubt of that.
    My handsome Tobias should have stuck to songwriting. If he had, the fantasies I entertained about him wouldn’t have shifted so radically and moved into the sphere of practical planning. I wouldn’t be here tonight, only yards away, admiring his face and body, sipping this cabernet, readying the scourge.
    What a fine specimen he is. He leans back in his leather-upholstered chair, drinking beer, grinning at some colleague’s joke. His eyes are as blue as the photos on his CDs. He has a full head of curly blond hair, and his goatee is golden brown and carefully trimmed, bespeaking carefully controlled wildness. His lips are very full, the lower one so thick it contributes to the surly look he’s know for in the press, a pout made all the more dramatic-dark by the rare gleam of his arrogant smiles. The jeans and muscle-shirts of his Nashville days have been replaced by slick politico suits, though he has yet to relinquish his cowboy hats and boots, just to retain the good-ole-boy image that appeals to so many of his conservative constituents. Expert at studying clothed male physiques and discerning how those forms might look stripped bare, I can make out the wide shoulders, thick chest and beer belly of a well-fed ex-athlete. At his age, midforties, the bulk’s as much fat as it is muscle, a proportion that has always appealed to me, bear aficionado that I am. Big as he is, he’ll keep me snug and warm tonight, after our official meeting.
    My kind—Scots Highlanders, mountain men—we love to tell stories. I order a second glass of wine from a lean young waiter with hairy forearms and an angular Mediterranean face shadowed with beard—a muskily aromatic boy who, due to my plans for Tobias, will be spared my sharp attentions tonight—and I think about those whose stories brought me here. Karen,
Charlotte, sweet little Chet: three of my handsome senator’s ill-fated constituents. Vivid narrative often makes for the most convincing political advice. Once Tobias retires for the night, we’ll begin that summit discussion.
    As if on cue, Tobias checks his watch, orders a bourbon nightcap, knocks it back, and says goodnight to his little crew of sartorial vipers. It’s approaching midnight, and he has early morning meetings, he explains. No distant human ear could pick out his words over the chatter of the parlor, but I can. I can smell him too. As he passes me, heading for his room, he leaves a lingering scent of spicy aftershave, and the sweat-smell of a big man whose deodorant gave out by late afternoon. I lick my lips.