Arena Stage

by habu

  It hit me then that Jack had the hots for me—probably enough that it was true he wouldn’t have ratted me out to Lenny on purpose. And Jack had been in the Bachelor Pad too, or he wouldn’t have seen me there. Jack wanted me. I leaned in closer to him, more intimately. Out of the blue, I’d had an idea. I felt so miserable about Sean, and I’d already thought a hundred times that I could escape to someplace like the Bachelor Pad to blow off the frustration of this four-cornered sex thing we were having with Masters and Handelsman—but Sean hadn’t had a day away from this ever.

  “You said you saw me in the Bachelor Pad, Jack?” I asked. I was palming the small of his back with one of my hands, and I let that wander down to his buttocks, as I so often did as my signal of interest. “What were you doing in the Bachelor Pad?” I asked.

  “Same thing you were, Gil,” Jack said. He stammered this out, but he was looking at me like he wanted to eat me alive.

  And then, when I suggested we might make a little trip back stage if he did me a favor—and that I’d certainly forget about anything he said to Lenny getting me in trouble—I let him do just that. We went back to one of the dressing rooms, bumping off the stage, carrying the long ladder together, natural as you please, and leaving it outside the dressing room door, running up the side of the corridor. And then I unzipped my jeans and pushed him down on his knees in front of me and gagged him with my cock. He loved it. And after that, I bent him over a chair and fucked him. And he loved that too.

  And at the end of the fuck session that he had been dreaming of and had no idea he’d ever get, he was more than willing to say that I could borrow his Mustang convertible anytime I wanted to.

  We went to lunch then—in Jack’s Mustang—and we ended up at his small apartment across the river in Rosslyn, where I fucked him again in his own bed just to make sure his loyalties would be to me, not Lenny. When I did borrow his car, I didn’t want him telling Lenny I had it.

  When I returned to the theater, I found the stage deserted. Lenny had carried through with his promise and released the actors. I entered through a stage entrance and I just walked on through the theater and up the elevated rows of seating and out into the lobby. Masters was there, preparing to leave out the front door. He turned as he heard me call out to him.

  “The rehearsal broken up?” I asked. There was something unusual about seeing Masters in the lobby.

  “Yes,” he said. He was giving me a smile, a strange smile, as if there was some joke I wasn’t privy too.

  “Have you seen Lenny?” I asked. “Do you know if he’s gone back to the Boxoffice.”

  “No, I’m fairly certain he’s still here,” Masters said. And then he chuckled. I had no idea what he thought was so fuckin’ amusing.

  And then it hit me, what was unusual. Sean wasn’t in tow. He was always there, walking a few paces behind Masters and carrying all of Masters’s stuff. At least whenever Masters hadn’t sent him off somewhere. But here was Masters, leaving the theater, carrying his own briefcase and water bottle and sweater. And Sean wasn’t here.

  “Where’s Sean?” I asked.

  Masters didn’t answer. He just gave me that “I’ve got an amusing secret” smile. My blood turned to ice. And as Masters turned and opened the door to the chilly wind blowing up Maine Avenue

  , I swiveled, ducked into the darkened theater, and raced down the aisle and across the stage and onto one of the ramps running down into the backstage area.

  I opened the door to Lenny’s office, and there they were. Lenny, gazing over Sean’s shoulder, his eyes slitted in lust, saw me and smiled. But Sean had his head bowed, looking at the floor, head and arms just hanging listlessly as he sat in Lenny’s lap, facing me on the edge of the chaise lounge, and Lenny raised and lowered his small, beautiful body on his cock. Sean was naked, his clothes strewn on the dressing room floor, and he was moaning softly and emitting a snuffling sound that made me think he was also crying. Lenny wasn’t naked; he was in his shirt and trousers, but his fly was open, permitting his impaling cock to skewer Sean’s channel. Sean’s body was perfectly formed, a well-muscled, dancer’s body. But of a small size. He looked almost like a boy in contrast to Lenny’s broad chest and the large hands he had wrapped around Sean’s waist to permit him to work Sean’s torso up and down on his cock.

  I felt a moan rising in my own body—and my own cock hardening up in arousal—and I quietly stepped back and silently shut the door again. I turned, my back to the wall next to the door, trying to compose myself, trying to regularize my breath and to will my cock to behave. I was disgusted with myself. And I was mostly disgusted not because Sean was obviously being suborned into letting Lenny fuck him by some nasty understanding between Masters and Lenny, but rather because I wanted to be fucking Sean myself.

  * * * *

  I kept to my resolution and neither went to Masters’s bed again after that or came close enough for him to touch me and override my resolve. And in an attempt to save Sean, I stuck close to Lenny and fucked him so often that I was sure he was perpetually exhausted and milked and couldn’t take advantage of Sean again.

  But I couldn’t protect Sean against everyone—and I knew I couldn’t protect him against me if I got half the chance to have him.

  The day after I’d seen him in Lenny’s office being worked by Lenny, I once more found him absent from the theater when I arrived late for the afternoon stage rehearsal.

  I entered the row behind Lenny, which was three rows in front of where Masters was sitting, and I leaned over and whispered in Lenny’s ear. “Where’s Sean? You know now that you can’t give recasting notes with just Masters here.”

  “This scene is well blocked; I don’t plan on any changes,” Lenny whispered back, not bothering to turn his head but a bit and not taking his eyes off the stage.

  “So, where’s Sean?” I asked again, that being the real question I wanted answered. “Do you know?”

  “He’s in the dance studio. Cersenka’s auditioning him for a spot in the dance troupe for Defiance.”

  My blood was running cold again. I knew exactly what this meant. I knew as well as anyone that Cersenka controlled his dancers by dominating them sexually—that no audition with him would be successfully completed without taking Cersenka’s cock.

  I jerked my head around so that I could see Masters, sitting behind us. Lenny and I hadn’t been whispering loud enough for him to hear us, but I knew he knew what I had asked. He was smiling that amused smile of his.

  I jerked away and rose and moved swiftly down the side of the stage and down a ramp to the backstage area and then started into a run for the annex building that housed the dance studio, the very dance rehearsal hall where I had first seen Sean in what now seemed to be ages ago. It had been long enough, certainly, for me to change from seeing Sean as just another cute little piece of ass I would fuck and forget to seeing him as so much more—seeing him as a vulnerable young man being misused and taken advantage of, someone I owed protection to because I too had hurt him. And more than this, maybe. More than just the need to protect him. I didn’t want to think what more than this I could be feeling—but I couldn’t kid myself; there was more than just protecting him on my mind.

  I heard discordant music coming from the practice piano as I approached the door to the dance studio. I pushed open the door and took two steps inside the room, and then halted and moved to the side and leaned back against the wall next to the door.

  There were only two of them, and they didn’t notice me from start to finish. The piano was against the opposite wall. There was a line of ballet costuming strewn haphazardly from the center of the dance floor back to the piano. Red leg warmers, a black ballet unitard, a man’s dance belt.

  The second half of the dance master, Miloslav Cersenka’s, audition was in full blossom.

  Sean’s butt was playing the keys of the piano, and his back was arched against the back casing of the piano. I could see the heel of one of his hands dug into the keyboard at th
e bass clef end, and his other hand was wrapped around Cersenka’s neck, both doing what they could to hold himself steady. His legs were spread and lifted up from around Cersenka’s waist. His small feet were still clad in ballet shoes, and his toes were daintily pointed toward where I was standing. That’s essentially all that I could see of Sean, although there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that it was Sean.

  Standing between Sean’s spread legs and facing him was the backside of a wiry, sinewy-muscled dance master. His black, form-fitting leotards were pulled down around his knees, and he was naked above that. His muscles bulged and strained as his pelvis rocked back and forth and his butt cheeks contracted and expanded in advanced stages of the fuck. His arms were on either side of Sean’s slight torso, and the heels of his hands were buried in the keyboard. One of his legs appeared stiffer than the other in the motion of the fuck, but, barring this and the discordant music being coaxed from the piano by Sean’s buttocks bouncing up and down on the keyboard in the rhythm of the fuck, the two were making beautiful music together with their lithe, flexible, highly trained bodies.

  From the harmony of grunts and groans and moanings, I felt assured that Sean was passing his audition into Cersenka’s dance troupe.

  There was nothing I could do here. I knew that it was Sean’s dream to dance for Cersenka. And I knew that Sean was aware of what was required to do that. Masters may have thought this was just another indignity being forced on Sean for his own amusement and yet another manifestation of his control over Sean, but I saw it as more than that—I saw it as an act of defiance, as the start of Sean’s liberation from Masters.

  I could have turned and left. I should have turned and left. But I didn’t. I leaned back against the wall, unzipped my jeans, pulled out my cock, and pumped it in the rhythm of the audition fuck, joining their coupling to the extent that I could. I was finished and gone before they were done.

  * * * *

  My plan to give Sean a bit of relief came three days later. The rich-bitch backers of the production were gathering for a lunch at the Willard Hotel, where they expected to see the director, playwright, and dance master they were paying such a lot of cash for on display. Not only were these guys out of our way for three hours in the middle of what was an unseasonably warm and gorgeous day, but neither Sean nor I had been invited to the party.

  So, I decided to make a party of our own.

  I had a luncheon basket made up at the Gangplank restaurant, secured the use of Jack’s Mustang convertible, and told Sean about the outing at the last possible minute, not entertaining any demur or indecision, Then we were off, using the suggestions Jack had made to me on the quickest route to scenic—and private—beauty, over a Potomac bridge and onto the George Washington Parkway, headed west. When we hit the Beltway, I jagged off onto route 193, a winding road, where the lush trees met over the roadway, and multimillionaire mansions peeked out behind dogwood and oak trees at two-hundred foot intervals. This route, which put us instantly into the rolling Virginia countryside, led out to Great Falls, a network of rapids on the Potomac River above the capital city of Washington, D.C. The river itself was navigable higher than this, but only if you could get past the rapids. In the early years of the American republic, a consortium headed by George Washington himself had dug a canal on the Maryland side of these rapids to give access by boat to the upper Potomac. But that canal was a dry bed now.

  The most glorious thing about Great Falls Park was the foliage and the rocks and the many very private nooks and crannies tucked alongside the trails and the river gorge itself.

  The great weather had not been predicted, so we had the park almost to ourselves alone. I searched until I found the perfect spot, close enough to the river to hear the dull roar of the rapids and see glimpses of rushing water between the trees, but off the walking path, in a small, moss-covered dell surrounded by protecting granite outcroppings and verdant tree coverage.

  I had no trouble discerning that I had guessed completely correctly—that Sean had been yearning to get out of the theater environment. To relax and enjoy something different.

  I hadn’t actually intended on making love to him here—I’d tried doing it in the car in the parking lot, but he made me wait, while promising it might happen—which just heightened my desire for him. He was relaxed and happy and vocal, and he only objected mildly and only at first, when, after we’d eaten the box lunches while sprawled out on a blanket and drunk the beers I’d brought along, I embraced him and we began to kiss.

  He murmured his “we shouldn’t be doing this” objections while I slowly unclothed him, covering all revealed flesh liberally with kisses. But he just lay there, panting, and looking up at me all wide-eyed and shuddering as I stood over him and stripped down, showing him how much I wanted him, how much I had to give to him.

  And then, surprising even myself, I showed myself how much farther beyond just protector and brief fling I thought our relationship was moving by coming down to him and covering his face and neck and nipples and belly with kisses and then voluntarily lowering my mouth yet farther and making love to his cock and balls and channel entrance with my lips and teeth and tongue until, writhing and groaning and moaning and sighing under me, begging for what I would eventually bury deep inside him, he released his hot, milky nectar for me to devour.

  Chapter Six: Sean

  I was never more nervous than while I was waiting in the dance rehearsal hall, trying to keep up with small talk with the pianist, while I was waiting for Miloslav Cersenka for my audition to dance in Defiance. I was torn. I wanted to do this, and not just for the money I needed to help keep Mr. Masters’s lifestyle afloat. I needed this for me too. I was beginning to dissolve into Mr. Masters. If there was ever going to be anything left of me that was me, I needed someplace that Mr. Masters could not go. For me, that was the world of the dance.

  On the flip side, however, I was afraid of what was required to become part of Cersenka’s troupe—and I remained shocked that Mr. Masters could just share me around like this. First Leonard Handelsman and now Cersenka. Mr. Masters had always been so adamant that there would be no one but him. I felt used and worthless. I consoled myself with the thought that Cersenka may be too ill to follow his custom. Over the weeks of early preparation for the opening of Defiance at the Arena Stage, his condition had noticeably weakened and, if anything, he looked even more cadaverous and gaunt than ever before.

  In the days since I had asked for and been granted the audition, I had been sitting in on the dance rehearsals so that I could see what dance positions and routines were going to be used and I could concentrate my audition on those. What surprised me the most about those rehearsals was Cersenka’s movement there. He would appear, tapping his ivory-headed cane on the floor as he favored one leg in his steps. But then the music would start and he would be out among the dancers, still the master of all in his flexibility and the grace of his movements as he gave instruction. I ached for him on how he would feel when the day came when he no longer could dance like that. And I thought that what appeared to be an acceleration in the progress of his disease probably was welcome to him—that he preferred death to life as cripple after having been a premier dancer.

  When Cersenka entered the rehearsal hall, I stood away from the piano, in the first position, and watched his pained progression to the center of the room from the door. He merely snapped his fingers and the piano music began. Then he gracefully extended his hand to me and put on the mere hint of a smile, and I began to move over the floor in the prescribed audition positions. I was so keyed up that I had to keep trying to make my mind a blank, to let my body do what it had been conditioned and trained to do. It meant the world to me to do well, even though it frightened me to the core on where doing well would lead.

  Cersenka was bare chested and bare footed, clad only in a form-fitting black leotard. Even in his emaciated state, his muscle tone held, and his veins popped out on his chest and arms, indicating there was practically no
fat on his body for them to run through. He appeared made of steel.

  At length I had come near him, and he commanded me to take the position of the arabesque penchée, where I lifted one leg high behind me at over a 90-degree angle and moved my torso forward, toward the floor, to counterbalance. Cersenka came close to me then and put one hand on my belly and the other one high on my thigh.

  “Demi-pointe,” he commanded. And, as directed, I went up on my toe. Cersenka, in dramatic strides, walked around in a circle, turning me. His breathing was raspy, and I felt the hand he had on my thigh move up and cup my basket.

  I knew now that I had passed the dancing segment of the audition and we were now in the second phase—the phase where he possessed me as his.

  “Felix, enough, thanks. You may go.”

  Cersenka was addressing the piano player, who brought the music to a graceful conclusion and stood up, bowed, and walked out of the rehearsal hall in long strides, my heart matching the beat of his clicking heels.

  I was alone with Cersenka now. He was breathing heavily, and it wasn’t all a result of his condition. I was trembling from the feel of his strong hand cupping my cock and balls through the tight-fitting unitard material and the dancer’s belt.

  He was still circling around in the center of the hall, moving me in the arabesque position. I felt his hand going from my basket up my extended leg, and he was pushing the red terry cloth leg warmer off my calf.

  “Change position, arabesque penchée,” he barked, and I came down off toe and lifted the other leg up as high as the first one had been and went back on demi-pointe. Cersenka circled me about a few more turns and then ran his hand up the extended leg and pushed the other leg warmer off.

  His hands went to my shoulders, and he pulled the straps of the torso portion of my unitard down over my arms and down my chest and then all of the way off me. I was naked now, except for my dance belt and my ballet slippers.