Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 21:41:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Evan Bradely <evanbradley33@yahoo.com>
Subject: "The Crew" - Chapter 1

The following fictional story deals with sex among males.  If you are offended
by such material, are too young, or reside in a location where it is not
allowed, please depart. Though not observed in this story, care enough about
yourself and humankind to practice safe sex.

The author retains all rights.
EvanBradley33@Yahoo.com

Chapter 1
Substitute Homes
				Hal and Max

Hal Winston eased his 6-foot, 3-inch frame out of his dark green Dodge Ram
pickup as he grabbed his gym bag from behind the seat and tossed it into the
pickup bed.  Max Weingart, his foreman and nearly his equal in stature, rolled
out the other side with his gym bag.  Hal's long muscles told him he'd put in
a hard day shingling a roof.  He leaned back against his pickup, waiting for
their buddies on the crew to join them for a late afternoon workout at Murphy's
Gym.  Max leaned up against the truck beside Hal.  They observed a companionable
silence, glad to be free of the labors of the workday.

Hal had been surprised minutes earlier when, just as he was ready to pull away
from the curb at the construction site, the truck's door had opened and Max had
plopped into the passenger seat, shutting the door.  "Let's go," Max had
directed his boss.  Hal had wondered where Kenji was, but decided he and Max
were capable of sorting their logistics out for themselves.  Their relationship
was also something he didn't want to think about.  So he shoved his mind in a
different direction.

Tired as Hal was, he was also quietly proud of the huge distance he'd come in
his life - not from ground zero like other men he knew.  He'd started way below
ground zero.  He had never known his parents or the circumstances of his birth.
He'd been one of those headline babies placed in a Rubbermaid laundry basket
and left on the front porch of a convent.  There wasn't a letter, a birth
certificate or any clue for police to follow.  Even his name was made up; he
had no idea why someone had decided he was a "Hal" or a "Winston."  He sometimes
laughed ruefully, imagining somebody - certainly not a nun - in desperation
spying the name on a pack of Winston cigarettes just as fledgling stars' names
are chosen in Hollywood.

"Penny for your thoughts," Max said, sensitive to his buddy's moods, aware that
Hal had slipped into a reverie.  He often was like this after a hard day's work
or some unexpected challenge.  He was certain the reverie had to do with Hal's
personal history and recent experience with Kenji, neither possibility a good
topic.	He loved this Hal Winston, more like a brother than a lover.  But
they'd been lovers in their early days.

"Just thinkin' about who the hell Hal Winston is, who gave him that moniker and
why.  Why those two names?"  He paused as though trying to think of an answer.
"I'll never know," he spoke softly, his brow wrinkling.  "It makes me feel that
I don't know who to be.  Funny how a name is like that.  I remember during a
psychology class in college reading a research study about children growing to
fit their names.  But most children have parents - as well as their larger
family - and its history to help shape that name and image.  I had nothing."

"Lots of people think you fit your name just fine," Max replied, knowing that
Hal had set off down a line of thinking and he wouldn't be jolted out of it.
"They'd be proud to bear the name."  Max knew his role:  just follow Hal, making
certain he didn't become too depressed, knowing he would never be able to
convince Hal that his lack of a family made no difference to anybody else.

"That's just it:  I don't know if I do or don't fit it," Hal answered.	"How
would I know?  Hal, the mystery man," he said softly, "X man."

Max chuckled.  "Well, if X-Man refers to your dick and the way you use it
against other guys, I'd agree."  Hal grinned, punching Max lightly in his hard
gut.  They fell into another quiet stretch.  Max knew Hal would resurface when
he felt the need.

Looking at Hal out of the corner of his eye, Max took in the shiny black hair on
the sides of Hal's head.  His head was full of the stuff.  His ears were perched
high on his head but flat against it.  He had a long face with a square jaw, two
features that complemented each other perfectly.  Widely spaced brown eyes with
black brows almost in a straight line over them.  Gentle creases running down to
the corners of his perfectly proportioned mouth always lightly shadowed by
whiskers.  Strong chin and throat.  Broad shoulders that sloped down to nicely
built arms with veins snaking down from his pits and through the tops of his
hands.	He was still a hell of a looker, Max decided.  A century earlier, people
would have thought him some kind of European nobleman just because of his
looks.	Hal turned a lot of heads, men and women alike.

Hal had spent the early years of his life in foster homes.  A host of factors
led to his being shifted from one foster home to another.  So that deep
attachments could be avoided, state and Catholic Church policies stipulated
that a child be moved from one foster home to another at least every three
years.	As an adult, Hal figured out that, when the Church couldn't work
through the family structure on which it was so focused, its decisions could be
downright stupid.  And for all its noble mouthings about family values, the
state, which licensed all orphanages, had never actually worked within family
structures at all, so it didn't produce any better social policy.  Hal suddenly
spat out an exasperated sound, not words, just angry emotion, a burst of
expelled breath, looking away from Max, a little embarrassed that someone had
witnessed his frustration still boiling over after so many years.  Max ever so
slightly shook his head as though to say, "I told you so!"  Hal decided that
both Church and state merely reacted to family structures - when they were
present.  It was surprising how blind they were to their warehousing policies
when it came to homeless children.

When young foster parents moved from the state for better jobs elsewhere, foster
children, as wards of the state, had to stay behind.  As Hal approached puberty,
he was taken on by many families merely to be a laborer on a farm or in a family
business.  He'd also had his share of sex with some of his foster fathers or
foster brothers.  It occurred at their prompting, not his, for he was too afraid
of getting his ass booted out.	However, it revealed to him even then that it
was men he really liked, men with whom he wanted to form a close relationship.
So he didn't feel exploited during those early sexual encounters.  It allowed
him to fantasize that he was loved, that someone valued him for himself.  Less
happily, some of his foster homes introduced him to physical abuse.  When one
was the flotsam and jetsam of society, he became a target at some point or other
for at least one of the ill-tempered, evil intentions in the universe.	One time
he'd run away from a foster home when it was really bad, ending up back in the
orphanage.  That coupled with his increasing height and weight as he was about
to enter senior high school pretty much ended his being bounced around.  No one
wanted him.  His rapid growth and size intimidated potential foster parents, so
he spent his senior high school years at the orphanage.

He didn't entirely regret those final years in the orphanage.  He'd become a big
brother to many of the boys there.  He'd taught them sports, corralled and
reformed the bullies, listened to the guys' longings for a real home and family,
helped steer them away from cynicism, encouraged them to dream big about their
future even though he had to push himself to do the same.  It seemed like such a
waste of energy to dream about something that was never within his reach.  He
did his best to build up the other guys.  Their worst times were holidays, the
approach of which they dreaded, for those family events enforced their deficient
status upon them.

Suddenly Richie Collins's handsome face leapt from his memory into his mind's
eye with that constant "eat shit" grin on Richie's face.  Instantly, Hal felt
pain knife into his gut, followed by a shocked "oh" quietly bursting from his
mouth.	Max knew exactly what thought had surfaced from Hal's memory.  "Thinkin'
of Richie, aren't you?" Max asked.

Hal shook his head in the affirmative but offered no explanation, again looking
away from Max.	Richie, a year younger, was the closest thing to a brother Hal
had ever experienced in his youth.  When Richie arrived at the orphanage, he was
a good-looking, brash, outspoken runt, a little troublemaker actually.	He
harbored a wild streak from, Hal finally decided, never having belonged to a
family.  In no time at all Hal and Richie had gotten into a knockdown, drag-out
over some silly issue.	Richie had challenged Hal's place as leader - Richie
was going to run the show.  Instead, Hal had clocked Richie.  The amazing result
was that he immediately looked up to Hal as his hero.

Besides being inseparable, Hal and Richie were also sex buddies and finally
lovers.  Hal felt so fulfilled making love to the short fella - which wasn't
easy in an orphanage full of other boys.  Hal loved holding him in his arms,
persuading Richie that he was protected and loved.  It made Hal feel invincible.
It also made him feel like he had a family at last, anchored on his
brother-lover and their "brothers" in the orphanage.  Hal couldn't remember
being happier.	He never gave any thought to how they would keep it alive.  Hal
didn't know how many times after the orphanage he had relived their bouts of
lovemaking, trying desperately to hang onto the details, the tactile sensations,
the deep feelings of fulfillment and love.  However, he discovered that time
took its toll on memories, and memory processing itself had a way of distorting
those details.	He'd hang onto those details forever if he could, recalling the
adage "it's all in the details."  He agreed.  Hal was initially desperate when
he realized that the details were fading, like old photographs, growing dim
around the edges, then fading into the center.	He was left with broad strokes,
but not the little details that allowed him to feel that he owned the memory.

Hal had slowly maneuvered Richie into looking out for the other boys as Hal did.
Richie was good at it.	Since Hal had to play the role of tougher lead male,
Richie could assume a softer stance with the boys.  It had been good, really
good.  Even Elizabeth Waller, the director of the orphanage, had commented on
how proud she was of the two older guys' looking after the other boys.

When Richie had entered senior high a year after Hal, he'd gotten into a gang
that introduced Richie to drugs.  Hal had watched him drift away toward the
group.	He had tried to talk to Richie, tried to figure out what allure the
group held.  Richie had shut him out.  In short order, Richie had run off to
stay with the gang.  Later they had heard that he'd died from an overdose.
"Damn," Hal swore softly when he remembered Miss Waller calling him into her
office to break the bad news to him.  He'd cried.  He'd loved Richie, and he'd
failed him.  He felt as though he'd lost everything worthwhile.

About the first sane thought he had after the initial news was the question
'Why wasn't anyone in that gang looking out for Richie?'  Then he realized, the
members of the gang were all caught up in their own thing with drugs.  Their
confederation was merely protective coloration.  They were probably all stoned.
Several weeks more and a few quiet talks with Miss Waller were required before
Hal realized that Richie had put himself in harm's way by leaving those who
cared for him.	It made Hal all the hungrier for a family.  He wondered if he
could ever again create a family of his own.

"Does it do any good to mull it over again and again?" Max asked softly,
throwing his arm briefly over Hal's shoulders.

Hal smiled wanly.  "Maybe I'll come up with an answer this time."

"Do you think there are answers to every question in the universe?" Max asked
kindly.

Hal thought a bit, recognizing the gentle challenge and the direction in which
Max intended to push him.  "Yeah, most of the time I believe that.  I'm just
lousy at coming up with them."	Max squeezed his neck and then removed his arm.
Hal wasn't really ready to talk yet.

When Hal had reached 18, the age at which he graduated from high school and at
which the state would no longer support or care for him, Miss Waller had
suggested that he enlist in the army.  Not having any other prospects, he did.
It was a good move.  It taught him what it was to be a man since he'd never
really had a father.  It put him in the company of real men, which he liked, not
that he was able to act on it very often.  It provided the occasion in which
he'd lost his virginity with a woman.  He had liked it, but sex with men was
always more satisfying.  Oddly, for him, sex with women was a power trip; with
men, it was a search for romance and acceptance.  He would have to be very close
to a man to admit that - as he had to the stud leaning next to him.  It had
been his undoing.  He frowned as broken images and acrid exchanges crashed
through his mind.  He wanted them out of his head!

Max fidgeted next to Hal.  Hal gently threw his body away from the truck as he
walked aimlessly in circles a short distance away, shoving his hands in the
front pockets of his faded jeans.  Then he took off, walking across the parking
lot.  Max knew Hal was thinking about the two of them and their "facing the
music."  Max had hurt him, the first man after Richie to whom Hal had
substantively reached out and declared his love, and the first man to decline
what Hal was offering.	To this day Max didn't know why Hal hadn't given him the
boot.  Hal was frosty for months, but he kept Max on as an employee of Winston
Construction Company.  A part of Max DID love Hal, but not finally as a lover,
not a real lover to whom one handed over his heart.  He'd felt the need to be
completely honest with Hal because he respected him too much, telling him that,
as important as Hal was to him, he didn't love him romantically.  Out of the
corner of his eye, Max saw that Hal's agitation was on the wane as he returned
to the pickup.

Hal's stint in the army also made it possible to fund his post-secondary
education.  His veteran's college assistance along with money from a state fund
to finance a college education for orphans made it possible for him to study
during the academic year without working a lot.  And it provided a little pocket
money.	The biggest challenge in those years was figuring out where to spend the
holidays when the dorms closed.  His only recourse was to find a cheap hotel
near several restaurants, hoping that one stayed open on the holiday.  It was
never a good time.  A couple of weeks were required to build himself back up
emotionally and mentally.  One holiday, he'd gone home with a roommate.  The
family was very nice to him, but he was horrified that it felt just as it had
when he was in foster homes.  He didn't repeat that again.  In the summers he
worked construction for spending money, but he also managed to save money.  He
wasn't a big spender.  When he'd graduated with a double major in business and
a self-generated major in civil engineering, he'd decided to return to
construction.  The prospect of moving into the corporate workplace left him cold.

Max couldn't stand the silence anymore.  "You've come a long way, Buddy, built
a life when no one handed you one, stood strong.  Some guys would have come
out of that selfish.  Not you.	You take care of all of us."  Max leaned over and
planted a chaste kiss on Hal's cheek.  Hal glanced about to see of anyone was
near.  Then he brushed his lips over Max's, sliding the tip of his tongue between
Max's dry lips.  When Hal pulled back, he was grinning big time.

"You bastard!" Max complained in mock fashion.	"You know you bone me up
when you do that."

Hal laughed.  "Yeah, I know, Big Guy.  I knew you needed to sweeten up before
the others got here."  Max harrumphed in response, stifling a grin.

Returning to construction after graduation from college was a good move for Hal.
He'd worked for Henderson Construction, owned by Walter Henderson, a man on
in years.  Walter's wish for a son had never been fulfilled.  He'd had three
daughters instead.  So he'd taken a liking to Hal, especially after worming his
life story out of him, coming to view him as the son he'd wished for, moving
him up to foreman on a building project before his first year was over.  Because
of his size, the older workers didn't challenge Hal, and the men soon learned
to follow him because he was smarter than all of them put together.  All those
years shepherding young boys in the orphanage were paying off, making him a
natural leader.  The men in construction were often nothing more than overgrown
boys anyway.  Most just fell into the construction trade because they really
had little else to offer the world.  After three years, Mr. Henderson had made
Hal general manager.  Then Walt died suddenly.	Hal felt that he'd lost
something special.  It wasn't as bad as when Richie died, but it felt something
like that.  Walt had never
behaved as though he were Hal's dad, but he certainly had treated Hal like a son.
Hal thought he knew what it must be like when other guys lost their dads.

Walt's wife and three daughters were eager to sell the business for the proceeds.
Hal nearly died inside, for he wanted the company so badly.  As frugally as Hal
had lived (a result of early realization that there was no one to take care of
him but himself), he didn't have anything near the capital necessary to
purchase the company and no real credit history or backers to secure a huge bank
loan.  He stayed on with the new owners, but he knew his time with them was
limited.  They were interested only in volume building, going for big housing
tracts of boxy homes, taking no pride in their work.  He was surprised after six
months when the Henderson family's lawyer stopped by a construction site to
inform him that Walter Henderson had left him $50,000, which the lawyer
proffered on the spot in the form of a cashier's check.  Hal had immediately
quit the company and established his own construction company.

Hal had cleverly identified a stable niche in the market for construction
workers - being hired to help complete troubled projects before penalty clauses
kicked in.  Since he had no allegiances or life to speak of, he could put in the
long hours necessary to complete a project.  And the overtime built his cash
reserves nicely.  Then in his second year, he'd built his first modest family
dwelling, the point at which he'd hired his first employee, Max.  A warm smile
creased his face as he thought of Max - without his clothes on!  Hal's journey
from leaving the orphanage to starting Winston Construction Company had happened
over ten years.  In some ways it seemed only yesterday.

			       Rich Adams

Rich Adams, an accountant, was, in effect, Winston Construction Company's
second employee.  Within only a matter of months, Hal realized he needed an
accountant.  He needed to deal with tax issues associated with Walter
Henderson's bequest, but he also realized that he couldn't keep books, work
construction, serve as a contractor and owner, and be on the lookout for the
next project all by himself.  Max was a gift, but Hal knew he needed more help.
So, like most Americans cast adrift in the Sea of Need, he consulted the Yellow
Pages in the local phone book.	As he thumbed down the names of accountants, his
thumb hit Rich Adams's name.  Not "Richard," he noted - "Rich."  Sounded like
an uncomplicated man.  Immediately, the image of Richie Collins sprang to Hal's
mind - Richie Collins, his failure for a lifetime.  His thumb stopped, and his
memory dragged him through the glories of holding that hot, short body, that
energetic, needful spirit in his arms, loving desperately in the hopes that he
would be loved back by Richie in equal measure.  He wasn't.  Richie Collins
loved the gang and drugs more.	Hal's head drooped as he grieved again.  He
really didn't know how long he sat there with his thumb jammed on that spot on
that page in the phone book.  It must have been a long time because all feeling
had left his thumb.

Surely he couldn't be so stupid as to think that connecting with another guy
just because his name was Rich would give him a chance to redeem himself for his
failure with Richie Collins.  Yeah, he was so needy about Richie that he was
JUST that stupid.  He didn't pause another second before dialing the number and
setting up an appointment with Rich Adams.

When Hal arrived for his appointment and the receptionist showed him into
Rich's office, as soon as his eyes fell on Rich Adams, he felt he had a chance
to wash some degree of failure from his soul.  Rich Adams was a dish!  Lean all
over.  Dark honey-blond hair; jock-square, not butch-square face; broad, dark
eyebrows; intelligent, animated brown eyes; nice average nose; average mouth;
sort of a square-chin with jawbones curving back to the cutest ears.  Long,
sturdy neck, broad shoulders for a 5' 10" guy.	Hal later found out that Rich
was a baseball star who couldn't quite make it in the majors and knew how
defeating too many seasons in the minors might be.  So he'd gone to college,
earned a BS in Accounting, passed his CPA exam, and hoped for better than any
of that promised!

When Rich's eyes lighted on Hal, they flamed!  Connection on both sides!  They
had talked business, but they were thinking seduction.	Since it was late in the
afternoon, Hal had insisted on continuing their discussion over dinner.  He'd
hauled Rich to The Purple Onion, a gay restaurant, wondering if he'd overstepped
his bounds.  When one of the waiters greeted Rich by name, Hal had laughed
aloud, mostly in relief.  Before they left the restaurant, Hal had an accountant,
and Rich had a horny entrepreneur on his hands.

They went immediately to Hal's home, where he peeled Rich out of his clothes.
He stood looking at the young stud's awesomely squared pecs, lightly haired,
accented by nipples that were larger than normal, telling Hal that they were
linked directly to sweet Rich's cock, balls, and maybe ass.  Otherwise, they
wouldn't have been worked so much.  No six-pack but a slim, tapered lower torso
with just the slightest hint of a treasure trail.  Rich's cock rode at high
mast, six inches snug up against his lower belly, surrounded by a small bush of
black hair.  The head of his cock, while not a big mushroom cap, had a deep
cleft that ran from the piss slit to the bottom of the glans.  That feature
alone stoked a fire in Hal's groin.  A modest sack of balls rested below with a
line threading down the middle of the sac but with a smaller line threading
across the sac.  Rich's slim but muscled thighs, lightly haired, added to Hal's
ardor.	Whenever Hal was with Rich, no matter what the season, it seemed like
summer.  He thought Rich even smelled like summer.

Hal pulled Rich into a powerful hug, kissing him like he was starved for love.
Instantly, Hal realized that he wasn't just reacting to Rich Adams, hunky though
he might be.  He was reacting, after Miss Waller's announcement about Richie
Collins's death, to his need to show Richie Collins again how much he loved him.

Rich Adams was bowled over by Hal's ardor.  It was only two months later that
he tipped to the fact there was more in Hal's love of him than related to Rich
himself.  It freaked him out a little, made him feel phony.  It was the
beginning of the end for them.

The evening came when Rich Adams asked Hal to tell him to whom else he was
making love when they were together.  His question caused Hal to break down
into tears, slowly sinking on the carpet of his bedroom, naked in more ways
than one, wracked with deep sobs of grief.  Every time Rich and he had made
love, he'd felt it had drawn him nearer and nearer to Richie.  When Rich
challenged him, all the old grief poured forth.  Even butch Hal was frightened
by the power of his emotional collapse.  Rich Adams understood immediately.  He
moved to Hal, shifting him into his arms, holding him, caressing him, gently
kissing him as the story spilled out, ugly, painful, gut-wrenching.  Rich Adams
couldn't be angry at this wonderful man even though he knew they could never
really be lovers.  They would always be haunted by Richie Collins's specter.
It was one thing to invite a guy into a three-way.  It was quite another for
him to take up a ghostly presence there.  It had taken an hour of soft talk and
caresses on Rich's part to gentle Hal into some kind of stasis. Rich had finally
coaxed Hal into bed.  The next day, Rich told Hal how he felt.	A long time
passed before they had sex again.  At that point, they had made it clear that
they were just having sex.  Rich knew Hal loved him, which left him feeling
guilty, so their bouts of sex were infrequent.

The memories brought tears to Hal's eyes.  Max sensed a different dynamic in
Hal's reverie, but he knew better than to probe.

(To be continued.)