Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2001 18:28:04 -0500
From: David Buffet <tightserve@hotmail.com>
Subject: Alpha Male - Chapter 10

Chapter 10:  Analysis

	The next morning, I asked Johnston if I could take the morning off.
I told him I had some errands to run in the town.  He gave me the green
light, so long as I could set the boys up first.
	After breakfast, I took my position at the laundry, exchanging what
needed to be exchanged, handing back work out clothes which had been
cleaned, and distributing towels.  This done, I went, as usual, into the
gym to await Johnston's okay to get going.  I surveyed the floor.  Brad was
working the pommel horse -- his weakest apparatus.  Matt was on the
parallel bars, being instructed by Johnston.  My eyes scanned.  Adam was on
the rings, hanging, perfectly still, upside down.  Agonizingly slowly, his
body, completely layed out, rotated to horizontal in a strength move called
a planche.  He locked into position, his body perfectly straight, perfectly
parallel to the ground, his upper chest and shoulder muscles perfectly
straining and perfectly defined.  Satisfied he had held for the requisite
three seconds, rather than breaking the move, he remained horizontal and,
in seeming effortlessness, raised his head and looked up.  He was chewing
gum lazily.  His eye caught mine, and, with a smile, he winked.
	Fuck this, I thought, totally unnerved.  I'm not waiting for
Johnston.
	I stole into the laundry room, and found one of Adam's used unis,
and a jock.  Placing them in a Ziploc bag I had brought, I put them into a
knapsack, and made for my car.
	The ride to the town was therapeutic.  As the miles between Adam
and me increased, I found myself beginning to relax a little.  The wink was
the topper.  Hi, I'm doing something that competition level bodybuilders
aren't strong enough to do, but I still have the energy left over to
ridicule you.  Hope you appreciate it.  This boy was too much.  But long as
it was, his dick was still too short to fuck with me!  I had a few tricks
left up my sleeve.
	So Brad blew him, but he fucked Corey, huh?  That interesting
factiod kept turning over in my mind.  Did that mean anything?  Did Adam
just like Corey's ass better?  That seemed wrong.  They *all* had
spectacular asses, each and every one of them.  Was it because Corey was
youngest?  There was possibility there.  Was it just a coincidence?  That
didn't feel right either.  My guess was that whether or not he consciously
understood what he was doing, nothing that he did was by coincidence.
	Finding myself in the center of town, I pulled up to the post
office.  I slipped the Ziploc bag from my knapsack into one of the
overnight delivery envelopes, sealed it, and addressed it.  Fuck you, I
thought.  Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
	Next I stopped at a phone booth, and called a friend I had who was
getting her degree in organic.
	"Sharon," I asked, when she picked up the phone?
	"Hi, Mark," she said, "where you been?"
	"I got a gig for the summer in the mountains.  Look, I have a favor
to ask of you.  A big one."
	The university had a forensics lab, and Sharon was a genius at
molecular isolation.  I explained that I had found a candidate for alpha
male, and that I thought that there was something chemical going on.  I
needed an analysis of a sample.  She hedged.  I pleaded and promised a six
pack and a mention in the thesis.  She demurred. I begged and promised a
bottle of champers with a credit in the thesis.  She agreed.
	"Thanks," I said, biting my lip, "I'll send the package out to you
in the next post."
	"What do you want me to look for?"
	"Anything.  I don't know.  Anything that's out of the ordinary
that's organic.  Keep an open mind, and just tell me what you find."
	"You know, your little 'I don't know' added about a day and a half
to my work."
	"I'll make it Dom," I said.  She laughed.
	"Christ, am I so cheap?"
	My errands done, I got back in the car and headed toward the camp.
It was lunch by the time I arrived.  I got my food from the service line,
and brought my tray over to the table, where the boys were already half
done with their meal.
	As I was passing behind him, temporarily holding my breath, not
looking at him, Adam spoke.
	 "Hey, champ."  His tone was neither competitive nor insulting.  If
I didn't know him better, I would have called it friendly.
	"Hey," I said back pleasantly, not looking at him.  "Hey, I got
your number," I didn't add, "hey, le roi est mort."  Instead, I sat and
smiled at the boys.
	Doug was complaining about the fact that there was to be a workout
on Saturday.
	"Fuck, man," he said, between mouthfuls of mashed potatoes, "it's
not bad enough we gotta work in the summer, now we gotta work Saturdays
too?"
	"Yeah, man," said Matt, imitating Doug's plaintive whine, "next
thing you know he'll want to make us work Sundays!"
	"Yeah," Doug groaned in angry agreement!
	"And *then*," Matt went on, not missing a beat, "he'll make us work
Mondays!"
	"Fuckin A, man!"  He was totally sincere.
	There was a beat of silence before the rest of the boys cracked up
in unison at Doug's righteous, if misplaced, indignation.  Brad lost the
milk he was drinking through his nose.  Even Adam smiled.
	"You're too easy, amigo," Matt said, laughing, "you gotta give me a
challenge."  Doug grinned sheepishly, having realized his mistake.  The two
punched knuckles in the classic bonding ritual.
	I spent the afternoon in the laundry happily catching up on the
work I had let slide from the morning.  Whistling, I fancied myself one of
the Seven Dwarves.  Perhaps the Seven Dwarves updated.  Sleazy, Skanky,
Whorey...  Which would I be, I wondered?  Foxy?  Brainy?  I changed the
paradigm.  No.  More like a superhero.  I am WinsInTheEndMan.  See him turn
the tables on aggressors, and bring them to their knees!  I am
QueerPowerMan.  See him take it to the evil StraightTradeMan, and, with
nothing but his rainbow flag and a copy of the DSM III, analyze him into
submission!  The afternoon flew bye.
	I rejoined the boys at dinner.
	I sat across from Drew, who smiled when I joined the table.
	"How ya doin' Heywood?"
	"What's with the Heywood," I asked back, perplexed.  Steve had
called me Heywood the day before.  Drew smiled, and looked at his food.

	"It was Matt," said Brad, pointing his fork in Matt's direction,
and never, it seemed, at a loss to discuss things freely.  "He named you
'Haywould' after you got me off the first time."
	"Heywood?"
	"Yeh.  Djablowme."
	"Pardon?"
	"Heywood Djablowme, dude.  Get it?"
	I got it.  The boys laughed heartily except Corey, of course, and
Matt, who blushed and focused on his hands.
	After dinner, I went back to my room, and fixed myself a drink.  It
had been a busy day, and I had to unwind a little.  I sipped half of it
over the beaten up paperback edition of Marquez' classic tribute to
unrequited lust I had brought along.  But even that did little to soothe
me.  Feeling as if _100 Years of Solitude_ might have been a better choice,
I found myself restless and needing some air. I determined to take a walk.
	Nights in the mountains are special.  Used to the city, I had
forgotten the sheer number of stars that pocked the sky.  It was cool
without being uncomfortable.  The air was thick with pine and clover.  I
took the jogging path that circled the compound.  It was dark and
meandering, but at least I wouldn't get lost on the mile long circuit.  The
trees crowded the trail, covering it in an arboreal arch.  There were eyes,
but they were benevolent.  A 'possum and I startled each other.  I
apologized.  The 'possum, haughtily, did not, withdrawing, instead, back
into the wood.  The promenade drew me on.
	Halfway around, the trees opened where the path edged a pond.  The
vista was tremendous.  I had seen it in the daytime before, but never at
night.  The clarity of the air and closeness of the cosmos were
breathtaking.  Below that, the pitch silhouette of the mountains.  Below
that, the inky stillness of the pond.  Below that, the broken line of the
grass at the near shore.  And on that grass, lying, splayed out and asleep
was...
	...no one.
	But that would have been a great place to come across a sleeping
hunk, I thought, wouldn't it?  If only life were cliche.  He would be the
man of my dreams.  Alas, it was not to be.
	And who was the man of my dreams?  I returned to this, the
perennial question.  He had Brad's easiness and charm and joie de vivre.
And the wonderful combination of intellectualism and raunchiness of John,
an ex, who, alas, had moved away before I was old enough to understand that
I should follow him.  He'd have a great dick, of course, and an unabridged
Oxford.  Beautiful face, beautiful heart, beautiful soul.  There would be
tenderness and sharing; there would be play and foreplay.  And there would
be something else.  Something unnamable.  Something which, despite my best
endeavors and years of therapy, would not show itself to me.  Something my
superego always had always kept hidden.
	Wondering where he was, and when we would, at last, find each
other, I fell asleep under the beautiful blackness that cradled the canopy
of stars.