Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 22:49:11 -0500
From: David Buffet <tightserve@hotmail.com>
Subject: Alpha Male - Chapter 30

Chapter 30: Magic Words at Chippendales

	I watched Thursday being born.  Unable to sleep, I lay in my bed through
the dawn hours sifting through the events of the past few days and watching
myself slowly appear in the mirror on the desk across from my bed.
	The boys were going stir-crazy from the rain.  Dan had signed onto the
poker game the night before, which left me little time with him alone.  Just
enough to ask if I had figured out the cumming question.
	"Because you're the master of my domain?" I had asked in his room as he
prepared for the game by going through the pockets of shorts he found on the
floor looking for bills.
	"Sorry, Kramer," he said, "keep trying."  He became frustrated by his
search for cash.  "And you can clean up in here, if you want.  Adam's right.
  I can't find shit either."
	He left me empty in the empty room.
	Was he mad at me, I wondered as I began to gather clothes into piles?  Was
he mad because of the answer I had given when he asked if he were hotter
than Adam?  I hadn't really given an answer, actually.  I had just laughed
delightedly at the question.  Had that pissed him off?  Had he wanted me to
say he was?
	Was he?
	Who was hotter, Adam or Dan?  Which is hotter, a blast furnace or an
incinerator?  Which is hotter, a star or a thermonuclear device?  Adam's
sere had been imposed, instant.  Dan's was learned, acquired.  Each left me
fried to a crisp.  Adam's body was perfection.  Dan's was flawless.  At this
point, Dan could get me to cum merely by giving me permission to do so.
Adam had already done it three times without even touching me.  How could I
possibly answer that question - who was hotter?
	Was it intended to be serious?  We compete, he had said, but the good kind.
  Was this the good kind?  Was he asking me because he was afraid he had
competition for me?  Did he have competition for me?  Lord knows, Adam had
had ample opportunity to take me, but never had.  Was he making fun of my
demonstrated weakness for Adam?  Was he just playing with my mind?
	This would have to be one I would have to figure out for myself.  I surely
could not ask him if he were serious.  If he weren't, it would raise
questions I didn't want to raise, and if he were, it would require me to
give answers I couldn't possibly give.  And I surely couldn't ask Adam about
it.
	And could I ask about what Eric had been talking about?  Dan had
said...what had he said?  He transferred here to work with Johnston, right?
It was clearly something the entire team knew about.  How bad could it be?
But if I asked about it, Eric would win.  Dan would tell me, I decided.  If
it were important, Dan would tell me.
	The sun was up somewhere behind the low cover of gray, but there were still
two hours to breakfast.  The time I spent alone in Dan and Adam's room the
night before played itself out before my eyes as if a movie projected onto
the ceiling.  There was Mark bending to pick up clothes.  There was Mark
making piles - this piece Dan's, that piece Adam's.  There was Mark left
alone to ponder his revelation - the Great Revelation of the day - that Dan
was, in his way, every bit the Alpha Adam was. There was Mark unable to
determine to which of the two this particular pair of boxers belonged.
There was Mark bringing the boxers to his nose, inhaling, imbibing.  Dan.
That was Dan.  Those were Dan's.  And that pair?  There was Mark burying his
nose in them.  That was Adam.  This shirt?  Mark had seen Adam wear it.
Mark could picture Adam in it.  Still the underarm seam came to his nose.
	There was Mark sitting, legs akimbo, in the center of the floor.  A crane
shot.  He is small in the picture, surrounded as fully by smells as Scarlet
was by the wounded on the streets of Atlanta.  There was Mark, swooning.
Did he even know he was unzipping the fly of his shorts?  Could he feel
himself wrap the boxers he held in his hand around his furious erection and
begin to stroke?  Was he even aware?  He must have been.  See how he stopped
himself and lay back onto the floor?  See the tears?
	By the time Adam came into the room, this time with Evan, Mark had
reclaimed himself.  The floor was tidy, the clothes in baskets ready to be
washed, the CDs arranged on a shelf, the magazines stacked in a corner, the
sheets changed, the beds made.  Fin, read the frame of the movie on the
ceiling.  A Rankin/Bass Production.
	So Dan was an Alpha.  What did this mean for his and Adam's relationship?
Could a pack have two?  This one clearly could.  Yet another way in which we
are different than the other primates.  But wasn't it uncomfortable for them
to be together?  Was there a pecking order among Alphas themselves?  Was one
aleph nought, the other aleph one?  Had I stumbled upon my own Continuum
Hypothesis?  It was that final thought that got me out of bed and into the
shower, sure that I was going nuts.
	The morning practice, like the afternoon one, reinforced my revelation.
>From interaction to interaction, each of the two's catalogue of
interpersonal, non-verbal moves matched the other's.  This was no mere
mimicry on Dan's part, as I had suspected at the beginning of the summer.
Adam's repertoire of power might have had a chemical aspect to it, but from
a purely observational viewpoint, the two were interchangeable. I watched as
they rotated together, late in the afternoon, to the p-bars.  After
stretching, they mounted the apparatus together from opposite ends.
Shoulders down, arms long, they hung above the bars and slowly brought their
legs up so that they formed two perfect right angles.  Their pointed toes
almost touched in the middle.  At a word from one of them, they began, in
unison, to rotate out, pressing to handstands.  The two of them, happiest
when demonstrating perfect strength and perfect control.  Physical and
emotional bookends, parallel lives on the parallel bars.
	During dinner, it began to pour again and the wind resumed howling. It was
the kind of rain where the drops were so large that they drowned turkeys.
The kind of rain you don't endure, the kind of rain that can't last, the
kind of rain you run to get out of.  Finishing my meal early, I sprinted
back to the dorm.  Turning right before my door, I went into Dan and Adam's
room, not bothering to knock as I had just left the two of them in the
dining room.  There was already shit on the floor.  I laughed and put it
back into the piles I had created the night before.
	How tired can a person get?  It wasn't just physical exhaustion, either.
Aside from the inability to sleep came the necessity of getting through each
day minus the use of a pint of blood.  How did priests do it, I wondered?
Sitting down on Adam's bed, I chuckled to myself.  Fuck, I thought.  I
*must* be exhausted.  The answer to that one was, of course, that most of
them didn't.
	Adam's bed.  I ran my hand over the sheets.  Fucking lucky linen.  Would
Adam ever find love?  Could he possibly?  To be loved by Adam?  What could
one give to him that he needed?  What could one give to him that he didn't
already have?  How intensely lonely he must be!  I had thought that before,
once.  I could not even begin to picture the woman or man who would cause
Adam to fall in love.  It was a good thing, probably.  If I suspected
someone could do it, I'd be tempted to kill them.
	I got up and walked over to the other side of the room.  Lying down on
Dan's bed, I buried my face in the pillow and conjured him through smell.
How close smell is to our souls!  Smelling him, I could feel his dick press
against my thigh.  I could feel his finger trace the lines of cum on my
face.  I could feel his arms around me as I trembled next to the trampoline.
  His touch had awoken something in me.  It was fierce and demanding and
insatiable.  It was quenched only by his presence and attention.  When would
he let me cum?
	I could see the fine stubble on his chin at midnight.  I could see the way
his stretched foreskin pinched together just under the labia of his ample
piss-slit.  I could see the ten freckles he had on his shoulders.  Can a
person be an opiate?  Of course he can.  And I had been trained to consider
that unhealthy.  We are considered unhealthy if not independent in this
society.  Individualism to the extreme.  We must be complete in and unto
ourselves.  What a curiously modern concept.  For fifty thousand years of
our evolutionary history, we died as individuals.  Without the clan, we were
at the mercy of the capricious gods of starvation and saber-toothed tigers.
I exist because my distant ancestors were smart enough to follow their
Alphas.  Would following *my* Alpha be as rewarding?  And why wouldn't he
let me cum?
	I could hear his baritone.  I could hear him frighten, reassure, scare,
soothe.  I could hear...I could hear...I could hear Papa Bear.
	"Somebody's been sleeping in my bed," Adam was saying.
	"Somebody's been sleeping in my bed too," Dan responded.  "And he's still
there."
	I rolled over and drowsily opened my eyes, only slowly becoming aware that
I had fallen asleep.  The boys were standing over the bed looking down at me
with curiosity.
	"You think our porridge is safe?" Adam asked.
	"Hey," I said, rubbing my eyes.  "How long was I out for?"
	"Couple of hours," Dan said.  "We've been hanging out in the commons."
	"Sorry."
	"Next you'll be wanting me to join you," Dan said, smiling.
	"Yes, please."
	"Jesus," he said to Adam, rolling his eyes in mock annoyance, "give 'em an
inch and they take a fucking mile."
	"What are we going to do with the boy?" Adam returned, shaking his head and
tisking.
	"Cum, please.  I'm steely, Dan."
	"You're Steely Dan?" asked Adam.
	"Do Aja," said Dan.
	I laughed.
	"Should we make him cum, Dan?  Whaddya think? What say we two fuck in front
of him?  That'd do it, huh?"
	"That wouldn't make him cum, bud, that'd make him fucking explode."  They
were standing there next to the bed, each with arms folded, looking down at
me as if I were a specimen in a museum, or, perhaps, a lobster in a tank.
They grinned as they talked, taking clear pleasure in baiting me.
	"'Spose you're right.  There'd be brains everywhere."
	"And he just did such a good job of cleaning the room."
	"Yeah.  Be a shame to ruin it."
	"Besides," Dan said, "he hasn't said the magic words yet."
	My humor fell.  The magic words.  I was at the end of my tether, and the
grand experiment was about to fail before it even began because I couldn't
find the "magic words" that Dan wanted to hear.  It wasn't funny anymore.
	"Fuck, Dan, what the hell do you want me to do?" I asked plaintively.  "You
want me to beg?  I'll beg.  I'll fucking grovel at your feet."
	"Well," he said, still smiling, "yes, in fact.  I *do* want you to beg.
You want to see him beg?"
	"Oh!  Indubitably."  They were doing fucking Chip and Dale.
	"Yes, little man.  We would like to see you beg."
	Adam made no move to retreat as I launched into it.  The two of them just
stood there, shoulder to shoulder, and watched me squirm.
	"Please, Dan.  Please."
	"That's not begging," Dan said to Adam.  "You think that's begging?  I
don't think that's begging."
	"Naw," he replied, "that was hardly even asking.  What would you call that,
champ?  Entreating?  Was that more entreating or appealing?"
	"Bordered on a beseech at best," Dan said.
	Adam nodded.  "That's it.  A beseech.  But not a beg."
	"No, definitely not a beg."
	I lost my temper.  "You want me to beg?  I'll fucking beg.  Dan, I can't
sleep, I can't concentrate, I'm going fucking nuts!  I haven't had a good
meal in days.  All I want to do is cum."
	"Then why don't you just cum?" Dan asked simply.
	"Because you told me fucking not to.  That's why I don't just cum!  You
told me not to, and I want to be with you."
	"Why not just do it and lie?"
	"Fuck me, you know exactly why.  Because you'd know and then that'd be it.
Please, Dan.  I'm begging you.  Please.  What's the fucking test here?  What
are the rules?  What do you want me to do?  I'll do it.  You want to
publicly humiliate me?  I'll be publicly humiliated.  You want me not to be
humiliated by being in public?  I'll fucking be proud.  Walk me around on a
fucking leash.  I'll bark like a dog and smile while I tell strangers I'm
your property.  Tell me what to do.  I'll do it.  Just please let me cum."
	"That was fucking hot," Dan said.  "Wasn't that hot?"
	"That was surely hot," Adam echoed.
	"I am so boned right now."
	"I sprung a woodie myself."
	"You going to tell me that wasn't it?" I exclaimed in disbelief.
	"Naw," Dan said, "that wasn't it.  But it *was* fucking hot."
	I snapped.  I screamed. The frustration, the exhaustion, the heat, the
constantly being off balance had finally taken their toll.  I could feel the
tears begin to form.
	"I fucking give up," I shouted.  "I have no fucking idea, Dan.  I've
thought it through, I've analyzed, I've considered, I've reasoned.  I've
done everything I know how to do.  You say I'm wrong?  I think it through
again.  I come up with another idea.  You say *that's* wrong?  I analyze it
again.  I try another angle.  Well I can't think it through anymore, Dan.  I
have no God-damned mother-fucking clue.  I GIVE UP."
	I was yelling at the top of my lungs, and the end of the sentence brought
an emotional collapse I hadn't felt since a particularly painful
breakthrough in therapy many years before.  Dan and Adam looked at each
other while tears fell uncontrollably from my eyes.
	"Wow," Dan said.
	"Wow," Adam agreed.
	"Congratulations," Dan said, turning back to look at me.  "That's the right
answer."