Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:38:04 -0500
From: fireflywatcher ford <fireflywatcher@gmail.com>
Subject: Winning by the Numbers, Chapter 3

	Warning:
		This story contains scenes of a sexual nature
between two men. If reading or possessing such material violates
the law in your jurisdiction or you are under the age of 18, please
leave this site and read no further.
	The author retains all rights to this original story. Please do
not publish ir reproduce it without explicit authorization from me.
	Disclaimer: This stort is entirely fictional and any
resemblances to real persons or events are purely coincidental.


	This story is about the natural human desire to love the
person of your choice and to find equality. There is a desire in all
of us to have children and this story fictionally addresses that.

	WINNING BY THE NUMBERS, Chapter 3 : Awakening

	Finally it began to cool down. As it had many years in the
past, the weather went from hundred degree temperatures one
week to an ice storm the made the roads impassable the next.
James was at my place as the storm hit. SMU was closed the next
day as was the medical school. He would only have had a short
walk on slippery sidewalks but my commute was beyond walking
distance in good weather. I could have bicycled, but never on ice.
Because of my pay, I bought groceries once a month and stayed
stocked up. The Tom Thumb on Cedar Springs, about six blocks
away, had their free turkey deal that year if you'd saved your
receipts, and my holiday food was in the freezer. The power went
out from falling trees but my heat and stove ran on gas.
	I was a freak for candles and oil lamps so light was on the
romantic side and the reflected light off the ice during the day
made it brighter inside than it normally was. It took four days for it
to melt and the busses to start running the streets again, with
Thanksgiving falling right in the middle. We would both have been
free for all but two days without the storm.
	The bright morning after the storm hit drew us both
outside. My dog had to do her business anyway, so there wasn't
much choice. It turned out to be safer walking over the grassy
areas with the ice crunching under your feet than trying to
maneuver the slick walks and busting your ass, Lulu led the way,
when she sprawled out her six pound body with her four legs
spread askew on the sidewalk, we stuck to the grass and she joined
us. I had her favorite tennis ball in my pocket and a Frisbee in my
hand. The crisp air seemed to carry them both further than they
normally flew with the same force. Retrieving them was more
difficult.
	I tossed the tennis ball for her from the grassy area where
guys had lain days before in running shorts soaking up the sun.
When she hit the frozen surface of Turtle Creek, she skidded all
the way to the opposite bank and the ball kept rolling. James was
hooting and hollering "hooo hooo hoo" and Lulu's eyes were
bigger than I'd ever seen them. After she'd sprawl out, she'd shake
herself as she stood up just like coming out of water, but only ice
flew from her back.
	Damn the ice! "Where are the ducks?" I asked. The creek
was always full of ducks.
	James pointed under the bridge and sure enough they were
all bunched together under it out of the weather. I was starting to
get that mechanical shiver going from the chill and the lack of fat
over my skinny bod when James grabbed me a twirled me in the
air. We fell and rolled in the crunchy ice a moment and the shiver
started to set my teeth clattering. He hugged me tight and bit on my
bottom lip, saying "We better get you back inside before you
freeze, babe."
	Lulu tagged along with that green tennis ball firmly in her
teeth, giving each of us a growl to say "my ball, my ball" when we
reached to take it. Inside the door, she disappeared and hid it
somewhere. We settled into my grandma's old antique couch,
sipping some brandy and staring at the space heater like it was a
television.
	The phones were still working. Wanda called and
announced "I'm walking over to see you; I'm bored out of my
skull from being trapped in this ice."  Her family lived toward
Austin and she'd moved to the area during college just as we had.
She lived two blocks away in the same cheap rent district in
another apartment owned by my landlord. As long as we'd worked
together she'd been a redhead, a very attractive petite bosomy
redhead. You could never be sure of a ladies natural hair color,
unless maybe you compared the carpet to the drapes, as they say,
and I was never going there.
	Twenty minutes later she bopped in the door without even
knocking, giving me that look that said "you knew I was coming,
so why should I knock?" We had been naked. I had a limited
amount of clothes James could fit into and he'd been there two
days. He'd had a lot of his own clothes in my closet, but since he'd
planned on going home over Thanksgiving and getting him mom
to do his laundry, it was all packed back in his dorm room. I'm
only domestic on a survival level like throwing in a couple of
things with my load, but he'd always been welcome to use my
washer and dryer. He was wearing one of my tanks that hung
mostly between his pecs and left both his quarter sized nipples
showing to the sides along with my sweats. Wanda settled back in
one of the wingback chairs with her legs stretched out straight in
front of her and both hands fisted together stretching down as well.
She looked James up and down, wide eyed and with the curiosity
that killed the cat.
	"Well, who is this fine specimen, Dave?" she asked.
	"Wanda, this is James. James, this is Wanda" I replied
doing my best proper introduction.
	"Let me hear your story guy" she inquired adding "I don?t
play on your team, so don't be nervous; I'm just another nosy
friend of Dave's" not assuming him to be gay or straight. I eased
toward the kitchen and brought her back a glass of wine I knew she liked.
	"I go to SMU" James replied trying to keep it short and
sweet. I'd never mentioned him to her thinking it might be
inappropriate that we met through my job or that I'd had any
sexual contact with the candidates.
	"I hear a little West Texas twang in your voice and you
look familiar" she responded. There are fewer shy women in
Texas, probably due to having all the cowboys hitting on them  so
much.
	"Yeah, from out west of Abilene" but he didn?t say where
and added "I play ball so you might have caught me on the news or
in the paper if you were paying attention. I don't get covered a
lot." She did that glance from him to me and back again and he
spoke up saying "Dave and I met when I was a donor on your
project" with a grin spreading across his face and turning bright
red. Damn that's a cute blush, I thought.
	She began to laugh and covered her mouth with her hand
for a second. "Guys have all the luck. The women I work with are
sooo clinical. There's no nudity or measurements to take and eggs
are taken in a surgical procedure. I've got to talk Reed into some
measurements. It would be so much fun. Karlisle is your name,
right?"
	"I guess you were paying attention if you remember my
name" James replied.
	"Actually, I'm quite a sports fan. I just don't meet many
women who share my interests. Do I smell a bird cooking Dave?"
It would have been hard to miss the smell of the turkey and I was
surprised it took so long for Wanda to mention it, but she was
distracted.
	"I don?t just have the bird cooking, but all the fixings, too. I
have a big hungry football player on my hands that can't get home
to momma for the holiday. I have to feed him." I drug her by the
hand to the kitchen and showed off my efforts. Lulu came out of
hiding to follow and James fell in behind us.
	"You know you have to feed me, too, now. I never grocery
shop and was going home myself before the storm hit." Wanda
would be staying for dinner. Just then the refrigerator started it's
hum, letting us know the power was back on. I don't know the
point of turning all the light switches off when the power is out,
but I'd guess it was off because the lines went down during the
night.
	Wanda walked home with a goodie basket before the sun
went down, to stay safe. We'd put a dent in that twelve pounder
and she thanked me saying she'd see me Monday and nice meeting
you to James. It was not to be. Another ice storm hit Sunday night.
Thank god I was on salary or it would be a sorry Christmas with a
shrunken paycheck coming up. The board of director's check was
a miracle.
	James and I spent the next few days mostly in bed. I was
really getting into rimming his beautiful ass and he got so loud as I
did it, I'm surprised no neighbors came to complain about the
noise. The old apartment house was built in the twenties in a sort
of deco style with hardwood floors and arches, and those skip
trowel rough plaster walls. Before I had drapes up and a few throw
rugs down it echoed inside; but I never heard any noise from my
neighbors. They did something right back then. If sex burns off
calories, James and I both lost weight.
	The porn tapes were in my apartment because I'd had a
candidate scheduled the day after the ice storm hit. Reed had
bought more and there was a wider variety. We tried a few moves
but what makes a great camera shot doesn't necessarily make for
great sex. I'd always been more of a top and so had James. Finding
out we enjoyed being on the other end of the stick was amazing.
I'd get so turned on when I felt him getting close to cumming; I'd
cum at the same time no matter what we were doing. I think it was
happening to him too, we were just in sync.
	The semester ended several days before Christmas for
James and my two classes at work were done at the same time. I
was so glad I choose to study viruses. Optical microscopes gave
me migraine headaches. The electron microscopes used for viruses
had a view screen like a television or a computer monitor. Viruses
could be used to insert genes at specific points on chromosomes or
to extract sections and map the code. Gene therapy to repair
defects was just a theory.
	We were building quite a 'library' of sperm donations with
extensive portfolios that included pictures and family histories. I
was going to need help working with candidates. It was secondary
to my main duties doing the DNA testing and interviews. Wanda
was racing past me in terms of egg collection versus sperm
donations. Eggs were collected a day after an injection in a quick
surgical procedure. The doctors did that part of the work and
Wanda basically did screening and testing. A problem there was
eggs couldn't be frozen unfertilized like sperm. They could be
frozen fertilized as embryos and stored somewhat indefinitely.
	Neither of us was sure where this was going. If we were
selecting for gay and lesbian genes, we couldn?t morally impose
those characteristics on parents desperate to have children. For the
embryos to be used we would have to do a full disclosure of the
facts and only work with willing couples or single women. For
men, there was the possibility of using surrogate mothers. All
options were very expensive and few invitro procedures were
being done. It seemed we were building an embryo bank as well.
	Dr. Smith retired at the end of the semester. His heart failed
the day before Christmas and he never got to enjoy his retirement.
He would have remained on the board of the foundation with Reed,
Wanda, and I but we would need a new member in January at the
first meeting. Actually, we'd need two new members because the
foundation was structured in it's charter to have five members on
the board so all decisions could be made by a majority. Dr. Reed
was the chairman.
	He did an amazing job of soliciting funds. I'd find out in
January how much was in the trust fund account, but guessing
from the number of times he came back smiling saying "they gave
me a bundle" after meeting with potential backers that it was a
large sum. I knew we were paying a hundred dollars to sperm
donors and a thousand to egg donors. A lot had been paid out
already. Our staff salaries and his and Smith's had mostly been
paid by research grants he'd gotten. He'd gotten a lot of grants, but
how he spent the money was up to him as long as he published the
papers with the study results. That money was his nest egg, his
personal fortune. He had a considerable income from his patient
load in reproductive medicine and his salary for his teaching
position. Why he drove that ugly sixty eight Volvo was beyond
me. Even his apartment was in the neighborhood near Wanda and
I. After my one visit there, I thought mine looked nicer.
	James left two days before Smith died to be home for the
Christmas break. The medical school was closed for the same
period and I went home to visit my family, too. We were only sixty
miles apart and arranged to meet for New Years Eve and got both
his friends at home and mine together for a party that night. I got a
call from Reed late on Christmas Eve about Smith's death. Oddly,
I'd been named as a pall bearer and had to be back in Dallas on the
afternoon of the twenty-eighth. We'd never been close or even
social but the obligations imposed by the dead must be respected. I
got back to moms at midnight.
	I'd taken off my muddy boots and left them just inside the
door when I came in. She had a fit the next morning when she saw
them sitting there on her clean floor, reminding me of the boot
brush on the porch that looked like a porcupine. "The porch light
wasn't on and I forgot. I haven't been here in a while. I was tired
and it was late. I'll clean it all up." I pleaded. She left me alone
after I said all that but her frown never faded.
	My cousin Mitch came by that afternoon, yeah, my first,
the one I'd been as close a a brother to since we were kids. He
didn't ever knock on the door but stood out in the drive by my
truck all antsy and shit with his thumbs stuck in the pockets of his
jeans, kicking around rocks with his boots and looking forlorn
down at the ground the whole time. He'd graduated like me with a
useless degree from A and M in agriculture no less, three years
before and a year ahead of me. He never looked up but as I came
up to him he said "Got a coldbeer man?"  that West Texas way
where it is just one word, not two and all slurred together.
	"Sure thing Mitch, I got two cases." It was a dry county and
I was a boy scout at one time, 'be prepared'.
	"Throw 'em in the truck and I'll grab my ice chest. We're
going down to the river"  he told me. The river was the 'Texas'
Colorado that flowed through family land on its way to Austin and
then down to the gulf. He'd gotten married in the spring and the
spouse was at home all prego and bitching about everything. She
was due in a month. I never talked to her even once. He wanted me
to be the best man but I wouldn't even go to the wedding. If
you've been fucking a guy for twelve years and they have stolen a
chunk of your soul, you'd have to be crazier than hell to show up
at his wedding. I'd have fucked it up big time with my mouth after
a few drinks and the wedding night would get cancelled. I loved
him too much to let that happen. For the life of me, I'll never
understand how a bottom guy who loves getting fucked can get
married, except maybe to a guy.
	"Motherfuckers around here would kill me dead if they
knew I was queer. Hell, she won't want dick more than once a
month anyway and I can do that just thinking about you or Johnny
Ray" he told me at the time.
	"Fuck Johnny Ray. He did the same thing you're doing
with a girl he only polished belt buckles with once at a rodeo
dance" I said. At least they had each other to keep happy back
there and I was in another world in Dallas. I didn't even talk the
same way at home. It was just a part of me.
	We pulled up under some pecan trees that stood tall in
Indian days before any of the family arrived in 1840 and walked to
the waters edge. Sitting there on the bank with the sound of the
water rushing over the rocks and a few coldbeers made the world
right for a moment. Bass jumped and left their ripples in the still
pool above the rapids and turtles basked on logs along the waters
edge. Only a few weeks back, the scene was ice everywhere. But
today was eighty and extra sunny below the bare branches of the
trees. The winter rye grass was six inches tall and covered the
ground like a carpet of green.
	Mitch burst out balling like a baby and I held him in my
arms until there were no more tears to shed. "I fucked up bad,
Dave. I wish I could run away or die" he said.
	"I tried to tell you. Everything will be all right. You get
Johnny Ray and any other buddies you want, and we're going to
party New Years Eve" I told him.