"Can I Use Your Phone?"

Harold Dempsey had spent most of his sixty-three years refining his handshake—firm, warm, and just long enough to say “I’m your man” without seeming overeager. Time hadn’t been cruel, but it hadn’t been kind, either: his button-downs strained over a soft belly, and his jowls hung heavy beneath his chin. Still, he wore a tie every day and polished his shoes until they gleamed.

That afternoon, after a routine meeting with a chain of supply stores in a town that might as well have been named Oblivion Junction, he checked into the Westernaire Motor Lodge. The two-story brick building looked tired, its carpets threadbare. Room 117 smelled faintly of bleach, with an undercurrent of something unplaceable. He was bone-tired, his undershirt damp against his back, and all he wanted was a hot shower.

He shed his suit and left it in a heap on the vinyl armchair, then wrapped the laughably small towel around his waist with practiced ease. The water pressure was more trickle than torrent, but he stood beneath the tepid spray, letting the day wash away.

When he finally stepped out, he patted himself dry with the towel’s corner and cracked open the bathroom door to let out steam. He shuffled back toward the room to grab fresh underwear—and froze. The outer door was ajar, nudged wider by a draft from the ancient air conditioner.

He must not have latched it when he came in, fumbling with his suitcase. Before he could reach out and close it, a stronger gust swung the door shut with a harsh click.

Harold stopped dead in his tracks. The door had shut itself—from the outside.

He yanked on the knob. Locked solid.

“No…” he muttered, hand still wet against the metal. He looked down at himself—bare feet, bare chest, and a towel that barely held on. His wallet, his keys, even his dignity sat just beyond the locked door.

His heart raced faster than it had when he’d feared a stroke in an airport food court.

He jiggled the knob again. Nothing.

“Jesus, Mary, and all the saints…”

He backed away, the towel brushing awkwardly against his legs, his bare soles sticking to the worn carpet. Down the silent hallway, he could imagine Barb behind the desk, seeing him like this. No way he could face her. There had to be another way in.

He crept down the corridor on tiptoe, his towel slipping with each hesitant step—one hand pinning it in place, the other testing doorknobs as discreetly as he could. Room 115—locked. 113—no go. 111—deadbolted. His breaths came shorter now, a jumble of nerves and exertion. Rounding the corner, he tried Room 109.

The knob turned.

Harold blinked. The door stood ajar by barely an inch, muffled laughter spilling out. Men’s voices. Heart pounding, he pushed it open just enough to peek inside.

Five shirtless men—all in their mid-sixties—milled about, some in slacks, others in boxer briefs, one shedding khakis. Beer bottles cluttered the dresser; a neat pile of clothes lay on the far bed. The air was thick with cologne, body spray, and something muskier beneath. They hadn’t noticed him.

Harold’s mind stalled. A poker night? A bachelor party? A…support group?

He took one silent step back into the hall, mouth parched, then froze.

Footsteps. High heels clicking. Two women’s laughter approached, something about forgetting ice.

Panic surged. Without thinking, Harold slipped back into the room and nudged the door shut.

Heads turned.

“Uh,” he cleared his throat. Five pairs of eyes on him. A bald man with a silver mustache frowned.

“I—I’m sorry,” Harold stammered. “I’m not here for…whatever this is. I got locked out of my room. I swear. I just need to use a phone.”

The men exchanged glances. A tall guy with a tuft of white chest hair and bright blue boxer briefs grinned.

“Well, damn,” he chuckled. “You could’ve just said so. Come on in before that towel runs off.”

Harold stepped fully inside, clutching the terrycloth like a life raft.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, voice small, cheeks burning. “Sorry to barge in…”

He glanced around, still unsure what he’d interrupted.

The mustached man offered a wry smile. “No worries. We were just getting comfortable.”

Harold picked up the phone, its handset sticky, the cord kinked. He dialed the front desk and held it to his ear as the men resumed casual chatter. A shorter fellow with salt-and-pepper curls and a belly matching Harold’s winked before folding his slacks with exaggerated care.

“No answer,” Harold said, setting the receiver down. “Maybe Barb’s already gone for the night.”

“You’ll be lucky if she picks up before morning,” the mustached man said. “She quits at nine and doesn’t come back till sunrise.”

Harold’s mouth opened, then closed. “So… I guess I’ll just wait. Maybe call later.”

There was an uneasy silence. He shifted from one foot to the other, trying to keep the small damp towel clinging to his waist.

“You don’t need to stand there like you’re on trial,” said a man in blue boxer briefs. “Name’s Walt.”

“Harold,” he replied, his voice rushing out.

Walt gestured toward a simple wooden chair in the corner. “Have a seat. We’re not savage.”

Harold hesitated. Every instinct screamed at him to mutter something about finding a manager, retreat down the hallway, and sort this mess out on his own. But the carpet was plush underfoot. The air smelled faintly of aftershave and warm skin. And for perhaps the first time in years, he wasn’t alone in a hotel room, subsisting on vending-machine pretzels and cable news in his undershirt.

He sat.

“That’s better,” said the curly-haired man, still folding shirts he didn’t seem in a hurry to put back on. “First time in Jackson Hill?”

“First time locked out of my room half-naked, if that counts,” Harold quipped, trying for levity.

They laughed—some genuinely, some kindly.

“We come here every few months,” Walt explained, taking a swig from a green glass bottle. “Little retreat. Some guys golf, some fish. We… just hang out.”

Harold blinked, uncertain how to respond.

Another man, lean and sun-kissed, flopped onto the bed in nothing but underwear. “No pressure, Harold. You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with. But if you’re curious—about being around other guys—we don’t judge. No contract to sign.”

Harold’s pulse hammered at his temples. He wasn’t naive—he could piece things together. This was no poker night, no fraternal club meet. These men were relaxed in a way he hadn’t felt since his college roommate had nearly leaned in one drunken night before backing off when Harold pretended to snore.

Decades of sleepwalking—marriage, divorce, closeting, politeness—had kept him from ever being fully honest.

“Looks like your head’s racing,” Walt observed.

Harold took in the scene: five men, his age or close to it, each utterly comfortable in themselves. No mockery, no coercion—just space to breathe.

“Well,” Harold said, clearing his throat, “I guess I’ll stay a while longer. I’ve nowhere to go dressed like this.”

They chuckled warmly.

“That’s the spirit,” Walt said, tossing him a fresh towel—larger, fluffier, a clear upgrade. “Here. This might help you relax.”

Harold caught it, fingers brushing the soft terry cloth before he loosened the wet strip clinging around his hips. His cheeks were flushed but determined.

“I’ll admit,” he murmured, “I’ve… never done anything like this.”

Walt leaned back, smiling. “There’s always a first time, Harold.”

Harold sat perched in the battered wooden chair, its legs shuddering faintly under his patience, the new towel a banner of decency draped from his armpits to his knees. He was careful not to make eye contact, but the absence of television or even the pretense of phone checking forced his attention fully into the room. The men moved in practiced, unselfconscious routines—one, then another, plopping onto the bed, their bodies at once startlingly familiar and bracingly foreign. The way they carved out space for themselves, the ease of hand grazing thigh, the offhandedness of touch—they were in a world that, by some perverse chance, Harold had stumbled into but never properly entered.

A pair near the window peeled off from the loose group. The taller, tan-skinned one leaned in, a hand settling onto the other’s shoulder with easy authority, and their faces met, at first decorously, lips just touching, then with reckless, unstoppable hunger. The smaller man’s eyes fluttered closed, and the big one’s arm circled his back. Harold averted his gaze, but it snagged on another constellation: the curly-haired man and Walt, sidling together on the spare bed, knees knocking. Their laughter faded as Walt pressed his lips, first to the man’s cheek, then mouth, then jaw, their breathing a new pulse in the silence. Shirts rode up as hands found skin, a patchwork of pale and sun-damaged and hairless and thatch. The third man flopped between them and the two at the window, stretching out like a lifeguard at rest, hands behind his head, boxer briefs tented. He smiled, deliberately, at Harold, then stretched until the small opening at the front gaped. Harold looked away, but the moment hovered, ready and waiting if he dared.

He’d always believed the body was its own kind of betrayal: what it sprung upon you at thirteen, what it demanded at thirty, what it refused at fifty. The room seemed determined to shake off that belief. Walt’s hand moved across the curly-haired man’s stomach, then up, tracing the edge of a nipple, which puckered alarmingly fast. The curly-haired man tensed, then murmured something that made Walt snort. Faces pressed together, noses mashed, and then their mouths worked at each other with a ferocity that startled Harold. The third man, emboldened, rolled over and attached himself to Walt’s neck, biting delicately. The three became a tangle of limbs and towels and brief, urgent moans, until Walt, gasping, declared, “Careful, gentlemen, we don’t want to scare off our new friend.”

He tried for a laugh, but it snagged in his throat, emerging as a strangled cough. “Don’t let me stop the show,” he said, his voice wobbling between apology and some deeper, unclaimed thrill. “I promise I’m, uh, just here for the phone.” His hands were white-knuckled on the arms of the chair.

Walt grinned over a shoulder, teeth wide and a little stained. “That’s the point, Harold—no show. Unless you want one.” It was a kindness, or maybe a dare.

He watched the others—these men who looked like they could just as easily fill out a PTA board or a VFW bar, paunches curling over elastic, bald heads shiny under the motor lodge fluorescents—and a hot, confused ache started up in his stomach. The physicality was foreign but mesmerizing. There was nothing coy here, just ordinary men, their bodies having outlasted decades of hiding, now slack and jubilant as they pressed their faces and bellies and thighs together. Kisses landed with thumps and little wet noises that should have been repellent but instead made something in Harold’s chest go loose. He watched the shy one—he had not caught his name—slide his hand into Walt’s briefs, bold in the moment, and both men shivered.

Sure, he’d seen things—bathrooms on the highway, quick glances in gym locker rooms, pornography unspooling its impossible promises in blue-lit motel beds. But actual men, here, not staged and not ashamed, their bodies aging but still greedy for hunger and touch? His mind clattered with skepticism and longing. Was it possible to be aroused and mortified in equal measure? He wished for a cool breeze or a decent glass of bourbon, anything to anchor him.

His towel had slipped, unnoticed, until it bunched at his knees. A hand—his own—moved to tug it up, but stopped midway, suspended by doubt and curiosity and the overwhelming heat rising in his face. The men didn’t seem to care, had already forgotten about him, absorbed in the task of wringing pleasure from each other like boys with a new power tool. The third man, now fully freed from his briefs, lay sprawled like a sultan, his legs wide, head tipped back in ecstasy as the curly-haired man knelt by his thigh. There was no choreography, no script—just fumbling and laughter and the startling intensity of flesh meeting flesh.

“Jesus,” Harold muttered, meant only for himself, but the word seemed to hover above the mattress. For a sharp, panicked moment he considered bolting—scurrying down the hallway, clutching the towel like a shield, and knocking on the night clerk’s door until she took pity. But then the fourth man—so far a background figure—sidled over, arms folded, and caught Harold’s eye.

“First time seeing it in real life?” he asked, his tone gentle but edged with amused challenge. His name tag, left on for reasons Harold could not guess, read “LEON.”

“I’m not a prude,” Harold stammered, though his voice made a liar of him.

Harold tried to muster a retort, but his mind scrabbled for purchase and came back empty. The bodies on the beds had coalesced into a sprawling knot, indistinguishable where one ended and the other began. There was a sort of tenderness, even in the brusque shifting and gruff noise—the way Walt paused, breathless, to stroke the back of the curly-haired man’s neck. Somewhere deep in Harold’s memory, the smell of Old Spice and three-a.m. bowling alleys, his father’s friends collapsing on battered couches after some backyard barbecue, jostled up something soft. The urge to join—no, to belong—gnawed at him so squarely he felt it must show on his face.

Walt slid free of the tangle, a bit breathless, and patted the bed beside him. “C’mere, Harold. You look like you’re dying of thirst.”

He could have made a joke about the beer—opt for safety, step into a little burrow of dad humor and let the night roll past. But instead, he released a breath, swiped a palm across his thigh, and made the journey—three steps that felt like leaping the Grand Canyon. The mattress dipped as he sat. Someone, maybe the curly-haired man, touched his forearm; the touch stayed just a blink longer than casual.

“First time for everybody,” Walt said.

The others fell in line, as if auditioning for a ritual they remembered in muscle but not mind. The lean, sun-kissed one sidled close, balancing a half-empty bottle in one hand; his other hovered, then landed, square and certain, on Harold’s bare shoulder. “I’m Sonny,” he murmured, the syllables vibrating Harold’s arm, and he leaned in, lips grazing Harold’s for a second—a quick, practiced press—then lingered an inch away, letting his hand drift downward, tracing the slope of Harold’s collarbone.

The curly-haired man grinned and took his turn. “Kip,” he said, voice husky, and kissed Harold on the mouth, longer this time, letting the scrape of stubble and the sharp tang of beer linger before he broke away and, still smiling, laid a palm over Harold’s heart as if to check his pulse.

The third man—the shy one, whose briefs were now an afterthought—approached, nervous energy fizzing at the edge of his smile. “Tom,” he offered, then, almost apologetically, kissed Harold, a soft awkward brush of lips, while his hand, trembling, rested first on Harold’s forearm, then, with an almost ceremonial flourish, splayed fingers wide across Harold’s sternum.

Walt’s hand never left Harold’s thigh, moving only to make room as Leon, the latecomer, stepped in. “Leon,” he said, softer than Harold expected, and placed a deliberate, gentle kiss on Harold’s lips. Leon’s hands—large, sure—rested on Harold’s midsection, curling lightly around the edges of the towel, reminding Harold, with a quick hitch of breath, what could follow.

By now Harold’s cheeks were hot and he could feel the slick of nervous sweat beneath his arms, pooling at the small of his back. The first wave of introduction left him dizzy, a little giddy. The nervousness persisted, but it had changed key, dampened by the laughter that rebounded around the room.

The men resumed their knots and orbits, but now Harold was a part of them—a planet not just observing from the corner but spinning in the same strange, gravitational field. He didn’t move at first, content to let their hands and lips reacquaint him with the body he’d long ago consigned to routine and utility. When one of Kip’s hands wandered beneath the towel, Harold startled, but Walt’s steadying palm on his knee grounded him in the moment.

The next moments came in staccato: Walt’s mouth at his throat, Leon’s fingers brushing his side, Sonny’s hand holding his wrist, guiding it, gently, toward the heat of someone else’s body. He was being conscripted into a tactile democracy, each touch an affirmation that he was here, he was wanted, not just tolerated but coveted for what he was.

They took their time, the roughness of old men’s hands softened by the intent behind each gesture. The kisses grew deeper, less testing, more intent; towels vanished, replaced by the press of skin to skin, the peal of laughter when someone went too fast, or too tentative, or got too ticklish.

Harold, whose own body had surfaced as a kind of collective property, found himself less a person than an occasion. He was aware of hands at his waist, at the nape of his neck, and they all seemed to speak in a tactile dialect he hadn’t known he’d understand. Years of dissociation buckled and fell away—here, in this room of faded wallpaper and whirring window unit, a kind of rudimentary grace took hold. He felt oddly useful, as if a lifetime of being practical, unremarkable, a man of requests and responses, had prepared him for this moment: to take part, to provide, to reciprocate.

He leaned into Sonny first, shoulder digging into the mattress, arm snaking across the other man’s back as if to brace both of them against a world too absurd for explanation. Sonny’s hand, warm and voyager-dexterous, mapped Harold’s ribs and then traveled lower, pulling him close by the midsection, no part of the motion apologetic or unclear. The air thinned, the room shrinking to their bodies, Sonny’s smile a whole second language. Harold found himself wanting, more than he expected, to please.

“What do you like?” He half-whispered, the rasp in his voice a borrowed intimacy.

Sonny’s mouth curled, his teeth a little crooked, his eyes glinting over the rim of his cheekbone. “You ever rimmed a guy, Harold?”

He had not; he knew the word only from paperback smut, a thing college boys snickered about in circles. He shook his head, embarrassed by both the question and his own interest.

“It’s worth trying,” Sonny murmured, voice lowering as if privacy were possible in swarm of bodies. “Not hard—just, y’know. Start with what you’d want.” He shifted, hips rolling, the old boxer briefs half-pushed down. “Just do what feels good for your tongue.”

Harold managed a laugh, surprised by its steadiness. Walt, catching the exchange, reached around Sonny’s thigh and demonstrated a practiced guiding touch on Harold’s shoulder, easing him toward the cleft of Sonny’s ass. A quick consultation: faces, then eyes, then hands. Walt peeled the briefs further down and Kip, not missing a beat, fetched a warm, damp towel from the bathroom, placing it near the foot of the bed—a stage manager’s flourish.

Harold hovered, caught between etiquette and delirium, his breath stirring the hair at the small of Sonny’s back. He started gingerly, tongue flicking across the outer rim, then—seeing Sonny’s body go loose—grew bolder, drawing tight circles, pressing at the muscle that softened and opened for him. Walt’s hand massaged Harold’s neck, then his own cock, now heavy in his palm. All around, Harold heard a steady, low chorus—exhalations, laughter, a running soundtrack of men encouraging men.

Sonny arched, hands gripping the blanket, his voice a trembling yes, that’s it, just like that—until Howard found himself not a guest at this gathering but its orchestrator, a man given license to learn, to taste, to be the agent and recipient of pleasure. His own body, never the leading man, began to pulse in a way he’d never allowed. The room’s audience faded: it was just Sonny’s heat against his face, the grip of Walt’s hand on his neck.

He felt it then: Walt’s firm hand on his hip, urging him up onto his knees and closer—closer to Sonny’s body, to the raw business of breath and touch. Walt’s other hand, slick with something from the side table, traced the inside of Harold’s thighs. A moment’s pause; the smell of coconut oil, unexpectedly pungent and sweet. Harold’s nerves sparked as Walt’s finger circled then pressed, nudged, entered. He jerked, half in surprise at his own readiness, then steadied, leaning into Sonny’s ass as if to anchor himself there.

The rhythm of it unfolded—Walt’s fingers, sure and incremental, working Harold loose in slow increments, then two, then three, then the blunt push of something larger poised at the entrance, the pause to confirm (Are you good? One squeeze for yes, kid), then the insistent, overwhelming reality of Walt’s cock pressing in.

The discomfort was startling but instructive, a flare of sensation that forced Harold’s mind into his body. He clung to Sonny’s hips, panting into the other man’s skin, feeling Walt’s slow, determined breach transform pain to pressure, then to a precarious fullness. The room tilted, narrowed. Walt’s hands circled his waist and held him fast as Walt began to move, shallow at first, in and out, letting him adjust. Sonny turned to look over his shoulder, grinning, then reached back and stroked Harold’s hair with unexpected tenderness.

“You’re doing great,” Sonny murmured, then rocked back into Howard’s mouth with a soft, rolling moan. The encouragement went straight to Harold’s chest, hollowing out the ache and replacing it with want. He flicked his tongue again, emboldened, and was rewarded with a shudder that ran from Sonny’s tailbone up into Harold’s jaw.

Walt quickened his thrusts, grip tightening, the slap of hips rising in volume until the bedframe began to beat a hollow drum against the wall. The men on the other mattress watched—not with the leer of pornography but the openness of men who’d spent lifetimes pretending they hadn’t wanted what was now on offer. Kip, emboldened, palmed himself through boxer briefs, eyes glued to the place where Harold’s towel had vanished, his own cock tenting the cotton in anticipation.

Harold’s eyes watered, but more from the leap of sensation than from distress: each thrust seemed to rewrite an old script, exchange shame for a new, vivid ache. The squelch of oil, the slap and pull, the dirty chorus of men’s voices lapping at his ears—he let it happen, all of it, his hands roaming from Sonny’s round ass to the bedspread, searching for traction as Walt drilled him open.

Walt’s grip became a desperate clutch. He fucked in hard, once, twice, a seismic tremor firing up Harold’s spine—and then Walt’s hips jolted and froze, cock grinding deep, the man’s breath hittingched in a wild, wet gasp. Walt exhaled so hard that Harold’s hair fluttered where it stuck with sweat to his face. He felt the inner bloom, the slick warmth, the astonishing wet fullness as Walt came inside him. Walt’s voice, raw and splitting, muttered “yes—fuck yes, god—,” his hands staying at Harold’s waist, keeping him connected, joined.

Harold’s own body shook in strange, ungovernable ways. The struggle between pain and hunger broke in favor of the latter. For a moment, nothing else existed except Walt’s cock, still pulsing inside him, hands holding him together.

Then Walt’s hands softened, loosened, and he withdrew with a wet rush, air and cum and oil releasing together in a sound that would have mortified Harold an hour ago but now somehow made him want more. There was a pause, a sort of natural inhalation, before the others moved in.

Sonny, not content to just watch, gathered Harold’s head between his hands, steering his mouth directly onto Sonny’s cock, which was slick and salty at the tip. “Try this,” Sonny said, voice twisted with laughter and urgency. Harold opened, let the other man’s cock slide over his tongue, uncertain at first but catching a rhythm almost immediately. He tongued the slit, then took more, the taste a shock but not an unpleasant one. Sonny moaned, pushing just a little deeper, his fingers guiding, then Harold drew back, mouth closing around the head and working it until Sonny’s jaw slackened in a noisy, grateful sigh.

Kip, the curly-haired one, now knelt behind Harold, hands stroking at Harold’s back, gentle at first, then more insistent. He pressed his cock forward, slicked by Leon’s deft, quick hands, and found the road Walt had paved. Harold whimpered at the new intrusion, the stretching pain reigniting, but Kip’s cock was smaller, more nimble, and the sensation settled quickly into a bearable, then inviting, thrum.

Harold’s head spun—Sonny’s cock in his mouth, Kip’s cock inside him, Leon’s hands running all over, gripping his shoulder, then cupping his balls with almost paternal fondness. The stubble of Sonny’s thighs rasped against his cheeks; Kip thrust faster, chasing Walt’s ghost. Leon’s hand even reached up, stroking Harold’s own cock, which throbbed in astonished gratitude for any attention.

Walt, meanwhile, didn’t leave the field. Slimy with sweat and cum, he knelt beside Harold, running a soothing palm up and down his ribcage, sometimes dipping in to tweak a nipple or to feather a kiss into Harold’s neck. At one point, Walt met Harold’s eyes and, in a suddenly sober voice, said, “You okay, man?” His hand was a lifeline, grounding, meaningful.

Harold nodded, too full for words.

He rode the wave—Sonny’s cock swelling inside his mouth, the hands bracing his jaw and guiding his head in a careful, insistent piston. The heat, the taste, the urgency: it was all so much and not enough. He relaxed his throat, surprised at himself, and let Sonny fill his mouth as Kip’s hips churned behind him, amping up the pulse in his body to somewhere just south of panic.

When it happened, it was wild and immediate—Sonny stiffening, then pulling out on a ragged breath, and a splatter of hot, briny rope hitting Harold high on the cheek, painting his brow, the fuzz of his upper lip. He tipped his head back in shock—Kip still drilling into him—and then Kip’s own grip tightened on Harold’s hips. Kip buried himself to the hilt, gave a ragged groan, and pulled free, his cock bobbing and spurting another volley across the side of Harold’s face, some catching on his nose, most across his open mouth. It was obscene, and honest, and nothing like the clipped, sterile release of his own solitary efforts.

He froze, then—nothing but breath and the slow slide of jizz cooling in the motel air—until Sonny, now gentled, took his chin, thumb gathering a glob of cum from Harold’s jaw and sweeping it into his mouth with a gentle insistence that was not unfamiliar, if only from fantasy. The taste shocked him. He swallowed, throat working, and then dared to lick the corner of his lips, tongue finding a mixture of salt and hotel linen, and a faint undertone of aftershave. He found himself grinning, impossibly, as the men around him laughed, not cruelly but with the easy, exhausted pleasure of having done something brave and unrepeatable.

Leon squatted over Harold, hands braced on either side of his trembling knees, his tongue a slow, calming balm to the mess of sensation lit up along Harold’s thighs and ass. The first brush was a surprise, cool after the burning friction of a moment before, but then the motions grew purposeful: Leon lapped the spent lines of cum from Harold’s skin, tracing close to the rim, then retreating, then spiraling back, until Harold’s exhausted muttering slipped into a hungry, open groan. Leon’s tongue was a slow, deliberate instrument, as if he’d been specifically trained in the art of making a sixty-three year old man go boneless and senseless.

The others watched, the event now a gentle denouement, for nobody doubted Leon would savor his moment.

Inch by careful inch, Leon rimmed him, spreading Harold’s cheeks and letting his tongue playfully dart in, then withdraw, then flatten and press wet and broad. Harold, face flushed and glistening with other men’s spunk, couldn’t quite believe the careful cycle of humiliation and honor; he wondered who invented the term for this particular form of kindness, and whether they’d ever imagined it could be so slow, so ceremonial. When Leon finally drew back, satisfied, and wiped his jaw with the heel of his hand, Harold’s entire lower half trembled.

He expected them to leave him be, a spent guest at a feast, but no: Leon, his own cock finally hard and impressive in a way the others noticed and approved with a chorus of low whistles, maneuvered Harold around to the mattress’s edge. Sonny guided his head to a pillow. Kip pressed his palm to Harold’s chest, a steadying force.

Leon, kneeling on the thin carpet, took Harold’s cock in hand and waited until the room’s shuffle and hush focused solely on them. He looked up, grinned a lopsided, gap-toothed grin, and then enveloped Harold’s cock in his mouth—no tease, no warning, the entire head surrounded in one swallow. Harold gasped, head lolling all the way back, the ceiling tiles swimming in his fractured vision.

Leon’s blow job was unhurried and masterful: he worked the shaft with the precision of a man used to coaxing his partners rather than just wringing them dry. He alternated suck and swirl, paused to flick his tongue underneath the head, and occasionally looked up as if checking for directions. Walt, ever the captain, leant in to kiss Harold’s cheek, murmuring, “You made it through, huh?” then chuckled at the mute nod that followed.

It might have taken a minute, or ten; the clocks in the room stopped meaning anything. Harold’s cock, oversensitive and eager despite the battering it had taken, responded with a slow, gathering pressure that seemed to build everywhere at once—between his legs, along his ribs, even curling his toes. Leon kept his mouth sealed, cheeks hollowed, tongue running figure-eights as if determined to rewrite every previous memory of pleasure Harold had ever had. When the climax came, Harold felt it build all the way from the soles of his feet—a percolating, mortifying, extraordinary certainty—until his back arched and he came, mouth open in a silent howl, into the wet furnace of Leon’s mouth. Leon never flinched, never lost the smile crimping one side of his lips, just milked Harold for every twitch and pulse, swallowing dutifully, blue eyes locked on Harold’s in a final, fierce benediction.

Harold collapsed, a wind-up toy spent, and let the mattress catch his weight. Leon crawled up beside him and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, then pressed a soft, almost chaste kiss to Harold’s temple. The others ringed them, not victors but co-conspirators, and for a moment Harold thought—hoped, maybe—that someone would light a cigarette and they’d doze off, a tangle of pale

The men sprawled: Sonny smoking by the open window, Walt already half-asleep, Kip nuzzling behind Harold with arms wound tightly around his chest.

He woke in a sheath of dry mouths and unfamiliar arms, the hollow thump of a headache at the base of his skull. Some combination of sweat and semen glued his thighs, but the disorientation was not altogether unwelcome: for once, the unfamiliar was preferable to the old routines. Dawn cast a sickly yellow bar across the battered bedspread, and for a moment, Howard (had he ever been merely Harold?) lay in the tangle, unable to tell whether the night had happened to him or to someone else’s dreams.

He disentangled himself quietly, sidestepping Sonny’s splayed arm and Walt’s dead weight. He got his room open by the clerk. In the bathroom, the mirror supplied a vision of himself he barely recognized—cheeks raw, eyes rimmed in pink, a smear of something drying along his jaw. He smiled, and the man in the glass looked relieved.

He dressed in last night’s suit, the fabric limp and faintly sour, then ran a comb through his hair. Out in the parking lot, he stood for a moment in the brittle morning, feeling as translucent as the vapor rising from the motel’s gutter. The rental car hummed as he twisted the ignition, but before he steered it out of the lot, he found himself watching the second-floor windows of the Westernaire, as if waiting for a final wave.

He drove, the day stretching silently to the west as the interstate cut through cattle ranches and decaying barn towns. Hours rolled by. He checked in with his home office, reciting the details of his last meeting as if his world hadn't shifted in its balance.

No matter where he ended up—Ardmore, Amarillo, Belen—he became sensitive to the unspoken signals: a certain inflection in the voice, a slight pause in the glance. At the Apache Lodge, marked by a neon cactus and the nostalgia of eighties design, a balding salesman started a conversation at the vending machine, his hands shaking just above the Snickers. In a church hall after a Thursday mixer, two men—one pale, the other sun-worn—stood too closely together by the coat rack. Some of these men were his business associates, while others would become future connections.

Howard's stay at the Westernaire Motor Lodge had sparked something within him, revealing an erotic world that had always been there, just unnoticed. Each encounter opened new avenues, hinting at a reality that extended far beyond the mundane boundaries of his itinerant life.