Published: 29 Jun 2020

I had written out a list of the most promising candidates for my illicit pleasure the day I moved into this apartment. I had received my first paycheck from the University and there was enough, what with the return of my security deposit at my last place of residence, to be able to afford the rent and deposit on this new place. It was a crummy one-bedroom apartment right in the downtown area of Amherst, in a big old Victorian one block from the main intersection at the town common. That was where I caught the bus to the university maintenance department where I had just started. I had been living in my car and now that I had gotten paid I could afford the apartment, and to have the car cleaned, but I didn’t want to be seen driving it around, I couldn’t afford to change the registration, this state required insurance on a vehicle to be able to register it and get the proper license plates, so I’d try to wait until all the students arrived back to the campus, when there would be a lot of out of state cars on the road, thus not drawing attention to myself.

My car now had Iowa plates on it and although the plates were about to expire, I still had a valid Iowa Driver’s License for an ID. The little gifts I had left behind in Ames were safely hidden, at least until classes returned full time in the early Fall, but there was always a chance they would be found, and if the cops there were any good at all, it wouldn’t be long until they connected me and the gifts, so the fewer times I had to use the ID, the better. I had rented a mailbox at a big commercial mail center in Ames and had all my Iowa mail sent there, and from there it was forwarded to one I had rented when I drove through upstate NY. That mail was forwarded to another rented box in Springfield, in the busiest box center in the city, thus cutting down on the chances I’d be recognized there. Springfield was about 30 miles south from Amherst, and I figured a night time drive a couple of times a week would do the trick. Speaking of tricks, there were plenty of spots in downtown Springfield to pick up a guy for the night, rob him, or cheat him out of his money due, or just eliminate him, I mean, there were hundreds of places to dump a body on or off the highway going back north, there was even the Connecticut River that ran alongside the highway in a lot of places.

I figured that modus operandi would keep me happy for a couple of months, until I found someone to have and to hold onto for a couple of months, if I found the right place to hold him. I had already started on the list I had made from the athletic departments records, they were so easy to get from one of the offices I was assigned to clean every night during my work week, and the keys I was given didn’t even have to be turned in, the only one they wanted turned in every night was the big master key for the outer doors and the doors to the sports arenas. That key was easy to get duplicated, so it was hard for me to remember to sign it out and sign it in every working night. My shift started at five and ended at 12 midnight Monday through Friday.

I was lucky that many of the offices I was assigned were occupied by fairly neat people, it gave me an extra hour a day to work out in the corner of the big student gym on my assigned floor. I chose the corner machines because there were no security cameras trained on that particular area. I usually had an hour of workout time a night four days of my five-day work week. My dinner hour I spent in the ground floor cafe, buying something to drink, but eating a sandwich from home. It really cut down on my expenses and it also cut down on my interaction with the staff and my co-workers. It gave me more time to check out the guys roaming the campus this Summer. None of them were on my short list, those guys were away for the Summer, but a few of them might be back for sports summer camps before classes started just a week or so before Labor Day.

I was to pick Sam up about 9am on Sunday, we had decided to go to the 9:30 Mass at the MCC church close to the campus. We had gotten out of bed about 7 and he had to go home to change, so we didn’t shower together, he left for home after our morning erection exercises were finished and after a lingering kiss he left to get spruced up and get into his church clothes. I shaved and showered and did the same, wondering how we had missed each other at services, but remembered he had said that he usually went to the later service at 11 and I usually went to the 8:30 service.

I was just glad that we shared most of the same values, and the ones we didn’t agree on, weren’t important to our lives. I was pleased he had respect for religion, he wanted a family with the right man, he believed in marriage, and he was a one-man kind of man. He told me that once he settled down that was it, he was spoken for and he’d be happy to make that commitment. I told him I felt the same way and we shared a great kiss after. I told him that I felt that children should be raised in a quieter area than where my townhouse was, but he said he thought it didn’t matter, it was how well the parents parented that mattered. He wasn’t flighty or slutty as I first might have thought, considering how he had come on to me at the fire house, but then I got to know him better, and realized he was asserting himself, marking his territory so to speak. He had seen what he wanted and went for it. It was something I might not have done, I tend to be subtler, but that explains why I’m single when that wasn’t what I really wanted to be.

But in two days I knew I wasn’t the shy retiring hulk in the corner anymore. Sam had infused me with some of his new-found confidence (at least twice since my lap dance on him in my gym) and I felt wonderful. I finished dressing and poured two travel cups of coffee and grabbed a couple of packets of sugar and a few packets of left over creamers from the coffee shop and I was off to pick up Sam.

We drove to the church, a few blocks from the big University campus. It was an older church that had sold out to be able to move to the suburbs and the founding group of the MCC had spent two years of appeals to be able to afford it. For a non-secular church, it really was impressive. It had a very large congregation for a church only five years in existence here in Western Mass. Its members ranging from college students to the chief of police and the chief of the fire department and his family, and at least three members of the board of selectmen, a five member governing board that ran the town.

Worshiping where our bosses and their families did, in what had originally began as a refuge for gay Christians, was empowering, but it showed just how accepting this whole community was in accepting their gay neighbors. My straight partner, Jeff Whiggins, and his wife were married here, at MCC of Amherst and their twin sons, now 6 years old, had been baptized here. When Sam and I first found out we attended the same church we both realized that if we progressed in our relationship we had a lot of support in the community.

After the service we were both greeted by several people who knew either one of us, or both of us, either in our professional capacity or as neighbors or friends of friends. Josh and Sarah Whiggins and their boys Jay (Jason) and Ray (Raymond) met us in the vestibule where they had waited for us, I guess to greet me and to meet Sam. The boys rushed up to us and each grabbed one of my legs, asking me,” Uncka Tom who’s that guy?, are you coming over today?, are you gonna swim with us?” Josh told his sons to take a break with the questions and let me answer. I had already explained to Sam that I usually spent Sunday afternoon at Josh and Sarah’s house, about five miles out of town on a cul de sac of large homes built around the time of their marriage. The property, the house and about five acres of former farm land and a small stand of wooded area had been a wedding present from Sarah’s parents who had built the neighborhood and were fairly well off when they died in a plane crash just after the birth of the twins. Josh had made several improvements to the site over the years, including a big in ground pool and an adjoining guest house that they used primarily as a pool house.

After Josh and I were partnered he had asked me over for a barbecue, so Sarah could meet me and we all had hit it off, and when Sarah tried to fix me up with unmarried girlfriends, Josh had to tell her to stop that, that he thought I was gay. She then tried with some of their male friends, but nothing came of those either.

At the church Sarah was impressed with Sam, as was Josh after they had talked to each other for a few minutes, and we agreed to come out to their house about three o’clock, time enough for a swim and we’d stay for the cookout later. Until then we had chores to do, so we all said bye for now and we’d see them all later.

Sam and I picked up our dry cleaning at the 24-hour cleaners and had a late breakfast at the coffee shop downtown, the one at the end of the common where Josh and I usually got our coffees. Sam told me he stopped in there almost daily too, as it was kitty corner to the fire station and was convenient for a sandwich either for his shift or to take home for a quick meal. We were both well-known there, and one of the waiters winked at us as he served us our food, and walked away from us with a big smile on his face. Sam told me he was imagining us together in bed. I told him I was too.

Sam took his cleaning into his apartment and came back out with a small gym bag that he said had his swim suit and some sunblock and a towel, I told him I’d do the same thing, so we then went to my house and I packed the same things and we took off for the five-mile drive to Josh and Sarah’s house. It was an easy drive, out the main road toward Hadley and just before the town line it was a right turn into the cul de sac and at the very end was the Wiggins house. It was the only one fully faced with native flag stone, all of it gathered from this very street as the foundations were dug. It stood facing down the street, with a view of the Mount Holyoke range at the end. It was like looking across the fields at my parent’s farm while I was growing up, the same mountain range, just a slightly different perspective. There was a huge four car garage attached to the big colonial, and everything from the front looked like it had been here for a hundred years.

I parked in front of one of the garage bays and we walked to the front door, our bags in hand and before we could ring the bell the door flew open and the boys rushed to us and we both got our legs hugged in greeting. Somehow from the time we saw them in church to now Sam had acquired “Uncka” status as well and the boys regaled us with how much fun we were going to have in the pool. We all went in and Sam and I said our hellos to Josh and Sarah, presenting them with two half gallons of their favorite ice cream for which we were well and truly thanked and then it was off to change into our swimsuits. The family used their own bedrooms and Sam and I went out to the pool house to change. Sam let out a whistle when we stepped outside. The grounds closest to the house were laid out like an English garden, like you would see at a heritage house. Flagstone paved walks between raised beds covered in flowers this early in the Summer, with the promise of more color throughout the Summer and Autumn months.

There were shaped topiary here and there in huge planters and a quaint garden shed off to the right, looking like a miniature Victorian carriage house. To the left was a spacious flagstone patio with two rectangular tables and 2 round ones, all topped with crisp patio umbrellas in a muted tan color and at one end of the big patio was an outdoor kitchen with the biggest gas grill I’d ever seen built into the flag stoned low wall separating the patio from the lawn around the house. Just beyond the patio was the pool and beyond that was the pool house/guest cottage.

We could hear the boys calling for their parents to hurry up so we scooted to the changing room in the guest house and slipped into our trunks. I was watching Sam to see all I could see, and was surprised when he pulled out of his gym bag a pair of those Speedo swim trunks that look like a small pair of boxer briefs, as that was what I wore. I had a black pair and he had a deep blue pair to wear. Once pulled up and everything tucked comfortably into the shaped front pouch we turned and took in each other, and we both said, “Good choice” at the same time. We shared a really deep kiss and then took our bags and went out to one of the tables by the pool. There we did most of our own sun blocking, but I helped Sam with his back and then he did mine. We had just finished when the family joined us poolside.

We had a lot of fun tossing the 6-year-old twins into the water, or to each other. We got to swim quite a bit and we even gave the boys swimming horseback rides. Sarah didn’t last as long as we men did, so she was the one who got out of the water and fired up the grill and began our dinner prep. Josh, who was in very good shape, left us soon after to help with dinner and before long the couple were calling us all out to get ready for dinner. We had had a great time in the pool with the boys and we had a great time visiting with Josh and Sarah, but we both had shifts the next day so we left them about 7 pm and drove to my house where I made myself familiar with those areas his swimsuit had covered for most of the afternoon and Sam was totally spent after so I set the alarm and by eleven we were both asleep in my big bed.

I didn’t have to report for duty until just before 3 pm so I got up and fixed Sam breakfast in the morning, he had to report by 8 am and was on duty for three days and then off for three days, the first three days on it was the day shift, that meant if I went home after my shift ended at 11 pm we could at least sleep together, the next three days he had off and I had one whole day off with him, then the next Sunday he would start three days of night shift, 3 to 11 pm, the same as mine. It really could work, as long as we let each other get enough sleep to be able to function at work.

I got lucky last night. While I was doing my laundry in the basement of the apartment house I found an old storage room, hidden behind the boiler room. There was even the hasp from a previous user attached to the door of the near empty room. There was one light in the ceiling and I could make out an old discarded mattress, two or three old plastic storage bins, a wooden kitchen chair, and three cardboard boxes. Everything was covered in dust, so I knew no one had been in here for probably years. All I would need to make it useable for my purposes would be a padlock for the door, and maybe a few buckets. I had made a few trips to Springfield in the middle of the night over the past weekend, but the streets were very busy even at 2 am so I hadn’t found any guys to hook up with. I was starting to get jittery and needed to find someone soon or I’d be a complete basket case.

Sam and I had a good talk on Tuesday night after I got home from work. He told me that he was getting more and more invested in us, and I had to agree, I mean yes, my experience was not as extensive as his, but I felt that we had something good going on here, and Sam encouraged me to try what I wanted, but really, what we had been doing was more that satisfying for me and he assured me that what we had been doing was all he could have asked for. He told me he loved my stamina and the way I paid attention to him, even as I topped him, which we did even on the nights, or mornings, that I had an itch that only his big dick could scratch. We decided we were such considerate lovers because we truly cared about each other. He did my laundry on his days off and had a breakfast ready for me after I had showered to get ready for my shift. On the weekends I cooked for him and did what shopping we needed done, and on Sundays we attended church and often spent the afternoon at Josh and Sarah’s, visiting with them, but playing with the twins and getting them worn out so they’d sleep good and not be fussy for their parents that night. Josh told me that that he and Sarah knew they had a sex life on Sunday nights after Sam and I had been over to exhaust the boys’ so they would go to sleep earlier.

After Sam’s month of 3 days on and 3 days off we settled into an even more comfortable routine. Sam put his bid in for the evening shift and it was given to him so we both ended up working the three to eleven shifts. We were settling into a very comfortable routine and when a unit one floor up from Sam’s apartment was burned out (it was an accidental fire, no one was hurt) and his belongings were smoke, and water damaged, I asked him to share my house with me. Josh had come right over and the three of us worked to salvage what we could from his unit and we cleaned what we could and moved it to my townhouse which I had bought with money left to me in my parent’s estate after they had both died during my training at the police academy.

That Sunday at Josh’s, Sarah teased Sam that he could have always moved in with them, but they couldn’t afford to feed him. He laughed, saying he bought his protein powders at a discount, but he preferred to get it directly from the source naturally. He said this while holding my hand, and I leaned over and kissed him. We took some teasing from the couple that was becoming friends to Sam, and closer friends to me.

Josh had put in for a week’s leave for the last week in October so he and Sarah could travel to see his 97 year old grandmother out in Arizona, for probably the last time as he had been told by the staff at the senior facility where she lived that she was starting to fail and so they asked Sam and me to watch the boys for the five days of their actual trip. We were excited about doing it so I took the same week off, so someone would be with the youngsters in the morning and when they got out of kindergarten in the afternoon, plus one or both of us would have to drive them to their school and pick them up as they lived on the other side of town and their school was there too.

One of the big things was that we’d have the boys for Halloween and we were looking forward to -]bringing them back to their neighborhood for trick or treating. Sarah had put their costumes together before the boys were brought to our house the night before they were to fly off. That gave us five full days to spoil the kids. The twins were going as dinosaurs and they looked really cute in their costumes, but cute wasn’t exactly what they were striving for, they wanted to be ferocious, so there was a lot of roaring and growling going on as we walked the sidewalk around their neighborhood and as the night wore on it was more like purrs and yips as they tired out. They were both asleep as we buckled them in their car seats which had been transplanted into my car.

It had been fun for all of us and they had more when on Sunday we took them into the coffee shop at the common for breakfast after church. They apparently hadn’t been there before because it was “Uncka Tom, what’s that she’s eating?” or “Uncka Sam, look at all the jelly on his toast!”. You know, the innocent banter from little kids that were happy being with their uncles out on the town. We walked them over to the fire station and Sam let them slide down the fireman’s pole from the second floor down to the garage where the fire engines stood ready for their next alarm. The boys got to crawl all over one of the older trucks that was only used in an emergency and they got to see where real firemen slept when they had the overnight shift. The other firemen got a kick out of their little visitors, and we then took them a block off the common on the other side of the common and we showed them where their dad and I worked.

They got to see the front desk and the big bullpen room with all the desks we used to write up our reports at, they had to see the locker room and the inside of a patrol car, but the highlight for them was the cells. They thought it was really funny to have all those rooms but pipes for walls and doors. We then drove over to their house and we had a fun time in the pool. We let them shower in the guest house with us supervising and then Sam and I took turns showering with one of us watching the boys while the other showered. Once we were all dressed again we took off for our house and we stopped for some fried chicken on the way. I’m glad we got the big family bucket to go, and the boys needed a good washing up after they insisted they eat their chicken with their hands, as we did.

We expected to hear from Josh and Sarah about 3 or 4 am on Tuesday after they had started their drive home from the airport in Connecticut. They had left their car at the airport and when they returned they were going to get an airport shuttle to the long-term parking lot and pick up their car and then drive the hour up to Amherst. They had wanted to pick the boys up then, but we convinced them to just call us to let us know they had arrived alright and let the boys sleep and I’d drive them over to their house as soon as I got them up and dressed in the morning. Sam was scheduled to work that afternoon, I didn’t have to return to my shift until Thursday at 3 pm, the same as Josh. It got to be 8 am and I had the boys up and dressed. I was about to drive them home when Sam stumbled downstairs to say goodbye to the boys. As he kissed me goodbye he told me he never heard the phone ring this morning, and I told him I hadn’t either.

I had a restless weekend and I hadn’t planned to go cruising this past weekend, but after spending Sunday fixing up the storage room in the basement in readiness for a visitor, I was anxious to go find one. I trolled the downtown streets of Springfield by the gay bars and finally spotted a likely candidate, at least for a night’s fun. It was about 11:30 pm when I spotted him, hanging around the side street of the closed train station, with only a streetlight from the other side giving a weak light on the stone framed doorway. What attracted me was the V shape torso covered in a very tight white T shirt and tight blue jeans and sneakers. He had the look of a college boy returning home for the weekend, including a brown old-fashioned suitcase at his feet. I knew the train station had been closed for years so he might have arrived in the city on a bus as the bus terminal was just a block or so down on Main Street.

I had my meet and greet supplies at the ready, a rolled joint and a small half pint bottle of brandy, liberally laced with Rohypnol. I parked in the deep shadows across the street, turned the motor off and doused my lights. I exited the car and quietly closed the door, so as not to startle him. I lit the joint and slipped the flask sized bottle in my pants pocket. I crossed the street and puffed some smoke toward him as I neared. He sniffed, and I could tell he was interested. He wasn’t a college stud, he was older, about 30 with a weather-beaten face, but in the dark, with him stripped and face down, he would have to do. After all, he wasn’t someone I needed for more than an hour or so.

I held out the joint and offered him a toke and while he was inhaling I pulled out the brandy and as he toked I pretended to swallow a gulp from the bottle and then passed it to him as he handed the joint back to me. He took two gulps and as I made small talk with him he started to get really weak kneed and I ushered him to the car and opened the back door and guided him in, telling him I’d take care of him. I had forgotten the suitcase, but then, I wouldn’t need anything from it, and neither would he. I left it and ran around to the driver’s door. The street in this two-block area was deserted, but there was no telling when a car or a hooker came around the corner from the bar district. I quickly drove to the upper end of the street and hooked a left heading for the highway spur the branched off the north south highway I wanted, but I entered the east bound spur, on the other side of the overpass and got on the east bound portion that would shortly merge with the northbound traffic on the main highway. It was a tricky merge, with the much faster traffic on my left and no real merge lane, you just popped up on the main highway and had to blend into the traffic as soon as you could.

My thought was that on a late Monday night, actually very early Tuesday morning, I was sure there would be little or no traffic to merge with. I was anxious to get my guest up about five miles on the main highway where I knew there was a copse of trees in the median separating the north bound from the south bound lanes. There was a maintenance dirt road that the service vehicles used there, and after the bars closed in the city there was occasionally a state trooper parked there, but it was a little too early for him tonight. Hopefully I’d be leaving him a gift in the bushes under the trees tonight.

Sam said he’d call their house and while he did that I called first Josh’s and then Sarah’s cells. Sam got no answer, but left a message on their home machine. He then tried to call the airlines local number to see if their flight had been delayed. There was no answer on Josh’s phone, but Sarah’s phone rang several times and then her message recording came on. I left a message, asking her to call Tom or Sam, that we had expected them home by now and we had the boys all ready to drop off when we heard from them.

Sam and I compared notes and I was starting to feel really uneasy, but I checked the answering machine in the den anyway, just to make sure whether we had gotten a call on our home phone, but there were no messages there. I phoned the station and I asked to be connected to the chief. I told him our predicament and explained it just wasn’t like Josh or Sarah not to call and let us know what was going on. I asked if he’d do us all a favor and check with the State Police to see if anything had occurred on the highway that might be delaying them. He assured me he would do that and we disconnected and I went down to let Sam know what I had done. He was starting to make breakfast for the boys, so I hopped in and helped him.

We had just finished eating, letting the boys watch cartoons on the little kitchen TV across from the table when there was a knock on the front door. [this is a legal cliffhanger as it comes inside the chapter, not at the end of one!]

There wasn’t a trooper parked near the copse of trees, but the dirt maintenance road was hard to see in the dark, but I spotted it at just the last second, unfortunately clipping the corner of a car traveling too slow, about 65 miles an hour, and it sent that car into a spin right across the four or five lanes, making about four complete 360 degree spins before it broke through the guardrail, plunging down the raised highway onto the connector road close to 80 or 90 feet below, being struck by a loaded semi-trailer truck as it landed nose first on the pavement below.

To say I was spooked now would have been a serious understatement. I was beyond spooked by about 30 notches and swiftly approaching catatonia, but I turned off my lights and drove to the nearest clump of bushes and pulled the car to the side of the dirt road and turned the car around, facing the way I came. I then scooted out of the car and around to the rear passenger door closest to the bushes and pulled the lucky bastard out of the car and rolled him under the bushes. I got back in the car and still with my lights off I re-entered the highway, gained some speed and turned my lights back on. I was 25 miles by highway away from my apartment and I would be there in a half hour, after putting my car back in its hiding spot in the rear of a house for sale down the block from my apartment.

It was the chief at our door and he had Officer Brenda with him. I sunk to my knees as they stood in front of me, the chief looked so sad and Officer Brenda was also our station’s grief counselor. I knew it was bad news. Brenda put her hand on my shoulder and softly asked where the boys were. I pointed toward the kitchen and called out for Sam.

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