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“I do. But he still scares me.”

  “Because he contacted you out of the blue?”

  “Exactly. Guys don’t usually do that. It’s freaky.”

  “What did you tell him about your blogs?”

  “I’m not going to let him use them. They’re not teaching tools. They’re for entertainment.”

  “Your life, your strife,” King replies, rubbing his chin. Sometimes he thinks that Toby is a little too sensitive, particularly about his Bear Blog.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  King says, “I’d let him use them. No harm will be done. What could go wrong? Plus, the blogs are great. You could help teach the world, or at least a part of it.”

  “That’s the difference between you and me.”

  “I know that.”

  King’s phone rings. When he reaches for it, Toby rises from his seat and heads out to the locker room to change into his workout gear, spending the next hour in an intense exercise program that King designed exclusively for his body.

  Chapter 5: When A Stranger Calls

  Later this day…

  Toby likes to talk to people. Just about everyone he runs into. He’s not picky. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry will suffice. Particular places of interests that he enjoys starting conversations include Eat Right Grocery Store on Mifflin Avenue, the Templeton Post Office, and shopping for shoes at Dustin’s Flats & More. Queer men love to talk about shoes. And since Toby has over fifty pairs, he has a lot to say about them. Other topics of discussion include the weather, queer music, new or old restaurants, and Hollywood actors, most of which are alive and still produce multimillion dollar films that win awards.

  When Blue calls Toby’s home office, Toby isn’t as excited as he usually is because he doesn’t want to give the English professor permission to use Toby’s blogs as a teaching tool. Instead, Toby wishes that Blue Danning had never contacted him, because part of Toby believes that the man is turning into a pest. The last thing Toby needs in his life is someone in his personal business, particularly his job.

  Toby’s a softie, though. And he has a kind heart. The guy can melt over just about anything and anyone. King calls him mush or butter because he’s this soft. So he takes Blue’s call when the professor bothers him, and he says in a soft tone, “How are you, Blue?”

  “I have a proposition for you, Toby. Do you want to hear it?” Blue sounds confident, not at all weak or like butter. A confident man is a strong man, both mentally and emotionally.

  “I have a couple of minutes. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “Your blogs.”

  “Just as I thought you would bring them up.”

  “I still want to use your writing as teaching tools.”

  Toby shakes head, although Blue can’t see this. “I don’t know if I can don’t that.”

  “Hear me out,” Blue says. He pauses for a few seconds for effect, and then he adds, “I think you should get to know me better before you handoff your blogs to me for use.”

  “How do I get to know you better?” Toby asks, confused. There’s a number of ways that Toby realizes, of course. He can rape and pillage the Internet and learn everything he needs to know about Blue Danning. Blue probably has three speeding tickets, the novels he likes on Goodreads, and a number of other things on social networks that strips each user of their identity, peeling away their lives, layer by layer. Or the two can…

  “I want you to have a cup of coffee with me at Cliffy’s Café. What do you say? You can ask me anything you want. It will be a good way to build trust between us, and you can learn everything about me that interests you.”

  Toby thinks this opportunity through for a compilation of seconds and eventually says, “What day and what time?”

  “Tomorrow. Seven in the evening. You in?”

  “I’m in.” It’s the first time during the conversation with Blue that Toby feels confident and calm. And he thinks, What the hell, right? I can only live once.

  Chapter 6: Cliffy’s Cafe

  March 29, 20—

  Cliffy’s Cafe

  7:00 P.M.

  There’s a piano man performing Billy Joel tunes inside Cliffy’s Café. He’s seated at a grand, perpendicular to the bar. Peach-faced waiters in tight black T-shirts wait on the patrons. Cherry-flavored cigar smoke fills the bar, which Toby doesn’t seem to mind. About a dozen men and women sit around the piano and its performer. Some of the patrons are dressed to the nines while others are less formal. Toby wears a pair of khaki slacks, white dress shirt, and leather loafers with just a few scuffs. He sips at two fingers of whiskey in a glass tumbler, feeling numb and comfortable, listening to the Billy Joel wannabe.

  Blue arrives ten minutes late and apologizes. He’s dressed in the same outfit as Toby, which sort of blows Toby’s mind. His shirt is unbuttoned to the center of his pecs and Toby studies the man’s black coils of hair on his bearish chest. Blue says, “I had a million things to do at the college. Time got away from me.”

  “No problem. I was just enjoying the music and my drink. Glad you didn’t stand me up.” The two men shake hands.

  Blue finds a seat in the empty chair next to Toby. “It’s not in my nature to stand attractive men up.” He winks at Toby and shares a polite smile. The light flirting is soon interrupted by a young waiter with bright red hair, freckles, and an adorable cleft in the center of his chin. Blue orders the same drink as Toby, and adds, “And bring my friend here another one.”

  After the gingerhead vanishes from the two-person table, Toby says, “That was kind of you.”

  “Kind would be you lending me your blogs so I can use them to teach with.”

  Toby contemplates his next comment before sharing it out loud. He doesn’t think Blue rude. Instead, he finds the man sexy as hell, and likes how he gets to the thick of the matter. Blue seems to have a lot of balls. After rubbing his chin with two fingertips, he asks, “If I lend you my blogs for your summer class, what will I get in exchange?”

  “What’s a guy like you want?”

  Toby winces and laughs. The laugh is more like a happy sigh than a laugh. “This is going to sound strange.”

  Blue shakes his head. “I expect nothing less from a professional blogger.”

  “Should I be offended by that comment or not?”

  “Of course not. I simply meant that you’re strangely interesting. I’m attracted to you and don’t even know why.”

  Toby raises the right side of his mouth in a half-smile. There’s something about Blue—besides his name, of course—that is also strangely interesting, a bit pushy, and attractive, all mixed together. Feeling confident, Toby says, “Let me tell you what I want from you for the use of my blogs.”

  “What?” Blue says, grinning, proving that he’s delighted to be at this meeting with Toby and maybe thinking that he’s not wasting his time. “Spill it. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “A date with me. That’s what I want.” This request comes out as confident and exactly how Toby wants it to sound. Deep inside he knows that Blue will say yes, finding Toby attractive.

  And Blue does say yes.

  Chapter 7: The Bear’s Den

  March 30, 20—

  7:00 P.M.

  Twenty-four hours later the two men meet at The Bear’s Den, a queer bar on Weston Street in downtown Templeton. The place isn’t busy tonight because there’s a drag queen competition going on at The Bear’s Den’s nemesis bar, The Velvet Closet, which is seven blocks away from The Bear’s Den.

  A U-shaped bar is being worked by a handsome college kid with an adorable overbite. The kid goes by the name Wall, probably because his chest is massive and squeezed into a too-tight T-shirt and looks like a wall of bricks. Wall serves Toby and Blue longneck bottles of beer. Madonna sings a song about Romeo and Juliet on the jukebox in the corner. The oval dance floor to the far right is empty. Two drunks sit at the bar. Both are in their forties, depressed, and attempt to salvage their pathetic lives and damaged livers.
/>   Toby feels nervous about the date with Blue, but he really shouldn’t. He’s been on a number of random dates in his twenty-four years. Some were awesome and turned into long-term relationships. Others were a complete waste of his time. One date was so hot that he enjoyed it for over twenty-four hours with the guy. Because he’s nervous, he plays with the label on his beer. His fingers pry a corner away with diligent labor. He listens to Blue tell him that Blue enjoys Edith Warton over Jane Austen and that he used to be a faithful viewer of Gray’s Anatomy until his mother died of a heart attack two years before. Blue also mentions that he likes to color like a third grade boy. He says, “It’s how I release my stress.”

  “Most guys masturbate,” Toby says, nervous about looking the guy in his eyes, but not square on.

  Blue laughs. “I do that too, but what guy doesn’t? The equipment’s there, why not play with it, right?”

  Toby learns other details about the professor. Blue lost his virginity at eighteen by his parents’ pool boy, a rugby playing badass who was twenty-one years old. Blue is a top, although sometimes he likes to be a bottom. “It just depends who the guy is.” Toby also comprehends that Blue likes rough sex, and to be sprayed down with strings of semen, calling the practice his fetish. Blue’s father lives in Seattle, Washington and runs a company called Nature’s Touch, which produces a variety of organic apples. He’s a reader of classics too: Kate Chopin, Wilde, and Hemingway. But he loathes Fitzgerald and Buck.

  Following all of this information, details packed together in an audible bundle, he says to Toby, “Tell me about you. I want to hear everything. Leave nothing out.”

  Over another beer, Toby chatters for the next twenty minutes about himself. How he got started blogging. Where he grew up as a child, Pennocot Bay near Pittsburgh. Losing his virginity at seventeen by a nineteen year old clothes model by the name of Derek Chatham. His favorite color, mint green. His first boyfriend’s name, Rueben McKeith. And he says, “I used to have my left nipple pierced. It got infected pretty badly. I decided it wasn’t worth losing, so I took it out. The piercing scar is still there, though.”

  “Maybe I can see it later.”

  Toby laughs, somewhat buzzed because of an empty stomach, and replies, “Maybe.”

  Chapter 8: Show Me Your Chest

  The Bear’s Den

  8:45 P.M.

  Toby is surprised to learn that Blue is easy to talk to. The conversation flows between them as if they have been friends since childhood. Lines are crossed, but neither becomes offended. They discuss anal sex and how goddamn bad it hurts, but feels enjoyable at the same time. They talk about book clubs and how Oprah is an idiot regarding her picks. They discuss condoms and how they hate to use them, but do. They detail foods they like and enjoyable vacations. And they become drunk together, relishing one beer after the next at the bar, unable to drive.

  Toby is smashed. Sometimes he sees two of Blue, but doesn’t seem to mind. He hiccups a number of times, slurs his words, and feels a touch dizzy. The most obnoxious thing he says is, “Take your shirt off. I’m bear hunting and want to see what you have to offer me.”

  Blue laughs, also smashed. “You’ve seen one bear chest, you’ve seen them all. Why do you want to see mine?”

  “Trust me no two bear have the same chest in this world. Now take off your shirt and display the goods. I want to see hair, nipples, abs, and a navel. Now.” He hiccups again, wipes the back of his right hand across his mouth, and stares at the professor at his right side, seated at the bar.

  “You’re not very hard to please, are you?”

  “I’m just hard,” Toby replies, laughing.

  Blue stands up from the bar, steps away from the three-legged stool that he has called home for the last ninety minutes, and unbuttons his shirt. The cotton is removed from his torso and he drops it over the bar stool. He runs a few fingertips down the center of his chest and asks, “So what do you think? Is this doable?”

  “It’s a handsome chest with a nice tan,” Toby says, analyzing Blue’s upper frame. “Your abs are nicely cut. Your hair is perfectly trimmed. It’s not a bad chest at all. You seem to maintain it quite well.”

  “Do you want to feel it?”

  “Why? Do you have the reputation of letting young men touch your chest?”

  Blue shrugs and laughs. “My vice could be worse. Besides, who doesn’t like their chest rubbed when they’re a bear?”

  So Toby reaches out and strums a nipple, a pair of tight abs, and the professor’s navel. Fingers brush against the man’s stringy hair and—during guitar strokes—Blue says, “You can go lower if you want.”

  “Down to your cock?”

  Blue nods. “Only if you want to. It’s not like I’m going to make you.”

  “I think I have a better plan,” Toby says, and places money on the bar for their drinks, snags Blue’s shirt off the bar stool, and exits the place with Blue at his side, treating him to a night on Second Avenue and in his sheets, among other private places.

  * * * *

  Toby doesn’t normally drag young bears home and spend the night with them. He can’t remember the last time he has led such a man astray, whisking him back to his Colonial just to use the guy’s dick. He’s horny, though. Plus he knows two significant things about the man that he likes: Blue’s sweet side and that he’s a bear.

  It’s true that Toby drags Blue’s six-two frame down Espinalda Way, makes a right on Truckett Street, and then a left on Bissner Avenue, which he follows for the next three blocks, until he makes the final right turn on Second Avenue. Home. His bear den.

  Chapter 9: Memorabilia

  21 Second Avenue

  9:58 P.M.

  The sex is wild and rough and heated and sweaty and unmanageable and concurrent and painful and sweet. They use four condoms, fucking over Toby’s leather sofa, against one of the living room walls, in the shower, and in Toby’s bed. The Colonial smells like a bathhouse when they’re done, stinking of semen and sweat. Load after thick load bursts within the house’s confines. And the two young men continue to drink; this time from a freshly unscrewed bottle of Jack Daniels, draining half of its golden brown contents before they pass out.

  Toby wakes in the middle of the night and finds the spot empty on his right side. There’s dried semen where Blue’s ass was just positioned hours before. The man’s pillow is dented from where he laid on his back and Toby banged his tight ass, exploding dense ejaculate in a sleeve of latex that separated their bodies. He reaches out and touches the empty area. The mattress is still warm from where Blue slept for an hour or more.

  It’s not the first one-night stand, and surely it won’t be the last. Yes, he feels connected to the English professor, but not that connected. Blue is a fling and nothing more. Someone Toby can use to get his rocks off. Who knows, the two men might just become fuck buddies. Why not? What do they have to lose, certainly not their dignity?

  Templeton is awake this morning, even if it’s still dark out. Buses rumble down Second Avenue and a taxi beeps its horn. Someone screams at someone else on the street corner. City life is something to get used to, which Toby has. Truth is he wouldn’t prefer to live anywhere else. Everything is so handy in the city. Groceries. Taxis. Restaurants. Bars. Shops. And bears. He’d be a fool to move away from Second Avenue. He’d maybe be signing his own death certificate if he did. No wonder Toby doesn’t have any intention of leaving Templeton anytime soon.

  Something catches his eye on the floor. It’s white and in a ball. It looks like an odd-shaped sphere of sorts. At first, Toby doesn’t know what the thing is, but realizes that it’s Blue’s boxer-briefs on the floor, in a ball. Leftovers from a one-night stand. Memorabilia of hot sex with a city bear. A little reminder of Toby’s sexual drive and lust, bringing the professor home to satisfy both of their desires.

  He climbs out of bed, stands next to the white boxer-briefs, bends over, and collects the fabric from the floor in his right hand. He’s back in bed before he reali
zes it, on his side and positioned in an S-shape against the mattress. Toby bunches the cotton into a ball, snuggles the material against his nostrils, and inhales Blue’s urine, semen, and perspiration. His eyes close and a smile forms on the edges of his mouth. Satisfied with last evening’s hunt and its outcome, he drifts off to sleep, again.

  Chapter 10: Bear Blog, April 4

  How do you think a young man such as yourself should choose a bear? By weight, height, or how much hair he has on his chest? What about pierced nipples or tats? Does that influence your decision when you’re on the bear hunt? And let’s not forget about cock sizes, uncut or cut? Can the mass of a wanker steer your liking in a certain direction or another?

  Honestly, sometimes you don’t get to choose the bear because he chooses you. You could be sitting at a city bar and get picked up with such ease. He could be your waiter, or the guy delivering a DPS (Direct Parcel Service) package at your house or apartment. These bears may just show an interest in you, decide to feed on your ass, among other body parts that steep with your sweet sweat after an intense workout.

  I am the type of cub who believes that you always can get what you want. Never settle. Even if the bear is hunting you. Set your standards high and never look back. If a bear doesn’t have enough beard, dump his ass. If he can’t use his dick in the bedroom (or in his Avalanche) then get rid of him. Make sure it’s the bear of your dreams. A top-notch animal with a steady hunger. Like I said, never settle.

  But what if a bear doesn’t go away? How do you ditch him after he continuously trespasses onto your camp and territory? One, stop putting food out for him, which means cover up your biceps, tools, and those chiseled abs with some loose clothing. Two, stop paying attention to him. Three, replace the bear with a new bear. I recommend someone sweet and soft with blond hair, a reddish beard, and nipples the size of the Twin Cities.

  Tell me your views on this topic. Is a bear hunting you?