Bear Hunting Read online

  Larkin Road narrows at its west end and veers right. It heads toward Templeton Municipal Park where Templetonites take long walks, jog, play baseball or soccer. It’s also the place where some queers meet and fall in love, sharing blowjobs in the bushes, or other sexual treats that are inconspicuous and private; physical actions between gay men that really shouldn’t be seen by young children, religious old women, or gun-rearing cops who just happen to hate fags.

  Toby and Grant decide not to head to the park. Instead, they come to the corner of Larkin and Meed, stop, cross Larkin, and walk down the other side of the street, returning to The Whiskey Club, enjoying each other’s company.

  Chapter 16: Beautiful Bodies

  “Do you really like my music or were you pushed into seeing me play and sing tonight by your straight friend?” Grant asks, leaning into Toby’s right side, prompting their shoulders to rub together, perhaps foreshadowing a sexual event in the their lives this evening.

  Toby finds humor in the man’s question and laughs. “I’ll take the Fifth on that question, if you don’t mind.”

  “I pose no judgment,” Grant says. “It’s just an inkling.”

  “It’s true. King forced me to see you. He thought I would like you, and he was right.” Toby nods in the night’s dim lights among the leafy oaks and maples. He can’t recall the last time he has actually carried out a conversation with another man while holding his hand, and being serious. Blue chats it up with him between sex games, amusing him, but Blue’s rambling isn’t anything like this remarkable conversation with the singer.

  “Doesn’t matter. What matters is the here and now. You and me.” Grant squeezes Toby’s hand with a little more pressure than what’s necessary. He swings their arms forward a touch, then backward, engrossed in their time spent together.

  Toby learns three things about the man that he finds important and didn’t know about since King didn’t tell him. One, Grant used to take tours throughout the Midwest, singing at Catholic churches. He tells Toby, “My mother dragged me everywhere, praising Jesus.” Two, his mother, whom he has much respect for in his adulthood, tried to rid the homosexuality out of his life when he was fourteen years old, sending Grant to a Jesus Camp for an entire summer. And three, Grant tells him, “All of my songs are based on the men I have loved, hated, and those in between guys that I was never sure about.”

  “You’re a superstar,” Toby says. “Have you maxed out your dream as a musician?”

  “My goals are unlimited. Besides reaching the stars, I want to do an entire CD of ballads. I’d also like to study Tibetan music and somehow, someway, fit it into my style.” He sounds confident, Toby thinks. There’s nothing that can break the man or take him down from his success. He’s driven, unstoppable, and loves what he’s doing.

  Toby expels three things about himself to Grant, which is only fair during their conversation and city walk. He says, “I’m allergic to cats, although I love them. I’ve been in love twice, I think, but I’m not sure. And the last guy I was involved with, begged for my blogs to use in his college classroom, which I eventually broke down and lent to him.”

  “You’re an interesting guy,” Grant replies. “I’m glad I sent you that drink.”

  Toby doesn’t know why he laughs at this, but he does. It’s maybe the way Grant says it in an upbeat tone, without any inhibitions. He finds Grant adorable, intelligent, and not at all dull. Plus, he’s attracted to the singer, drawn to him. Perhaps he’s not surprised with himself when he says, “How would you feel about walking to my house and having a drink with me?”

  Grant smiles, squeezes Toby’s hand within his own, adding pressure to it, and answers, “I think I’d enjoy that. Show me where you live.”

  Chapter 17: Lay with Me Awhile

  “Nice place here,” Grant says, taking a finger of whiskey down the back of his throat, and pouring himself a second one.

  The two men sit opposite each other on Toby’s sofa. Both have their shoes off, strewn over the floor, and both have reddish cheeks from the whiskey. They’ve consumed three shots in the last twenty minutes while discussing Toby’s Bear Blog, Blue Danning, and Grant’s obsession with self-help books, selfies, and pandas.

  Grant looks around the living room area and says, “This is intimate without too many knickknacks. You like owls, don’t you?”

  Toby nods. “I’ve collected a few throughout the years. Only my favorites, though.”

  “There’s gotta be twenty or more in here, watching me.”

  There are twenty-two owls in all, Toby knows. Snowy. Short-ear. Barred. Eagle. Barn. One is stuffed over the unlit hearth to their right. The other twenty-one are comprised of ceramic, bronze, wood, and pewter. There’s also a papier-mâché one that was purchased in Maine a few years ago. It is a spotted owl that was sculpted by hand, numbered, and signed by the artist, a Meryl DuBois whom Toby spent a three-hour dinner with, and then six hours in the crafter’s loft, under his skin, enjoying a romantic spell with the man.

  “I’ve always liked owls,” he tells Grant. “I believed them to be evil when I was a boy, but they’ve grown on me. Now I have seen and learned about their goodness.” He takes a sip of his whiskey, decides to pass on a fourth shot, and places his glass tumbler on the Moroccan coffee table that sits in front of them.

  Grant chuckles, showing off his pearly whites. “I’m sorry for laughing,” he says. “I think I’m getting drunk.”

  “There’s no reason for an apology. I’m glad you laughed. I could talk about owls for hours.”

  “Until I decide to seduce you,” Grant says, raising his eyebrows and widening his eyes, showing interest in Toby.

  “Seduce me?” Toby asks. “How do you intend to accomplish that?”

  “Watch and learn, my new friend,” Grant says, and goes in for a kiss.

  He meets Toby’s lips, parting them ever so slightly with his tongue. Toby knows that Grant’s achieving exactly what he has come back to the Colonial for: a one-night stand with the handsome blogger, whom he claims he has been faithful to Toby’s work, reading Toby’s random blogs almost every day. Toby lets the guy remove his shirt and drop it to the living room. And he doesn’t—not in the slightest—prevent the singer’s fingers and palms from caressing his chest, swelling his nipples and hardening his pecs, turning Toby on.

  The moment on the Moroccan sofa turns into something more romantic than what Toby believed would have originally happened this evening after attending Grant’s show with King and Bea. Cocks are grasped through material, naked navels are rubbed with fingertips, and tongues touch, darting languidly from mouths.

  Both men have erections, but Toby’s feels as if it is going to burst within his khakis. He can’t remember the last time he had laid with a man, naked or dressed, turned on and pulsing. Truth is if Grant doesn’t stop with the foreplay, Toby might come too soon, creaming his boxer-briefs with a sticky burst before he honestly wants to.

  Frankly, Toby doesn’t have anything to worry about when it comes to his dick spitting out a load tonight. Not in Grant’s company, anyway. The moment is rather quickly terminated inside his living room when Grant abruptly pulls away from him and says, “I can’t do this.” The singer sits back, wipes a hand over his mouth, pushes his hard-on down between his legs, shakes his head back and forth, three times, and provides the moment with a heavy sigh.

  And Toby replies with shock, stung, horny, hard, and sweating, ready to be intimate with the man who he has suddenly fallen into a crush with, “Why? What did I do?”

  Chapter 18: It’s Alright…Alright

  Toby’s heart races, his dick beats rhythmically, and his hands begin to tremble with nervousness. He’s unsure of what has just occurred on the sofa, reaches down for his shirt near his feet, slips it over his head and shoulders, covers his hairy torso, and asks again, “What did I do?”

  Grant is a melancholic pale in his cheeks and shakes his head. “Nothing. This isn’t about you.”

  “But it is a
bout me. We were just getting ready to give each other blowjobs. Of course it was about me.” His octave sounds damning and hurtful, but Toby doesn’t intend for it to come across this way. Not as of yet, anyway. Confused, he rubs a hand down and over his face, concentrates on the stud positioned on the opposite side of the sofa, and adds, “Something tells me you’re not being honest to me or yourself. What’s your story?”

  Grant stares at Toby, attempts to smile, but can’t. He rolls a hand across his pumped pecs, scratches the bone between their naked humps, and confesses, “The guy I like is named Ralph. He’s a biologist who lives in California, near San Francisco, and I can’t seem to get him out of my head. He’s blond, blue-eyed, and a doll. And I think I’ve fallen in love with him. My crazy career keeps me from seeing him, though, which scares the hell out of me because another guy will probably bump into him, meet him, pick him up, and decide to keep him forever.”

  It all makes sense now why Grant pulled away from Toby while they were making out on the sofa only seconds ago. It’s crystal clear inside Toby’s head, which now causes the erection between his thighs to go limp, deflating. Grant’s in love with a guy on the west coast, dazzled by the man and emotionally taken. Grant’s heart and mind are elsewhere, not in Templeton with Toby at the moment. Love will do this, of course, Toby knows, having experienced its doings at least twice in his life.

  “It’s alright…alright,” Toby consoles, patting Grant’s right kneecap, and providing the singer with some compassion and strength. “We can’t help who we fall in love with. The Greek Gods have control over us weak mortals.”

  Grant is flustered on the sofa. Again, he sighs, shakes his head. “The biologist really doesn’t know I exist. We met at a fund-raiser in Sacramento. He donated a shitload of cash to a nonprofit kick-start program for young musicians. We talked about earthquakes for a few minutes, and then he was gone. I was lucky to get his name and learned everything I could about him online.”

  “Does he listen to your music?”

  He shrugs. “I can’t answer that. I know next to nothing about the guy, but I like him. Rather, my heart does. It doesn’t make any sense to me, and probably never will. I’m being a fool about Ralph, and foolish.”

  “Love is a crazy emotion and taunts every part of one’s being. Trust me, I know.” Toby recalls waking up to Blue every morning, longing for the man, happy that Blue was in his life. Not a moment in Toby’s day had slipped by when he stopped thinking about the professor, caught up in an emotional and euphoric blur with the guy, lost in him, even when Blue started cheating on him. Of course Toby knows, and can relate to what exactly is going on in Grant’s life.

  “I want to see him…and hold him,” Grant says. He finds his T-shirt on the floor, slips it over his stunning and sculpted chest, hiding its massive pecs and hairy abs. “I want to make him mine, Toby. Does that make any sense whatsoever?”

  “Clear as rain, my friend. I get everything you’re saying.” He pours the both of them another shot of whiskey, passes a glass tumbler to Grant, and says, “I want to make a toast.”

  Grant smiles, looking uber-handsome, drop dead attractive with his white smile and fall-into eyes. God, the guy is gorgeous. Dreamy. Chiseled. A God. “I’m listening.”

  Toby lifts his whiskey between them and says, “To the men that get away when we don’t want them to get away.”

  “And those that we chase after,” Grant says, clinks the rim of his tumbler against Toby’s, and the two men drink to the toast, beginning an end to this evening’s unplanned, but eventful, time together.

  Chapter 19: Blue Visits

  Grant leaves without a kiss, blowjob, or a fuck-session. A hug does occur between the two men. Toby wishes the man well and promises that he’ll return to The Whiskey Bar to see Grant perform. Grant says on his way out the door, “You’ll make a great husband for someone, someday.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Toby replies, waves, and closes the door, somewhat saddened by this evening’s occurrences with the musician from Chicago. And once Grant is gone, out of his life, but only temporarily for the time being, he says, “The good ones get away. Always. It never fails.”

  * * * *

  Not twenty-five minutes later and Blue Danning appears on Toby’s doorstep, which honestly doesn’t surprise Toby. This is Toby’s life lately, digesting Blue’s occasional visits without notice. Sometimes the professor arrives drunk or stoned, escapes his current boyfriend, and ends up on Second Avenue, spending the night in Toby’s bed. Other times he’s bawling his brains out, looking to Toby for some coddling. Never does he show up during the daylight hours, which is quite bizarre. But at least he’s still in Toby’s world, because Toby loves the man, and probably always will, no matter how badly the professor treats him.

  The act of coddling Blue is sex, and lots of it when Blue Danning unexpectedly visits him. Sex against the living room wall, sex against the dining room floor, sex over the kitchen countertops, sex on the stairs, and even sex in the shower. Rarely do the two men have sex in Toby’s queen-size bed; a place where they sleep together after diddling. Toby cannot tamp his attraction for Blue, using his body, mainly his dick, as a toy for his own personal needs.

  The coddling is always good medicine for Toby, and probably always will be. The act itself is usually rough and consists of biting, slaps, and aggressive pinches. There is nothing sweet or charming about their hour or two spent together within Toby’s Colonial. Sometimes the coddling is more like violence between the two men, but neither seems to mind, agreeing to such terms.

  Blue arrives at almost eleven o’clock. He strips out of his clothes—jeans, a T-shirt, summer sandals, and a Pirates baseball cap—and drops his attire in the foyer. He doesn’t wear any underwear, so there isn’t a pair to add to his accumulated pile. He’s drunk tonight and slurs his words, “I need you to fuck me, Toby. What do you say?”

  Toby has never objected to such pleasure, since he rather enjoys sex with his ex-lover’s body. He checks out Blue’s physical frame yet again, desiring the man’s black hairy chest, onyx-colored eyes, and the dick that hangs between Blue’s legs, which just happens to be semi-hard. He licks his lips, steps closer to Blue, falls to his knees, and processes oral satisfaction on the intruder for the next fifteen minutes, until the two friends end up in Toby’s living room where Blue demands to have his hands tied behind his back with a leather contraption that looks like a whip. Thereafter, Blue is bent over and his head is buried in the sofa’s cushions, blinded by darkness. And Toby, horny and willing to fuck his ex, kicks Blue’s legs apart, applies latex to his cock—because he really doesn’t know who Blue is sleeping with these days, and nor does he want to know—and bangs the interloper with his all his strength, digging his fingers in the professor’s hips.

  * * * *

  The sex is blissful for Toby and he floats in a numb world of deep satisfaction. He doesn’t offer his bed or shower to Blue, although maybe he should. Rather, he removes the latex from his sticky cock, holds it in his right hand to toss in the garbage, and tells Blue, “You should go. You got what you came for. I got exactly what I wanted. Leave.”

  And Blue, perhaps understanding his worth in their new and less complex relationship, agrees, dresses, and walks out of Toby’s life, until the next time he decides to have a fuck-session in the middle of the night with Toby Cartwright.

  Chapter 20: Bear Blog, May 6

  Sometimes the bear will get away. You chase him because he wants and likes to be chased. You feed him his favorite snacks, which is usually that sweet and sticky honey he enjoys so much, and a variety of nuts. You play with him because he loves to play with you. You rub his tummy and make him feel like the happiest bear in the world, and loved. But before you know it, finally realizing that you’re alone, the bear is gone, out of your life. He’s escaped your forest and he plans to move in on someone else’s forest. Too bad for you. Now you’re bearless.

  Are bears migratory? Well, the human types are, wh
ich is sometimes upsetting. And when this happens, this straying, if you want to call it, you no longer get to nuzzle your face in his masculine hairy chest, bite his perfectly hard nipples, or roll fingers over his dip of a navel, ending their travels in the bushy thatch of his triangular-shaped bear hair above his humongous dick. And no longer do you get to sniff his ass or balls, the way bears like to be sniffed in the wild, after the two of you come home from a dance party at some crazy bear club in your city. And no longer will you have a bear to snuggle against in the early morning hours, naked and hard, waiting for his bear-cock to be tugged on while he sleeps and dreams.

  Yes, sometimes the bears get away. You can’t cage them. You can’t hole them up in a den. You can’t chain them up for good, like they do in the circus. Bears have a mind of their own. No matter how much you like them, they can lumber away without you even knowing.

  This is life. This is reality. You want something or someone and you can’t get it or them. Life is a revolving door. You don’t know what’s going to appear on your side of it, or vanish to the other world beyond. This includes bears of all types. Everything happens for a reason and nothing is permanent.

  Good luck out there and finding and keeping your bears, readers.

  I hope you get what or who you want.

  I don’t know if you deserve it, but that’s not for me to say.

  Hit me back.

  —Toby Cartwright

  * * * *

  Toby reads the blog a few times before uploading it to his Bear Blog. The piece is short but ripe, which he believes his readership will enjoy. There are too many blogs in the world that just ramble, going on and on and on, and so many of them piss him off because they say absolutely nothing, lacking content. He always takes his followers seriously, considering their busy lifestyles. People have so very little time for long-winded blurbs, even the humorous ones. Short and crisp pieces are his cocktail of choice when crafting them. There’s really no reason to be windy, right?