His Name Was Craig

I also included ads in two magazines aimed at gay men and women, offering both engagement and wedding photography as well as “candid” photographs, intending to let them see the inclusiveness I felt, especially in view of the recent political firestorms involving bakers who didn’t want to create wedding cakes for gay couples. Anyone who was looking at those magazines would understand that “candid” included photographs which included modeling in “clothing-optional” poses.

I also included ads in two magazines aimed at gay men and women, offering both engagement and wedding photography as well as “candid” photographs, intending to let them see the inclusiveness I felt, especially in view of the recent political firestorms involving bakers who didn’t want to create wedding cakes for gay couples. Anyone who was looking at those magazines would understand that “candid” included photographs which included modeling in “clothing-optional” poses.

When I checked the website after the ads ran for the first times, I found two inquiry responses. I reached back to each of those potential customers, suggesting that we set up meetings to talk about what kinds of photographs they had in mind. They suggested that I come up to scout out several outdoor venues they had been thinking about, with the idea of doing the actual photo shoot in May when trees, bushes and flowerbeds would be in bloom.

What I hadn’t thought about, and what turned out to be a stroke of luck for me, was that a woman in the first pair of potential customers had known exactly where she wanted to have engagement pictures taken of her and her partner. She took the three of us to a park overlooking the Delaware river, which separates New Jersey from Pennsylvania. The park is an arboretum, so there are individual trees that are samples of their species that were intentionally planted to demonstrate their individuality. We walked among them and found locations where the two of them could hold hands as they walked while I took videos, or they could lean against a tree overlooking the water, reflecting the quiet solitude of sharing the park with each other.

The second couple were a pair of men, and they wanted to have photos taken at exactly the same park, with water views behind them, as well as the island in the river that houses the US Steel plant, and they wanted photos with that as the background, since one of the men worked there.

I hadn’t even known that park existed, so they gave me a free view of a venue I could post onto my website as an enticement for further customers.

Several days later, there was a third response from a man named Craig Howell. He wanted to set up a FaceTime call, which was fine with me. When the call opened, I saw a man who looked to be about fifty-five, with a full head of silver hair and pale blue eyes. He must have had a laptop on his desk, since I could see him from the mid-chest up, and he looked moderately trim and fit.

“Good morning, Mr. Howell, how are you doing?”

“I’m fine Brady, how are you? Thanks for doing this call on FaceTime, I wanted to see your eyes as we talked.”

“I’m doing well myself, A video-call is fine, Sir. How can I help you? What did you have in mind in terms of candid photography?”

“Well, I saw your ad, and I was impressed by your website. You seem to be younger than I expected, but I saw that you’ve have pretty extensive experience.”

“Yes, Sir. I’ve been working in my parents’ studio since I was sixteen, so I’ve learned a lot from them over the last twelve years.”

“I saw on your website that you’ve done video photography at weddings. Is video photography something you’d be comfortable doing again? I know that you’re based in Trenton, would you be comfortable doing photography up here in northern New Jersey? We’re about an hour away from you. There’s also a venue near Bangor, Maine where we might like some photography done as well.”

“Well, we photographed quite a few weddings in the Hamptons, and that’s four hours east of New York, and we lived in Westchester, so that was another hour north of our studio in Manhattan. What we did for those weddings or even for garden parties in the Hamptons or Sagamore Hill, which is pretty far out on the north shore of Long Island, was to block out several days for shoots and drive out two or three days in advance of an event and check out the venue the next day or two, and then drive home the day after the event, so the distance isn’t a problem for me. I’d have to schedule things on dates that would work for both of us here in New Jersey, but I’m sure we could do that, and I bet it wouldn’t be too expensive for me to stay in an inexpensive motel in Maine, either.”

“Have you ever been to a gentlemen’s club, Brady?”

I froze for a moment, but then I broke through the ice. “Yes, Sir, I have. I went to college at Princeton, and there are several gentlemen’s clubs in northern New Jersey.”

“There’s a gentlemen’s club in Livingston. Do you know where that is? “

“I do, Sir. I’ve actually been to Livingston.”

“I thought we might do some candid photography here if you came as a guest of mine, and we could see how that works out.”

I took a hefty gulp thinking about that and said, “That’s fine, Sir. As you said, perhaps we should start by thinking about what you had in mind at the gentlemen’s club.”

“I’m one of the financial backers of our club, and there are quite a few colleges in New Jersey and New York. I’m sure there are gay young men in at least some of those schools, or even young faculty men who feel either intrigue or confusion about intergenerational sexuality between men, but we’re not seeing many of those men in our club. I’m not sure they understand what a gentlemen’s club is, for that matter. The sexuality of gay or bisexual men over the ages of thirty-five or forty is different from the lustful exuberance of high school or prep-school boys, or even college freshmen.

“In my experience, the young men who enjoy a gentleman’s club the most are men who come in the door with self-confidence and order a drink and sit alone while they let their eyes roam the lounge. They’re the young men who wait for an older man to join them and start a conversation, without thinking that they have to initiate flirting themselves.

“And a gentleman’s not going to grope a younger man’s crotch. He’s more likely to lock his eyes onto that man’s eyes and press the back of a finger on the man’s lips and wait to see if the younger man will suck the knuckle into his mouth. Or the man might press the back of a finger upward against the younger man’s nipple, waiting for each of them feel that nipple firming into a pebble, each of them knowing that the electric tingle from the firmed-up nipple is going straight into that younger man’s testicle.

“Those are the ideas that we want to convey to potential visitors. We want them to feel that the club will welcome them, and the gentlemen there will see it as their obligation to make the younger man see stars before he leaves, and that a visit will be something he’ll remember for the rest of his life.

“So that’s what we’re trying to create, and what I was hoping you could help us explore. Basically, we’re looking for a welcoming video to introduce our club to potential visitors in a way that would make them feel it’s a welcoming space.”

I thought back to the time I visited the gentlemen’s club in that estate in Livingston, west of Newark. I was lucky that I had been taken there by a senior in my eating club, the guy who had told me exactly that trick of buying a drink and sitting alone to wait for a gentleman to find me.

Guys at school razzed me for a year after I got out of the man’s limousine the next morning as the chauffeur opened the door for me, and I’ve certainly remembered the whole encounter ever since.

I chuckled to myself when I thought about the way I teased the guys with the idea that I had been a gigolo for some lonely thirty-five-year-old wife of an executive who was on a business trip in Frankfurt or Singapore. Even so, after that I always had the chauffeur pick me up or drop me off behind the post office in downtown Princeton where no one from school would see the limo.

Mr. Howell broke my daydream. “Then perhaps we could think about doing some further photography if you came to another club in Trenton. I don’t have an ownership interest, but I am on the board of that one. As you know, it’s the state capital, so there are quite a few men around the ages between twenty-four and thirty-eight who work in government. A lot of the staff are new here starting in the summers, typically after they’ve graduated either from college or from advanced degrees in one graduate program or another, so our hope was that we’d have a website up and running by the first of June, so those men as well as new junior faculty would be able to browse it in June and July and perhaps start coming to visit us by the middle of the summer.”

“The other thing that has interested me is the process by which men come to be comfortable flirting with other men. Perhaps you’ve seen how awkward young men can feel once they screw up their courage to walk through the door of a gay club or a pub, so what I was also intrigued by was almost showing them videoclips of how some men take the first steps in that kind of environment. Doing what feels like a documentary of videoclips to let young men see how other men initiate an encounter. I’ve met some men in town that I think would enjoy providing that kind of demonstration for younger men.

I caught my breath, but the smile took over my face. “That’s the greatest suggestion I’ve ever heard,” as I thought about the first steps I took when I initiated encounters with men. I wanted to close my eyes, turning off my awareness of how awkward I had been.

“Yes, Mr. Howell, I could do that over a weekend in April if you could set up some pairs of men who’d be comfortable doing those encounters in front of a video camera. It can be a bit awkward for a man to flirt in front of a third man and his camera.”

“Yes, I understand that. Let me work on it. We could do it in May if it would take that long to find guys. We already have a website manager, so you wouldn’t have to do any of that. If you burn the videos onto disks, he can link them onto the website himself.

“Let me give you some instructions to get to the club in Livingston. It’s called The Knights’ Inn. Do you have something to write on?”

I froze. I forgot that he could see me on the video-site.

“Brady? Has something happened?”

The warmth washed over me, and I just spit it out. “No, Sir, I’m fine. I, uh, I don’t need instructions. I know where it is.” 

I guess he couldn’t hold back his smile. “Have you been there, Brady?”

He had been right at the beginning. The video-call had let him see my eyes, and it’s surely true that they’re the windows into a man’s soul. I just looked back at him and nodded.

“Well, that pleases me. It means that you’ll have your own personal understanding of both sides of the dynamic of the presentation we’re trying to create. I’m very glad I found you, son. I think you’re the perfect photographer for this job.”

It seemed so natural for me to envision the view of watching his hands unbuttoning his shirt. Would he undo his belt, or would I be doing that?

Andrew and Kevin, the professors who organized a backyard barbecue at their condo on Labor Day, always made it a welcoming event for their guests. Most of the people were faculty and their significant others, but Kevin had included the four students who were doing senior honors projects under his supervision, and I was invited as Pete’s significant other. Andrew had also invited three grad students he was supervising.

Picnic tables had been arranged on their back lawn, and Pete and I sat with Bob and Justin once we got our hamburgers and hot dogs and pasta salad. Justin teaches English, and Bob’s his partner who’s the construction manager that’s been able to see into the depths of my soul. He had a warm look in his eyes when we shook hands, and Pete was happy to see him again. We told him about our time in New Hampshire, and Pete bragged about my photography work once I opened the studio in Trenton, so I had to explain.

“It’s picked up astonishingly. I had put some ads out starting in February, and Kevin had suggested that I create several separate lines of work that I could offer and advertise independently, and that’s been crucial to getting business.”

Bob scrunched up his forehead. “What does that mean?”

“Well, I created one line called ‘Creative Candids,’ which highlights candid photography. It’s linked to the main website I use, but I can advertise that kind of work in different places or in different ways than say the wedding photography I hope to build up, using a campaign called ‘Wedding Photos You’ll Remember.’ The problem is that weddings are planned months if not more than a year in advance, so people aren’t looking for wedding work that I can do soon. On the other hand, I could advertise candid photography for engaged couples or couples who are looking for photography they wanted done during the summer or in the next few months.

“Then, I’m hoping to build up a business in what’s called ‘executive photography,’ which means taking photos of executives that they would use for their corporate advertising or corporate websites, or even just for formal photographs they’d have around the house or that they could give to family members, but that’s the kind of work I advertise using the name ‘Executive Photography,’ posting those ads with the local Chamber of Commerce. There’s also a whole advertising niche called ‘community advertising,’ which specifically gears companies in advertising in their local regions, and I’ve reached out to companies who do that kind of work to offer services in doing photography for their clients. Then each of those lines of advertising are linked to my personal website that explains who I am and lays out my experience as a photographer.”

Bob said, “That’s great. I’m really glad for you, but you should be proud of doing all that, as well! We have an agency we use for doing that, and I’m sure they do that kind of ‘community advertising’ you describe.”

Pete chimed in. “He reached out to websites and some newsletters in the gay community in both Philadelphia and New York as well, and he’s gotten some work from doing that, too.”

Bob gave me a smile as he responded. “Every little bit helps, right? Our development company advertises all over the map too.”

Pete got up to get another drink, and Bob looked at me and said, “Are you okay? You looked a little spooked.”

I looked around and saw Pete on his way back, so I said, “I can’t talk about it now,” and I looked over and took the beer Pete brought me.

It was as we were leaving that Bob came up to me, ostensibly to shake hands and say goodbye when his left hand slipped a note into my breast pocket as he said, “Give me a call. We can meet for a beer.” 

I looked back at him and felt my breath catching as he smiled at me. “I’ve been to more than one rodeo.”

I had driven Pete to the barbecue, so I dropped him off at his place, saying that I had work to do on the website before classes began. When I parked outside my apartment, I killed the engine and sat in the cab and rolled my head back against the headrest, trying to collect my thoughts about Craig Howell. I had told Pete about the shoot at Craig’s club, but he didn’t ask me how I felt doing that shoot or being in a club, and I had never told him about the club in Livingston, either.

I could feel my heart racing on Tuesday morning, so I reached for the note Bob had given me and I called his cell. He answered saying, “Hi, Brady. How are you?”

“I’m a total jumble. I guess that’s what you saw yesterday. Can we find a time to talk? I don’t know whom else to talk to about something that’s come up.”

“Sure. There’s a wine bar in Deerfield, and nobody who knows you or who knows Justin is likely to see us there. They sell draft beers, too. I can get off soon after five, you want to meet me there about five-thirty?”

“That sounds perfect,” and I took down the details.

Bob was sipping a twenty-ounce beer when I walked in, and he said, “I didn’t know what your preferences in beer are, so I didn’t order you anything. Go up to the bar and order and she’ll deliver it here.”

I ordered the Carlsberg pilsner I had learned to drink in Copenhagen and Amsterdam, and sat with him, but he spoke first.

“You got spooked when Pete said you had reached out to gay websites and newsletters for your advertising campaign.”

I looked at him, but I knew I had to go slowly if I was going to keep myself together. “I did. It’s complicated, and Pete doesn’t know about a part of my life, and that makes it more complicated.”

“I won’t say a word. I’m just here for you, to support you getting through whatever it is, that’s all. I won’t even tell Justin, I promise.” His eyes were warm, and I knew I had to tell someone, so I went ahead.

“There are things no one knows, actually, but I did a photo shoot that brought too much of it all back.” I had to stop; I couldn’t rush through this.

“I had gone down to Philadelphia to try and scout out the gay bars and clubs there, and I went up to Newark as well. Most gay venues have a cork board where people can post things of general interest to the community. I wanted to see what kinds of postings they might have so I could see if there were newsletters or magazines where I could advertise, and I found three, so I created a website and I did post the ads for a photography studio that would do candid photography, as I told you. That’s broad enough so people know what it means, and if gay folks wanted a service, I was available for it.

“The third response I got was from a guy named Craig. We set up a FaceTime call, since he said he wanted to see the look in my eyes when we spoke. He looks like he’s about forty-five or maybe fifty, and he’s good looking and fit. It turned out that he’s one of the backers of a gentlemen’s club in Livingston, New Jersey, and he wanted some publicity videos to let potential clients know what the club was like and know that it was a welcoming place. He was particularly interested in reaching out to college-age guys or young faculty men who were in schools in either New Jersey area or who were willing to drive out from New York.”

“Okay….”

“I went to college at Princeton, and I went to that gentlemen’s club my junior year. One of the seniors I knew brought me there, and I had an ongoing relationship with a man from the club starting then and going on for my whole senior year. Nobody ever knew. His chauffeur would pick me up in the parking lot behind the post office in town, and he’d drop me off at the same place either the next morning or at the end of a weekend, so guys in the dorm wouldn’t see me getting into or getting out of the limo. This guy, Craig Howell, is one of the owners of the same club, so I kind of froze when he invited me to meet him there. 

“I hadn’t thought about those college encounters for three or four years, but bringing it back made me remember the feeling of fulfillment and the knowledge of being wanted by an older and more worldly and more worthwhile man than I’ve ever been, and remembering all that has made me feel an emptiness in my soul that I haven’t felt since I was nineteen. The encounters there involved the executive who was probably around sixty, and some also included the chauffeur, who was around thirty.”

Bob reached out and covered my forearm with his open hand, and I wiped away my tear with my other hand. He whispered, “Deep breaths. Let it happen. Let it wash over you,” as he handed me his black cloth napkin.

“I don’t know what to do, but the submissiveness and the melting into the body and the personality of an older man that I had in college is a different thing, and it’s not nothing, either. It was a part of my soul. There seem to be multiple facets to my soul, and I’m afraid of some of them myself. The chauffeur was like an older brother to me, but a brother I was involved with sexually, and that was something I craved. He always beat me at arm-wrestling, and gripped me hard into a headlock with one arm as his other fist dug into my abs, and he was the brother who leaned the full weight of his chest onto his arms as his hands held my shoulders down against the edge of the mattress while he skull-fucked me as he called me his cock-whore, while daddy spit-roasted my ass. He was the chauffeur who drove me back to Princeton wearing his grey livery, the two of us silent the whole way, making me stew in my subservience to him.

“I once got out of the limo on my own when he stopped it, and he had fire in his eyes when he came around the car and smacked me across the face, telling me never to do that again, and I never did. He set the rules and implemented his boss’s rules, and initiative wasn’t mine to exercise. That submissive side of me exists, and I feel lost when I think about it.

“Can you understand any of this?”

Bob reached up and put two fingers across my lips, letting me know that I shouldn’t say anything more. He smiled and said, “Welcome to life, Brady. Let me tell you, many guys have conflicts within themselves, and many of us get spooked by things within ourselves, too. Plenty of guys are multi-faceted in our sexuality, and almost none of us admit it to anyone besides the guy in the mirror.

“The most reliable and wisest guy I know is my older brother, Nick. There was a time I was going through an inner conflict of my own, and I’ve never forgotten what Nick told me then. He told me that if I had fantasies about following a certain path in life, or if I felt conflicted about whether it was the best path for me, that I had to give it a try. He told me that the worst thing in a man’s life is for him to look back on it and to regret the opportunities he didn’t take. If an opportunity didn’t work out, then it wasn’t the right path for me, but I had to learn that it wasn’t for me, because otherwise I’d carry the regret of not having tried it for the rest of my life, and Nick was exactly right.

“I’ve been in situations in which I craved attention and respect from an older guy, but when I ran down that road, he helped me I realized that my best prospects were to spend my life with Justin, and that’s exactly how it worked out. Nick gave me the idea of opening up Justin’s awareness to the sexual things other men do that he could try doing with me if I admitted that they turned me on.”

“But I can’t go trekking down to Livingston all the time. It’s more than an hour each way.”

“Maybe you don’t have to. There are probably gentlemen’s clubs around here. Besides, he told you about one in Trenton; you could go there, just saying that you were spending time at your studio.

“But now I’ve gotten a different idea. To what extent have you had time to hit the gym?”

“I’ve hardly ever had time. I was on the swim team in prep-school, but I just swam to unwind while I was in college, and I never had enough time to hit the gym at the Y when I was working with my parents. Gym fees in Manhattan are off the roof, so I never joined a gym there.”

“Perfect. When a man realizes that he enjoys having another man in a somewhat submissive role, he also realizes that he needs to keep himself fit if he’s going to attract men like that, so that’s what you saw. I’ll bet that Craig Howell goes to the gym two or three times a week to keep himself toned. How much of his torso did you see on that video call?”

“Just from his upper chest and up.”

“See if you can set something up. See if you can spend some gym-time with him.” 

Once I got home, I leaned back on the couch, and somehow my left hand reached over to cup my right pec. Bob was right; it didn’t have the definition and the firmness that it used to have. 

If not now, then when? I texted Craig Howell. “Does that club in Trenton have a fitness room, the way the Knights’ Inn had on one side of the basement?” I wasn’t going to ask about the facilities in the other part of the basement. I was sure the cubicles there still had the same kinds of equipment they had ten years ago, even if some of it had been updated. The swings had been where I first fucked older men who craved my dick, and those were also where Malcolm had first taken me, after I agreed to wear the black leather collar for him. That had been the first time I spent the night with him, since he said I needed to have him caressing me as I incorporated all of it into my mind. He was right, as always.

He texted back. “Yes. Do you think you might need a gym-buddy to encourage you to work our regularly?” My fingers flew; that was exactly what I was thinking, and I said so.

I knew that he understood exactly what I was saying. I went wide-eyes when he texted back.

“There’s a pavilion there too, with a heated pool. The club is in a wooded estate, the same way the Knights’ Inn is, so everyone swims nude there, if you enjoy swimming laps to unwind.”

I guess we both knew that the next step after swimming laps was a body-oil rubdown. I’m sure the massage rooms are kept warm, too. My phone dinged again.

“I’m going to be there later today. Do you want to come in as my guest?”

I didn’t have the balls to write it out, so I just sent him a smiley emoji. 

He sent back a thumbs-up emoji, with a text saying he’d be there just after four and gave the address. How early could I go there without looking too needy? What should I wear as I drove there? There must be lockers for guys to put their street-clothes into before they went into the gym, so they could change before they went into the lounge room or the bar too. Did guys work out in just jocks? I chuckled when I thought about the underwear some guys had worn in Livingston, with open areas over the crotch or over their ass, or both. Luckily, I did have navy-mesh jocks. I never have felt comfortable running on a treadmill or using an elliptical trainer with my cock and balls swinging around. Besides, I wanted the mesh hugging my nuts as I lifted weights; the last thing I wanted was a hernia. 

I got to the club at twenty after four. I walked into the fitness room not too long after, and Craig was the only one there. I froze when he locked his eyes onto mine. He pointed to the treadmill next to his, and I knew he’d talk me through this once I started jogging, matching his speed, even if I had to work myself up to that. The aroma of his sweat mixed with his sandalwood cologne washed over me, and I knew that I had found a fulfillment I hadn’t felt for years, if ever. Craig understood me in ways that Malcolm never had, and Bob had been right. If I didn’t try this I would regret it for the rest of my life. 

Lord Above, what do I do if Pete finds out?