I’m sitting with Johann on the back patio of Simeon’s summer home in the Hamptons, which overlooks the pool where Giovanni swims laps. It’s early still, just past dawn, with the fog still clinging to the water in a possessive embrace. The others are sleeping off their hangovers from the party Simeon hosted last night. I drank only a little and retired early, electing to spend the rest of the night stretching Giovanni with increasingly larger toys. Thank goodness for the sounds of revelry to drown out his wailing and moaning.
“Too much of what?” Johann asks.
“Too much of Rupert’s attention or his time.” I would call itlife force, but I don’t want to sound loopy.
“Rupert makes me better, and I hope I do the same for him. We feed each other’s passions. We have fun together, support one another. Is this about you and your much younger lover?”
I stretch my fingers, marred with scars, liver spots, and other signs of aging. My knuckles are swollen, not quite arthritic—not yet—but also not far from it. How long, realistically, can I provide him with what he needs?
“Sometimes when I touch him, I see my wrinkled hands against his skin, and I feel as though I’m feeding off him, sucking away his youth and vitality like a vampire.”
“He seems very healthy to me.” Johann motions to where Giovanni slices through the water like a shark.
“He doesn’t want to go to school or get a job or make friends. He hardly wants to leave the apartment. He only wants to be with me. Toserveme.” I’d thought his fixation would lessen with time, but it’s only gotten stronger, as has my own.
“He doesn’t let you out of his sight, but maybe that will fade when he’s feeling more secure.”
The possibility of Giovanni growing out of what I provide is just as distressing.
“There’s something else.” I don’t know quite how to frame it without it sounding… abusive. “We have safewords, of course, and I know his triggers and his limits, but during a scene, he doesn’t deny me. Anything. His pain threshold is extremely high, and I worry…” I take a deep breath. “I worry I may go too far.”
“Too far, how?”
“I don’t want to do any lasting damage, but his skin is just so tempting. Christ, the noises he makes when I’m hurting him.” I shake my head because I still fantasize about things that are not safe or sane.
“But he likes it?” Johann asks.
“Yes.”
“And he’s not just faking it?”
“I don’t believe he could fake it. And now he wants me to fist him.”
“Sounds like an interesting conversation,” Keller says, joining our little party. A baker by trade, he too keeps early hours. “What’s the problem, old man? Your arthritis acting up again?”
I flip him off and Keller settles in a lawn chair beside me. “He would let me cut him,scarhim, choke him past the point of what’s safe, and I’m so tempted.”
“You need a spotter,” Keller says. “Another Dom to pull you back, at least until you both learn your limits.”
I nod. “Maybe so. I’ve never had this kind of power before, and I worry I’m abusing it because he doesn’t know any better. I’m his first real lover and his first Dom. I wish he had more experience to know for certain he’schoosingthis. I still worry that he thinks our dynamic is a condition he must fulfill in order to stay with me.”
“You’re selling yourself short,” Keller says. “I’ve seen him with you. We all have. He lights up when you’re around. He fucking glows when you touch him. That night you flogged him, no part of him seemed hesitant or uncomfortable. He’s young, sure, but he knows what he wants. But you’re right that managing a full-time sub is a big responsibility, especially if you move into TPE territory. Is that whatyouwant?”
“At this point I don’t know what I’d do without him. If he left me…” Will he tire of our dynamic or start feeling too constrained?
“He adores you,” Johann says. “The age thing, I get it. I had the same concerns with Rupert, but there are a lot of advantages to being older. I’m more patient, I’m a hell of a lot wiser, and I can offer him some financial security. The things you provide him are obviously the things he needs.”
Does Giovanni see me as his surrogate parent? Is he trying to recreate the love and stability he felt while in his grandfather’s care?
“Do you ever worry about dying on him?” I ask. “My heart isn’t what it used to be, and my lungs are probably tar black from all those years of smoking. I never thought I’d live this long, doing what I do, and I never had a reason to worry if I didn’t.”
“Sometimes,” Johann says, “but that’s why we’ve got our friends and family. If something were to happen to me or if I got sick, Rupert would have others to lean on.”
Giovanni needs a community and if not that, at least one other person in his life he can rely on, someone who could possibly give him what he needs in my absence.
“Sounds like you might have a fear of commitment,” Keller says. “A fear of permanence.”
“Permanence,” I repeat. “Nothing is permanent. I’ve spent most of my life ensuring my own survival. And I’ve shied away from lasting relationships if I felt I didn’t have the resources to adequately protect them.”
