September at Esplanade excerpt by Roy Kirby Chaudoir

September at Esplanade by Roy Kirby Chaudoir is set in September in the 1980s. It is a fictionalized story based on the personal journals of a promiscuous gay man. This is story follows a young man's unlucky life and psychiatric hospitalization and begins with him "indentured" to the man who signed him out of the psychiatric hospital. The protagonist has multiple sexual encounters, and even tries to form a loving partnership with someone new, but realizes that he's never lived "free" and with responsibility only for himself so he backs away from the promise of love a relationship might bring in order to face his own true self. It is a story of a confused process towards individuation.

September At Esplanade
Lulu Press (December 13, 2011)

Excerpt:

Chapter 4 “Road Trip to Biloxi”

The Apollo Arcade Intensity

The Apollo Arcade was a pretty worn place. It wasn't dirty. Well, it wasn't dirty like a park bench isn't dirty, when in fact it is probably full of pigeon droppings, hand germs, dropped food particles, all sorts of things on it but since it is a park bench you have some low expectations about just exactly how clean you would expect it to be. In reality, the Apollo Theatre in Biloxi was probably only cleaned with a push broom to get the paper wrappers of candy and potato chip bags, cigarette butts, and ashes pushed to places where a dustpan and garbage can could catch the mess. It wasn't the kind of place that had the floors mopped, and the floors were a sort of concrete floor, but the surface of the floor was so traffic worn that it seemed like a public sidewalk, only dimmer. In the dimness shadowy people seemed to scurry from area to area. There were untold hallways that wound off in a labyrinthine framework off of the main room. These halls were constructed of booths and within each a small projector screen was built into the wall, and you got in your little booth, alone or with one or two others and watched two bit's worth of a porn flick. Once the door was closed you'd do whatever it is you had come there to do. There was cruise tension in the air, so if you wanted to play the hunter-like game, it could be just like cruising in a sex park. I felt arousal from this cruising around, and endorphins kicked in and I began seeing flashing lights over every one's head.

There was no guarantee that the vice squad wasn't there in force, patrolling the large arcade, but the "let's take a chance" atmosphere seemed to bring out the danger lover in me, and forbiddance and sex always make the game more fun for me. Only, I'm with Sandy and I have to be more aware of how I act. There was one other factor that ate into my judgment. Just before we got inside the Apollo Sandy offered me a little paper tab with "windowpane" LSD on it. I took it. I had been told by my psychiatrists not to do hallucinogens. I had really taken a lot of mushrooms in the past, and still had some at home, but I knew I wasn't wound too tightly and feared I might show my craziness. Nonetheless, I took the acid.

At first we each had two rolls of quarters, and we'd been together kissing and doing it for the last day or so that we were relaxed enough to let each other go in a booth alone. It seemed Sandy wanted me to be his, and only his, but that he was not rushing me into anything like an exclusive relationship. Only, somehow being "lovers" or on our way to being "lovers" gave us some new feelings about control and possessiveness towards one another. It seemed not okay for some reason to let some other stranger suck your cock when your lover was right there with you. It was funny in a way but we got booths next to each other and thought we were being discrete and safe by letting our dicks go through the holes in the walls, the glory holes, and sucking on one another's cocks but what we didn't know was that eyes from the other adjoining booths were peeping in the other glory holes and watching us doing each other. It was a big turn-on for several voyeurs, and it made them more bold and horny in relation to us so when we came out of our booths, we found a group of six guys outside, one obviously masturbating and two watching him and the other three with hardons in their pants waiting like midnight cowboys against the wall watching for a sign from me or Sandy that we'd like to go in a booth with one of them. It began really fast to be an almost orgy scene and we found it confusing for a moment. I was beginning to hallucinate happily, too. Everything seemed so busy and crowded suddenly. It seemed I needed to be alone, and I told Sandy to go off on his own for ten minutes and I would too. He seemed okay with the idea, but I could tell he was worried about me. I wasn't. I was on some sort of animal control, and it felt good. No matter how I try to deny it in my everyday life, I really don't like to be logical and some craziness seems right for me. I am intuitive. I am scattered, too. I prefer living without a plan.

I peeked into a booth, ignoring the men in the hall giving me signals to come with them, and then I saw him. He was actually an ugly skinny black man. I peeked through a glory hole in my booth and I see a black guy with his shirt unbuttoned hanging out and his chest and stomach and pubes exposed and he was jacking off to the sights of two white guys fucking in the porn flick on the small screen.

I'm really hallucinating now. For some reason this kind of ugly guy turns me on. I think he looks really hot, but in the dim light all I can see is the shape of his face, chest and stomach, and cock. He's working himself.

I confessed all this into my journals, but never to anyone in person yet. It gets steamy to recall this. I am totally psychotic on the acid. I think acid effected everything thought this whole episode. On LSD I'm so much more sexually driven.

This dark skin black guy about mid-thirties, skinny thin, almost just bones and skin, his face pocked from year's ago acne--one of those adults who had bad acne as a teenager and it scarred his face, actually so ugly that it was beautiful, and I felt this rush of heat grow in me and I slipped my dick into the glory hole in his booth and when he sucked it felt electric. I thought I was going to be sucked off in a flash it was so hot. I dropped down, and eyeball to eyeball asked him, "Can I come in?"

"No! Wait a second!" He stood up, buttoned his shirt and left the room. I was about to flip out I felt so rejected and this heat of passion was not cooling off. I didn't have time to react, but was standing up and turning around when in my booth door this dude rushes in, pops his shirt open again, and we go belly to belly, kissing, and it feels like our skin is literally flaming with fire. We set upon one another voraciously, like two vampires.

"You're burning up you're so hot...." I told him as our stomachs touched and my t-shirt was pulled behind my head. My jeans were unbuttoned and my long five inches, or short six inches seemed longer than seven as he worked my dick with his hand then his mouth.

"Stop," he said. "You wanna fuck me?"

"Sure," I said.

"Then button up and let's go across to the other side of this joint. It be safe over there."

Not exactly sure of what is happening, I zip up, button up and hand in hand we cross the gloomy space between what appear the populated side of the arcade to an older part of the building, and water was flowing in through the roof, and there was standing water on the floor. We splashed our way into this rain soaked booth.

"In here," he said and pulled me into a booth. "Put some quarter in the machine. Ain't nobody gonna fuck with us in this dump."

The floor was unbelievable, I almost knelt down to suck but realized we had to stay off our knees or the water on the floor from a big leak in the ceiling could get us totally wet—a storm of rain and what sounded like some hail had been pelting the metal roof for the whole time we were in the maze of baths, and anyways, I couldn't kneel and he couldn't' and we stood, our shoes in almost a half inch of water. Other guys opened the door to come join us but seeing that we were standing in water up over the edges of our shoe soles they guys shut the door and backed out.

I am not believing how hot this black man is, as things progress, and his kisses were so erotic I was shaking from the excitement.

Then he turned around and dropped his pants to his knees and leaned forward on his hands and arms offering his bare ass to me, his look spoke to me

“Fuck me."

He is bending over with his hands on the seat of the bench, and shoving his skinny ass and legs out and says again more forcefully, "Fuck me!"

I shoved my cock into him and almost passed out with pleasure. He had thick greasy lube in his ass and around the pucker of his asshole. I pushed my cock into his hole it seemed like he began contracting and loosening his sphincters such that his ass was like a mouth hotly sucking my cock. I was sure I'd never had sex this hot in my life before. The rain roared on the metal roof, dripped into the booth, and now and then the door popped open and we'd slam it, and I'd put a quarter in the video machine, and I pumped until my brains shot out of the end of my cock. I saw lights going off in my mind.

I kept pumping him hard and he kept the ass action on me so hard that I was really fuckin' fucking, and I couldn't break away if I'd have wanted to. I was coming again a second time soon.

When I shot in him like ten spurts, emptying the cum from within in me so much that I felt an exhaustion overtake me, he turned and put his arms under my armpits and stopped me from falling to my knees in exhaustion and he held me up, pressed me against the wall with his body, and with one hand took my hand and licked my palm and put it on his dick and I began jacking him off and it was exciting him extremely. This was decadent beyond belief and the heat of it was beyond anything I ever knew.

When we walked across the room, I sensed from the men in the arcade that they did not approve of this black and white sex but it turned them on, too. But they were afraid to come in on us the way we acted.

I was jacking him off and he was about to shoot when he put his hand on his asshole and got it greased, then shoved two fingers between my legs, shoved me hard up against the wall, and from in front of me his long cock reached between and through my soft inner thighs, under my balls, and his penis penetrated just into my second sphincter, and he began putting it in and out of me and it felt so hot. He began to moan, and was going to pull out, but I squeezed him against me and felt him cumin' inside me.

We had to keep pumping quarters into the machine to play like we were watching the movie but we were blind somehow in an erotic cloud of a haze that made me think of Prince, the artist, and the song he had put out with the movie, "Purple Haze." The LSD was painting things rose and yellow colors swirling in a deep purple field.

I felt like this dark skinned beauty of a man had brought me into an atmosphere as strange and wonderful as any I'd ever seen or been in, and his body scent, the musk or perfume of his natural body scent magnified my arousal. I began getting hard again as he kissed me and I pulled on his cock but then he pressed me gently but firmly against the wall with my back against the wall and only his arms behind my waist holding me tummy tight to his, still taking my weight off my feet and let my thighs rest on his standing thighs, me leaning against to wall for balance and him pushing up under my balls so fine, so fine...that I melted in his arms, and he pumped gently, but he was spent, and me too. Apparently knowing I couldn't have taken his long cock from behind like he took my relatively small cock--his twelve would have split me open--he had fucked me from in front. We were done. We didn't want to stop, but we were limp now. I held his mushroom head so trying to milk him of any residual cum, and his circumcised big cock was so pleasurable to hold. I just wanted to sleep with him all night. He had fucked me like I'd never been fucked before. His super curly hair acted like Velcro for my white cum, and he rubbed my cum into his pubes to show me he loved it.

We'd forgotten about the video and some guy barged in with another guy in tow and said, "You fuckers can't hog this machine all night."

"We're just leaving," I said and laughed, and my nameless lover laughed too, and when the other guy saw he was black he said the nastiest thing, using the "N" word against my friend and me a "luvah" of the "N"...but this guy and his fuck mate were both twice our sizes and we got out of there as fast as we could.

My black partner whispered into my hear, "You are the best. Don't go near that guy, though. He hurts guys when he is finished with them."

I was about to pick up the conversation by whispering into my nameless black partner's ear when I realized he was splitting for the door. The rain was pouring on the ceiling, and I guess he felt it was a good time not to be trapped in a southern theatre, which was seemingly beginning to fill up with rednecks.

I tried to call after him to wait. I wanted to get a name and number.

He was gone. I saw him look at me like a ghost from the doorway. He was standing in the Apollo's purple neon light and rain was pouring on his head and face, and his chest an stomach were still exposed and water ran down his torso in rivulets. I saw him mouth the words, "I love you."

I did the same thing, "I love you!" He put on some shades, even though it was night, and pulled his collar together at his neck as the door of the arcade closed and then, I stood there unsure of what to do. I got my shirt and pants neater, and then I realized I was letting the guy get away and I ran to the front door, and out into the night, there were twenty or more cars and pickup trucks in the parking lot and he was no where to be seen. I went out to the side of the highway to look in both directions, and there he went, running in the rain, almost two blocks away, small against the shiny wet pavement from the street lamps, and I felt an emptiness I had only known as a boy ,an emptiness when I felt lost and afraid, this black man whose name I never knew had evoked in me something that had been dormant. He possessed a vital life force I needed desperately.

One of the reasons they called me schizophrenic at the hospital some times was just what was going on now. I began running down the street chasing this guy. I couldn't catch him. He turned a corner, and when I got there he was gone. I walked up to the first house I saw and even though it was early morning, about two a.m or later. Irrationally, I rang the door bell. I was going to ask for him. No one answered. I went to the next house and knocked. Then I realized I was being crazy. I looked to be sure no cops were around, and I ran back out of this sleeping neighborhood and to the Apollo Arcade.

I knew I was going crazy and needed to stop, find Sandy, and write in my journal about this later, so I made a mental note to write about this the next day in my journal beside the pool.

I felt something like an earthquake in me. I wondered in that moment if I would ever feel this solitude leave me, a dense and thick feeling of aloneness that was more drenching than the rain absorbed me and made me little, weak, and small.

I cursed myself for not getting a phone number because I had every intention in the world of getting his name or address, but our meeting was sudden, our time together intense, and our departure instantaneous. True anonymity. An authentically spectacular anonymous sexual encounter! It seemed sacred to me. Later I wrote about him, and it stayed true my whole life that he remained the best fuck I ever got and gave. I wanted him. I truly wanted him, this anonymous rather ragged creature. He could easily have been homeless. I could readily have given him a home.

I came back into the building from the rain, in the lobby, walked along the counter in the front areas where they sold condoms and dildos, and lube, and magazine and movies, and then there was an open door into the sex theatre. I'd buttoned up and then I saw Sandy coming out of the arcade labyrinth and we made eye contact and rushed into the movie theatre where there were men of all sizes and colors pseudo-outdoors camping and the camp tables and other props had the purpose of being a set for every kind of homosexual position in sex that you could imagine two's and three' and four's to be in. He and sat next to each other and giggled a bit, still stoned, and he said, he didn't think he would go alone in the Arcade again because he met some guy that was like a cop who was hassling the customers, and I only mentioned that I'd watched a video in a booth and some guy tried to suck me. I felt I couldn't tell him how hot the sex I had was with the black guy. I really wanted to get up and follow that man again, but not then, not later that evening, not the next days nor even in the years to come when I hit this place alone, never did I ever see the best fuck I ever had in my life again. No one knew I visited the Apollo theatre. I continued to sneak over to it for years, until it burned down.

I never saw the man again but I never forgot how hot his body was and his ass was like double delight. I thought later that probably he was with fever of some major degree to have emitted that much body heat, but I didn't know, and all I remember was the faintest outline of his body and pockmarked face and the suction of his lips and ass.

I was enthralled. I was enchanted...with another man, and there I was sitting next to my "new lover" wondering about all these relationships and the ties that bound one man to another in some semblance of exclusivity. And my ass was titillated, somehow electrified by the guy's fucking of me with the head of his long cock and his shaft sheathed in my external flesh and him in me. I developed a fever that night, and the next day I seemed to have some flulike symptoms, fever, upset stomach, burning eyes, but I was much more "lovesick" than physically sick. Whatever the fever that man had, I had it now, and I was glad to be burning up. It was like being in his wet sweaty arms, and I never wanted to stop smelling his odors. Our odors.

This was not the way the Gay world presented itself in New Orleans. This was a sex theatre where men went to meet men.

Did I feel like I belonged in the gay world? Not really. I believed I belonged in the sexual world, not gay, but homosexually sexually making it with men, not playing at marriage or imitating straight couples and all the rituals those couples go through.

I made a note in my mind to bring this up to Sandy when the time was right. It was a delicate subject: relationships.

Sandy and I sat in the movie theatre for about twenty minutes. Then from boredom and the stupidity of the sex movie, I began to get sleepy and needed something to drink or eat.

"Sandy," I said with my head on his shoulder, he seemed so much older than me suddenly, "Can we go? I'm tired?"

I heard myself sounding like his little boy and it seemed appropriate but it also scared me to think I was beginning to fit into a special role with him, beginning to acquire expectations he'd put on me, no matter how much he was open to Bert being in the bed with us while Linden was in bed fucking Drew, I knew he was being patient as a strategy.

I wanted to be free. It was a scary realization, that I didn't want to be property of Sandy, not property of anyone's at all.

roychaudoir@me.com
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