Chapter 1

“It’s going to take longer than I thought,” Nick said, “restarting the Tales.”

He sat with me and Xo, his fellow eternal wanderer and now, after millennia of avoiding each other (or Xo avoiding him) a friend, at the large table in my loft in SOHO, a place of work, not only for my collaborations with Tash or Yoshie, but for putting together the next installment of his Tales. For some reason he only wanted to meet with me and the Chinese immortal.

“I thought that might happen,” I said, “with Lindy’s troupe heading west without me or my wives.”

It had been decided that, after the wonderfully successful BAM shows, pregnancy had become an issue for my wives continuing to dance. Not because of any fear of damaging fetuses, but because it would become a visual distraction. Acting would be less so. The bump could be hidden. But a stage can’t hide a growing tummy forever. It couldn’t be cropped out or CGIed away like in a movie. Its illusion could only suspend disbelief so far, and more intellectually than visibly. Which meant not only Shira and Eva had been replaced as dancers, and me because I wasn’t going anywhere without them, but Helena as an actor, because of the pregnancy and because of me and her sister wives not continuing.

I think Shira’s pregnancy, the expanded tummy, with the tight leotard making the shape clear to be a life growing inside her and not anything to do with her getting fat (all my lovely wives ate carefully and exercised, following Lindy’s methodology like I had, making their baby bumps unable to be mistaken for anything else) increased the powerful sexiness of our pas de deux. Not only did we represent seduction, making love and fucking, but she displayed the result of all that heat. Nothing interrupted our conjoining. No worries about getting her pregnant. She already was. And she wanted to be. She obviously desired the biological result of our passion.

“Not just your wives,” said Nick. “I won’t be joining them.”

“I presume Lindy knows,” I said.

He nodded. “I told her, since auditions began, to keep her eyes open for my possible replacement.”

We had a unique audition process, similar to when Lindy found new dancers while we resided in New England. We actually performed scenes from Tash’s and my new plays, and either plugged auditioners into the scene, or had them perform our roles in other scenes. Lindy said it would let her see if an actor could perform under her choreographic style of directing, and also if they had the imagination and the presence to make it their own, not copying us. And not being a private, one-on-one audition, she could also see how they performed in front of an audience, especially an audience of their peers, with comfort or channeled nerves. Those called back for a second audition she took even further in exploring their comfort zone and imagination, having them improvise those same scenes or, for those uncomfortable with going off script, and could memorize things quickly, to actually say Tash’s and my lines, all so as not to be using the script as a crutch. Lindy said it made for a truer presentation of their abilities.

I ended up being the first to be replaced. Lindy had stumbled into a former lover, a fellow student during her undergraduate years. It had been a highly sexually charged albeit brief affair, the brevity owing to both of them finding each other on the rebound, and both bounding back to their presumed ex-lovers. Neither felt any regret about it, agreeing it had been a wonderful sort of cleaning of the pipes. A most intense and appreciated relieving of frustration.

They reencountered each other during the time my wives and I had been bonding at the Sherry Netherland a month or so before. She had been with her San Francisco lovers, the Aerie Dancers’ leader and her arts administrator boyfriend. George had been their waiter at a middle-brow restaurant in the Bowery. They exchanged numbers.

They met again when Nick’s and Xo’s entourage of angels and mortals moved to New York. A dinner date with Lindy’s female San Francisco lover ended in Lindy’s bed in Brooklyn, the apartment building Nick owned, and where she stayed throughout her time in New York, instead of moving into Nick’s SOHO building where me and my wives stayed.

During the date, he asked about the missing member of their threesome, and Lindy’s lover explained he had a job to return to. Lindy could see his disappointment. It confused her. She had seen his memory of their tryst as she had felt it in the flash of excitement in his eyes when they first bumped into each other.

“Would you have preferred to have him here than us?” she asked carefully.

“Not at all,” he told Lindy. “I could see his interest in me, while being clearly interested in his girlfriend and you. I think we shared the same fantasy.”

“You’re bisexual?”

George laughed. “I’m like a reverse out of the closet guy. My parents ... had been dancers. Featured performers in a Prague ballet company, edgy but not quite pushing the envelope into avant garde. Acceptable enough to tour the evil capitalist west, including New York, where they defected. They encouraged my interest in dance, though my choice of modern and the college I attended displeased them. They also encouraged my interest in my male classmates, and attending a performing arts high school kept me from being ostracized also. But when I became interested in a girl my senior year, and it became my first real love affair, it disappointed past lovers, and my mother. Something about gay sensibilities being more creative or some such bullshit. I could see my father secretly pleased, perhaps partly because my girlfriend happened to be quite beautiful, and I suspect he has had a few secret affairs with younger women. And I think my mother has as well. They may have even known about them or even shared them. They kept that from me, but I have my suspicions.

“Is this the girl you returned to?” Lindy asked.

“For a time, yes.”

“So it didn’t last.”

“No. And I kind of wished I’d just forgotten her and stayed with you.”

“Me too,” Lindy admitted. “But it allowed us to be friends and colleagues.”

“So yours ended too? Your boyfriend?”

Lindy sighed. “Not nearly soon enough. It lingered far too long. It took on the relationship that became a familiar trope. The needy boy. The grasping boy. The imprisoning boy.”

“What do you mean?”

“My boyfriends tend to get desperate.”

“Why not tell them to fuck off?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I like that desperation. Even if it irritates me. Maybe I’m masochistic, or maybe I have such a low opinion of myself that I need someone to worship me. Face it, I bet I look nothing like your beautiful girlfriend. Or the girls or boys that followed. You must know how beautiful you are. And with your height, and your perfect dancer’s body...”

“Would you believe me if I told you I find you as beautiful as any of them?”

“No,” she smirked.

“Maybe you’ll take this the wrong way. But I love your difference. You’re uniqueness.”

“Only in being ordinary instead of beautiful.”

“You’re anything but ordinary. You have a luscious body, a luscious face and a luscious mind. I meant what I said. Being with you has been the best sex I ever had.”

Lindy laughed. “It had been for me too.”

“Had been?”

“Until recently, yes. But let us not dwell on other lovers.”

“Good idea.”

“Uhm,” Lindy’s lover finally interrupted. “So if my boyfriend happens to visit, or...”

George’s intense blue eyes flashed on his handsome, almost pretty, face. He brushed aside the black lock of hair not captured by the band that held the rest of its straight shoulder length. “Like I said, it’s been a fantasy of mine, playing with two women and another man.”

“Mmm,” the woman purred.

Lindy swore she could smell the desire over the smells of the restaurant. She thought the woman might have cum a little. “We should go,” she said, feeling nearly as turned on.

“Yes,” the woman murmured.

George laughed.

Obviously I hadn’t been there to remember the conversation for this book. Lindy remembered it for me, and the aftermath, though that had far less detail.

“It was as good as I remembered,” she said. “Better actually. To the point my poor friend got left behind.”

She had introduced me to George prior to a dance audition. I could see the connection. He impressed me when he danced, and I had seen some passion in my usually lesbian dance partner, Chloe, and no little chemistry, when she partnered with him.

“You’re jealous,” Lindy noticed.

“I shouldn’t be,” I admitted.

“You’re actually better than him.”

“Bullshit.”

“As far as taking hold of my style of choreography.”

“He’ll learn.”

Lindy sighed.

“Tell me about him,” I insisted.

We watched the handsome man approach us. “You should go home,” she told him. “I have to talk to my best friend.”

“Okay,” he smiled, a little tensely. I could tell it wasn’t jealousy.

“You’re in if you want to be,” I told him.

He looked to Lindy, who nodded. His grin lost its tenseness. “Great,” he said. “Talk to you later?”

“I’ll call you tonight.”

“Whenever you want. But I look forward to it.”

I could tell it was the perfect thing to say. I knew about Lindy’s history of clingy boyfriends.

“Tell me about him,” I asked as soon as he left.

“Let’s walk,” she said.

We did, and she related her reencounter with her new lover. She completed it over dinner at a nearby diner.

“Maybe you’ll think I’m being jealous or whiny,” I said afterwards, taking her hand. “And maybe I am a little. But he’s a dancer, Lindy. Trained like you. And whatever appeal I may have had, I think he triples it. It’s not just his talent or his beauty. He’s ... expressive. I’m sure you noticed Chloe connecting with him.”

She nodded.

“He’s perfect Lindy. And even better, he’s attracted to you, and it’s mutual.”

“Is that what it is? This jealousy?”

“He’s replacing me. And not just as a dancer.”

She understood. It would be ridiculous to think it had anything to do with sex. I had five gorgeous wives after all, and Lindy and I hardly ever fucked without company.

“Not exactly a long distance romance we have to worry about,” she nodded. “Best friends sometimes separate.”

“And often no longer are. You were good friends with him after your torrid affair.”

“We get along. He’s easy to talk to.”

“So you agree?”

“No, Joe. You’re my BFF. The last letter.”

“Forever.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. And to tell you the truth, the sex part? I mean, I imagine it’ll get better. And there’s a one-on-one intimacy that intensifies things. But I don’t think it will challenge sex with you.”

“Because of my little trick?”

She giggles. “That too, but it’s also about other company.”

“Making love to us? To Angelique or Tash?”

“Or Yoshie or whoever. We share such love so selflessly.”

“He’s a selfish lover?”

“No. Maybe. It’s relative.”

“Compared to...”

“To you, Joe. Especially to you. And I actually prefer your cock over his. He’s uncut. It’s kind of fun to play with, but aesthetically...”

“I don’t get this beautiful cock thing. A piece of jutting flesh, with veins like blue worms around it, and a Nazi helmet on top?”

She giggled. “It’s not for you to find beautiful. It’s for your ladies. And I wouldn’t mind a close-up view.”

“With who?”

“Angelique? Tash? Yoshie?”

“All your lovers?”

“Yes.”

“Does George expect you? Will he be disappointed?”

“He better not be,” she nearly growled.

We used Tash’s bed, since it was the closest largest one besides mine, and the rest of my wives needed mine. Her three favorite ladies and I focused on her. Once utterly sated, she insisted they focus on me. We added some of Miwa’s toys to counteract having mine the only cock available. It meant double penetration and triple penetration, making Lindy airtight during her time of focused attention with her sucking my cock while a dildo and a vibrator fucked her other two holes. She fucked my wife’s asshole while her former slave bounced on my cock for some of my portion of the evening with Yoshie and me performing a sixty-nine. Yoshie rode me for more orgasms. But I managed somehow to send my ejaculation into my best friend’s pussy both times I came, both times in the missionary position, the last occurring, for the only time that night, with just the two of us. Eyes watched eyes cum simultaneously. Somehow we expressed our goodbyes for at least this part of our relationship.