Pleasure Thieves

Phillip had a portable outside world that he carried with him. Maybe that was the attraction. Harry had never been hot for men, not for women either, except when a detached heat would spread through him, and then he'd find a cunt, thin and clinging or wide and comfortable and exhaust his prick. He'd pull it out of them, depleted and eager to leave them.

There were better ways to make it. Not get your prick into anything, just feel it ponderous like an arrow leading you into strange experience.

But that way it had to be without heat, just a cool fucking erection in the head. Phillip was strange enough to be a constant invitation. He never was hot for Phillip, but that was the only place for the cool fuck to go. So his prick never got finished and ready for something else.

Now he was beginning to plan the Llewellyn job; that was where his maleness wanted to be. An immense job, absorbing and satisfying. It would take brains and courage; it would take maleness.

Phillip was watching him, seeing him go off into a world nobody could touch. There was something pathetic and childlike about Harry's dream world, yet it had to be taken seriously. There was no question that the visions, created by a deprived child became the acts of the man.

That was how they all got there, wasn't it?

Even Phillip cared enough about something to get here, and not mind the ten month stretch. He cared about money. How original! The things you could do with money. There was no Midas touch about him, no sensuous thrill in spilling the sheckles through stretched fingers. He put all the money back into gracious living, fantastic expression, something out of a woman's magazine. The one thing, the one raison Anonymous The Pleasure Thieves Page 4

d'etre were the paintings. To line his walls with the brilliance, the most selective vision of all ages. Phillip despised museums, despised the keepers, despised the confused giggling viewers or the awed small town viewers or the arrogant student viewers. A painting had to be lived with, had to be cultivated. There should be a master-slave relationship, sometimes the painting master, sometimes Phillip master.

To keep the thing interesting. Like sex, only better. Museums were like prisons, and he wanted to tear down the precious colors that became barred windows on the long corridor walls.

Phillip felt the attraction of Harry's long relaxed body. Harry was as perfect as a master's etching, perfect and simple without a wasted line or a decorative curve. Phillip lifted himself from his cot, and crossed his arms on the rim of Harry's decker, a layer above his. He ran his fingers across the sharp planes of the upraised face. It should have felt like steel, cold and smooth to the touch. Instead, he was surprised to find his flesh damp, and the bristles of his heavy beard rough against his palm. He moved his fingers down to the what-could-be female flesh of his neck.

Harry lay as if in a dream, musing to himself. His mind's absence allowed Phillip to possess his body freely. To possess him coldly, to watch him as a snake watches a drowsy rabbit in the hypnotic sun.

"Harry," he said, as softly as a woman.

Harry lay immobile, unresponding.

"What will you do when you get out?" Phillip murmured.

"What I've always done."

"Take the pretty diamonds out of the pretty girls' ears?"

"Out of the ugly safes, off the ugly chests."

"Don't you like women, Harry?" Phillip's hands were moving under the rough shirt, down to the leather belt, loose around Harry's waist.

He swung himself up on the bed.

"I like diamonds."

"Why Harry? Because they're so cold and deep, cold and perfect.

Time makes it perfect?"

"A diamond is perfect. Time makes it perfect. Time makes it more beautiful. Flesh decays."

"Diamonds turn to dust. Someday all the diamonds will turn to dust."

"Not before me."

"But Harry," Phillip's hand had edged beneath the buckled belt soft into the hairy field that surrounded the dozing man's lazy prick, "you're so insignificant." The prick gave a responding jump, the face remained immobile.

"More significant than women, less significant than diamonds."

"Is it all a question of what turns to dust first. I'll be dust before you are Harry."

"I'm more significant than you." Harry turned bored grey eyes on Phillip's mocking face.

"Why do you say that, my diamond merchant?" Phillip was speaking as if to a drugged child. "Aren't all men equal?"

Harry coughed a spontaneous laugh, "You have no courage, Phillip.

You have no depth."

"Ahhh," Phillip sighed, "my diamond merchant is also a philosopher.

My hard as a diamond lover," and his fingers were a fist around Harry's cock. He pressed his thumb against the bulging vein. "Hard as a diamond," he approved, and lowered his head to the swaying erection.

"You're so weak Phillip, there's so much you want. A diamond doesn't want anything."

"So you've modeled yourself after a diamond. But no facets, Harry.