Selys was a parvenu but rising star in the competitive and mercurial arena of fashion retailing. He was designer par excellence but his peers would berate his caliber with assertions of nepotism at play.

For Selys was Byron's lover, and Byron was a heavyweight on the executive suite.

As far as compatibility went, Byron and Selys were raised in opposite environments. Whereas one was born feeding off silver flatware, went to an Ivy League business school and enjoyed the usual trappings of wealth, the other fed off castaways his mother would scour from the soup kitchen where she worked, rose to the top from an apprenticeship with a male tailor and longed for the trappings of wealth which he would see on 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous'.

It was such a battered old TV his family had in the one-roomed apartment that Selys promised his mother as soon as he drew his first salary, he would buy a new one for her.

And whereas one started to suspect he might be gay only while at college, when he had secretly admired the track star, the other already knew the truth about his own orientation from the time he started to enjoy playing with his sister's Barbie doll. That was also when he discovered he liked being in bondage, in drag and in mod.

Selys was blithely aware, from a young age, that he would one day grow up to dress the mod crowd, the ones that frequented the nightclubs at the gay quarters. He frequented them, too; he simply enjoyed the rush that dancing with the lithe-bodied young and gay men there accorded him. It was at one of these clubs that he picked up Byron. And then the next morning Byron James would include Selys in the elite design team of his father's rag trade.

A month later, Selys's name was threaded in fabric and carried on the backs of men's collars.

One could only guess how that must have made Lew feel. Lewellyn Greene was the senior designer and had fought for years for the right to his own label. But everyone on the board of directors merely dismissed Lew's complaint, putting down envy as the healthy outgrowth of intra company rivalry. Besides, Selys proved to be worthy investment and on the strength of his creations, the first fiscal quarter saw the company rake in a 35% profit jump.

Now, Selys, though twenty-five years of age, still liked playing with and dressing up Barbie dolls but this time they were his dolls. And what a large collection he had, all wearing the Selys Wade masterpieces of velvet, silk and jacquard dossiered as originals.

And Byron indulged Selys. Byron loved Selys, what could he say? It was child's play to spend upward of a thousand dollars to indulge Selys's girlish pastime, for Byron had all the money to do it. Besides, Barbie was Selys's muse and Byron didn't want anything to plug Selys's creative juices from flowing.

The love-thing the men were doing, in the first year they were cohabiting, quickly settled the thirty-six-year-old Byron into the unpredictable realms of domesticity and converted Selys into a committed monogamist.

No one doubted Byron's love and Selys's sincerity.

No one however was willing to bank on the honeymoon lasting more than a year.

Many now swore that they had seen it coming.

Selys simply woke up one day and felt bored. Byron, on the other hand, felt run into the ground from putting up with Selys's endless proclivities. But that was the rub: he only put up with Selys's desires, but never invested time and energy to take part in them. Selys wanted and needed more. The leather, the cuffs, the clothes pegs, the paddle, the chastity belts: these lifestyle badges of the sado-masochist's persuasion were scattered around them in their shared menage a trois but spawning mold from lack of use.

Byron felt adrift when Selys resorted to self-pleasuring.

And Selys was increasingly disdainful about Byron's limited opportunities for excitement and pedestrian hobbies.

It was written on the wall: Selys would return to his roots.

Byron had felt betrayed. He was fuming and ranting at the brief note: 'Heading to the city for a bit of fun; don't wait up. Love, Selys.'

But then the phone rang and a hurried plea for help conducted Byron immediately to the city. A mutual friend had just revived a swooning Selys. Byron felt an urge to abandon his husband, but changed his mind. Besides, what would the press do if they got wind that the hotshot designer Selys Wade was found drunk, naked and raped outside Club 2000?

And they were bound to get wind the way celebrity voyeurism was among Angelenos.

What publicity that would give Byron's father's company.

But more important, what a torrid testament to the travesties of success and wealth that would be.

And then there was Selys. In spite of everything, Byron was ingenuously in love with Selys.

Byron brought Selys home and after a shot of anti-tetanus, a feverish Selys was entreated to bed.

Byron felt a presence on the stairs the following morning. He clued in and found a penitent but terrorized Selys huddling himself into a tiny ball in his robe. In time mollified by how vulnerable Selys looked, Byron waved to him to join him at the computer.

It would seem that the right thing to do to show that all was forgiven was for Byron to go up the steps and bring Selys down. But perhaps the older of them was not in a forgiving mood yet.

Selys sat in the little space on the bench that Byron had created for him. They played some beastly game and then as the burden of last night's foible weighed down heavily on him, Selys broke down in tears, flinging himself on Byron's shirt.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, meaning it.

The tears would dry after the hour had lapsed. But now came the call for absolution.

It had crossed Byron's mind while keeping up a solicitous vigil at Selys's bedside that it was not entirely Selys's own fault. It took two people to make a marriage, even a de facto one, work, and it occurred to Byron that he, Byron, had not been playing his part. Selys had been the more faithful one, now that he came to think of it: Selys had gamely participated in anything Byron liked, even forgo a personal pleasure for any one of Byron's stuffy hobbies that were the humdrum innovations of his privileged lifestyle and different class of citizenship.

Besides, how difficult was it to learn to wield a paddle?

Or don a leather chap?

Or watch his lover squeeze himself into a cage, naked and bound up in chains?

In the evening Byron went to awaken Selys from his weepy nap. Selys was immediately stripped of his robe while he was lain across Byron's knees.

"What the ... ?" Selys blabbered incoherently, looking over his shoulder at Byron, who didn't look like Byron but some strange man in a leather hood, "what are you doing?"

"Did I say you may ask questions?" Byron replied. "From now on it's 'sir' every time you address me. Do I make myself clear?"

Selys stared aghast at the mask bopping above him. But he recognized the voice as unmistakably belonging to Byron. Completely made naked and ingloriously paralyzed by the weight of Byron's arms over his shoulder and waist, Selys felt his penis already enlarging but because it was gorged between Byron's thighs, he was helpless to service it.

"I believe I just asked you a question, boy," Byron said.

"Yes," Selys cried, his voice not cleared of sleep, "yes, sir."

In the instant of Selys's nervous reply, Byron premeditated a successive barrage of smacks from his gloved hand to his boy's bottom, bludgeoning the nude cheeks to warm them up for a more severe spanking afterward. Selys readily wailed while Byron intermittently suspended his spanking to explain that this was what he, Selys, could look forward to every time he was found to have transgressed and disobeyed.

"Of course you need to know why you have transgressed and disobeyed," Byron explained further, "and you would only know this if there were rules by which to live and the rules were broken. Tonight, after you have done the dishes and put them away, we shall sit down and start setting rules for ourselves. In the meantime, be prepared to be soundly paddled as penalty for the error you committed last night."

Byron had Selys in the usual position to be paddled, standing up and bending over from the waist, his hands clutching his ankles, his legs spread apart. Selys then received smack after smack of the vicious instrument of punishment that had spared not an iota of the fleshy layers of his bottom and thighs.

As Byron found his momentum, he doubled the leverage in his swing to force Selys's flesh to quiver and rock.

Being on the top floor penthouse proved an indispensable asset for how Selys had screamed from the pain, and at the same time loudly goaded and coaxed his lover to apply greater force in his delivery.

Selys had felt close to climaxing a few times, but each time he felt an orgasmic surge lambaste his groin, he swiftly crippled its period of command. Always the active bed partner, Selys had labored hard to prolong the joy of being paddled.

But Selys did finally climax. It was at the sixtieth paddle. Not even Byron had been able to take Selys to this level of elation in their hottest and _s_e_x_iest moments of making love.

There was now one thing left to do to cap their play: thrust a _d_i_l_d_o_ deeply into Selys's still-sore anus and send him to take corner time facing the windows. The _d_i_l_d_o_ drove Selys wild once more so that for a moment he resembled a figure of madness, all flailing limbs and convulsing muscles. Byron threw a boner just because his lover was rediscovering pleasure through him, himself climaxing and spurting thick cum down Selys's throat.

Though it was the first night of a portable and miniaturized S/M experience for Byron, he had learned quickly and well enough to salvage his marriage to Selys, which he planned to go on for a long, long time. Strapping Selys's wrists to the bed rails now, Byron put Selys to bed, but not before rendering helpless Selys's straying penis and philandering testes with a bucolic-looking chastity belt.

Tomorrow would be another day.

(Copyright, JRK, December, '99.)