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EXCERPTS
Short Story
"Dakota."
This short story was the basis for my one-act play, The Dakota.
Published: The Circle, the website of Circle Magazine. (Fall 2002).
Description: Surprised and disappointed to discover that his potential sex buddy is an old man, a closeted married man from Connecticut takes advantage of the situation to find out what life is like inside New York's most fabled apartment building.
Excerpt:
Earl Mumford stared out his window at the trees in the park, still grateful after all these years for his comfortable perch overlooking Central Park West. Despite the many changes in the world, some he found exhilarating, some infuriating, he could always take solace in this view, one barely altered through the decades. As he watched, he marveled at how quickly the sunset behind his building always plunged the park into night, especially at this time of the year, when the long hot days seemed to collapse from exhaustion. Off in the distance, he saw the lights of the city come on, inaugurating a different view, one that had changed dramatically through the decades. Turning from the view with a sigh, he stopped to pick up a framed photo from the bookshelf by the window, lowering his reading glasses onto his nose to study it carefully. Pausing with the photo in mid-air, not sure what to do with it, he sighed again and put it back down. What next, he wondered?
Bored with the novel he was reading, he looked around the room expectantly, his face brightening when he remembered the computer, a desktop monstrosity he had reluctantly acquired six months earlier. Ignoring the damage the contraption had inflicted on the décor of his living room, he now loved nothing more than going on-line in search of conversation and adventure. His fingers knew what to do, within moments taking him to his favorite place, a special chat room. Quickly exploring the profiles of all the visitors to the site, he settled on "HotConnMan," sending him a short provocative message.
Having suffered through another slow week, Mark Mayfield was thrilled to receive the message. Now in his forties, Mark was pained by the way his looks were slipping. His wife didn’t notice, because she had her hands filled taking care of their three rambunctious children. All that mattered was that he came home to Stamford, Connecticut most nights and offered some relief with the kids. She never asked him about work or his other activities in the big city, so she had no idea that he transformed himself into a social butterfly every day at lunchtime, reveling in the company of the other members of his midtown gym, some of whose bodies he got to know as intimately as his wife’s. For years, he found his encounters in the steam room thrilling, dazzled by the beauty of some of the men he was able to attract. But eventually, as with so much else in his life, the magic dried up. Sometimes he found himself making passes at men he wouldn’t have even looked at a few years earlier.
All of this changed when AOL entered his life and he found that he was once again a hot commodity thanks to his facility as a writer. Slipping into the computer room to visit his favorite chat rooms whenever his wife wasn’t around, he made friends all across the country, often finding dozens of new e-mails waiting for him when he logged on. Sometimes he came across members of his gym on-line and made dates to get together in the steam room. If he didn’t like what showed up, he just didn’t identify himself. When he tired of this game, he started to hunt for men with apartments in the city convenient to his office, nurturing these relationships in cyberspace until they invited him over for lunchtime sex.
[End of excerpt]
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