Brief Encounters

Title: He Touched my Heart
Author: F. Gorden Scott
Length: 3,757 words (  pdf pages)
Publisher: JMS Books
Genre: m/m contemporary
Rating: C-

Blurb:

Silver fox Robert is celebrating his birthday and coming out on the same day. He’s traveled three hundred miles to spend the day with his friend Larry, who treats Robert to his first gay restaurant and then to the Westside Club.

At the club, Robert is awed by the nearly naked stage dancer Bobby. Sparks fly between the two as the evening unfolds, and Bobby dances his heart out for Robert. When Bobby loses his balance and plunges into Robert’s arms, they find themselves on the floor amid the patrons. Bobby’s dance continues, taking on sexual overtones as he rides Robert in blatant violation of the club’s rules.

Before leaving, Robert gives Bobby his business card. Will the younger man call once the music ends and the dance is over?

Review:

This May-December story started out well, but by the end, the flood of tears and  a rushed vaguely coherent ending, kind of ruined it for me. Bobby likes his job as a stripper. He makes better money than he could any other way and he just enjoys what he does, even though his boss is kind of an ass. However Bobby is a romantic, he wants to find someone to love, but he doesn’t care for younger men and is attracted to much older guys. He’s called into work on his birthday, which is kind of depressing, but just his luck, one of the regulars brings in a friend and he’s exactly Bobby’s type. During his dance, he allows the guy to touch him (even though it’s against the rules) and he’s so turned on he comes all over the guy, falls off the bar and ends up on top of the guy on the floor.

Robert gives Bobby his business card, not really thinking a young thing like Bobby could be interested in him, but hopeful. Bobby however ends up washing Roberts card in his jeans and having no way to contact him, falls into a funk. Robert finally goes back to the club but is told Bobby is on “probation” and he leaves a card one more time with the manager.  This was where things went a bit off the rails for me. Some time has passed (a few weeks perhaps?) and Bobby is forcing himself to be his usual perky self and even agreed to a date with a long-time client of the club who had become something of a friend. However as he’s leaving with the guy, he sees Robert and ends up a blubbering mass of tears figuring Robert didn’t care about him. Needless to say the friend/date is not thrilled and goes back inside to give Robert a piece of his mind, assuming he dumped Bobby, then Robert starts blubbering all over the guy. Seems they are both madly in love, even though beyond one night a strip bar is all they’ve ever had. However the date manages to get them together and when they found out he manager had the card but didn’t give it to Bobby, they plot their revenge.

The entire plot of the revenge is to once again have an orgasm on stage which pisses off the boss, then he quits and they ride off into the sunset. So he just moved in with a guy he spent one night with? That was the best you could do for revenge? All of this happens in a few pages and was rather disjointed and rushed and I was left wondering how we went from two sobbing men to riding off happily ever after. It just felt out of place with the build up, as both men question and angst over an opportunity lost. So I think there was a kernel of a story here that started out well, but got rather over-wrought and muddled at the end.