Lower Than Hearth

Overview: habu, a bisexual former supersonic spy jet pilot, intelligence agent, academic, mainstream book editor, and diplomat, is a published mainstream novelist, short story writer, and essayist under other names and in another dimension of his life. He has lived extensively in East and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe as an embassy-based intelligence agent, which influences the settings and plots of many of his stories. He now lives in a picturesque and historical Midatlantic/Upper South state university town, with an accommodating spouse, where he writes, edits, teaches, and indulges himself. A Valentines Day Romance. Having outlived one older lover, young Washington, D.C., playwright Trent Colson is (only barely) resisting the attractions of another older man, stage director Gerhardt Von Hultz, who is in cancer remission. Trent retreats to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, nominally for quiet time to make rewrites to his coming play, but more in sexual frustration and denial. Here he falls under the power of a predator lover, Buster, who sees sex between men as a clear victor versus vanquished struggle in which the only point is the concluding ejaculation. Buster defines Trent as the natural vanquished and manipulates him as such. Another man enters, however, who endeavors to prove to Trent that there is far more to a sexual relationship between men than that. Will the spell Buster has cast over Trent be broken and what will be waiting for Trent when he returns to Washington?