"Glory!" Part I

Normally, I am the kind of guy who abhors the term "blind date," let alone the concept. Well-meaning friends go out of their way to set you up with someone they are positive is an ideal lifelong match for you; nine times out of ten, this process winds up outlining one simple and unavoidable fact: your friends never, ever know you as well as they think they do.

The process invariably starts with a friend awkwardly approaching the subject in a conversation—usually with a clumsy segue from a totally unrelated topic, or, worse yet, with no segue at all. They just drop the bomb.

"Hey! What are you doing Friday night?" they ask. My stomach acid reflexively begins to churn.

Since I have not seen this coming, and I suck at ad-libbing, I am unable to salvage my pride; I am totally unable to create a bullshit excuse for why I am doing nothing on Friday night, nor am I able to just make up something believable. If I say I want or like to be alone on Friday nights, this is instantly dismissed as insanity.

"Umm," is usually the most intelligent thing I am able to say.

My ploy having thus failed, they feel they have carte blanche to forge ahead. They open with a volley of superlative—yet weaselly—adjectives, cleverly crafted to paint Mr. X as a bastion of perfection, faultless and graceful. Never in any conversational setting is so little actually said with so many words.

On the surface, Mr. X comes across as delightful. Reality, however, has compelled me to devise a short list of blind-date-setting-up adjectives and what they really mean:

Conversationalist: self-absorbed, will not shut up without an act of Congress

Makes a good living: you will hear about nothing but his job and money for five hours

Great personality: butt-crack ugly

Great sense of humor: butt-crack ugly and annoying

A little heavy/chunky: 650 pounds

Quirky: psychotic

Interesting: psychotic

Unique: psychotic

Intense: ax-wielding psychotic

Perfect for you: the only criteria being they, too, are alone on Friday night

The blind date is a doomed concept, practically designed to fail; why do people still set them up? I know my friends care about me; that isn't the issue. Also, most of them are happily settled into lives of their own, with mates/spouses whom they love deeply. I know that deep in their hearts, they want me—a valued and honored friend—to gain the happiness in my life they are experiencing in theirs. Am I seeking a mate? Sure, but not in this manner. Friends who take on the role of matchmaker, although brimming with the best of intentions, can be very dangerous things. In extreme cases, friendships can die in the wake of a disastrous blind date.

Needless to say, I do my damnedest to squirm my way out of any such dates that have been set up for me; however, once in a while, I just can't. The excuses run out, my defenses collapse, the stars are aligned against me—whatever the reason, I occasionally cave and just go through with it. I march toward the weekend with a sense of doom hovering over me like a heavy, black cloud, dreading the inevitable. I find myself contemplating running out in front of speeding traffic sometime around noon on Thursday.

Now with all that bitching aside, I must humbly eat a hearty helping of crow. Every rule has its exception—and that applies even to the potentially evil and personality-sucking concept of the blind date.

Those of you looking for another blind fiasco story will have to look elsewhere. I heartily recommend the movie of that title starring Bruce Willis; it carries the hell of all blind dates everywhere to its hilarious extreme.

But I digress. Allow me to share with you the one and only blind date in my entire life that went well. Consider it a tiny, sparkling diamond of hope in a mile-high pile of manure.

It started in the usual blind-date manner; on Tuesday evening, I had a friend breathlessly describe this hunk of a wolf to me like he was a dream come true. Hell, my friend told me, if I didn't have a mate I would go for him myself! (If that wasn't a line designed to elicit an inward groan, I don't know what would be.) He isn't rich, but he's independent (my friend continued), he's tall, has a hot body and is a microphile!

Hmmm.

Okay, he got points for knowing me well; that is certainly a term that will get my attention. But, I countered, being a microphile doesn't count for much if a person isn't giant, now does it? With a smirk, my friend told me to just shut up and go meet him, already. What could be the harm? (I didn't have the heart to bring up the phrase nutcase stalker.)

Maybe it's because my friend's excitement was contagious, or it had been a while since I had dated anyone, or the stars were aligned yadda yadda yadda. I caved and said yes; my friend arranged the blind date. The moments ticked inexorably toward Friday night.

Woof. My friend has one hell of a Christmas present coming this year.

His name was Philo (the blind date, not my friend), and he was big. Not giant, mind you, but a good eight-and-a-half feet tall, and built like a Mack truck. The khaki pants and faded blue denim shirt hugged his every curve, and even the tiniest motion of his body made those glorious muscles flex and bounce under the straining fabric; I remember watching him pick up a fork, the denim stretching over his bicep until I thought I was going to swoon. Though I didn't dare ask him, I estimated he couldn't have weighed an ounce under seven hundred pounds—and every last bit of it sculpted, swollen muscle.

I fell blatantly in lust with Philo over dinner; I admit it freely. We had conversation; that much I remember, albeit faintly. Somehow I got through the motions of replying and contributing to it, but I don't remember anything I said, let alone any of the topics we discussed. Sheer luck kept me in the game, I think; at least nothing he said or did suggested I was being a babbling, distracted moron—but I was, dammit; I was.

Heaven help me, I wanted him so badly I could taste it. Once during dinner, he stretched to grab a salt shaker or dinner roll or who the hell knows. It was quite a reach, so he sort of loomed over the table, the massive hills of his pecs pressing down so heavily that I could see two of the buttons in his shirt separating a little under the bulk of his chest. An inviting tuft of his chest fur peeked out between the buttons for a fleeting second before he sat back up. He had to see me staring—but he simply smiled.

That is when I felt the warm pressure of his footpaw rubbing against my ankle. It gave me such a start, I bit my tongue.

I have never summoned or paid a check so quickly in my life. I don't recall if Philo offered to split the check or not, and I may have tipped as much as sixty percent. I just don't know—and at the time, I just didn't care. I had to get somewhere with this huge, sexy wolf. Alone. Now!

Philo led me to his car, and I was happy to sit down, even after the short walk out of the restaurant. I was as dizzily giddy as a school girl, and was delighted just to look at him as he drove. He filled the driver's seat, his sexy ears (yes, even they were sexy) brushing the car's roof. His driving style was very masculine, his huge legs propped wide open; that massive basket he was showing off suited his body's bulk quite nicely.

As a tentative move, I half-turned toward him (or as much as I could with a seat belt on) and rested my right paw on his right pec. With a smile on his muzzle, he reached over and patted my paw with his left—and to my delight, he let me leave my palm pressed against his shirt. As subtly as I could, I stroked my pawpads over the swell of his pec; even in its relaxed state, his chest was enormous, warmly pushing out against the thick fabric. I let out an audible gasp as he reached down to shift gears, the great mass of his pec bouncing against my paw. The firm bump of his nipple rubbed against the tip of my pinkie finger for one wonderful, fleeting second.

I couldn't help my sex-starved mind from wondering if Philo was a "grower" or a "shower." Fully relaxed, he was big down there; somehow I knew (hoped! prayed!) he would grow quite a bit larger upon arousal. The visual image of his thick, semi-erect member draped over his tree-trunk thigh was more than I could bear. I eagerly awaited every time the car would hit a bump, making the huge mound in his khakis bounce a little. Heaven help me, I was this close to sliding my paw down to the impressive bulge between his legs—when he parked the car.

I barely had my seat belt unbuckled when he bounded around the front of the vehicle—every inch of him bouncing beautifully—and scooped me out of my seat as though I weighed no more than a pillow. Philo carried me like a B-movie damsel in distress in his arms, my head resting against one of his granite-hard biceps, my legs draped over his other arm. As he walked, his chest bounced against my muzzle, and I couldn't resist the temptation to nuzzle the beefy slabs through the denim as he padded toward a nearby building. He had a clean, slightly woodsy scent to him, which I really liked; I don't care for those who bathe in cologne—or, conversely, don't bathe at all.

Almost immediately inside the building, he carried me into an elevator, gently lowering me down onto my footpaws. With a playful grin, he pressed his palms together in front of his abdomen,assuming one of the classic "most muscle" poses. Philo's shirt bulged so suggestively and invitingly, I thought I was going to faint again. The stitching on the button centered over his chest held its own heroically, but those bunched, swelled pecs put up an amazing fight. I swear I heard a few stitches over his broad shoulders pop quietly as he flexed. The massive muscle wolf then chuckled, drawing me into a tight hug; I was thrilled to have my nose mashed against that perfect chest again. Not to mention the heat of his oversized package rubbing against my abdomen.

It was a long elevator trip; that much I could tell. Beyond that, though, the passage of time or any other measure of reality was pretty much a blur to me. At long last, though, the doors opened, and he released the bear hug on me, leading me into a small room.

That is very literally all it was: a small room. Slightly more rectangular than it was square, it measured roughly twelve by ten feet. There was no furniture, and not a single window. To my right was the brushed-steel elevator doors, to my left, a smaller, single-panel wooden door. Above the latter was a small box, in which there were mounted two lights—one green, one red. The red light was currently lit. The entire room—walls, ceiling and floor—was stark white, with not so much as a speck of dust in sight.

Not exactly warm, intimate surroundings, but I would have been delighted to have been accompanied by Philo to a landfill. I closed in for another hug.

The big guy quickly countered my move, though, his huge paws pressed down on my shoulders and kept me at arm's length. Releasing my right shoulder, he waggled a finger before my nose, admonishing me to practice a little patience. Then, in a gesture of almost sadistic teasing, he lowered his paw to gently grope between my legs. He had to feel I was about five seconds away from a raging erection.

Leaning down toward me, his warm breath tickling my ear, he murmured two directions: strip down and wait for the green light. On the last point, he motioned with his muzzle toward the lights above the smaller door.

Before I could react, he swiftly pivoted around (showing that hard, broad back and wonderful, firm buns—gods!). Philo shoved what looked like an electronic hotel key into a slot next to the elevator, and the doors opened immediately. He gave me a wink, and the doors closed.

He was gone. What the fuck.

All of a sudden, this had the high stench of a setup. I couldn't get out through the elevator—it required a coded key, and Philo had that—and heaven only knows what awaited me on the other side of the other door. Hell, there could be a whole platoon of gay-bashers with baseball bats in there. A bit extreme, I know—but that is where my mind went for a moment. Gay, naked, aroused wolf beaten to a pulp; what a lovely headline that would make.

Well, there was no way in hell I was going in there nude. And the near-erection I had going just moments ago felt light years away now. Actually, it felt like I would never have an erection again in my entire life.

Was I being too paranoid? Would a good friend set me up for something like this purposely, or did he just not know what he was getting me into? Philo seemed nice enough; nothing during our conversation during dinner caused any mental red flags to pop up. A million thoughts along those lines raced through my mind in the space of just thirty seconds or so.

The light above the door was still red. I tried turning the knob; locked, of course. I decided to adopt an realist's stance; I braced myself for the worst and expected the best.

In for a penny, in for a pound; I also stripped down, standing buck naked before the door and awaiting the green light. They say a watched kettle never boils, and I tried to divert my attention from the light—but there was nothing else in the room to look at. Pile of clothes. Seen it. Elevator doors. Ditto. Light. Still red.

Bleah. Clothes. Door. Light. Clothes. Door. Light. Red again. Shit. Clothesdoorlight....

Green!

Sure enough, the knob turned in my paw, and I padded into the next room. Seconds after the door closed behind me, I heard a soft clack sound. I tried the knob—this time from the other side, of course—and wherever I was, I was locked in again. I imagined the green light on the other side switching back to red; apparently this was a very limited time offer. Had I waited ten seconds longer, I would still have been in that tiny room.

No homophobes with baseball bats, anyway. But what a curious room!

This new room was much larger; it was big to a startling degree. The first thought that crossed my mind was "airplane hangar." It was a long, narrow, rectangular room, with banks of fluorescent lights sunk in along the longer walls. I thought that odd; all I saw on the ceiling were the star-shaped metal heads of a sprinkler system.

The floor seemed to slant slightly downward from the longer walls toward the center of the room. Right down the middle ran a grate about two feet across. I figured it was a drainage system, the slanted floor designed to sluice water toward the metal grating. Was I in a gigantic public shower area? I dismissed that thought immediately; except for the sprinkler heads high overhead, there were no nozzles or spigots of any kind to be seen.

The décor here—or lack thereof, more appropriately—was identical to that of the smaller room; everything was blinding white from ceiling to floor. It was almost stiflingly warm in there; I was glad that I had stripped down. As I padded toward the middle of the room, I noticed even the tiled floor was almost hot; I guessed it must have been artificially heated. So folks are supposed to be naked in here, I deduced; that would explain the higher temperature. But why?

Just then, my attention was drawn to the most unique element of the room's layout. Way down at the other end, the narrow wall was dominated by a huge circle. It dominated the entire room, actually; jet black in color, it stretched from ceiling to floor. It was one hundred feet high, if it was an inch.

Call it curiosity, call it feng shui; I was attracted to it—and as I got closer, I could see more detail in the enormous circle. Its outside rim was a thick rubber ring about five feet thick. The soft, pliant material dimpled a little as I pressed my paw against it. The inside of the circle radiated out from the center in curved lines; it was a design that took my mind a moment to fully grasp, perhaps because I had never seen it on such a huge scale.

Imagine a camera shutter blown up to thousands of times its normal size. This was an iris, then, an opening. But an opening to where?...and what would be coming through it...?

My memory flashed back to when my friend was excitedly extolling the virtues of my then-unnamed blind date. He's a microphile!, he had gushed. In one almost overwhelming rush of realization, it dawned upon me what was going on here: a long, narrow room with a circular hole one hundred feet across in the wall at one end.

Holy jumped-up, corn-shucking shit.

Somewhere off in the distance, I heard an almost subliminal humming noise. It sounded like a dynamo of some kind was thrumming to life. The baritone rumble got closer, as if it were crossing the ceiling—and this was punctuated by a loud pffssst! sound overhead. The sprinkler system had kicked on, and little cone-shaped cascades of water were raining down on the floor—and onto me.

Only this wasn't water. It had a slight medicinal smell to it. I held my paw out and collected some of it on my palm. Dipping the fingers of my opposite paw into the liquid, I lifted it to my nose for another sniff—and also felt it was extremely slippery. It was lube; hundreds of gallons of lubricant were spraying down from the sprinkler heads, the floor glimmering as it got coated.

Had I a clear-thinking brain cell in my head at this point, I would have reconsidered my next move; I tried to take a step. Of course, the only spots on the floor that weren't lubed at this point were the areas under my footpaws—and as I stepped forward, I slipped in a broadly exaggerated slapstick manner. Arms pinwheeling grandly at my sides, I watched my legs fly up before me as I landed painfully on my ass.

I sat there, rubbing my tender rump, feeling the warm lube soak my pelt down to the flesh. Just as the pain subsided in my backside, another mechanical rumble started. This one was much closer. The iris was opening.

At first, I couldn't see much; remember, the center of the circle was fifty feet up. I didn't dare try to stand up, so I more or less waited, watching the panels of the shutter collapse outward, the opening they created increasing in diameter.

Once I could look up through the iris, what I saw there caught me mildly by surprise. I had expected to see the outdoors, a nighttime sky peppered with stars. Though I could see no real detail through the opening, I could tell that the space on the other side of the wall was an interior setting, as well. Artificially-lit whiteness was all that was visible; I saw no fixtures or the source of the lighting. I couldn't even begin to imagine the dimensions of the room over there.

Still hesitant to stand, I started scooting myself a little closer to the iris once it had finished opening. It was a strain for me to look through, and I wasn't rewarded with much. There was nothing over there but frustrating, blank whiteness; I couldn't make out the ceiling or the walls. There wasn't so much as a corner or junction of perpendicular planes for me to judge by.

Then he stepped in from the side.

A wall of shifting fur filled my field of vision. So much of it went by; I just gaped stupidly at a titanic, thunderously-muscled thigh over four hundred feet across. Once the monstrous, furred mass stopped moving, the giant circle offered me a view of the biggest paw I have ever seen hefting up the biggest sheath I have ever seen.

So...not only was Philo a microphile, but he could also assume the size of a god.

And I was on the "giving" end of the largest glory hole in the entire world.

To be continued....