Page 4 of A Little Campfire Blues (Pride Camp 2025 #10)

Chapter Four

Mackenzie

If anyone had told me that I’d be heading to camp for the first time at thirty-eight years old, I’d have laughed my ass off and then asked what the hell they were smoking.

Yet here I was, the bed of my pickup truck full of fishing gear, coolers, clothes, and two pairs of hiking boots, ready to see what the hell pride camp was all about.

Until discussion of it had started popping up among the message boards of the alternate lifestyle group I was a part of, I’d never even known something like it existed.

A camp for queer people involved in the BDSM lifestyle?

Yeah, my first thought was that someone had gotten their wires crossed somewhere and didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

Then I started digging into it, and holy shit, it was real.

I wasn’t the only one shocked to discover that truth either.

A few of the men I’d spent time chatting with over the years had gotten excited about going.

All of us were Daddy Doms, and two, Charles and Marius, were also pet handlers like me.

Over the years, we’d bonded over the struggle to find partners who fulfilled all the desires we had to be both Daddy and handler, landing ourselves in situations riddled with jealousy, accusations, and tantrums that had led to the implosion of relationships.

It had been a year since I’d tried to get involved with anyone, having learned to spot the signs when someone I was interested in was after far less than I was.

I couldn’t remember the exact moment when it had clicked for me that I was over one-night stands and fast flings that burned out after less than a month or two.

They’d grown exhausting and left me disillusioned and bitterly wishing I could just be satisfied with having a fragment of my needs met.

Too bad I was a stubborn man who didn’t know how to tone it down or dial back the intensity I brought to everything I did.

Even on the factory loading dock, where I worked from six in the morning until three in the afternoon, I strove to stay in motion, carrying two crates at a time every time and cranking on those straps until nothing moved when a truck rattled. It was just my way.

Back in my heyday, when I’d been touring as a part of a southern rock band, I’d played like a beast, sweat dripping off me while I slayed on my guitar.

City to city, town to town, we rolled on for fifteen years.

Unfortunately, during all that time on the road, we picked up some bad habits too.

Drinking, indulging, and forgetting that the music industry is ever-changing.

We sniffed our own hype and got drunk on it, wallowing in the successes and growing lazy.

It was a hell of a wakeup call when we failed to chart with the release we’d labored over for almost two years, and to my shame, none of us was able to rebound from that.

Instead of getting our acts together, we allowed ourselves to be swallowed up by that failure, and not long after, the band fell apart.

Kicking around the Memphis scene had been pointless after that, and I honestly hadn’t had the heart to try again with a new group of guys, even when the opportunity was offered to me.

I’d tucked tail and returned home to Oregon, applied at the factory I’d worked at during my final years of high school, and settled into a life of early morning wakeups, grueling work, and evenings spent restlessly prowling, looking for something to fill the hole the loss of my music had left.

I still hadn’t found it, but along the way I’d learned how to be content with that.

Whenever I was feeling too nostalgic, I loaded one of those old CDs and played along to it, fingers stiff and clumsy from disuse.

At least I’d never lost the calluses I’d built up over years of sliding my fingertips up and down those strings, or I’d have bled all over the damned things.

Just thinking about playing left me glancing sideways, triple-checking that I’d remembered to pack my old girl.

The website mentioned evening campfire get-togethers and encouraged anyone who played to bring their instruments along.

The list of activities mentioned karaoke as well as a talent show, so Bertha, my acoustic-electric, was riding shotgun beside me the way she always had.

I’d always felt like the best of me came out when I was playing, not just that old guitar, but when I was deep in play with someone, learning their body language and what the tones of their sighs and wailing moans meant.

There was a type of deep, meditative focus in mapping out a lover’s body, finding harmony with them until you were so in tune with one another it was like being swept into the heart of a song.

I hadn’t written anything new on my old girl in over a year, almost as long as I’d gone without playing with anyone, period.

While I held little hope of pride camp being the place where I’d finally find the people I’d always dreamed of having in my life, I’d poured over the pictures on the website, mentally committing to memory all the places that would be perfect to sit and draw inspiration from.

With any luck I’d leave camp with some new pieces to play around with and maybe even recapture some of the drive and motivation I’d lost when I’d tucked tail and gone back home.

The last time I’d ridden away from here, I’d been filled with a hell of a lot more swagger, that cockiness dripping off me when I’d said goodbye to the people who’d loved me.

Hell, I’d practically promised my mama the moon and crowed to anyone who’d listen about how the boys and I were gonna take Nashville by storm.

And we had, for a time.

But that same arrogance had burned bridges too; some who might have been in a position to help when we fell on hard times.

Only that helping hand hadn’t been offered after the way we’d rejected the opportunity to be mentors and collaborators on various projects over the years.

Back then we’d only cared about the next rung on the ladder.

While we’d always been elated to work with those we’d admired and hoped to one day reach the same level as, working with lesser names was something we’d turned our noses up at.

Until those lesser names had surpassed us and we found ourselves wishing for that connection.

Talk about a kick in the ass from Karma.

In the final days of the band, our manager reached out to a promoter putting together a festival being headlined by one of the individuals we’d turned down the chance to work with several years before.

Needless to say, we hadn’t been awarded a spot.

In the days that followed, with few bookings and little revenue trickling in from our failed album, we’d been forced to face the reality of our situation.

We were no longer relevant or even welcome in many of the spaces we’d once dominated.

The fall came far faster than the ascent, leaving us all with a serious case of bitterness and pissed-off frustration as we’d come together in that last band meeting.

None of us had the heart to write new material without the motivation of a tour or festival circuit looming on the horizon.

Especially when it wasn’t just the one promoter who turned us down, it was several, all in a long line.

Each time we realized that the people telling us no were the very people we’d said no to in the past.

The fates had spoken.

We were done.

A southern rock flame-out story

That was the legacy I’d spent the past two years back here in Oregon trying to erase.

Every day on the docks I did a little more than was asked of me, picked up the slack when others fell behind, and stayed late when management needed it.

It had gotten to where I’d started shaking my head, saying, no, sorry, you must have the wrong guy, whenever anyone recognized me from my days with my band.

Maybe it was a lie, but in my heart I knew I wasn’t that guy anymore and would never be that guy again.

Best to hold on to the pieces of the past that had been amazing without having to answer questions about what I was doing back there, why I was working at the factory, and if I was still making music.

I wasn’t.

At least not for anyone but me and the few houseplants my sister had given me that I’d managed not to kill.

I might not have a black thumb when it came to them, but the stubborn little buggers who survived did so out of sheer tenacity.

Alternating between forgetting to water and forgetting when I’d watered and overwatering, I’d drowned more than a few or left them with a bad case of fungus and root rot.

Some Daddy, right, can’t even take care of a houseplant.

Shit, that was not the mindset I needed right now.

Thinking about my failures on the way to what I wanted to be an inspiring and motivational two weeks was not the right way to kick things off.

I had sixty-five miles of driving ahead, a little more than an hour once I factored in the speed limits on the backroads once I pulled off the highway.

Only there was nothing on the radio to hold my attention, and the few things that did just got me thinking about a mood or a moment in time that I didn’t want to focus on right now.

Maybe an audiobook. I’d recently broken down and gotten a subscription, then loaded up on queer fantasy novels, where everyone, even the beasts, found their mates, close bonds of friendship, and their happily ever afters.

I’d barely heard fuck all from any of my bandmates since we’d split up.

Hell, the last time I’d gotten a message from anyone, it was Terry, our old bass player, asking if I could hook him up with some cash since he’d spent his rent money on bail.

I’d had it, so I’d sent it. Received a thanks, man in response, and nothing since.

Shit, okay, stop thinking, fucker. Stop thinking.

I told my phone to cue up the poly pride cruise book I’d snagged because the smirking boy on the cover had been positively adorable, and I’d been curious to see what kind of story the author had written for him.

As the words of the opening scene filled my truck, I could picture Daddy Duncan sitting in his car, fretting over whether or not it was too early in the relationship to take his little and pup on a Caribbean cruise vacation.

Little Ember answering the door with Boo, his boa constrictor, over his shoulders while he fed Bump in the Night, his bearded dragon, a cricket, made me laugh and wonder how he’d come to name them the way he had.

If he was my boy, I’d want him to share those stories with me and any others that let me get to know him better.

And Rusty, the pup who expressed his worries about having too dominant a personality for a handler to want to take the time to learn what he needed, left me just wanting to hug him and tell him that a competent handler who was secure in who he was as a Dom would never have an issue with his pup being proud, confident, and self-reliant when he needed to be.

I hated seeing that shit when I did visit clubs and tried to spend time with the pups and littles who didn’t seem to be receiving much attention from anyone.

Unfortunately, all the clubs close enough to where I lived were still too far for me to visit as often as I needed to forge lasting relationships, but still.

On the nights I was there, they were the ones I focused on, hoping that in some small way I’d made the evening better for them and left them with the hope that someone else would come along and see how wonderful they were.

Maybe if one had truly grabbed my heartstrings and left me with a burning need to see them again, I’d have made it a point to visit with more frequency and even invest in a membership instead of a weekend pass, but I’d yet to feel the burning spark I’d been yearning for.

Was I waiting on something that only happened in the stories I listened to—that thing so many others claimed to have felt the moment they met the one ?

You’re damned right I was.

With the same desperate desire I’d always felt when I took to the stage, I waited for my forever, all while struggling to believe it would ever happen for me.

Did I fail to connect time after time because I couldn’t fully believe in it, or trust that the fates had something amazing in store for me?

Or was I simply letting the failures of the past color my expectations of the future?

Had I created one of those self-fulfilling prophecies people talked about when they said that someone’s fear of failure had led them to fail spectacularly after they’d done something to sabotage themselves?

Hell, in my time with the band, we sabotaged ourselves over and over again, with that ego of mine playing a big part of it on more than one occasion. Failure had taught me to tame it, but it had also taught me how easy it was to let my dreams slip through my fingers.

As I listened to the moment in the story where Duncan explained to Rusty how much he enjoyed sitting back and watching their little, Ember, submit to him, I was reminded of how much I’d always loved watching a little and pup play together.

The dynamics of the relationship in different headspaces was something few ever got to experience.

I had and I craved it like those bottles of tequila I’d learned to leave alone.

Tequila and me wasn’t a good combination, much like me and loneliness. At least at the camp, with so many others around, the only reason I’d have to be alone was if I wanted to be.