Curious

by Seth King

  “MSM?”

  “You haven’t heard of that whole thing? It’s where, like, straight guys hook up with other straight guys. It stands for ‘men who have sex with men.’ Do you live in a cave?”

  “Well, I’m pre-law, so…yes, I do.”

  “Whatever,” she laughs. “Tell me, for real: why are you calling?”

  “I, um…”

  At this point I wish I could spill it out, I wish I could tell her that Beau paints the sky for me every morning and places the stars over the ocean in my head every night. But I can’t. Nobody even knows about this. So I rush her off the phone and hang up.

  But I can’t get something out of my head – MSM. What is this?

  I head to Google and soon get lost in some pretty interesting articles. It all has to do with the same subject I was researching before, I just didn’t know there was a name for it. Apparently it’s been a hot subject for sociologists and researchers over the past three or four years. First I find a study from a Scotland think tank that specializes in evolving attitudes regarding sexuality. It enlightens me on so much – for instance, there are all different kinds of MSM situations, and people come into this for all different reasons. One “straight” man in the study says his sexual appetite is so huge, he just hooks up with a guy if he can’t get with a girl at that moment, and the researchers even gave him a lie detector test – and found he was being truthful. He really wasn’t homosexual, at least not in his own mind. Another said he actually was attracted to men, but didn’t attach it to any kind of sexual identity. A few identified as bisexual, a few said they were pansexual, but most seemed to shrug when asked for a label. A few even said they only care about the man’s penis, and don’t even look at the man it’s attached to. (I guess this explains that weird “glory hole” thing, where a dude just sticks a penis through a hole and gets it sucked by a guy on the other side of the partition. If I had a dollar for every message I ever noticed scrawled on a bathroom stall saying “blowjob offered, no questions asked, just be here at midnight on Tuesday…”)

  But almost all of the guys in these interviews have one thing in common: they go through lives as what we imagine traditionally “hetero” guys to be. They drink beer and watch football with their hookup buddies. They drive pickups and wear camouflage hats. It seems that “gay” and “straight” don’t even mean that much to them anymore.

  The more I think about it, the more my head spins. Soon I find a New Yorker interview with an anonymous guy who hooks up with men on Craigslist, behind his wife’s back:

  Call it “bromance sex,” call it a “bro-hookup,” or even call it “dude-sex,” but sociologists all agree on one thing: it’s happening. From rural red-state cowboys to inner-city straight men with girlfriends, men who identify as “heterosexual” are having sex with other men in record numbers.

  “As a man living in a society that suppresses gay men, don’t you worry about what this makes you?” a journalist recently asked Marc, real name redacted, who enjoys casual hookups with certain male friends. “Is that why you decline to identify as a gay man?”

  “No. Not at all. Why would it? That’s exactly the point. We don’t care about labels anymore. I like to suck dick, and that’s it. Have you ever seen two girls get frisky and flirty with each other on the dance floor? It happens all the time. Sometimes they even make out. And what is the crowd’s reaction? They cheer and yell and pump their fists. Meanwhile if two men enjoy each other, they’re labeled as being sad and confused and closeted and in denial. What if we looked at women the same way we looked at men? How many more men would admit they’ve felt things, too, instead of doing everything they can do hide it and deny their same-sex urges? How many men have even killed themselves because of our damaging views on all this, and the way we try to force everyone into these little boxes? My over-arching view on the subject is this: who gives a single fuck? This country would be a totally different place if it just stepped back and let people live their lives.”

  I sit back and decide he’s exactly right. We’re so hypocritical as a society. Women who experiment with other women are called fun and flirty and adventurous. Men who do the same with other men are called sad, desperate closet cases. Why did I never realize any of this before?

  And I know, why don’t these men just identify as gay or bisexual? But I think that’s beside the point. One scientist says it’s because men historically don’t attach sex to emotion, like many women do. They’re able to dis-attach the two, to basically fuck someone and then go on their merry ways – so they hook up with a guy and then keep dating women, like it never happened. Another researcher says it’s because these men want the pleasure men can offer, but don’t want any of the baggage of the “queer experience” – the persecution, the isolation. And I can’t deny that this is a good point, too. I can’t remember one popular kid from my high school who happened to be gay – they were all sequestered to drama classes or the arts programs. Many of the jocks wouldn’t even talk to gay guys or associate with them. But then again, I know for a fact that those same jocks would get pretty damn flirty with each other in the locker room, slapping each other’s bare asses and playing games of “gay chicken” where they’d touch each other and see who blinked first…the idea was that the first one to react to the touch was enjoying it, and therefore more gay than the other. But looking back, what is more gay than literally hooking up with another dude to prove you’re not gay?!

  And speaking of that – there’s one more thing I need to know. I want to find out, definitively, how to reach my G spot, so I can play with Beau’s, too. I want to do what he did to me. But I want to make it even better.

  I find an article fairy quickly. “The Male G Spot,” it reads. “Not just a myth.”

  I devour the text and find that the G spot refers to the prostate, like Beau said. When hit from the right angle, it can make you orgasm within seconds.

  “I can’t even let my man hit it from the back,” one guy interviewed for the article says. “It makes me bust too quickly, and the sex is ruined right then and there. Nobody likes to be a two-second lay...”

  There’s a diagram at the bottom, instructing you on how to hit your own prostate. My pulse throbbing, I disappear into the bathroom, drop my shorts, and sit on the edge of the tub with my ass out. I squirt some lotion on my free hand, make sure it’s good and soaked, and move closer to my hole…

  I look at the diagram. Basically it tells you to move your thumb inside yourself, facing forward, and then to move it up and forward at the same time, toward your balls. I take a breath, make a face, and then…bam. I’m inside myself.

  I moan a little. I’m still not used to this – it feels like I’m being stretched out, and my muscles down there still don’t know how to handle it. It feels sublime, though – it’s just odd.

  My toes curling, I move my thumb in the motion described by the article – and then groan. Instantly it sends a warm, fluttery feeling throughout my whole body, and my core goes numb. It feels like my stomach is contracting and stretching at the same time, too – what is this?!

  I do it again, and my eyes roll back into my head. I start hitting it harder and faster, then I put down my phone and start jacking my dick, too. Then I imagine it’s actually Beau’s big cock doing this to me, instead of my hand, and I imagine that he’s bare, too. Just as I imagine him delivering a big wet load into my hole, I hold my breath, clench up, and squirt all over my right leg.

  Damn, that was good…

  When Beau returns twenty minutes later, I’m cleaned up and laid out on the bed like nothing ever happened at all. He smiles at me, and I smile back and take out my diary for my nightly entry. But his smile makes the most important question of the whole night sink into my soul. And at the end of the day, does all this “MSM” stuff mean I can keep fucking Beau without having to actually date him?

  But at the same time: what if I actually want to date him?

  hey Beau

  from the diary of
Nathan Sykes

  Hey Beau Lindemann – I want you.

  Hey Beau Lindemann – I’ll never be strong enough to actually give you this letter, but I really do. I really want you. My eyes always find you in a room, and I catch your name flitting in and out of my mind from sunrise to bedtime. You haunt me in every beautiful way.

  Hey Beau Lindemann, I know we’re best friends, and I know we’re standing two kids away from each other in the photo from Miss Underwood’s kindergarten class. And I know we live in a place that looks at two boys holding hands and raises an eyebrow at best and raises a fist at worst. But I want you.

  Hey Beau Lindemann – I know this was never supposed to happen. But if you didn’t want me to fall for you, you never should’ve been born with dimples that deep, with a laugh that bubbly, with eyes that depthless.

  And hey Beau Lindemann – I want you. I want you and I don’t know what to do about it anymore…

  Because I was born with the desperate need to send out a whole lot of love, but I’ve never found a worthy recipient. Until now. Until you.

  So, hey Beau Lindemann – I want you to love me. Please say yes. Please say you do…

  Beau Lindemann

  I hit the streets early the morning after the group dinner, desperate for my muscles to feel the burn of a good cardio session. I head down the main tourist street then turn on a wide waterfront road, and soon Eminem is shouting into my ears and my legs are pumping and I’m in my zone.

  I had to get away from Nate for a minute – I just had to. Things are happening so quickly, and I need to wrap my head around it all. Working out was always the jock-iest thing about me – if I don’t exhaust myself at least once a day, I can’t sleep. And if I don’t sleep, my whole mood is wrecked the next day. An hour of cardio will do me just fine, though.

  But the other reason I needed some time alone is…complicated.

  Last night I dreamed I was marrying Nate.

  Our families were there. It was like the “dream version” of the local beach, where it looks like the real version, but not quite. And we were getting married at sunset. Nate told me he didn’t ever want to be with anyone else, and I said the same. I tried to look around and see if my mom was there, because she often shows up in the periphery of my dreams, but she seemed to be nowhere. And just before we exchanged rings, I was jolted awake and found it was just after dawn again.

  I looked over at him then, and I can just remember this relief hitting me – he’s still here. He’s right here. And then I felt something else, too – guilt. Yesterday he made a comment I didn’t like – he said he’s starting to feel used. I know our agreement was literally built around us using each other, but I knew exactly what he meant. I once dated this man-eater of a girl, Jess, who made no secret of the fact that all she wanted from me was sex. She’d text me late at night, come over, fuck me, and then leave again. I always felt so…empty afterward. The idea of it sounded so cool from afar – oh, awesome, a girl who literally only wants dick from me! But the reality of it was so lonely.

  So when Nate said it, I felt so bad for him, both as a friend and as…whatever this thing is becoming. At the end of it all, he’s still someone I care about, and it made me realize how automated I’m becoming – sex, sex, sex, with nothing else on the side. Our little moment in the sea was amazing, but it was just a moment. I don’t want him to feel how Jess made me feel, like a sex toy that became human…

  Speaking of sex toys, I spot a sign up ahead that stops me right where I am. I’ve run all the way to the seedier part of town, where Key West starts becoming whatever is west of Key West, and tucked into an old shopping center is a store with a huge sign in its blacked-out windows.

  Adult Superstore, the sign says. For all your steamiest adult needs.

  Hiding a blush, I cool off for a minute and then step inside. Due to that time when I went on a run and twisted my ankle and found myself stranded alongside a highway, I keep a debit card in my shoe when I run, and I take it out as I wander to the area obviously reserved for gay men. There are jock straps, whips, and leather S&M outfits with nipple clamps attached. I feel the heat on my cheeks as I slide on to the dildo section. My eyes zero in on one in particular – it’s almost my exact size and shape.

  My dick gets a little hard as I look at it. We’re almost out of lube, anyway, so I need to make a purchase – why not try this out with Nathan? We’ve only got a few days left. Why not have some fun?

  And I know it might not make sense, but why not use a sex toy to let him know that he’s not only a sex toy to me? Attention is what he wants, and what I wanted from Jess, too. Why not give him some – in a way he would never, ever expect?

  Nathan Sykes

  I’ve just finished my morning “black coffee and scalding shower” routine when the door opens. I swivel around, naked, and sigh when I see it’s just Beau.

  “Geez,” I begin, “I thought the maids were about to see my dick and my-”

  “Shh,” he says, walking forward, and the look in his eyes makes me stop short. “I got us something.”

  “But-”

  “Hold on. Come here.”

  He peels off his shirt and pulls me against him. My body tingles as his scent hits my nose – it’s sweaty and animalistic, and I have to fight back a moan.

  “You know how exercise makes me horny?” he asks darkly. “Well, I passed a little sex shop, and, um…”

  He reaches into a plastic bag and pulls out what looks like a replica of his own dick.

  “Damn,” I inhale. “Nice.”

  “Yeah. Come with me.”

  He pushes the extra bed, the one we stopped using when we started sleeping together, back into the corner, so it’s against two walls. Then he jumps on it and sits in the corner facing me with his legs out. “What you waiting for? Come here.”

  “What’s gotten into you?” I laugh as I crawl into bed. He grabs me, turns me around, and leans me against his stomach so we’re both facing the same direction – and facing the mirror, too, I notice.

  “I told you, cardio makes me crazy horny,” he says against my shoulder, softly but dangerously. The tickling of his stubble against my earlobe makes me shiver as he opens up the package and lubes up the dildo. There’s a heat building in my core, my face is burning, my throat is tight…what is he about to do?!

  “So I was thinking, what would it feel like to do stuff to you while we both watch?” he whispers against my shoulder as he wraps our legs together. “I figured we could maybe get a little…sensual. A little romantic. In front of the mirror.”

  “But…I thought we were only hooking up as friends?”

  His eyes lock into mine in our reflection. “That was before I knew what hooking up with you was like.”

  My insides jump. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. So I figured we could do…this.”

  I moan as he lifts up my leg and squirts some lube on me down there. Then he starts circling a finger around my hole as my muscles tighten.

  “You like that?” he whispers as our eyes meet in our reflection again, five feet away. I can’t even look – he’s too sexy, and I’m too embarrassed of seeing my whole body close-up like this.

  But at the same time, I can’t look away.

  He slips a finger into me, and with the lube it feels warm and wet and perfect. With his other hand he rubs my nipple as he works me.

  “Fuck…” he keeps muttering under his breath. “Can’t believe we never did this before…”

  “I know...”

  “But at the same time, I don’t want you to feel used, or feel bad about this,” he murmurs, rubbing my shoulder with one of his big hands as he holds the dildo with the other. “So I just thought you could use some...attention. Are you sore anywhere? Well, besides this little hole I keep abusing?”

  “Um, my traps, from that workout,” I whisper, red-faced, and he starts kneading against my traps as I close my eyes and moan. Fuck, this feels so good…

  “No – open your eyes,�
�� he says, and I do as I am told – and our eyes lock in the mirror immediately. “Have you ever played with a toy?”

  “Just with a girl – she wanted me to fuck her with her vibrator.”

  “Well now you’re about to get the other side of things,” he says, still massaging me. “Just watch.”

  Both of our bodies are in clear view – mine in front of his, and both of us are sweaty and tanned and toned from our workouts. It’s quite a sight, I can’t lie. As I moan again, he moves the dildo closer and starts rubbing the tip against my hole.

  “Fuck…”

  “Does it feel good?”

  “Yes. Please fuck with me with it.”

  “What was that, now?”

  “Fuck me with it! Please?”

  “I may just have to do that,” he says delicately as he rubs further down my shoulders. “Just after I rub these muscles some more.” Who is this sensitive, romantic partner Beau has become? And why do I like it so much?

  But I don’t have any more time to think – just like that, he slips the tip of the dildo into me.

  “Ahhhh,” I exhale. I can see it enter me in the mirror, disappearing into me, and the sight alone makes me nearly convulse.

  “Yeah, yeah – how’s that feel?”

  “Good,” I breathe. “Different.”

  “Perfect. Now watch me fuck you with it in the mirror.”

  He leans forward and starts sucking on my ear as he rubs my neck with one hand and sinks the dildo deeper into me with the other. I don’t want to orgasm, so I clench my jaw as I watch. The toy feels colder and harder than his dick inside me, but it’s not bad at all – if anything it feels like it’s opening me up, which I obviously need. He inches in, in, in, until the fake ball sac is against my skin.