by James Lear
I wanted to reach out, to help him and, in doing so, to help myself.
But I also wanted to suck his cock, and there it was, hard and within reach if I twisted myself around. We manoeuvred ourselves into a sixty-nine position, and I had the novel experience of sucking a cock upside-down. We were side by side, sucking each other and fucking each other’s mouths until, inevitably, we came again, jerking off together, semen shooting over faces and necks.
‘Suppose I better go,’ he said. ‘Get a shower or something.’
‘OK.’
It was over, whatever ‘it’ was, that moment of intensity and connection. We just wanted to be rid of each other, to forget what happened. We started fiddling with towels, getting up, wiping down. Someone said, ‘I don’t suppose you want to get a coffee, do you?’ and I realized it was me.
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. A coffee. Have a chat. Is that . . . ’ I wondered if I’d broken a rule, gone too far. You come and you go without speaking again. Was that the deal?
‘I’d love to. Here?’
‘Rather not. I’ve got a car. There must be somewhere. A pub or something.’
‘There’s a pub by the tube station. I mean, it’s just an old boozer.’
‘Sounds perfect. Come on. Let’s go and get dressed.’
We threw on our clothes and got out as quickly as we could. In the car we talked about traffic, commuter trains, the weather, the roadworks.
‘It’s just here on the left. My name’s Simon, by the way.’
I was going to say ‘Jack,’ but something went wrong with my mouth, so recently filled by Simon’s cock, and I said ‘Joe’ instead. This was real then. I had met someone. We could be friends or maybe more. This might be the beginning. Simon and Joe, Joe and Simon, left their wives for each other, but look how happy they are, making a home together, going on holidays, fucking like rabbits.
He got the drinks and had a bit of banter with the barman. In his grey suit and white shirt, he looked exactly like any other office worker popping into a pub.
‘Here you go.’ We’d chosen a table at the back, away from the crowds near the door. We could talk without being overheard.
We sipped our drinks: beer for him, Coke for me. Conversation did not come easily.
‘So,’ I said, without any clear idea of where this was going. ‘That was more fun than I expected.’
‘You been before?’
‘Never.’
‘You ever . . . you know. With a bloke.’
‘Once or twice. It’s all pretty new to me.’
‘Right. Yeah, me too. I mean, I’m married.’
‘Me too.’
That seemed to be the end of that. Simon’s eyes were flicking around the pub, as if he was looking for an excuse to leave. Oh look, there’s my friend . . .
‘He was a laugh, wasn’t he?’
‘Who?’
‘That other guy. The hairy bloke.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘He certainly gave us our orders.’
‘Yeah.’ Simon drank again and looked up at me over the top of his pint. ‘He got you to fuck me.’
‘I hope that was OK.’
He put his pint down and wiped his lips. ‘It was amazing.’
‘Good.’
‘It’s what I really wanted.’
This was more like it. A bit of honesty. ‘We could do it again sometime, you know.’
‘What?’
‘You know,’ I said. ‘We could get together.’
‘Meet up there, you mean?’
‘Or you could come to my house when my wife’s away.’ This would take a bit of planning, but there were frequent weekends when Angie and Alex were both off somewhere, and I was alone with my broadband connection and my dick in hand. Why not do some entertaining?
‘OK. Wow. That sounds amazing.’
‘And we could do it in a bed.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yeah. Why not?’ I lowered my voice to a whisper. ‘I loved fucking you. And I want you to fuck me.’
We looked into each other’s eyes for several seconds. I had butterflies in my stomach. He wasn’t the most beautiful man in the world—like me, he’d been around the block a few times, there was some wear and tear, a broken nose at some point, wrinkles around the eyes, hairline long gone—but he was just what I wanted. A mate, a bloke, a friend who was more than a friend. I didn’t know the right words. I wasn’t falling in love in the way I fell in love with Angie—she and I just belonged together, everyone said so, we came together on a tide of other people’s approval and encouragement. Whatever this was with Simon would happen in private, in secret. But for the first time, I felt as if I’d found the answer to the questions that had been nagging me and keeping me awake at night.
‘Right. I want that too,’ said Simon. ‘You’re fucking gorgeous.’
I laughed. ‘I never thought I’d hear a man say that to me!’
‘No? Well, you are.’
‘And so are you. Shit,’ I said, squeezing my dick under the table, ‘I want to fuck you again.’
‘I don’t think I can take any more tonight,’ said Simon, his eyes twinkling. ‘I’m going to be feeling you inside me for a couple of days, I think.’
‘Good.’ I looked at my watch—it was nearly nine o’clock, and if I wasn’t going to face a barrage of questions when I got home, I’d better head out fairly soon. Simon was feeling the same way, obviously.
‘Well, back to reality then,’ he said, finishing his drink. I watched his Adam’s apple going up and down, just as it had when he sucked Hairy’s cock. I wanted to kiss his throat. ‘Shall I give you my number?’
‘Yeah. Here.’ I handed him my phone. ‘Put it straight in there.’
‘As the actress said to the bishop.’ He punched in the numbers. ‘Call me during the daytime, OK? Not in the evening and not on weekends. You understand, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, of course. I’ll give you a buzz tomorrow, then.’
‘Looking forward to it.’
We put our jackets on. ‘Can I give you a lift anywhere, Simon?’ I was half thinking of parking in some dark side street for a goodnight kiss.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘The station’s just over the road. Best if I get home.’
We shook hands on the street and went our separate ways. When I looked back over my shoulder, he was gone.
Angie was in a placating mood when I got home. She didn’t actually apologize for her suspicions, but she was nicer to me than she’d been in a long time. Perhaps she knew she’d gone too far.
‘Been to the gym?’
‘Yes. It’s the only place I can get some peace.’
‘Are you hungry?’
I was starving, for obvious reasons. ‘Yeah.’
‘There’s some pasta for you, and I cooked some chicken.’
We ate together, not saying much, as friends.
But I slept alone.
The next morning, I waited until eleven o’clock before I called Simon. I wanted to hear his voice—and I wanted to make sure he had my number in his phone, even if he didn’t pick up. I’d leave a message. I had it all planned. ‘Hi Simon, it’s Joe here. It was great to meet you yesterday. Just give me a call some time.’ Nothing incriminating there—could be a work contact.
The number didn’t ring. Silence. I tried again. This time a voice: the number you have called is unavailable. Again, the same. Again and again.
It would be nice to think that, in the heat of the moment, Simon’s finger had put in the wrong number on my phone. But I knew that wasn’t true, and I knew quite well that I would never see him again.
5
I DELETED THE EMAIL ACCOUNT. I CLEARED ALL OF MY BROWSING history, I cleaned up my mobile phone, and if I could have erased parts of my memory I would have done so. My libido crashed. I never wanted to touch another man again, or even see one naked. Bill and Peter would never find me again. I went doggedly to the gym, trained hard, and avoided
any human contact in the changing rooms. Michael said hello once or twice but I ignored him; I’m sure he understood, and he didn’t persist. I saw Adrian, who in some way I blamed for everything, for pushing me down the slope that led to the Thames Sauna, Simon, and the shame of being given a phoney number. How many times had he done this? Pretending to be sincere and passionate, pretending that he’d finally met someone he could open up to, trust, love—and then, when he’d enjoyed his little walk on the wild side, keying in a random number and scuttling back to the security of wife and family.
Is that what I was doing? Would I end up like Simon, making meaningless gestures toward freedom, faking it just enough to pretend for an hour or two that I’m a decent, honest human being? Would it get easier each time? How long does he leave between visits to the Thames? Does he have a circuit of happy hunting grounds where he picks up married men, gets fucked and sucked and indulges in some romantic play-acting? Perhaps he keeps a secret diary. ‘Ah, I haven’t been to the sauna for nine months, there’s no chance that Joe will be back there, it’s safe for me to return.’ And if by chance we run into each other—well, I’m not going to make a scene, am I? I’ve got too much to lose. I suppose it works for the Simons of this world. He’s found a way to scratch his itch without having to leave his wife. It’s not honest, but the world isn’t honest. It’s not perfect— or maybe it is. Best of both worlds, as long as you can play the part. Straight husband and father for most of the time, passionate gay lover when it suits you, just enough to get the thrill of possibility, the intoxicating moment when everything could change.
But it doesn’t. Nothing changes. Your marriage is intact, your daily life grinds on: work, gym, home, eat, sleep alone, repeat until dead. Your heart dies first, your spirit, your lust for life, and finally your body just drops from mechanical exhaustion. I’m keeping myself fit just as the doctors want, staving off heart disease, but why? The cancer of despair is already consuming me. I’m a shell. A walking, talking, working Joe robot. Put food in at one end, and I’ll earn a salary that keeps everyone going, my wife, my kids, even my own parents. Never mind if the smile is fake, the banter with the blokes in the pub louder and louder to drown out the screaming in my head. He’s good for a few more years yet. A good twenty years before he retires.
I took Simon’s betrayal hard. Stupid, I know, over a man I met in a sauna. But it wasn’t just him. It was everything. The future. Those twenty years of work. Sleeping in my daughter’s bed. Perhaps I should just leave, start again on my own. I think about it all the time and do nothing. I talk to nobody. Who would I confide in? My family? My wife? My kids? My mates? If I gave them even the vaguest outline, everything would change. But isn’t that what I want? I talk to myself, I go round and round in circles like a fucking hamster on a wheel, and I’m starting to feel old.
One lunchtime at the gym, I was warming up for a circuit class, concentrating on using the skipping rope, watching my footwork in the mirror, when I saw the reflection of Adrian behind me. I missed a beat, tripped on the rope, and ended up tangling it on my head. He laughed. ‘Hey, man,’ he said, in his London-meets-Eastern-Europe accent, ‘how’s it going?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ I said, untangling myself.
‘Neck OK?’
‘Fine, fine.’ That was a lie, it was hurting again, keeping me awake at night, but not yet bad enough to render me immobile. I concentrated on the rope.
‘Good. You doing the exercises I showed you?’
‘Uh . . . kind of.’
He grabbed my neck and squeezed gently. ‘No you’re not. I can feel the tension up here. You need to take care of yourself.’
If you only knew.
I said nothing. Adrian frowned—wondering why I was so unfriendly, I suppose—and started setting up the stations. It was a good class, and by the time I’d been sweating and straining for forty-five minutes, my mood was considerably better. I shook his hand at the end of the class and thanked him.
‘Glad you liked it.’
‘So how are you?’
‘All good man, all good,’ he said, smiling. The smile hit me in the gut. ‘Yeah. Things are great.’
‘At least someone’s happy,’ I said, which was more revealing than I intended.
‘I moved into a new house this weekend.’
‘That’s always exciting. Nice place?’
‘I split up with someone, so . . . ’
‘Oh.’ Shit. Too close for comfort. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I was the one who left. It’s all good.’
‘Right.’ I swallowed a mouthful of saliva. ‘Well done then.’
Adrian laughed. ‘Thanks. I think.’
I wanted to ask more. How did you do it? What was the conversation like? How long had you been together? How did she react? Or . . . was it a he? What’s it like, being on your own? I’ve never been on my own. From home to university to flats with Angie, then our first house, our second house, the kids, never been alone.
‘Anyway, you come and see me if you need that neck looked at.’
I rubbed the affected area. ‘It’s fine now. Just gets kind of tensed up.’
‘You know where I am. Email me. OK?’ And he was off talking to someone else. That was it. And all my good intentions fell to pieces. Why, Adrian? Why is it you that sets me off every time? What have you got against me, that you want to break up my marriage and screw up my life? Why do you smile at me, touch me, talk to me in that goofy accent, and make me feel this way?
I practically ran through the showers, looked only at the wall as I dressed, and hurried back to my office. My heart was still beating fast—could be the exercise, of course, but my recovery is usually a lot quicker than that. Why, after weeks of denial and forgetting, was I feeling like this again? Adrian, bloody Adrian, my nemesis. I’ll have to change gyms. Change jobs. So that’s basically everything in my life, isn’t it? My marriage, my home, my job, my gym. What about the kids? I love them, but they don’t need me any more. Just my money. They’re like strangers.
Fuck you Adrian. Fuck your healing hands and your bright white smile and your confidence; you walk out on your girlfriend or boyfriend because you’re not happy and you know that you deserve something better, then you bounce into the gym and teach the best fucking circuit class ever and you tell me to email you, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, as if I’m not sitting at my desk with sweaty palms and a horrible sick feeling in my stomach, knowing that if I touch my cock, I’ll spurt all over my keyboard.
So, after a month of abstinence and misery, I was back to the scary, uncertain life of Craigslist. Another email, another password, another name—this time I would be Mark, in memory of a guy I knew at school, the star athlete with the swimmer’s body and dozens of girlfriends who left halfway through the sixth form amid rumors that he’d been shacking up with one of the male teachers. Mark. Haven’t thought about him for decades. And then I dreamed about him. We were kind of friends. No—we were friends, and then like everyone else, I distanced myself from him, just as I distanced myself from Stuart, just as Simon detached himself from me, so many disconnections, dead friendships, and forgettings.
Mark. I will be Mark, and I will get what I want this time, and I’ll follow where it leads me, and one day, as Adrian is massaging my back, I will tell him, ‘I moved house last weekend . . . yeah, it’s all good . . . I left my wife.’
And Mark needs sex. Right now, or failing that, tonight. Before he goes home and becomes Joe again. Anything will do. Anyone who can get me off and bring me back to life.
Trawling, trawling, trawling, the usual bullshit, I’ve started recognizing them now, the ‘straight men’ and ‘expert cocksuckers’ who promise the world and never get back to you. The ‘athletic eight inches’ who refuses to send a photo. I may be an unavailable coward, but at least I’m not the worst of pariahs in the online world, a timewaster.
Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then I saw this.
CMNM. Me clothed, you
naked. Fancy stripping off for an appreciative audience of one? Show me all the hard work you’ve done at the gym, pose for me, or let me watch you wank. I’ll only touch you if you want me to. Good-looking, sane, solvent male, 50s.
And then details of when and where. Evenings. Not too far away. I replied. He replied. By teatime, we’d exchanged photos (mine headless), I had the address, the directions, and enough correspondence to suggest that he was not a mad axe murderer. He had a name: Graham. Probably no more real than ‘Mark,’ but it sounded safe. I went to school with Grahams. I made it clear that I was married, officially straight, only available for no-strings-attached fun. This went down well, as it always does. I’ve come to realize that the things that make my life most difficult and painful—my marriage, my family—are my greatest assets in the online world. My unique selling points. My brand, if you like. Even in a world of marriage equality, ‘a married man’ is still sought after. There’s the illusion of virility and masculinity—you’re a ‘real man.’ You’ve fathered children. You’ve fucked women. And, of course, you’re not going to cause any trouble. You’ve got more to lose than anyone. You’ll turn up, have hot guilty sex, and then leave. You are, at the same time, both powerful and weak. And that, as I’ve discovered, is an intoxicating mixture.
CMNM: Clothed Male, Naked Male. I’ve seen the acronym thousands of times in my browsing. It’s a scenario that I find extremely exciting. This is partly vanity, of course: as my clever friend said in his advert, I’ve put in a lot of work in the gym, I think I look bloody good for a man of my years, far better than I did in my twenties, and I want to be admired. But there’s something else, a more powerful force that’s pulling me in. I want to be an object, defenseless, vulnerable, exposed. All those things I’ve worked so hard to build up—my career, my family, my defences against the world—will be stripped away along with my clothes. He, the Clothed Male, can do anything he likes. I surrender control, I don’t have to pretend any more. He will take care of me. He can hurt me, or he can nurture me. It’s frightening, like a really good fairground ride. As soon as I’m naked, I’m at the top of the steepest curve of the rollercoaster, about to plunge down into the abyss.
