A Wal in the Par

Part of the 'Butt Monkey' series of stories by Robert Furlong

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Early the next morning I was standing staring at myself in the bathroom mirror wearing only my pyjama bottoms. I looked like shit. I'd hardly slept all night, my fitful dreams being such a surreal tangle of male imagery that I kept waking, wondering what the hell was happening to me.

In spite of how tired I felt, the irony of what I'd ended up doing in the changing rooms was not lost on me. My attempt to convince myself that I really wasn't interested in other men's behinds had backfired badly, resulting in me behaving like a kid in a candy shop, almost running amuck in my lust to sniff strangers' underpants.

I had acted disgracefully and I was ashamed of myself.

But more worrying than that was the image which had been in my head when I'd climaxed: the image of me having anal intercourse with another man. Is this where my interest in men's backsides had been leading? To the point where I was fantasizing about fucking them?

I'd lain awake for hours the previous night, aroused and appalled in equal measure by the idea of buggering another man. I hadn't known whether to beat myself up or beat myself off and in the end I'd done both. Repeatedly.

Now I looked dreadful. My face was drawn and haggard and the dark circles under my eyes made me look ancient. I had dried cum-stains around the fly of my pyjama bottoms and my cock was sore from the number of times I'd been wanking it.

I was a wreck.

I either desperately needed a woman in my life, or otherwise I desperately needed a man in my bed. I couldn't decide which.

As I was driving Jake to college even he commented on how rough I looked and normally he wouldn't notice if I was on fire.

"Cheers, Jake," I'd said in a gruff voice. "You know how to set a guy up for the day."

"I just mean that you look even worse than usual."

"Gee, thanks. You really should consider a career writing verses for greetings cards."

He smiled. "Sorry... it's just... well, these days you always look like you haven't had enough sleep. And with you being so... you know... recently..."

"With me being so what?"

He looked over at me, a little uncomfortable. "Well... horny..."

"Oh right," I nodded, adding a blush of my own to join with his sense of embarrassment. "My sex drive has been a bit through the roof lately."

Jake was well aware that, as well as inheriting whatever gene I possessed for genital size, he had also been similarly endowed or cursed – whichever way you looked at it – in terms of his sex drive.

After he'd started masturbating, Jake had asked me the question which had so plagued me during my teens: how often is 'normal'? Having received so little guidance from my parents about the subject, other than a portentous warning that such things were a form of temptation, I wanted Jake to have a more balanced understanding of his male biology.

I was already aware that he, like me, needed a regular sexual release from the scattering of discarded tissues next to his bed and the instantly recognisable smell of semen in his room most mornings when I awoke him with a glass of orange juice. So, in answering his question, I'd set the bar at about once a day but had made it clear that it was not unhealthy to exceed that as long as it didn't start interfering with his other interests.

He'd asked, "So, like, some days it would be okay to do it three or four times?"

I'd smiled. He certainly did take after me. "Whatever is comfortable for you, Jake."

He'd asked me how often I masturbated.

Keen to nurture a spirit of openness between us without offering any specific details, I'd told him that I had done it a lot during my teens but was less active these days.

"I think it comes with having large testicles, Jake," I'd suggested to him. "We both produce a lot of semen each day and it needs to be released."

"So other guys do it less?" he'd asked.

I'd nodded. "I'm not sure how often other guys masturbate – I've never actually asked anyone – but I don't think everyone needs to do it as often as we do. It's called having a high sex drive and, while it's fun to have regular orgasms, it can become a bit inconvenient needing to do it so often."

Now, in the car, I apologised to Jake that I had, in spite of my best efforts to be discreet, been keeping him awake at night.

"You haven't been," he said, "well, apart from the other night. But there are other signs. I mean, the way you're getting through boxes of tissues..."

I smiled. "Yeah. So much for saving the rainforests."

"And," he went on, "there's a sort of spunky smell when you've... you know... done it..."

I felt my face blush a little. In spite of the fact I knew, from my morning wake-ups, that having strong-smelling semen was yet another trait which Jake had inherited from me, my post-climax odour was something Linda had made me self-conscious about. It was one of the reasons she'd cited for banning me from masturbating in bed.

"Anyway," he said as we were pulling up at the front gates of his sixth form college. "I just figured that was what was making you tired."

I nodded. "Maybe it is. I guess my hormones are bit screwed up at the minute or something."

If in doubt, blame the hormones.

Once I'd dropped Jake off and he'd disappeared into the crowds of teenagers congregating around the entrance to the main block, I decided that I couldn't face going to work and that I'd take the day off as a sickie.

I phoned the local surgery to make an appointment to see my doctor later that week. I knew him quite well and was confident that I could confide in him about at least some of what I was feeling. Perhaps, as I had suggested to Jake, there was some physical explanation for what I was going through, or perhaps my symptoms were more common than I realised.

After making the appointment, I spent the rest of the morning in bed, exhausted, and then, following a long bath, went for a walk to try and clear my head.

I took a fairly familiar path through Welland Park and along the river, dodging the cyclists and joggers who had ventured out on what was a sunny but bitingly chilly autumn afternoon. There were a few ducks on the water and I shivered at the thought of how icy cold their feet must be.

I kept mulling over the sexual imagery which had plagued me during the night. It was as if a switch had been clicked in my head. For some reason the idea of penetrating another man suddenly fascinated me and I couldn't understand why.

How would it feel to push my cock into another man's darkest, most unmentionable place? Would my large organ fit into what seemed like such a tiny hole? Would our sex have that raunchy, anal smell which so excited me? How would it sound as I slid in and out of him? And if I climaxed inside him, how would it feel to have his innards become sloppy and sticky around my cock?

All these questions intrigued me and yet, until just hours ago, the concept had simply never appealed to me.

Perhaps I was being titillated by the unspoken taboo which still, in spite of our increasingly accepting society and talk of same-sex marriage, shrouded to a large extent the more uncouth details of penetrative sex between men. Or perhaps it was an expression of some unconscious desire inside me to assert my masculinity at mid-life by sexually dominating another male.

I thought back to the only direct experience I'd had of seeing two men having sex. It had happened many years ago – I'd been a student at a university party – and although I'd thought about what I'd seen from time to time since, it had never struck me as being an attractive sight.

It was the end of the party I'd been at with my girlfriend at the time – I can barely remember who she was – and I'd gone upstairs to find our coats in one of the bedrooms. I'd opened a door and walked in on two young men, students I vaguely knew but not to talk to, fully clothed and writhing together on the bed. They were lying on their sides, one guy behind the other, making weird squirming movements against each other. They either didn't hear me enter or were so absorbed with what they were doing that they seemed unaware of my presence.

I couldn't immediately work out what was going on between them. The guy behind was hugging the one in front as their bodies moved together, and both of them had pained expressions on their faces with their eyes half-closed. It looked like were in some kind of weird wrestling hold and I wondered momentarily if I might have walked in on a practical joke for which I wasn't the intended recipient.

Then I saw that the guy in front had his trousers pulled down slightly, exposing his cock, which was prominently aroused and had its scarlet head fully exposed, and the cheeks of his arse. The guy behind had undone his belt and fly revealing occasional glimpses of the thick base of his cock protruding from his pubic hair as his hips moved back and forth against his partner's buttocks.

As their strange contortions continued it dawned on me that I was watching the two young men having sex together. And not just rubbing themselves against each other – they were having full-on anal intercourse – the guy behind actually had his cock inside the other man's bum and was pushing it in and out! I could hardly believe it: here it was – gay sex in all its glory, right in front of me!

At first I was mesmerised by what I was looking at. The sight of a cock sliding back and forth between buttocks which were unmistakably male (they were a little bit hairy and had a squat, muscular shape) was absolutely fascinating and a marked contrast to the vaginal sex I was used to. That such a large organ could enter an anus was also remarkable to me and I stared at it, absorbed by the thought of how deep it was pushing into the other man's body. Perhaps the guttural smell of their sex was of further intrigue, again in how different it was from the feminine aromas I was used to during my own lovemaking, but I don't remember clearly enough to be sure of that.

I do remember feeling surprised – in my innocence, I suppose – that the slowly moving cock which I was so captivated by was, in spite of which orifice it was penetrating, largely clean. Its swollen length was glistening with a sticky wetness, and in retrospect I now realise they must have brought some lube with them, but the liquid on it was undisputedly clear and certainly wasn't the colour I'd expected.

And yet, as enthralled as I was by what they were doing, it didn't seem to be much fun for either of them. They just writhed together, their eyes narrowed and their mouths grimacing, one man pushing his rear back against the other man's grinding hips. Although joined together physically and both clearly aroused by what they were doing, they looked emotionally distant; enduring rather than enjoying their homosexual version of lovemaking.

So I'd quelled the interest I had in watching their sex, and quietly left them to suffer together in their private moment of intimacy. I eased myself out of the door and went off to retrieve our coats from someone else's bed.

Following my brief glimpse of the two students, I guess I had formed the absurd assumption that sex between men is always similarly passionless and mechanical. It was utterly ridiculous, I now realised, to tarnish the entire spectrum of homosexual relations with the brush of one fumbling encounter between two inexperienced students at a party, and to assume that only heterosexual sex could have emotional intensity.

In any case, the thought came to me, there on the riverbank, that the two guys writhing around together on the bed had probably been stoned; so off their heads on some drug or other that they'd barely been able to hitch their trousers down enough for the one guy's cock to find its way into the other's backside, never mind show any enthusiasm towards what they were doing. That would explain, I mused, why they had been completely oblivious to my presence as I'd stood watching them from the doorway.

I could now see that, had the guys on the bed been more animated together – perhaps had been rapaciously enjoying an 'anal sixty-nine' together like the one that had so aroused my attentions on the internet – the mental processes which I was now working through might have been triggered many years earlier.

On second thoughts I mused, as I walked along the overgrown river bank past the little fruit shop and the KFC on the corner, perhaps such a thing would have disgusted me back then. The sight of two lads licking each other's backsides would most likely have horrified me: I'd have simply had no conception as to how enthralling such an activity could be when it was conducted one male to another and would have been utterly appalled at what I was witnessing them doing to one another.

The likelihood was that I had needed to experience for myself the powerful allure of rimming. If it hadn't been for the tantalising odour between Guy's buttocks as he'd straddled me in the hotel; if I hadn't been compelled to disregard every rational voice in my head and lean forward and inhale the thick, raunchy scents in the tangle of hair between his cheeks, I might never have even suspected that sex could have this extra dimension to it.

I crossed the bridge over the river then walked up through the town. The High Street wasn't very busy and the air was crisp and fresh. I stopped for a coffee near the church and, in spite of the chill, I drank it outside on one of the tables and chairs they'd set out.

As I was drinking my coffee, I decided I would ask Debbie if she was ready for us to meet up. We'd been e-mailing each other for a few weeks and it was clear that we got along pretty well. I knew a nice pub in Kettering, about halfway between where we both lived, and we could have a meal there and a few drinks without it being too formal and uncomfortable.

I hoped that there would be an obvious attraction between us – not love at first sight, which I didn't believe in, but at least a feeling that some sexual chemistry could develop between us. I certainly liked the look of her from the photos she'd sent me, and she'd commented in one of her e-mails that I looked 'cute' which I'd taken as an intended compliment and tried not to feel patronised.

I wanted to feel an attraction towards a woman and to know that she was attracted to me. I thought it would help me dispel – or at least control – the interest in other men which had taken such a hold of me.

I wanted to go back to innocently fantasizing about having sex with a woman when I masturbated instead of constantly having my thoughts drawn towards other men. I could accept that I had an interest in rimming members of my own sex and, since yesterday, that I might even like to have anal sex with another man, but I wanted to be able to put it into some perspective.

I didn't think it unhealthy that I'd discovered this fetish within myself – after all, there are far worse things to find oneself fantasizing about – but I wanted it to take a backseat to my more familiar heterosexual interests.

And I figured that meeting Debbie might help me achieve that.

Happy with my plan, I set off to walk back home through the park.

I hoped Debbie would find me attractive. Linda had said some very cruel things about my body, and in particular my penis and my supposed inability to use it effectively, in the last, dark days of our marriage. I'd known full well that she was speaking out of spite and that in better days we'd enjoyed a satisfying, if not exactly mind-blowing, sex life, but the jibes had nevertheless been hurtful and their memory was still sore.

During the few sexual experiences that I'd had with women since my divorce, I'd always been a little apologetic about my cock and balls – perhaps they really were so big that they looked, as Linda had put it, "deformed". None of the women I'd briefly dated had expressed any kind of dissatisfaction about my size or my performance, although one had found my aroused organ too thick to enter her fully. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but wonder if it was part of the reason I'd been so unsuccessful at maintaining a relationship.

I hoped that – if things developed far enough between – Debbie would like my genitals. I liked it when a woman rubbed my cock as I kissed her and played with her breasts. I liked to see her surprise at how much bigger I would grow as I hardened and thickened as she wanked me, and for her to start fingering herself as she did so. My hand would nuzzle between her legs and take over from hers, our fingers working on each other with the same rhythm. And then I'd replace my fingers with my cock and she'd cry out in pleasure from the feel of it thrusting inside her.

It felt good to be with a woman like that and I wanted it to happen again.

Finding myself needing a pee from the coffee I'd drunk in town, I made a stop at the park toilets. It was getting dark and the small, cottage-like building looked ominous, but I was pretty desperate and so I walked into the gloomy doorway.

Two men were standing at the urinals, not pissing but just standing there facing ahead, and so I made my way into a cubicle. The small stall was dimly lit from a small insect-filled ceiling light and I could see that the walls were smattered with graffiti.

Some of the space was taken up with a smattering of scrawled messages trying to orchestrate sexual encounters. Among them I spotted one which read: "COCK FUN HERE SUNDAY! LET'S OF AN ORGY!"

I almost flinched, shocked that someone would write such a thing: how could anyone make the rudimentary mistake of writing 'of' instead of 'have'?

Most of the walls, though, were filled with crude cartoon-like drawings. I searched among them for anything which might suggest that the sort of men who frequented these toilets were into rimming. Aside from the multitude of caricatured sketches of cocks and balls, any drawings showing sexual activity between men were restricted to a handful of blow-jobs and a more generous helping of penetrative encounters in various positions.

I wondered if, perhaps, the act of rimming was held in too high esteem to have its erotic power debased and sullied in a place like this.

Then I happened to spot some guy's claim to have given another man a 'rim-job' here. As well as the recording fact he'd used his tongue on a stranger's anus, for some reason he'd found it necessary to add the date and time.

Reading his scrawled admission, I decided that I didn't like the term 'rim-job'. As I unzipped myself and fumbled my awkward girth out through my fly, I mused that the term belittled what was for me an intense and erotic way of connecting intimately with another man. It made what could be a deeply meaningful act sound cheap and inconsequential. It was the sort of term, I felt, which could only apply to a fumbled encounter in a public toilet – a blow-job round the front, a rim-job round the back, then cocks cleaned off with a tissue and both guys on their way.

Not my idea of a good time.

As I pissed into the toilet bowl and steam rose up from it in the cold air, I looked at a drawing of two men having anal sex above the cistern. They were in what I thought of as the classic homosexual position: one man on all fours, the other kneeling behind him holding his partner's hips while he buggered his arse. The drawing was amateur and showed little discernible skill – subject matter aside, Jake could have drawn better when he was about four – but I found myself studying the guy who was doing the penetrating and wondering if I could do the same thing.

I was certainly attracted to the idea – the events of the previous day had proven that – but could I actually do it?

I'd never had anal sex with any woman I'd slept with. I figured that since she had a hole which nature had designed for penetration, why settle for anything else? In any case, the idea of buggering a woman didn't turn me on at all. I liked sex with a woman to be romantic and affectionate and the idea of involving her anus as a sexual organ didn't sit right with me. I didn't think she would feel any pleasure from having me inside her back there and a mutual enjoyment of physical contact was, for me, was a vital part of lovemaking.