'MORE FROM THE LEGEND OF THE HOUSE OF SHAME'
To counter the fear I find myself thinking regretfully of Ian. Wondering, what if I've offended him? Would it really have hurt so much to have indulged him, just a little? And there's the teasing element of sneaking curiosity as I lie there, still tensed, toying with myself. Bluntly I find myself wondering how big his cock is? What would it have looked like? Would he have wanted to see mine... would he want to touch it... like I'm touching myself now? My toes curl and my skin goose-pimples at the very thought of his cool fingers on me. He was offering me friendship. Not coercion or force. Just the offer of companionship. And I'd rejected him. I'd acted like a dumb scared kid. I can't afford to lose friends here. And he seems OK. We're both victims of this system, after all. Perhaps we have that in common, at least?
I greet the next day at the centre with a self-assurance I've seldom known before. After breakfast I determinedly go to seek Ian out, to make amends. It doesn't take me long. He's sitting by himself on a ledge in the corridor. He's essentially alone, just as I am. He needs a friend, just as I do. He smiles as I nervously approach, and sit beside him.
"I'm sorry about yesterday. I shouldn't have reacted as I did. I was scared and confused, you understand? You took me by surprise. But I need a friend in this madhouse. I'll be less hasty next time."
He smiles broadly, unfolds his latest cartoon to show me, as though we're already complicit. In the sketch a Probation Officer is being mounted by a giant walking penis - captioned 'The Penisaurus'. We snigger, then he stands up and beckons, leading me off down the corridor. We reach a fire-door, and he leads me through, then down a long flight of concrete steps into some kind of basement. There's a droning of air-conditioning pipes, or something. Through another door, for which he has the key. Beyond, it was humid and warm. The lights he punches up are low-wattage dim, the walls whitewashed breeze-blocks. He bolts the door behind us.
"This is the laundry room" he confides. "A secret place. I come here when I want to be alone or hide out somewhere. This is a secret I only share with special people. I feel we're going to become special friends. And because you're my friend, you can come here too."
"I'm sorry about yesterday. I want to make it up to you, any way I can" I mumble.
There are mounds of clothes everywhere, from where they come down shoots from the upper levels. The mounds make for comfortable reclining. We talk, increasingly freely. Grudgingly, cautiously at first, I tell him about the situation with Dean. About the first time he came into my bed. In a way, it was a relief to blurt it all out.
"You resisted him at first?" he says, wonderingly. "That was stupid. People like us - the Lost Boys, we're smaller and weaker. Natural prey. Sure, you always have a choice, to fight back. To walk the straight and narrow if you must, but why make it worse for yourself? When you first arrive here, what are your options, what do you do - stay celibate? Some try to. Deprived of convenient sexual partners, others just wank miserably by themselves. But think about it, why should they toss themselves off when there's someone here who can - with a bit of inducement, do it for them? It's only logical. They take what's available. And we are all that's available. So we accept the situation, and provide what they need. That's the way of things. You might try to walk that tightrope alone, and I kind-of respect that. But sooner or later you're going to realise, the logical way to survive here is to get yourself involved with someone. You're going to reach that decision eventually. So why not just accept it? Save yourself the pain and hurt. And everyone needs sex. It's a perfectly natural urge. A human need."
At first I'm a little awe-struck by how open and matter-of-fact he is, speaking about subjects more usually clouded in shame and evasion. "But isn't it degrading, humiliating? Isn't there a stigma to being called... y'know, a cock-sucker?"
"I guess 'cock-sucker' is usually used as a term of abuse. But I've a sneaking suspicion that's more a defensive macho thing they use to conceal their own deep secret desires either to blow or be blown themselves. But whatever, like other offensive non-pc terms - like Queer or Faggot, I think it's well-overdue to be reclaimed, and worn as a mark of pride, by those unashamed to be known as 'out' cock-suckers."
The mock seriousness of his speech has both of us sniggering. I've never heard anyone speak that way, or heard these things articulated with such clarity (although I would later learn that many of his phrases were mimicked from Bryan).
"Yes, but are they all, y'know - like that, homo, gay?"
"Obviously not. It'd be stupid to expect that. But hey, everyone likes sex. The only ones who don't are those planted in the bone-yard cemetery. You know how guys are, so full of raging testosterone they can't keep their hands off their cocks, or each other's. All guys are animals when it comes to sex. If you're not regularly milked it spills out anyway, while you sleep. This way, for them, they get their cock sucked every night by a hot young eager bitch. Excuse me, but I fail to see the downside of that. If it feels good, do it. When the need is on them they'll roger anything on two legs, and most things on four. Hell, it's just guys doing what guys have always done, which is to fuck whatever orifice is available. They'd fuck your nostrils if it was possible. I guess that at the dawn of time there were dinosaurs with sore arses after encounters with primitive humanoids. And in the future, when we first-contact with an alien species, they'll first fuck them, then eat them, hopefully in that order. It's the way we're hard-wired. Sex is voracious. Give it an inch, it'll take six - or eight if you're lucky! I've known some who've even used fruit! There was Groovy Glen who punched a hole clear through an orange and then slid it up and down his...you know, his wang, so it was dripping with juice."
"What did he do with the orange once he'd finished? Did he eat it?"
"Hell, fruit is too pricey to waste. Mind you, some guys here could make do with a tangerine, or... what's smaller than that?"
"A Satsuma. Nectarine. A grape...?"
We both crack up in uncontrollably sniggery laughter.
Then he resumes. "This is an enclosed community. Things are different here. The rules are not the same as they are outside. What's normal here is not normal out there. What's acceptable here is not acceptable out there. And vice versa. Yes, vice, especially vice. We all have sexual needs. Sex is contagious. And a regular mouthful of spunk is no big deal. It makes you horny. It's arousing to do it, we get sexed-up too, a hard-on, a spunk-off. The close proximity to someone's orgasm ignites your own burn for orgasm. And when their cum happens in your mouth, that means your brain is closer to it than they are. Nothing weird about that. It's basic biology. It's an itch you have to scratch. If doing it is unnatural, how come it fits so snugly? If it's against nature, how come it works so beautifully? If it's bad, how come it feels so good? If it's a sin against nature, it's a very small sin. It hurts no-one and the only object is giving pleasure."
It's warm in here. I'm getting increasing turned on.
He pauses, then continues. "I'm a lusty boy. I need sex too. If things were otherwise, if the situation was reversed and I had that kind of respect, if I was in the dominant position, I'd certainly have some little sod sucking me off whether he wanted to or not, maybe two young guys taking turns to do me. And I'd make damn sure they did it good, and frequently. Sex is sex. And it's a powerful motivator. But it's only sex. It doesn't mean anything else. There are no other implications. It's a form of negotiable currency, it's barter, it establishes status and prestige. But for it to become a full-on Gay thing there has to be more than just orgasm, there has to be all that emotional stuff too."
Although Ian would have been incapable of expressing it that way, some time later Bryan would phrase the same idea differently, 'there's a billion years of genetic programming going into producing your pleasurable hard-on. We are the victims of our DNA. We're evolutionarily conditioned with the overwhelming urge to exchange bodily fluids. That's what it's all about. You can't deny it. Just enjoy it. A stiff cock has no conscience - it merely demands attention.' For Ian it was merely 'I have no choice, so I make the best of it.' His brazen candour disarmed me. There's something transgressive about saying the unsayable. It was so easy to get drawn into an exchange of intimacies. And tell him things I'd never have dreamed I'd be able to confide to anyone, and scarce dared admit even to myself.
"I've got something to confess, you were right. What you said yesterday, even talking like this has got me sexed-up too, just like you said." I stammered a little with the effort to stay calm, but I meet his eyes, caught up in a blood-rush from some uncharted part of my body. "I feel awkward saying this, I don't quite know how to say it, but there's something I'd like to get out and into the open, if you know what I mean? What you said yesterday about showing me, we could show each other, if you still want to." The words tumbling out before I lose my nerve.
