Coc-Sucer: the Dar Hunter

Part Two: Deeper Into Darkness

With a feeling of some relief I follow him, in silence. I shouldn't be doing this. I should get as far away as possible. What do we have remotely in common? What will we find to talk about? Frey. His name is Frey Tyghi. What sort of name is that -- Polish? Across from the park there's what I call a Costa-plenty-bucks. He finds an alcove, I get coffee and, after a moment's hesitation, chocolate muffins too.

I sit across from him. Watch him drink. Something of my initial euphoria has died away. I've become a little more wary. But as he commences nibbling around the edges of the muffin my attention strays to his groin, where I can clearly detect the outline of the genital-bulge in his Levis. Whatever we have to say to each other will never stray far beyond that.

"You OK?" he asks.

"Never better" I smile. "Yet even to say that seems strange, I don't really understand what's just occurred between us. It's totally out of character. But whatever it was, it was good."

"Let's get this straight. Let's lay out some ground-rules. I don't know you. We just met, in a manner of speaking. But I can tell stuff about you. Let me guess, you have a tendency to overthink things -- right? To ask questions that don't have answers. You shouldn't do that. You should just do what feels right. Don't get into a guilt trip. Don't question it. Just enjoy it."

"You're right. Of course you're right."

With the first gulp of cappuccino the spunk-taste is gone. I can scarcely believe I'm sitting here, talking to a man I've just sucked-off! That his sperms, even now, are swimming inside me. It's like some crazy fantasy. Bring it down, reason this through.

"I don't even know if I'm... y'know, of that nature. I've never been close enough to find out. I've never dared admit or talk about it with anyone else. Not ever. I don't know why I'm telling you, except for... what just transpired between us."

"That's fine" he concedes. "You can talk to me all you want. Just keep your voice down, we don't want everyone to hear."

I lean forward, lower my voice conspiratorially. And it all splurges out.

"No, in the real world, I never had the courage to follow up on my secret desires. Afraid to do something, and just as afraid of doing nothing. Until here I am, old enough to be into mid-life crisis, and most of my sex-life is imaginary. Going over-and-over the same half-dozen incidents when I dared be true to my own nature. Until now."

There's something disturbingly Freudian about the whole oral-fixation thing. Starting out with the nipple, fairly obviously. Then sucking your thumb. Then the drooping cigarette stylishly set in the corner of the pouting mouth. Then chewing the shaft of your biro as you agonize over the next word in the document you're attempting to write. And sucking cock. It's a disturbing chain of connections. But beyond my rational control.

"Look, you don't have to explain. There's nothing to explain. People do what feels good for all manner of reasons."

He drains the coffee and eyes me critically.

"There's a lot of hypocrisy about gay and straight sex. You've been open with me, it's only fair I respond in kind. I'm a more or less normal guy with all the usual aspects and diversities to my personality. I enjoy all kinds of books, music, movies, good conversation and wine. I don't see my appetite for sex with guys as anything exceptional. Homosexual -- yes, but homo sapien too. Lots of so-called straights claim to be shocked and repelled by Gay sex, but when it comes right down to the moment of choice, there's not many so-called 'straights' who in private won't let a gay guy suck their cock. And judging by internet exchanges, a whole heap of bi-curious who want to get a taste too."

"A lot of it is social stigma" he continues. "Embracing your sexuality is not just an option or an alternate orientation. It's like they used to say in the sixties, it's expanding your consciousness to new possibilities. It's contrary to the whole social conditioning that's been drip-drip-dripped into your skull every moment since birth. You've been relentlessly indoctrinated. Boys do this. Males do not do that. Men do this. Sexually, men give, they don't receive. You do not submit to other men. You compete for status. The worst thing you can do is assume the effeminate role. It's a conditioned gender role thing. These are expectations, you are repeatedly told, that cannot be refitted."

"But human sexuality doesn't work that way. It can't be shoved into neat compartments. Sometimes your need may be to be assertive, at other times passive, sometimes submissive, or dominant. To repress any aspect of self is unhealthy. Your needs will seek expression, they will not be denied. It is never easy to kick against that accumulative guilt-trip, those repressive restrictions. But what you have to understand is these are social not genetic imperatives. Darwin shows that evolution favours diversity, not conformity. You've got to be true to the way you're wired."

He looks at me with an intensity that's unsettling.

"Listen. So when you do crouch nude to orally pleasure your lover's penis you are not only performing a simple sex-act, you're liberating yourself from generations of gender programming. Opening up your horizons of sensual potential from the single, to the multi-dimensional. Rejecting the habits of caution. You don't need to be camp and flouncy, unless that's what you want to be. Alexander the Great had a male lover, and he conquered half the known world."

"I suppose I can imagine, as you were growing up, there must have been moments of doubt. The 'what will they think if they know? -- family, friends, colleagues, how will they react to knowing that you're a sissy who likes boys? And how will it impact on your self-image, even to accept that knowledge about yourself. How will you feel about yourself inside? But believe me, it's worth it. Just be true to yourself, your true expanded self. Once you get to that point, once you're capable of ignoring social gender expectations, putting preconditioned roles to one side, and accept yourself for what you are, and just begin to enjoy your sexuality, you'll wonder why you were so confused and guilt-ridden."

"You're probably right. But I fear it's too late for me. I can never be like that. I'm from a different time, a different mind-set. It's as though I deserve to be punished for the dirty things I crave..."

"For me, I've always felt this way, I can't recall a time when I didn't feel this way."

He's a smooth talker. How can he be saying these thinks with such a casual ease? But he continues, even more explicitly.

"I've had quite a few serious partners and as many casual affairs, and I've enjoyed open and satisfying sex with them all. For example, Neil was married. I worked with him in a bakery. When I first told him I was gay he went through all the usual protestations of it being unnatural and how he found it physically repugnant. I made no big deal about it and we went on to talk of other things. It was some two weeks later, we were on night shift together. We were both tired. During a lull in the work we began to talk about sex..."

By now I'm getting a little nervous we'll be overheard, but more scared that he's not going to continue his tale. I lean in close to hear it all.

"He'd say "What is it you do exactly?"

"He was mid-thirties, wellbuilt and dark, but also a little reserved. He seems nervous and I found that both funny and also attractive. I told him I like doing oral. He looks away embarrassed."

"What's it like doing that to another man?"

"I tell him it's wonderful. He confessed his wife would never do oral, their sex-life was dull, and infrequent anyway. You can probably guess the rest. Some time later he deliberately returns to the subject. Who do I do it with, a regular boyfriend? I tell him I do it with whoever I fancy and with whoever turns me on."

"When he blusters "Yeah, but you wouldn't do it just... like, to anyone, say someone like me?" So intense and so obviously scared that I almost laugh out loud."

"I pity his desperation. His fear makes me all the more fascinated to see how far he'll take it."

"I say "Come into the car-park"."

"It was dark and cool out there. We get into his car and he's so wired with apprehension he just sits there stupidly frozen. So I unzip him and he lets me get his cock out. He's big, circumcised and already erect, aroused by the thought of what we've discussed. It looks so appealing."

"You've got a perfectly delightful cock" I tell him, cradling it. "I can't imagine why your wife wouldn't want to suck it."

"It takes him a moment to work out what I mean, so a rephrase it. "I'd love to suck it, if that's alright?"

"Grimly, he nods. So I go down and suck him, and as I do it I ease his trousers down to his knees so I can caress his balls, taking him as deep into my throat as I can and sucking hard. He's sitting ramrod straight, holding my head and going "Oh shit, Oh shit." It was like he was terrified to admit, and was fighting to deny the pleasure flooding through him emanating from that part of him embedded solidly in my mouth. His voice betrayed a hysterical edge as he wheezed "Look out, I can't hold it" and as he begins ejaculating into my mouth he's sobbing "Oh god, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"He was wracked with guilt and shame. "Don't tell anyone will you, promise you won't tell anyone."

"Personally I figured it was no big deal. I felt sorry for him. He had a beautiful cock, and I enjoyed sucking it. I got off on his arousal and his pleasure. But he was ashamed and terrified of discovery. Nevertheless, before I quit the bakery and move on, we did it twice more, and each time at his instigation, although I was never slow to pick up on his nervous hints, and respond."

"That's what I mean about straight hypocrisy. He enjoyed me going down on him, but he daren't admit it to anyone. We both enjoyed it, but I was the only one honest enough to accept it. I've always found it that way. I'm comfortable with that. You can't reduce desire down to percentages or decimal points. It exists in its own continuum, beyond good and evil. It knows nothing about, and cares even less about conventional morality. It's happy to do what feels good. That's enough. So, as far as I'm concerned, it's the same with me and you, we owe each other nothing. You owe me nothing. I owe you nothing. But if you like, you can come back with me? I gotta place to go."

As if I'm looking alarmed he adds "No strings, no expectations. OK?"

I move my head, kind of in and out, not yes, not no. I have time. I can make time. I can find excuses. So I nod. We must make a strangely mismatched pair as we walk together. I don't know where his easy relaxed slouch of a walk is leading me, but oddly I feel entirely unthreatened. We barely exchange a word. I look around me, recognising the area. A kind of student bed-sitterland. Run-down in a vaguely dreamy, bohemian disreputable way.

A warm autumn breeze shuffling the trees. At the end of a tree-shaded cul-de-sac a row of boarded-up houses are sited behind high walls in their own ground. He leads me confidently through black wrought-iron gates, across a leaf-moist gravel drive shrouded in bushes, and around to a side-entrance where a couple of black wheelie-bins stand guard, pizza boxes grinning from their open mouths. He hunches over the lock, and eases the door open.

"There are 'For Sale' signs outside" I venture. "What is this place, some kind of squat?"

"Do you have any moral objections to squatting?" he taunts back.

Moral objections? -- after the sex act I'd just performed on him, in the light of whatever reason I was here with him, surely I've got no right to take a moral stance on anything. I shrug, following him up the stairs.

"In a sense it is a squat" he concedes."In another it isn't. This is a magical place where things are allowed to happen that don't happen anywhere else. Certain arrangements have been put in place to ensure that situation continues."

Before I'm able to ask what the hell that means we're moving across the landing, and into his room. Are there other residents in the house? I don't get to find out, not then. Not properly. Although it was by now mid-afternoon the long drapes are drawn, and he thumbs up the dimmer-switch rather than open them. Leaving the room still claustrophobically dark. I'd expected a scruffy, down-at-heel smell, but there's no smell in the room, the only odour present, I guess, is the man-fragrance of Frey himself.

Shelves of books and masses of CD's, piles of magazines stacked on the floor, reproduction-posters blue-tacked to the wall, racy Tom Of Norway and Robert Mapplethorpe images. He indicates an easy chair, and I sink down deep into its upholstery. He stays standing, stalking up and down the carpet like some kind of caged animal. The analogy appeals to me. He has animalistic aspects. He can be dangerous. He has the potential to wreak devastation on my neatly ordered life.

Yet I'm irresistibly drawn. He embodies something I need in my sad inadequate life. What exactly does he intend by bringing me here? Is he anticipating more sex? If so, I'm certainly not averse to the prospect. Maybe I'll get lucky? Maybe he'll give me an opening? Will I get to see him stripped to the buff this time? Doing it in a more leisurely way, after the cramped urgency of our first encounter, I'd enjoy that. I wait in a fug of uncertainty.

My eyes rove the limits of the room, the dim light illuminating the spines of books on his shelves, checking out the titles, "The Swimming Pool Library" by Alan Hollinghurst, yet, I've read that, "The Motion Of Light On Water" by Samuel Delany, others that are more unfamiliar. "The Man With Night-Sweats" by poet Thom Gunn? Books by Rimbaud, Jean Cocteau, Genet, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust. The only jarring aspect of the room is the red door. Faded, and a little paint-worn, but leading off from the main space, into... what? A bedroom? An annexe? And why that out-of-context colour? Its significance plays teasing tricks around the edge of my mind.

After pacing up and down once or twice, moving with an easy grace, he sits opposite me with a serious intensity.

"It's not safe, you know" he begins. "Not safe at all, what you're doing. What we did today. There's too much risk. Not only from nasty infections picked up off random strangers, but queer-bashing violence and police harassment too. You've got too much to lose."

I don't need this. Lecturing advice on social responsibility, on what I already know, from a young guy old enough to be my own kid is the last thing I needed.

"You've got a respectable career, a marriage you can't afford to jeopardise -- financially or psychologically, a life you're putting at risk."

I simply returned his stare. "So?"

"So I've got a proposal to put to you. A proposition if you like. If you'd care to listen..."

I listen... and my life begins anew.

The psychology of it all is so obvious it's embarrassing. My life consists of making hard decisions, taking responsibility for other's lives, sometimes being instrumental in laying personnel off, downsizing. Or refusing lifeline loans to people who need it, like that desperate newsagent. I'd wrecked his life. It had to be done, but somewhere deep inside me, there's guilt. And the psychological need for retribution, for punishment. In situations where I'm taking responsibility, to achieve balance, there must also be a corresponding surrender of responsibility. That's why High Court Judges and Cabinet Ministers seek out dominatrix-sex with hookers. It's the same need. It's well-documented, profiled and analysed.

And even further, there's more. There is what people term success and failure in life. There's achievement, and there's loss. I've been to all those places. But when it all comes down to dust, when all hopes and dreams fall away, when it's all been seen and done and found false, there's only physical sensation left. The only thing we can ever be totally certain of. The only reality left.

But even such a degree of self-awareness does nothing to reduce the longing, or lessen the burning need. I'm incapable of resisting the lure of darkness. The gods are angry, and must be satisfied. It's some deep self-destructive thing that emerges from within me, blasphemous thought-streams that bring an almost unbearable hunger to my throat, until every cell in my body is screaming, like a drug-addict in withdrawal, for the next fix.

The images start seeping into my mind, haunting, tormenting, painful, unbidden, I fight them, but they keep coming. The slightly-built freckled boy in the high school showers who reaches out timidly and takes hold of my penis. Something so unexpected, so startling, I look around, meet his eyes, and instinctively push his hand away. Only to immediately regret it. I remember the hurt expression in his eyes, the semi-hard shape of his own cock. Why did I push his hand away? Why didn't I reciprocate without nambly-pamby hesitation? until our grubby teenage hands became a blur of mutual masturbation?

Why -- because I was scared. I've been scared all my life. Afterwards I was too nervous and too shy to approach him, although I thought about it. But I feel his fingers on me now. And there are sequences from porn-sites that replay over and over again in my head. Passages from erotic books. I fight the impulse, stifle the faint murmurings of conscience, fight so hard it physically hurts. No! No! No! No! I said I'd never do this again. But the id is an untamed savage.

There's something stuck down deep inside my head and I can't get it out. Something nasty. Science hasn't yet devised a machine that can reach into the brain, find the badness that shouldn't be in there, and rip it out by the roots. So it needs to be periodically purged. It needs the poisonous urges to be drawn. I need my occasional trips to Vulgaria. Otherwise I become remote and withdrawn, as though nursing a form of caged anger, instead of letting that true emotion out, to express itself. If you feed a desire for long enough with the fuel of longing, and hold it under pressure, one day it will erupt and destroy you.

I wish I could be as guilt-free as Frey, but I'm not. That is to want something it's impossible for me to have. I'm from a different age, another place, a separate mindset. Perhaps it's that very danger, the precariousness that makes it so addictive. Gambling all on that one moment of ecstatic release. Using sex to drown out the shame I feel. And feeling worse because I know I shouldn't feel shame, so abusing sex more...

Now, today, Frey invites me in and we smalltalk for a while. We drink, martinis probably. I pay him.

I ask "Do you have something for me?"

He nods. "Something special."

I say "How do you want me?"

And before he explains he says "Once in the room, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. There is no other god than pleasure and the gratification of the senses. You want this? You absolutely want this?"

I confirm "Yes, I want it."

"You surrender all rights to me, without redress?"

"I do."

I never know what to expect. Until he specifies. Sometimes I'm to be just naked, so hurriedly I undress -- usually erect already, in fact chances are I've had a lazy lob on ever since the phone call, and usually even before at just the thought of what I'm preparing to do. Full nakedness for me is embarrassing, because -- to be honest, I'm not well-endowed, and I'm also self-conscious about my over-fleshy gut-line being seen. I'm no-one's idea of the body-perfect sex-slave. I have no illusion about being desired for myself. Not like they might desire the smooth nude bodies of the young hitchhiker guys on the website clip. But I can be used. And my embarrassment, the humiliation, is part of the experience.