"Do you prefer dating a woman or doing the dirty with a guy?" my son asked me.
I know it's not a typical question for a nineteen-year-old lad to ask his dad but then Jake and I don't have what you might call a typical father-son relationship.
"I like the affection and companionship of a relationship with a woman," I replied. "But I think I'm starting to prefer sex with my own gender."
He smiled and nodded. I knew he was beginning to feel the same way himself, especially about a particular friend of his who he'd met at university.
"What is it about dude sex that you like so much?"
I had to suppress a snigger at 'dude sex'. It never ceases to amuse me how Jake avoids the word 'gay'.
"I suppose it's the sheer physicality of it," I responded. "The way that the guy you're with is out for the same thing you are... all the excitement, all the passion... the way there's no holding back..."
"Not to mention that you like having a dick up your butt!" Jake laughed, slugging the conversation into the gutter as he so often likes to do.
I smiled over at him. We were in our sitting room, having a few drinks before bedtime during one of Jake's occasional visits from uni. I was already on my second bottle of wine of the evening, while Jake had managed to work through a whole six pack of beer.
"I suppose there is that too," I admitted. "It's always fun to have the option of whose anatomy goes where!"
"When I'm with Ellie, I really miss that side of sex, actually," he agreed.
Ellie was his girlfriend, the main constant in his student bed among a succession of young men.
He went on, "I like making love with a girl - and all the boyfriend-girlfriend stuff me and Ellie get up to - but there's something really horny about shacking up with some random dude for a hump and a dump!"
"A hump and a dump?" I asked, wondering if it was some new scatological craze I hadn't heard of.
"Yeah, a hump on each other's backs," he grinned, "and a dump up each other's butts!"
I smiled over at him, taking a drink from my wine. We were being far more candid with each other than we would be if we were sober. We both knew we were saying more than we ordinarily would, but I thought it was healthy once in a while to be able to chat openly about such personal things without reticence or embarrassment.
"So essentially you mean gay sex!" I teased him, chuckling at his discomfort that I'd used the dreaded g-word.
"Do you miss it too?" he asked, not sharing my amusement. "When you're with Debbie, I mean?"
"Miss what?" I asked as I put down my glass. After downing the first bottle, I seemed to have lost a little of my focus.
"Miss having something up your butt? When you're with a woman?"
"Oh, yes... sometimes. It can feel a little... er... neglected, I suppose."
"When I'm with Ellie, these days," he went on with a conspiratorial smirk, "I get her to... well... use her finger on me while I'm... you know... doing my thing on top of her."
"Use her finger on you?" The drink must have made me especially dozy.
"Yeah... you know..." he grinned. "Reach round between my cheeks and work it up my butt!"
"Oh!" I responded. "That's very resourceful of you."
"It feels really nice, actually," he chuckled across at me. "You should try it."
"Doesn't Ellie mind?" I asked. From what I'd seen of her she seemed far to prim and proper to go poking around anywhere near my son's whiffy arse crack.
"She did at first," he nodded, taking a swig from his pint. "But I kind of went on and on about it. Kept telling her how important it was to me and how much I wanted to try it."
I nodded back, impressed by how persuasive he must be to tempt her to push her hand back there. Don't get me wrong - my son has a very attractive behind; I often find myself admiring how muscular his cheeks look, making two round bulges in the back of his jeans. I'm just under no illusions, from all the abundantly skidded underwear he brings home from uni, about what he's got down there lurking under the bonnet.
"Once she'd done it a couple of times," he continued, "and found it wasn't as messy as she'd thought, she started getting quite into it. Kind of got to like it."
I couldn't help but raise my eyebrows. "Did she indeed?"
This certainly was a turn up for the books! Sweet blushing Ellie was in the habit of treating my son to a brown-finger, was she? She clearly wasn't half as prissy as I'd assumed if she liked pressing her fingers into what his hairy crevice had left on the back of his boxers.
I asked him, "Didn't she query why you like having something up your bum during sex? Wasn't she... well... a bit concerned...?"
He chuckled indulgently as if that was such an 'old-school' question. I have such out of date ideas, you see, and I should count myself lucky that I have my son to keep me up to speed.
"She knows that dudes have a G-spot up their butts," he grinned. "I mean, she's not totally clueless!"
I smiled and nodded. "These modern girls, eh?"
"When she was used to it," he went on, jumping at the chance of educating his old dad, "she started asking to do it. She'd get me to bend over on all fours and she'd work at me with both hands... you know, one hand on the front with the other pumping away at the back...!"
He beamed triumphantly, no doubt hoping he'd shocked me.
I just laughed across at him at how daft he looked. I might have never had a girl do anything like that to me, but I'd done some stuff in my time that would probably make him blush.
"Imagine me asking Debbie to do that," I kept chuckling, after I'd taken another drink. "I think she'd throw up!"
My on-off girlfriend had made it blisteringly clear that my bum and hers were very much out of bounds during sex. She had a serious issue with smells and even my sweat could sometimes prove a deal-breaker in the bedroom.
"I've even got her to rim me when we've been like that," he added.
"Have you really?" Now I was genuinely surprised.
"Just occasionally," he smirked cheekily, clearly pleased to have elicited the reaction he'd been hoping for. "She has to be pretty drunk, mind!"
I nodded over at him, impressed that he'd manage to coax butter-wouldn't-melt Ellie to push her face into his stinky crack, even if he had had to ply her with alcohol beforehand.
"It's a bit of a fantasy of mine," he went on, "to have Ellie licking my butt while a guy out front slurps away at my dick. I think that would be so fucking hot!"
Wow - now we really were talking candidly.
He apologised for saying 'fucking' but I just shrugged like it didn't matter. Given everything else he'd said, it seemed somewhat precious to take issue with what was just a swearword.
It occurred to me - even after all the wine I'd downed - that I ought to manoeuvre our conversation away from such ribaldry. This was my son admitting some deeply personal things to me and, as the more adult of us, I should be mindful that we'd have to face each other across the breakfast table in the morning.
But this was an interesting chat to be having with Jake. And let's face it he was old enough to take responsibility for himself about the private things he was telling me.
So instead I kept the kettle boiling by asking, "Have you tried to engineer a situation to help bring that about?"
"You've gotta be really careful what you suggest with girls, haven't you? I mean, when you're with another guy you could mention a threesome or whatever and chances are he'd be up for it, but with a girl you've got to play it smart."
I nodded.
"The closest I got," he continued, "was at T in the Park last summer. There was this guy who'd lost his tent - or he said he had - and we offered for him to share ours. He was as camp as hell and I figured that in the darkness and with the three of us pushed up against each other, I might be able to wangle things so he'd blow me off while Ellie was tonguing my butt. Maybe push it even further and in the confusion pretend like I hadn't realised whose arse I was shagging! But in the end he was way more interested in copping off with Ellie - had his dick out and was trying to push it in her mouth - so I had to chuck him out."
"Couldn't you have worked with that?" I asked. "Pushed your face into his bum while she was sucking him off?"
He shook his head. "With Ellie - and probably with a lot of girls - you've got to be more subtle. She'd have seen sucking his dick as a betrayal of me, even if I was enjoying it. For her to be okay with having another guy join in with us, it would have to be a sort of 'accidental' thing like it would have been with all the fumbling and nudging if laddo had played ball."
I nodded, amused that he'd worked out possible scenarios.
"Come on then, dad," he urged me after downing another mouthful from his pint. "I've told you my fantasy - what's yours?"
I smiled. It wasn't really fair for him to ask me - I hadn't asked him to confess his secret desires - but I thought I'd play along. This was a fun conversation to be having with my son and, with any luck, after everything we'd drank the two of us would barely remember it in the morning.
I took a sip from my wine glass before admitting the scenario that had brought me much masturbatory pleasure over the previous year or so.
"Debbie and I go away for a weekend break with another couple. Maybe Dan and Eileen from work, but it can vary."
He smiled and nodded. We both knew it was implausible - I don't have friends I would do that sort of thing with - but sexual fantasies don't necessarily need to have any likelihood of actually happening.
"There's been a mix-up with the booking, and the four of us end up in one room."
Now he chuckled. He knew that old chestnut.
"For some reason - and, again, it can vary - the women have to share a bed while the two of us guys bunk up together."
"Why would you have to do that?" Jake asked, still smirking before downing another gobful from his beer. "There's got to be some rhyme and reason to it."
"I don't know," I shrugged. "Maybe the second bed was one of those small pull-out futon things, and the women - being dainty and petite - would be more willing to use it."
"So the upshot is, you guys get to share the double bed?" Jake grinned.