Football Match

The start of the 'Butt Monkey' series of stories by Robert Furlong

===

Considering the impact it was to have on my life, it now seems difficult to believe that it came with no warning. But then, I suppose that's true of almost all of life's most momentous events: they emerge unannounced amidst the most boringly ordinary of our daily routines.

===

The day it started must have been in late September. The shops were already selling Halloween lanterns, the nights were starting to draw in and there was a chill to the evenings heralding winter's approach.

I'd packed an overnight bag after work and was putting it in the boot of the car when my son Jake arrived home from college. Having put out a couple of extra bowls of food for our cat while Jake was grabbing a few things from his room, we'd set off in the car to go to Liverpool to watch a match between Manchester United and Everton the following day. On the way out of town, we'd picked up Jake's friend Simon who was coming along with us as well as Simon's dad, Guy.

As I remember it, Guy's inclusion on the trip was rather an after-thought. One minute, Jake and I were making our plans to drive up on Saturday morning to see the match, the next his friend Simon was being mooted as coming along with us, and before I knew it Simon's dad was in the picture and the trip had evolved to include an overnight stay.

That's often the way it works with Jake, though. Something about inches and miles springs to mind.

I wasn't bothered about Simon's dad coming along -- having another adult in the car at least brought with it the prospect of some fresh conversation -- but I didn't know him very well at all. I knew that, like me, he had been divorced for quite a few years and that, like me, he enjoyed watching a football match pretty much regardless of who was playing, but other than that he was just some bloke I occasionally saw and made small-talk with when I was giving Jake a lift home after college.

Guy and I sat in the front of the car on the way to Liverpool, with the lads in the back occupied by Simon's DS which they'd brought along for the journey. We chatted uncomfortably at first, exchanging trite observations about football and pretending to be interested in each other's jobs, before we grew familiar enough with each other to discuss our respective divorces and the limited success we'd both had with internet dating.

Guy was a plumber -- quite a financially successful one given that he only had to work three days a week -- and it turned out that his ex-wife, like mine, had left him for a younger man. In Guy's case the younger man had been a friend of his who had taken advantage while Guy was away working for a stint on an oil-rig. In my case it had been one of Linda's workmates. We discussed our experiences in terms of how angry we'd been, making jokes about our ex-wives' inadequacies and asserting that the other guys were welcome to have them. We kept well away from sharing the feelings of upset, rejection and failure that we must have both gone through in the months and years since we'd split from women we'd both clearly loved.

Guy had enjoyed more success than I had on the dating scene since his divorce, no doubt helped in part by his friendly and attractive face, and what looked like quite a muscular build through his clothes. However, while he obviously found it easier than I did to meet women and get past the first few awkward, fumbling encounters, his relationships seemed to quickly fizzle out and he seemed resigned to remaining single at least for the foreseeable future.

"Some women disappear when they realise they're not just getting into a relationship with one person," he said quietly, making a subtle gesture towards his son in the backseat of the car. "It was worse a few years ago, when he was younger, but it still seems like it's a complication that a lot of women aren't prepared to deal with."

"Maybe that's my problem too," I nodded. "I always make it clear from the start that I'm not on my own."

I glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw that the lads were too involved in trying to top each other's high scores on the DS to notice that they were being talked about.

"Maybe next year it'll be different," he went on. "Once the lads are away at university, we'll be a couple of free agents again!"

He grinned over at me and I smiled back. Unlike Guy, I was in no rush for Jake to leave home, even if it was just during term time and while he was studying. The house had been quiet enough after his mother had left: I dreaded to think what it would be like when I was alone.

===

When we got to the hotel, a fairly standard second-rate chain affair at the edge of an industrial estate, I was checking in with reception when Jake asked if he and Simon could bunk up together instead of the two of us sharing as I'd planned.

"Go on, dad. It'll be a laugh."

I shook my head. "I don't want to have to book an extra room."

"You won't have to," he urged. "I'll share with Simon. You can share with his dad. That'll work."

Guy and Simon were bringing their bags in through the entrance.

"I dunno Jake," I said, feeling a little uncomfortable and glancing over at Guy. "Guy might not want to share a room with me."

I was hoping that Guy would back me up and insist that we stick to the plan we'd made to both share with our sons. It wasn't that I particularly wanted to bunk up with Jake -- since he'd hit his teens, I'd made it clear he could have his privacy whenever we'd stayed in hotels -- but rather that I wasn't comfortable about sharing with Guy. In spite of what we'd found we had in common on the drive up, I didn't feel I knew him well enough to want to share a room with him for the night. What if I had to get naked in front of him or he caught sight of my morning erection? I'd never been comfortable about showing my body off to another person.

However, Guy just shrugged and said, "I'm easy either way. I guess it makes sense for the lads to share. More fun that having to sleep with their old men."

Jake and Simon were delighted: they probably had visions of playing on the DS all night. Not wanting to look uptight by forcing the issue, I let Jake get his way.

Guy, however, seemed to sense my apprehension and grinned. "Don't worry, mate," he chuckled, slapping my back. "I've seen it all before on when I worked on the rig. And if you fart in your sleep I promise I won't tell anyone."

The lads found this as hilarious as you might expect eighteen-year-olds to and so I smiled to try and hide my discomfort. I wasn't that bothered about farting in my sleep, but what if I did other stuff? What if I kept touching myself or scratching my bum or something...?

We loaded up the rooms -- two twin rooms which were fortunately next door to one another -- and then drove into Liverpool for as decent a meal as we could find for the limited cash that we'd agreed on.

===

When we got back to the hotel, it was past ten o'clock and time for us all to turn in.

"I don't want you guys playing on that DS or watching TV all night," I told Jake and Simon as they were taking their shoes off. "You want to be fresh for the game tomorrow."

"Yeah," Guy agreed. "So no wanking after light's out."

The lads found this to be very funny and I smiled to hide my disapproval.

It wasn't that I didn't want Jake to hear about masturbation: on the contrary, I'd been talking with him about it for many years after I'd started finding his pyjama bottoms in the laundry bag on an almost daily basis, always copiously soaked around the fly. At first I'd feared that he was starting to pee the bed again, like he had just after his mum had left us, but then I'd caught a whiff of a strong and familiar odour and had turned the fabric inside out to find it smeared with thick white gobs.

So we'd sat down to have the first of our chats about sex. I'd explained to him that he could avoid making a mess of his pyjamas by rubbing his foreskin up and down his penis each night until a white liquid called semen squirted out of it. At first he'd found this funny and said it sounded stupid. But then he'd asked if I did it, and I'd said that I sometimes did.

I assume he'd taken my advice because the wet pyjama bottoms stopped appearing in the laundry bag and boxes of tissues started disappearing from the bathroom cupboard. And Jake's bedroom door started being firmly closed after bedtime.

Since then, over the many years in between, I'd always talked quite openly about masturbation with Jake and had told him that it was something he should never feel guilty about so long as he was discreet about where and when he did it.

Guy didn't notice my displeasure at his frivolous remarks, and went on, "And it's no use trying to pretend you're not wanking by saying you're just scratching your balls! We've heard it all before!"

Simon laughed, "That goes for you guys too, then!"

Guy grinned. "I dunno... two blokes who haven't had a woman for a while... who knows what could happen..."

His son laughed but made a repulsed face. "Ugh, dad, don't be such a skeeve!"

Jake too found the suggestion disgusting but was clearly amused. "That is so heinous!"

I said, smiling, "I'm not sure I'm happy to share with you on this basis, Mr Leeson. I think I'll sleep on the floor in here..."

Guy chuckled, "You're an attractive guy... I'm only human..."

Again the lads giggled through protests of mock disgust at the prospect of homosexual activity between their dads, while I felt rather pleased that Guy had said I was attractive, even if it had been in jest. A bloke with the luck I've had with women needs all the confidence boosting he can get.

We left them with a promise that they'd turn their light off by half past eleven at the latest.

When we got back to our room, Guy said, taking off his jacket, "Maybe I shouldn't have said that stuff in there. It just seemed to amuse them."

"That's okay," I shrugged. "They could see it was a joke."

He laughed, "I tell you what. Why don't we give it ten minutes, then beat the headboard of the bed against the wall like we really are at it together... they'll wet themselves laughing!"

Again I smiled to hide my displeasure. "I think that'd be going too far."

He went on, oblivious, "Go on! I could be squeeking the mattress springs like I was screwing the crap out of you! And you could be calling out 'Give it to me! Put it in me!' like you were whacking yourself off as your arse got shafted!"

I felt quite surprised by the coarseness of his language and how direct he was being about sexual matters with someone he hardly knew. I said, more firmly, "I don't think so, Guy."

He ignored me and laughed uproarously, his enthusiasm carrying him away. "We can leave the door unlocked and get on the bed while we do it. You on all fours and me behind you, grabbing your hips like we were really at it. Wait for the lads to come bursting in and catch their old men doing the dirty! We could even strip off down to our skivvies! Or do it bollock-naked if you'd be up for it! Yeah, we'll do that -- it'll be hilarious!"

Now this really was taking it too far. Even fully clothed and clearly set up as an intended joke, I wouldn't be comfortable about Jake and Simon seeing me in such a vulgar position. But there was absolutely no way that I would simulate buggery with this man dressed only in our underwear or worse still naked, never mind allowing my son to see me like that. Just the thought of exposing my backside for this bloke to slap his -- presumably flaccid -- cock against was deeply offensive.

Making it clear that I was bringing this to a close, I stated firmly, "No, Guy. I don't want the lads seeing us like that and, anyway, it'd disturb the other guests. We don't want to end up getting thrown out of this place."

He sat down on his bed, still chuckling, and started taking off his shoes. "Yeah, I guess. It'd be funny though. The lads would be in stitches."

Figuring it was time to start getting ready for bed, I started unbuttoning my shirt. Jake would probably laugh at such a performance in front of his friend, but I thought he would probably be inwardly shocked at me for going ahead with something so crude and base.

Not wanting to appear humourless and dour, I said, with a laugh, "Why do you assume you would be the one on top?"

Guy removed his other shoe and stood up to unbutton his own shirt. "I don't. Anyway, that's a bit of an urban myth."

"What do you mean -- an urban myth?" I pulled the bottom of my shirt out of my jeans and started taking it off.

He looked over at me. "It's a bit of an urban myth that one guy gets to go on top. When men get up to this kind of stuff it usually involves a bit of... well... negotiation... turn-taking. It's a bit more involved than 'wham bam, thank you man'."

I looked back at him, puzzled. "How do you know?"

He smiled. "I told you I spent some time as a plumber on an oil-rig. That kind of stuff's pretty commonplace when you've got just blokes around each other day and night. I mean, they'd be careful about it, but you'd be aware of it going on all the same."

"On the oil-rig? You mean... working men... straight men?"

He grinned at my surprise and nodded.

He went on, fiddling with his shirt buttons, "Doing stuff like that might not be most guys' cup of tea, but you find that a lot of men become less fussy when their nuts are ready to burst after a few weeks on the rig."

I was both astonished and intrigued by what he was saying. I knew, of course, that straight men would couple up for sex when alternatives weren't available, but I'd assumed that such activities were restricted to prisons and other institutions were the men were confined together for long periods.

"You actually saw it happening?"

"Like I said, the blokes would be careful about it... choose the quietest and darkest nooks and crannies to do it. But sometimes you'd hear the kind of sounds you can't mistake, or you'd spot a couple of guys... trousers 'round their ankles... trading favours."

For some reason I found this quite fascinating. While gay sex had never interested me per se -- backsides, male or female, had never really figured on my sexual radar and male genitals had always seemed far too ugly to be erotic -- I could hardly believe that Guy's workmates could become so horny without female company that within a few weeks of being confined together they'd be getting together for mutual relief.

My face must have betrayed my surprise because he laughed as he pulled off his shirt, revealing a grey t-shirt with a beer logo on it. His chest was large and muscular, as I'd suspected, and a dark wiry tangle sprouted from the neckline. His arms were broad and covered in finer, but still quite dense, hair.

He said, "This is getting too deep. I tell you what. I brought a bottle of something with me as a night-cap, you know? Lighten the mood a bit."

He walked over to his rucksack and pulled out a bottle of whisky. "You up for it?"

I smiled. "Too right!"

He walked into the small attached bathroom and took the plastic glasses out from their hygienic wrapping.

While I was sitting on the end of the bed taking my shoes off, he poured us two remarkably generous measures of whisky and handed me one of them. I took it with thanks and enjoyed a sip of it, savouring the distinctly peaty flavour of what seemed to be a fairly good quality malt.

Guy took a large swig of his drink and said, "Nice." Then he started unbuttoning his jeans.

I was curious about what he'd said before he'd changed the mood, as he'd put it, by opening the whisky.

I said, as casually as I could while pulling my socks off, "Did you ever get up to any stuff yourself? You know... when you were on the rig?"

He looked over at me, hitching his jeans down. His legs, like his arms, were thick and quite hairy.

He was wearing a pair of light blue briefs; the sort of cheap pair you'd pick up in a pack of five in a supermarket but which I would never buy. He seemed to enjoy revealing the large mound made by his genitals; I wondered if he deliberately chose underwear which was a size too small, the way the flimsy fabric they were made of struggled to contain his impressive bulge.

He asked, rather brusquely, "Sex with other men, you mean?"

At first I thought he was offended by the question. However, his eyes were enquiring rather than hostile and so I nodded, again trying to appear as casual as I could when asking such a personal question to a man I hardly knew.

"Can't say I did, no." He grinned and went on, "Sorry to deprive you of a good bedtime story but it wasn't really my thing."

I smiled, joking, "Not even a quick one when someone dropped the soap in the shower?"

He chuckled. "Like I said, it wasn't as simple or direct as that. Guys did it secretively and, because we were pretty much all straight and married as far as I know, it had to be a two-way thing. A bit of give and take, if you know what I mean."

I nodded, standing up to take off my own jeans.

"I could probably have got into the giving when I felt desperate enough," he went on. "But not the taking. No way."

I hitched my own jeans down revealing my stripy red and white boxer shorts from M&S. I was thankful that my own package was more or less concealed in the folds of the fabric. Unlike Guy, I was certainly not one to flaunt myself; in fact, ever since my genitals had started developing in my early teens, I'd had quite a few issues about exposing them to anyone.

Still intrigued, I asked, "Are we talking oral or anal here?"

"Either or both. You do me and then I'll do you. That kind of arrangement."

"And you saw it going on? In the darkest nooks and crannies of the oil-rig?"

He smiled. "We were all aware of it -- that would be a better way of putting it. Two guys would disappear together after lights out and you'd know what was going on. Everyone would. Maybe you'd hear them at it... sounds of a mouth working a cock... or you'd walk in on something... one guy behind another, working up a rhythm..."

I nodded. He sat on his bed, leaning against the headboard with his backside on the pillows and holding his whisky in his hand. He seemed completely unselfconscious about wearing only a t-shirt and his straining underpants in front of me.

I figured he was now ready for bed. The pyjamas I'd brought with me when I'd thought I'd be sharing with Jake would have to stay in my hold-all. I wasn't keen on sleeping in my underwear, nor indeed of lounging around in my boxer shorts in front of a relative stranger, but I thought it would look prim not to follow his example.

"Did it disgust you?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Not really, no. As long as I didn't have to look at two guys going at it on the next bunk to mine, I didn't really care what they got up to."

Having folded my jeans and stacked them with the rest of my clothes on the chair, I sat on my own bed and took another sip of whisky. Musing on what he'd said, I asked, "And you wouldn't be happy even to give another man oral on the promise of receiving it yourself?"

He shook his head. "Would you?"

I considered the question, taking another sip of my drink and enjoying its burning sensation on my tongue. "I don't think giving a man oral would be that bad, to be honest. I've never really thought about it before, I admit, but the taste of his... you know... penis... can't be that bad."

I don't know why I felt uncomfortable saying the word 'cock' to Guy. Given the subject matter we were discussing, it seemed inordinately fussy to use medical vocabulary to describe parts of the body.

I went on, "I mean, as long as you keep the thing pretty clean, its smell is pretty inoffensive so one would imagine that it can't taste too bad."

Taking another gulp from his drink, he grinned and asked, "Would you let a guy fuck your arse?"