As I drove Ivan back across town in my swanky new car, I asked him how he'd ended up seeking out men for sex in spite of being married to such an attractive woman and having what he'd described as an 'enjoyable' sex life.
"I love Trisha," he replied, "and I'm being totally honest when I say it excites me to make love with her. But on a totally different level, I enjoy doing it with other blokes too -"
"Why 'on a totally different level'," I cut in.
"I just mean that the stuff I like doing with men arouses me in a different way from the intimacy I have with my wife. My fantasies and fetishes are very specific - the guy has to be willing to do anal and I strongly prefer flip-flop."
"Flip-flop?" I asked, wondering if he had a shoe fetish he hadn't told me about.
"Yeah, doing it both ways, like we just did. First one of us takes it, then we change places and the other one takes it."
"Oh right," I smiled. "Yes, I like that too."
"Go easy on the gears for the first few weeks," he advised about my driving. "Try to change up a bit later than you ordinarily would. It avoids labouring the engine."
I did as he suggested, pulling away from a T-junction and keeping it in first gear long beyond what sounded healthy, and asked him why he thought he liked flip-flop so much.
"It goes back to when I was in my late teens," he said. "They say your formative sexual experiences colour your sexuality for life."
"Did you flip-flop with your buddies?"
He grinned over at me. "When I had chance, which wasn't that often! Not many guys are into it but, like with you, I got to figure out ways of spotting them. So yeah, some nights a few drinks and a stopover round a certain friend-of-a-friend's place would end up with the two of us riding on each other's backs!"
"Sounds fun," I chuckled.
"It was," he laughed back, "as long as we were both discreet about it."
I drove on, trying to figure out how the headlights worked since it was starting to get dark, as he explained, "I've always called myself straight, Rob - I mean, I had girlfriends all the way through my teens. I've never dated a guy - never wanted to get into what you might call a relationship with another bloke - but no matter which girl or woman I was with and how much sex they were serving up, I've always sought out other men for... well... basically, for a bit of what we just did!"
"So you think having reciprocal anal sex with your mates in your teens has made you want it all your life?"
"No I don't think that," he replied. "I think it goes back to something that happened on a fishing trip. In fact I'm sure it does."
"A fishing trip?" I asked, accidentally switching on the wipers instead of indicating to turn right.
"Yeah, it was me and a mate with our two dads up in Northumbria. We often went there for a week of trout fishing and we slept in a couple of tents. Our dads had been good friends since their schooldays so they always shared a tent, and I shared with Daryl who I'd known since we were kids even though we weren't like bezzie mates or anything."
I nodded and managed to stall the car as I tried to pull out from the junction.
"One night," he continued once we were back on the road, "I couldn't sleep and it was getting really late. Lying there in my sleeping bag, I heard steady rhythmic sounds coming from outside and I figured my dad and Mr Jackson must be beating off in their tent. I don't know why, but the thought of our dads pulling away at their hard-ons started getting me horny, listening to their panting and gasping and the quickening slapping sounds they were making together.
"Soon my own stalk was as boned-up as theirs, and I crept out of my tent to go and take a peep through their tent flap. I thought they'd be lying there with their feet pointing towards me, their knobs poking upwards and their hands bashing up and down the thick veiny shafts. A bit like me and Daryl did when we unzipped our sleeping bags and whacked off together in our tent, like we sometimes did."
"Why were you curious to see what your dads were doing?" I asked.
"I dunno," he shrugged. "It's what lads are like, isn't it? Fascinated about anything to do with sex. I probably wanted to see if Mr Jackson's dick was bigger than my dad's... whether they wanked off the same way I did... how much spunk they made when they both shot off... that kind of stuff..."
"Okay, so what happened next?"
"When I shone my torch in on them, I didn't see what I expected to at all. Instead of their two dongs poking upwards and their hands smacking away, both their faces were right there in front of me looking at me through the tent flap, peering straight at me with my dad's on top of Mr Jackson's. I just about dropped my torch I was so surprised.
"'What do you want?' my dad snapped, keeping up the weird rhythmic movements he was making against Mr Jackson. I saw he'd wrapped his arms around Mr Jackson's chest and even though they both had their t-shirts on, I could see that my dad had his pants pulled down from how his white pudgy arse was bobbing up and down behind his face.
"'They can't really be bumming,' I remember thinking. 'Surely to fuck my dad can't be bumming another bloke's arse!'"
"You knew about gay sex at that age, did you?" I asked him, still fiddling with rear-view mirror as I drove to get it just right.
"Of course I did," he laughed. "I must have been eighteen when this happened and I was never that sweet and innocent! I knew that straight lads like me did it to girls up their fannies and that gay lads did the same thing using each other's arseholes. And I was pretty sure - although I couldn't really believe it - that that was what I watching my dad do to Mr Jackson.
"I could hear a weird wet munching sound coming from between them and I kept getting a whiff of a really fierce shitty stink that neither of the two men seemed at all bothered by."
"Did it disgust you?" I asked him.
"No. I suppose, if anything, it intrigued me," he replied. "I figured it was the smell you must get when two men are doing it and, as it was totally different from the sex smells I was used to of boys doing girls, I found it... well... pretty interesting, actually."
I smiled, checking that the mirror was as good as I could get it. "So what did you say to him?"
"I told him I just wondered what the two of them were doing.
"'What does it look like we're doing?' my dad asked huffily, not missing a beat as he kept grinding away on top of Mr Jackson.
"I must have just stared at them, wondering if they were really doing what I thought they were. Was this some stupid prank they were playing, or were they actually having gay sex right in front of me, my dad knobbing Mr Jackson up his dirty stinky bum?"
"Mr Jackson, who was just lying their taking it with my dad's chest heaving against his back, quipped, 'Come on, Ivan mate. Give us some privacy!'
"There was a fart - a really sloppy-sounding one - but neither of them so much as smiled and my dad just kept doing his thing, his forehead starting to bead with sweat.
"He said, 'If we're keeping you awake, we won't be long... just don't spy in on us while we're chuffing off!'
"I nodded and pulled their tent flap closed and went back to my tent. So they were having bum sex, right there in the next tent to ours! I'd never heard it called 'chuffing off' before but it was pretty clear what he meant."
I smiled over at him. "It's interesting the different words straight men use when they have gay sex, as if cloaking it in an inoffensive name somehow makes the act less emotionally troublesome."
A driver swerved in to cut me up so I gave him a stern blast of my windscreen washer.
"I lay there in my sleeping bag listening to them, my dad's rhythm getting steadily faster, until with three or four low grunts, it abruptly stopped. After half a minute or so, the two of them started moving around and I heard dad whisper, 'Oh fuck, that's well skanky! Pass me some bog roll over.'
"Mr Jackson whispered something and I heard dad chuckle. 'If you've got the runs, mate, I've probably just made it a helluva lot worse!'
"I put my pillow over my head, not wanting to hear anything more, and struggled to get to sleep with everything I'd just seen and heard running through my mind on endless repeat."
I nodded. "Things have must have awkward between you and your dad for a while after that..."
"Not really," he contended. "I don't actually think my dad was in any way troubled by what he and Mr Jackson were doing. He even talked about it with me the next day while we were fishing."
"Really? What did he say?"
"He apologised for being snappy with me and said of course it was natural that I was curious about sex stuff. I asked him, 'So does that mean you were... er... doing sex stuff with Mr Jackson? Making love to him?'
"He roared a great deep belly laugh at that and said, 'Of course I wasn't making love to him, Ivan! That's what I do to your mum!'
"'What were you doing to him, then?' I asked.
"'You could see what we were doing - you could probably smell it too! We were just chuffing off the way blokes do when they're caged-in together!'
"'Chuffing off? You mean you were... er... doing it with his backside?'
"He chuckled again like I was being really dim. 'That's how it works, son! It's not like he's got any other holes down there I could use!'
"'But isn't that a gay thing?' I came back with. 'Doing sex stuff with other men, I mean?'
"'Come on, don't be daft,' he laughed, 'do me and him look like we're gay? Doing it that way is just what fellas do when they're horny but there aren't any women around.'
