The Twelve Gays of Christmas

"Where are we going, again?" I looked around at the increasingly seedy environs. We were walking through the warehouse district, at night, just the two of us. It was seeming more and more like a poor decision.

"It's just around the corner."

"You said that three corners ago."

"Just come on, Kyle! You know what these tickets cost. You saw that review, this art installation was described as a 'transcendent cross-section of the gay community.' That blogger called it 'a revelation in twelve parts!' You seriously want to skip out on that?" Adam, my roommate with benefits, was very concerned with "the gay community." Not that I have any problems with the gay community, but gay people are still, well, people, and I do my best to avoid those whenever possible.

"What even is an art installation, anyway?" I asked.

Adam rolled his eyes. "You'll find out in a minute. Look, there it is!" He pointed toward a large warehouse down the block, cheerfully alight in a gratuitous display of holiday splendor. A large sign above the door bore the title "The 12 Gays of Christmas" in sickeningly festive candy-cane striped font. He pulled out his phone, checked the clock, and sighed in relief. "Good, we're on time. Our showing is the last one of the night, if we were late they'd probably just close up."

"Yeah, that would be a tragedy."

"Shut up, you're going to enjoy it. Just you wait."

Inside the door, we were greeted by an unreasonably handsome young man dressed in black, with a little nametag that said "Ian." He smiled at us with blindingly white teeth, checked a clipboard, and asked, "Are you the Adam McAllister party?"

Adam grinned back. "That's us! I'm Adam, and this is Kyle, the other group member."

The megawatt smile flashed again. I began to fear for my retinas. "Excellent," Ian the usher said, "you're right on time. Please, come with me." He showed us to a large steel door and indicated a lightbulb above it. "They're still resetting from the last showing, but it should just be a minute or two. When that lights up, you're good to enter. Would you like to leave your coats with me? It's much warmer inside."

Adam and I exchanged looks. I shrugged, he nodded, and we handed him our coats. Adam added his scarf to the pile, and I tossed my hat in for good measure.

"You can collect these from the front desk when you leave. I promise they'll be safe while you're inside. Please, enjoy the experience! I assure you, it will be a memorable one." With an oddly wicked smile, he returned to his post.

We appreciated his departure for a minute--his pants were VERY well fitted--before turning our attention to the big steel door. As he left, music began to play around us from discreet speakers in the ceiling. At first, I thought it was just good old "Jingle Bells," but then the lyrics started up:

Deck the halls,

Lick my balls,

We'll fuck 'til we can't walk;

Oh what fun it is to ride

On your big hard throbbing cock!

It pretty much went downhill from there. Adam and I exchanged incredulous looks, trying to stifle our laughter as verse after obscene verse played out over a timeless holiday tune. Eventually, the light above the door blazed into lurid green life, and the door made a ker-chunk noise as it unlocked. Adam pushed on it, and it swung open into darkness.

As we entered, the music changed, swelling from cheerful bells to electric guitars. Another recognizable classic, which was swiftly confirmed to be as twisted as the last when the first lines of "Jingle Bell Cock" rang out. We were standing in an island of light in a sea of shadows, with very precise lighting illuminating us and nothing else. From the way the music sounded, it was a large, open room, but we couldn't see anything more than ten feet away from us. As the music rose, though, the lights spread a bit wider, and I jumped--and then stared--as a dozen figures materialized from the darkness around us.

Each was a slim, pretty young man, dressed as what I can only describe as slutty Santa's helpers. They wore pointed green hats with white fur trim and comically oversized elf ears, little green vests which did nothing to conceal the lithe, bare torsos beneath, ridiculously tiny green shorts that left even less to the imagination than the vests, and long curl-toed shoes. We only had a moment to stare, though, as their emergence presaged a remarkably well choreographed dance to the increasingly vulgar soundtrack blaring over us.

We were immediately surrounded by a whirlpool of smooth skin and lithe grace. They wove complex patterns with their motions, gyrating around us and sliding against each other in a decidedly erotic fashion. Slim hips were thrust, pert asses were flaunted, and all while wearing those absurd hats and long shoes that somehow didn't detract from the eroticism--or interfere with the dance, which might have been more impressive. The song ended with all of them in a circle around us, facing outward and bent almost double. Twenty-four pert buns vibrated at us in chaotic invitation, right until the moment the music faded and they abruptly vanished into the darkness again.

Adam and I stood shocked for a moment at the sudden silence, then started applauding, because what else could we have done? After a few seconds, though, music started up again--"Santa Baby," this time. I noted with interest that the lyrics were unchanged, though it was a sultry male voice purring all those innuendos at us instead of the usual female vocalist. I soon lost interest in comparative music theory, though, because as the volume rose, so did the lights.

Spotlights illuminated a double row of raised platforms that lined a pathway to another door opposite us. There were five to a side with another at the end, actually mounted above the doorway so that we'd have to walk under it to exit. They were decorated to look like chimneys, with painted bricks up the sides, the cap serving as the pedestal's surface, and a tall pole rising from the center. Atop each platform was a man in a Santa suit, hat, boots, and all--though none had the traditional white fluffy beard. I didn't mind, though, because each was more handsome than the last.

As the music played, the men began an altogether different sort of dance, making use of their poles with expert precision. The bulky red coats came off first, flung aside to reveal bare, well-muscled bodies that gleamed in the bright lighting. Red suspenders held up the fuzzy red pants, and as the song progressed, they slithered off of those muscular shoulders as if by their own volition. With every request to Santa from the singer, another article of clothing vanished. The pants proved to be tearaways, and eventually each dancer was clad only in a classic Santa hat and a decidedly nontraditional red thong with white fur trim.

Awash in a sea of glistening skin and rippling abdominals, I almost didn't notice when the song drew to a close. As it did, each dancer flipped upside down and climbed feetfirst up their poles to vanish into the shadows above in a remarkable feat of acrobatic athleticism. (It also provided some excellent views.) With a burst of applause, a whistle from Adam, and a few longing looks at the disappearing dancers, we strode down the path of chimneys (I would never be able to watch that chimneysweep scene in "Mary Poppins" the same way again). As we approached the door, Adam called, "You can come down my chimney anytime!" I shook my head at him, but he was rewarded with some soft chuckles from the shadows.

The door led into a narrow hallway that curved in a tight U-turn, so that the next door was facing back the way we'd come. As we reached it, music began to play again:

Hark! The horny sub screams,

"Master, please! I need your cream!

Fuck me please, I've been so good,

Won't you give me that hard wood?"

I raised an eyebrow at Adam, and he just shrugged. "Stop judging. The dominant/submissive lifestyle is every bit as valid as yours."

"I didn't say it wasn't!" I said, defensively. "I'm just discomforted by the ridiculous music in this place."

"Art is supposed to discomfort you!" Adam replied. "Maybe you just need to open your eyes and--" He cut off as the door opened, apparently on its own. I don't know what I was supposed to open my eyes and see, but I'm pretty sure I was seeing it.

Similar to the first room, there were two rows of five platforms, one down each side of the rectangular chamber, though these were lower and wider than the chimneys. Atop each was an X-shaped wooden frame, with a young man clad in leather straps and little else tied to them. Beside each one was another man, also barely dressed in leather harnesses and chaps, and they were all wielding a wide assortment of...implements. One guy was attempting to insert one of those massive, inch-thick candy canes into a very inappropriate location, while another wielded a holly wreath, delicately pricking the skin of his victim's back with the sharp leaves as the poor lad squirmed and gasped in apparent pleasure. There were Christmas candles dripping hot wax, festive gift-wrap ribbons tied around all sorts of unlikely appendages, and one man who was just straight-up whipping his sub with an evergreen branch, berating him about being "too naughty" this year--though the whippee looked like he was enjoying it even more than the whipper, based on the bulge straining his tiny shorts.

Dazed and a bit overwhelmed, Adam and I wandered through the hall toward the door on the far side, trying to see everything without seeming like we were looking. Well, that's what I was doing. Adam was just blatantly ogling everything. As the song in the background wound down, we approached the exit door and tried to regain our composure.

"Well," I said, as the door closed behind us. "You were right. That certainly was eye-opening." Adam just rolled his eyes and adjusted his pants again. We walked around the tight bend to the next door, and I realized how this place was arranged. The warehouse itself was a huge long rectangle, and each...display?...was in a horizontal section of it that had been walled off internally. Each room would be parallel to the others, like slices of bread in a loaf.

The apparently inevitable background music rose around us--"Come, All Ye Fuckable," if you're keeping track--and we entered the next room, which greeted us with a wave of warm, steamy air. Unlike the previous rooms, we had to go up several steps onto a wooden walkway, like a bridge five feet above the ground. It wound across the room in an S-shaped curve, necessary to accommodate the other primary features of the display.

Nestled in the curves of the bridge were three hot tubs, which explained the humidity, and each spa contained three men. The water was bubbling and frothing, though lightly, which made the fact that none of the bathers were wearing a stitch of swimwear very apparent. In the first tub, the three men were snuggled together, with the two on the sides resting their heads on the well-muscled shoulders of the man in the middle. Their hands were under the roiling water, and were clearly not in their own laps--though with the frothing bubbles, we couldn't quite see what they were doing. Based on the rapturous expression on the middle guy's face, I had a pretty good guess.

We kept walking--okay, maybe we dragged our feet a little--and followed the curve of the walkway to the next tub. Like the last set, the three men inside it were clearly nude and up to some shenanigans. Two of them were literally sitting in the lap of the third, and the thinly bubbling water did little to conceal their aroused state. All of their hands were in the water, down between their bodies, and from the half-lidded eyes and occasional gasps, none were idle.

Telling myself the heat in my face was from the steam in the air--and the tightness in my pants was my imagination--I turned toward the final tub. As we approached it, one of the men inside took a deep breath and slid under the water. We could see the dark shape of his head move down between the legs of one of his companions, though with the bubbles we couldn't see what precisely was happening. At least technically we couldn't. The moan he released could have been a coincidence, after all.

As the exit door closed behind us, I tried to speak but had to clear my throat. "I, uh, ahem. How was that Christmas-y, exactly?"

Adam, looking a little red-faced himself, said, "Are you complaining?"

"Just wondering when the 'revelation in twelve parts' will kick in."

"Well, we've only seen the first few parts."

"Saw plenty back in there." I think Adam was going to reply, but the damned music started up again as we came around the bend to the next door, this time abusing poor "Silent Night":

Rigid dick,

Throbbing dick,

Long and hard,

Nice to lick...

I couldn't take any more. "You have got to be kidding me," I blurted.

"Yeah, okay, that's pretty bad," Adam said. The song, with its unsettling blend of somber tune and obscene lyrics, followed us into the next room, where I could fortunately stop paying attention to it.

This was a larger room than the last two, and my gaze was drawn first to the right side of the space, where four benches were facing a podium that stood before four doors. Two men sat on each bench, most of them holding hands or leaning against each other. At the podium was another man with two bowls, and as we entered, he pulled a slip of paper from each, read them, then announced, "C 1!" Two men stood from their benches, and I saw that each wore a little placard around their necks; one had a big letter C, the other, the number one. Looking around, I realized that of the four pairs on the benches, one guy on each had a number from one to four, and their partners had letters, A to D. A was with 1, B with 2, and so on.

Mr. C and Mr. One met before the podium. Mr. One was slim and graceful, with curly blonde hair and an adorably nervous smile. Mr. C was taller and darker, with broad shoulders and a wicked grin. He took Mr. One by the hand and led him off to the side of the podium, toward the leftmost door. As they entered, a little light turned on beside the door, and a sudden burst of cheering erupted behind me, making me jump in surprise.

Spinning around, I found a comfortable lounge space filling the left half of the room, with a big couch and chairs facing four large flatscreen TVs mounted on the wall. The seating was occupied by several more men--four on the couch and three in chairs--who were applauding as the first screen blinked into life. It showed Mr. C pushing Mr. One against a wall, pinning his hands above his head and diving in to kiss his neck. Mr. One writhed in obvious pleasure, pushing his hips against Mr. C's.

"B 3!" I jumped again at the shout behind me, and glanced over my shoulder to see another pair of men moving toward the second of the four doors. Already knowing what I would see, I turned back as the door closed behind them, and saw the second TV screen come to life with a view of Mr. B and Mr. Three. As the watchers clapped and hooted, the two all but leapt onto each other, kissing hungrily and pulling at each other's clothes. On the first screen, Mr. C had Mr. One's shirt completely unbuttoned, and was working his mouth down Mr. One's lean, muscled torso.

A moment later, another call went out--A 4--and then the third screen lit up to more cheers. These two weren't quite as eager as the last pair, and started calmly removing clothing. Shirtless, Mr. A stepped up to Mr. Four, and wrapped his hands around the other man's waist, before leaning in for a gentle, almost chaste, first kiss. Mr. Four warmed quickly though, and gripped Mr. A's shoulders as he pushed his tongue into Mr. A's mouth.

The fourth screen came to life as the last remaining men, Mr. D and Mr. Two, entered their door and practically tackled one another like the second pair had. Once again, the viewers on the seats burst into cheers and applause. Now that all four screens were active, I could see that each of the four rooms were basically identical, resembling a barebones hotel room with a bed, a lamp, and not much else. Mr. One was leaning against the wall, shirtless now and gasping as Mr. C, his head disappearing below the frame, did something at waist level we couldn't see. Mr. Three, now down to boxers with a serious tent, was bending Mr. B over the bed. He pulled B's underwear down, though Three's body was between the camera and his partner, so we couldn't see much.

A tug on my arm dragged me back to myself. Adam, his pupils dilated and his breath a little ragged, pulled me towards the door on the far side of the room.

"What's the rush?" I hissed as it opened before us. "It was just getting good!"

He looked at me, eyes dark with lust, and said, "The sooner we finish here, the sooner we can go home."

Oh. I smirked at him. "This is really getting to you, huh?"

He pointed at my waist. "Pot. Kettle."

I glanced down. Yeah, maybe it was getting to me a bit too. By which I mean, I was stiff as a board and straining my pants. I tried to surreptitiously rearrange some things while we walked around the U-turn hall to the next display room, but from Adam's snort I was not super successful. Fortunately, we were distracted by the beginning of the next terrible sex-carol.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful,

But your cock is so delightful.

We've got nowhere else to go,

So let me blow, let me blow, let me blow!

Snickering, we walked through the next door, and were greeted by a loud moan of pleasure. We were in a narrow hallway that seemed to go down the length of the space, instead of across it as in the previous rooms. Unlike the previous display rooms, which were large, open spaces, there were ten-foot-high wall panels set up to subdivide this area, so we had to turn and follow the narrow path. At its end, pressed against the wall, stood a man with his pants open and splayed out against the wall to either side of him. He held onto a handle mounted in the wall above him, and seemed to be shoving his hips against the wall. As we drew nearer, he pushed again, and groaned, his head lolling back. We couldn't actually see what was going on, as he was pressed to the wall, but it wasn't hard to guess.

Another moan made me turn my head, and I discovered that the path jinked sharply from the man's location in the other direction, creating a sort of switchback. At the far end, at what I assumed was another sharp corner, was another man in a very similar position. He had his pants down around his thighs, though, leaving a taut, muscular ass on full display. Watching those round globes flex as he thrust against the wall was a bit mesmerizing. The inner walls didn't go all the way up to the ceiling, so the sounds of groans and heavy breathing, with the occasional wet slurpy noise, seemed to echo all around us.

Down the switchback from Mr. Perfect Buns was a third man, but he was in a rather different position. He knelt close to the wall, with his face pressed into a hole at about waist level on the wall. Looking at him, I realized that with the switchbacks, this guy was right where the first guy was located, just on opposite sides of the wall. As we drew closer, it became apparent that something large and insistent was moving in and out of his mouth, stretching his cheeks and even his throat. With his face pressed literally into the hole, though, we couldn't actually see what it was.

My pants were feeling tight again.

After passing the first man on his knees, we found a second, right against the wall where Mr. Buns was standing on the other side. He, too, had his face pressed right into the hole, and was clearly struggling to contain...whatever was being shoved into his mouth. His jaw was stretched wide, and his eyes were watering a bit as he tried to maintain his position. I gave him an encouraging nod as we passed.