If anyone paid any real attention to Paul, they might have seen a traumatised young man. No one did. His family, though pleasant, were half a country away. In truth, they always struggled in their own lives and keeping in touch with Paul was never their top priority or concern. Paul found it easy to be keep family at a distance, if they ever did contact him, with the perfunctory hello and quick, impersonal, chat.
His friends, well, he started to question whether he really had any friends at all. His 5-a-side group never noticed a change in him. If he showed up and carried on with the usual banter everyone seemed to go home smiling. The few friends he had made at university were all busy with their own lives. The group chats that had helped them through university all but dead now. There was never any one-to-one contact and he did not initiate any himself.
Work colleagues, with him working at home so much, never really paid any attention. Beyond the next software drop and how he coded the only personal questions he ever got asked was about football. He always pretended to like one of the top teams and be interested but it was, he knew, all part of his way of keeping people away. He did his job well enough. It was well within his comfort zone, and no one seemed to care about his life beyond that.
Having won the final 'best technical project' prize at university he was more than capable of doing what his company asked him to do. The interface he created for the final project was why he got the job he had. The company that sponsored the university prizes were keen to have him onboard, so here he was, coding away. Though some part of him already resented the company he worked for. The work was easy enough. The pay surprisingly good. It was the way in which they took his interface and sold it to government clients, making a fortune he had no doubt. That pissed him off. Still, for now, it was what he needed. Easy and simple work with enough money to pay for a flat and let him get on with sorting the rest of his life out.
He did have a few days sick leave after the 'event' with Mark. He felt, after the event, that he had to create a better life for himself. He could never let himself get so low. So unconcerned about himself, so driven by arousal, that he ended up in the same mental space that had ended up wit him being buggered by a man twice his age. It was a turning point he felt -- he had to make a better life for himself. Though, Paul recognised, it would be easy for him to disappear and very few people would notice, let alone care. He mulled that though over a lot since the 'event' with Mark.
It was maybe three weeks when the fear of Mark contacting him started to fade. He struggled to understand, at least for those few weeks, what had driven him to seek male company. He had never been sexually attracted to men. Never one to be submissive or feel that sense of submission he did that day. The whole thing was out of character. It left a deep scar on Paul, grateful there was no long-term physical injury, that he knew would take a long time to recover from. Though, he struggled to accept the deeply humiliating and bisexual needs that he sought and experienced that day. He sought it out. Sought it! That thought neve really got an answer when it popped into his head. He had sought it!
As time moved on, he started to realise, and accept, that it was maybe an itch he had had to scratch. He forgave himself for being so naive. So gullible and, he accepted, so pathetic. He started to justify it all with the stress of loneliness and that slight curious itch. If he had dug deeper into his psyche, he might have found out that it was the humiliation, and powerlessness, he had experienced at the hands of his Father, that he experienced with Mark. Though the sexuality was his own addition to that emotional mix. Those beatings, spankings, bare bottom spankings, beltings, threatening words of silence, had bedded themselves deep into Paul's mind.
Three weeks passed. The hourly, almost constant, checking of his phone started to lessen. The sense that it was maybe just a one-off 'event'. That Mark, though he had made a big thing of wanting control and 'ownership' was maybe just a perv. Well, a perv for sure but also, Paul thought, a sadist, that just happened to be there when Paul sought an anonymous make stranger for sex. It was just an unlucky coincidence Paul reasoned. If it had been a simple kiss and grope in a care -- which he had thought more likely he would have forgiven himself easy enough. It was just the severity of it and his own automatic obedience to please a man sexually that he still struggled with. It was just the super low mood, the loneliness, it was not him. He worked to put it out of his mind.
