It began with unspoken consent, an innocent suggestion to share a room for a cool night in the middle of June. We swerved drunkenly through the city, eyes squinting upward for a vacancy sign.

My girlfriend wanted to go home, so I left her on the street corner next to the bar. I wanted to investigate a connection made with a burning gaze over a table piled with empty beer bottles and ashtrays. I promised I’d meet her back at the apartment after a couple more rounds with my icon, the taller, more handsome, glamorous, successful version of myself. The published writer.

Two hours later I’d forgotten my promise and was checking into a cheap hotel in a bad part of town. Too drunk to make it home, was what I told myself, and him. He nodded nonchalantly, allowing me the luxury of complete virtue. I’d follow any crack-pot line I told myself and others, as long as it eventually got me what I wanted and I could plead innocent every time. I was drunk. I passed out. I don’t remember. I’m not gay.

If I started clean, I could feel the dirt, then wash it away and begin new again. I took a shower in the bathroom while he smoked and waited on the bed. When I came out, I was already pointing to the future, the worn towel around my waist pushed into a tent. My cock bounced when I walked across the room to the naked bed he’d stripped down to the stained mattress. I stood and waited. There was no way I would initiate things.

His eyes roamed appreciatively over my bare chest, boring lasers of guilty sin that singed every corner, through my veins, into my consciousness, igniting my faith and reminding me that God was watching my every move under a furrowed brow. Of its own accord, my cock twitched and pulled the towel up further. If only it would push through the flaps by itself, I wouldn’t be responsible.

He scooted over and patted the bed by his side. I looked around the room, but caught the bulge curving the front of his slacks. He saw my glance wander across the thickness and he grabbed it, squeezing tightly with his left hand. A steady eye watched for my reaction, but I continued to portray aloofness. I was sobering up. I needed another drink, before I could suggest it:

“This isn’t going to be easy, is it?”

“What?” I asked.

Sighing impatiently, he unzipped his pants. He did it before I had the chance to look away, and then my eyes were glued. He wasn’t wearing underwear. It was hypnotizing, like an accident on the freeway, a mother nursing her child in public, a giant mole on someone’s face. I just couldn’t tear my eyes away. When he began pumping it in earnest, I became frantic, possessive. That was my job!

I nearly screamed, “Give me that!” when I hopped onto the bed and positioned myself between his legs. I yanked off his pants and threw them to the floor.

He smiled at me like I was his pupil, his fan, his subjugate, which I was. He left his dress shirt and tie on, flung lazily across his chest. His arms lay at his sides, palms resting against the mattress. Complete indifference. He was too old, too experienced, too successful to play this game with me. He refused to help at all. I needed to know he wanted it as much as I did. I couldn’t be the only one.

I bent to take him in my mouth. When I did, the flaps of my towel burst open and it slid down my thighs. My mouth swallowed his length while I tugged his balls hard enough for him to groan with pleasure, but tainted with warning. I left the towel draped across my calves, my bare ass aimed at the mirror on the wall. I knew he could see the hole from where he lay, knew it was tight and pink. It performed for him, undulated in contraction, sought to seize his attention and hypnotize.

I needed to bring him to the point just before orgasm. That’s where I’d stop. I predicted that, in his urgency, he’d have no choice but to round me and give me what I really wanted. His cock, yes, but not in my mouth. It had to be the other end, where I couldn’t see it. He didn’t even seem close, however. I ate him hard. I was desperate, close to crying. I moaned a muffled plea as I swallowed him again and again. I couldn’t come like this, but it was building. I worked him as if I would die trying.

Finally, he gave me a sign. I didn’t see it, didn’t hear it, but I felt it. He gently placed his hands on my head to encourage my rhythm and passion. That’s when I did it, pulled up and sneered triumphantly, anticipating his revenge, silently praying for it, but hiding the desperation with a straight, grim mouth and twinkling dare in my eye.

I sat back on my heels and reveled in the cascade of emotions crossing his expression. Shock, confusion, then anger.

“You little tease!” He barked.

I didn’t offer much resistance when he grabbed me by the shoulders and flipped me onto the bed. It wasn’t very difficult. I was much smaller than him. He got me on my back and pinned me down, his face inches from mine. My mouth was smeared with my own saliva and a few salty drops of pre-come he had granted me. He leaned in and kissed me hard.

I waited.

It was his turn to surprise me. My call from behind was granted but, unexpectedly, while I lay on my back. As if he wanted to savor every ounce of my humiliation, he shoved his cock in me and fucked me like a woman. There on my back, he forced me to see it all firsthand. I cried in dispute but it was too late. I was trapped by his thrusts, and reduced to his whim when he grabbed my dick and pumped me toward my release. I was nothing then. Maybe that’s what I wanted from the beginning anyway.

I even came first, hot and angry, and drifted quickly from my instantaneous, fleeting sense of peace back to my personal hell. I scampered to get dressed. He tossed me a 20 for cab fare and I left the room. I walked all the way home. My need, my frustration, my madness returned with every step and second in time.

She was asleep when I crawled between the gray sheets with her. She was naked on her back, the sheet rumpled at her waist and her breasts exposed in the street light from the lamp outside our window.

I prayed to be forgiven for wanting the things I could not have, taking the things I should not want, and lacking desire for the woman I should love.

I prayed for sleep. Invisible hours to project me into the future and away from what I’d done. I would start the next day fresh and new again, then try one more time to get it right.

© 2005 Lilie Berlin. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.