Adam and Steve

Part of the 'Butt Monkey' series of stories by Robert Furlong

===

A few months after Linda had left me, when it was becoming clear even to me that my ex-wife wasn't coming back, I'd signed up to become a member of a couple of online dating sites in the hope that I might yet meet my soul mate. The endeavour had proven largely fruitless as the women who responded to my ad would either turn out to have an aversion towards children-from-a-previous-relationship or would behave in weird ways that couldn't be dispelled as merely eccentric.

Needless to say, since I'd been looking at galleries of male rimming on the internet, I had all but stopped perusing the pages of women looking for dates and had given up on checking my mailbox to see if anyone wanted to meet up with me.

In any case, my own profile rarely got any takers. For a start, my picture looked like the sort of mug-shot they show on the news when the police have managed to infiltrate a paedophile ring. Coupled with that, my interests made me sound far too boring and I figured my new-found hobby, while acting as an eye-catcher, might not attract the sort of woman I was after.

Nevertheless, a few weeks after the trip to Liverpool, I logged into one of my accounts and found that I had a message from a woman who was a couple of years younger than me, recently divorced, lived local-ish and, as a rare bonus, didn't sound like she might be barking mad.

She was called Debbie and she suggested that we might e-mail each other for a while to see how well we got on before deciding if we wanted to meet up.

It was a positive step – more positive than anything else that had happened to me in the romance stakes recently – and I agreed at once.

In the weeks which followed, Debbie and I established an amicable e-mail friendship. Her letters were usually just three or four paragraphs long, but her style was witty and her observations sharp, and I found myself chuckling at the stories she told me about other staff who worked with her at a veterinary clinic. For her part, she said she enjoyed my e-mails in which I rambled on about stuff that had happened to me at work or with Jake; indeed, I was thrilled when she revealed at the end of one her letters that she looked forward to finding a new message from me in her inbox.

In spite of enjoying the distant attentions of a female for the first time in over a year, however, my thoughts kept returning to my newly-discovered interest in my own gender; or, more specifically, in one particular part of them. It felt odd to go from reading an e-mail from Debbie, with a warm tingle of anticipation as to what might happen between us, to open a new webpage and trawl through screens of thumbnails of men being intimate together and feel a different sort of tingle in a more physical place.

It felt odd, and yet not odd enough to stop me doing it.

My visit to the library had elicited many more references to rimming across a much broader sweep of books than I could ever have anticipated. In spite of my lack of success with the librarian in the storeroom, I had at least emerged from it wondering which, rather than whether, other men in my acquaintance might share such a base attraction. Could my fetish – I could now accept it as being that – be more widespread than I had suspected? Perhaps it was something that lots of straight men fantasize about but few will admit to – the way that some men are sexually interested in their wives' clothes and others have a thing about wearing leather.

I began to wonder if Adam, my long-time friend and former schoolmate, could be concealing a smouldering desire to get his face stuck into my backside when we occasionally met up for a pint. Or whether Steve, a guy I sometimes played squash with, was secretly checking out the back of my briefs in the changing room after a game, wishing he could stick his nose into the sweaty material between my buttocks. It was comforting to speculate that every ordinary-looking guy I knew might share my newly-discovered fetish, but I rather doubted that any of them really did. None of them ever showed the vaguest interest in me sexually – not even a furtive glace at my backside if I gave them an opportunity – and yet I found that I started to dwell on theirs, especially late at night as I played with myself in bed as quietly as I could so as not to disturb Jake in the next room.

Ever since Linda had left, my masturbatory fantasies had revolved around fairly mundane female imagery: the breasts of the girl in the sandwich shop who sometimes smiled at me; Jake's hot-looking Biology teacher who always fondled her hair as she talked to me about his work; the new secretary at work with the most amazing legs. I'd construct scenarios about how I might get into bed with these women and what we would do together as I stroked myself through the fly of my pyjamas.

Since Debbie and I had started exchanging e-mails, I would sometimes try to fantasize about meeting up with her and where things might lead between us.

And yet, try as I might, I now found that often couldn't even maintain my erection if I tried to restrict my thoughts to the opposite sex. I began to allow myself to relive what I'd done with Guy and then, by a natural progression, to explore what I'd like to do with other men who I knew. As well as Guy's backside, my thoughts would turn to those of some of the men I worked with and the fathers of some of Jake's other friends, and I'd enjoy imagining how their arses might look based on their build and how hairy they seemed.

But most often I would fantasize about Adam and Steve, whose backsides I didn't need to invent because I knew full well how they looked.

Over the thirty-odd years I'd known Adam, I'd seen him naked on many occasions from our embarrassed dashes into the school showers through to when we used to go swimming together in our twenties. The most recent time I could think of was when we'd shared a room the night before my wedding, where he'd acted as my Best Man. I remembered noticing, in a disinterested way back then, how hairy he'd become since our school days when he'd slept with his back to me in his single bed, his duvet thrown askew so that his arse was exposed, albeit concealed within a saggy pair of briefs.

Now I regretted missing the opportunity to explore his backside as he'd slept off the pre-wedding booze-up. Obviously, at the time the idea would never have occurred to me and if it had I would have been both revolted and confused. But now it provided fuel for my nocturnal musings, reawakening my slumbering cock between my fingers after female-orientated thoughts had softened it.

Lying in the bed I'd once shared with my wife, I would imagine creeping up and kneeling alongside Adam's splayed-out body in the hotel room, and leaning forward to sniff the crevice between his buttocks through his stripy briefs. I'd use my own underwear, discarded after a day's wear, to help me imagine what Adam's might have smelt like, nuzzling my face into the material where it had been riding upward so intimately close to me.

I'd sniff the sweaty odour on the damp material which had been between my legs, imagining it had seeped there from the raised hairy ridge behind my friend's balls. Then, while my hand gently worked up and down the hardening length of my cock, I'd work my way back from the gusset and relish the stronger, richer odour behind it. While I knew this was the smell of my own arse – a not uninteresting fragrance, I have to confess – I'd be telling myself that this was how Adam's backside would have been; that I was really inhaling from where his cheap-looking briefs had been pushed upwards by his trousers to caress his moist, puckered hole.

This was really the smell of my Best Man, if only I'd sneakily sniffed him as he'd gently snored that night before my wedding day.

Stroking myself more quickly beneath my duvet and rubbing my large hairy balls with my other hand, I would imagine easing his underwear to one side so that I could lick his moist hairy cleft, allowing the heady, pungent taste to guide me to his small, puckered anus. I would lap at his hole as if feeding from it, and imagine him pushing himself towards my face, unwittingly enjoying being gently entered by my warm, wet tongue in his drunken sleep.

If that wasn't enough to bring on my climax, I'd move on to imagine Adam waking up and, laughing about letting me enjoy one last night of being a bachelor, ripping off his briefs. I knew full well that in reality Adam would be mortified to find that I'd been violating him in such a way in his sleep, but in my imagination he would willingly bend over on all fours so that I could rim him properly, egging me on to tongue him deeper while he roughly wanked the erection which the ministrations of my mouth had brought about.

Or sometimes I'd imagine Steve's arse, hot and wet after a game of squash, with its hairy cleft exposed as he bent to take off his boxers before hitting the shower. With only the two of us in the changing rooms, he'd turn to me, still bending, and with a sly grin would say, "I know what you want... I've seen you checking me out... go on, Rob... lick it clean..." And I'd kneel down behind him and push my face towards his powerful odour, sweaty and rank in my nose and on my tongue.

By now I'd be beating my cock as fast as I could, my other hand holding the duvet up like a tent so that I didn't make a thumping sound against it. With the fantasy of having one or other man's arse in my face – my nose being tickled by his wiry anal hair and my tongue French kissing his acrid puckered opening – my cock would soon be spewing its pent-up liquid either into a hastily grabbed tissue or otherwise onto my pyjamas.

And then I'd lie in the darkness, feeling the chill of my sweat on my forehead and smelling the strong odour of my spent cock from beneath the duvet, and wonder with disgust what I was becoming.

===

I was curious to know whether our brief encounter had had any lasting effect on Guy. I'd see him occasionally, picking Simon up from college or at a parents' event, but I kept well out of sight in the background, unsure as to how I would respond if he were to speak to me.

I wondered if he, like me, had relived what had happened between us when he masturbated and had fantasized about doing it again. Whether he'd found himself thinking about other men sexually, as I had, and what he'd meant in the hotel room when he suggested that we might 'take things further' in the future.

It would have been a simple matter to get Jake to mention to Simon that I wanted to meet up with his dad for a drink sometime. And yet, as much as I enjoyed the fantasy of repeating what had happened between us, I didn't feel ready to actively seek a sexual encounter with another man.

I suppose it's strange that I felt like this because if Guy had sent a message through Jake to suggest we meet up, I'd have agreed to it in an instant. We'd have both known why we were getting together and where it would likely lead, and as long as he was the one instigating things, I'd have willingly – enthusiastically, probably – gone along with them.

But for me to be the one to approach another man for sex – no matter however well I dressed it up and couched it in euphemisms, it would still feel wrong.

===

One evening in late October, just after the clocks had gone back, I was having a drink with Adam after work. We were chatting together and something – maybe it was some joke he made – brought to my mind the recurrent fantasy I kept having about rimming him on the night before my wedding. With him sitting in front of me, smiling and talking, I felt a sudden pang of guilt that I had been thinking of him in that way.

When he got up to go to the toilet, I glanced over at him walking across the pub from behind, and found my eyes inexorably drawn to his solid, round buttocks. I was captivated by them, bobbing around in his dark grey work trousers which were tight enough to reveal an occasional hint of the hem of his briefs. I realised that my cock was slowly lengthening inside my trousers at the sight of Adam's arse and then I felt even more guilty. I shouldn't be thinking of him in this way; shouldn't be playing out fantasies about him.

And yet, that night, in spite of my best efforts, I couldn't get the sight of Adam's trouser-clad buttocks out of my head as I stroked myself in bed. I tried desperately to think of other things – fought with my cock to get it to respond to some fantasy about the barmaid in the pub or a woman I'd seen on the bus – but in the end I gave into my real desire.

Adam was in a toilet cubicle in the pub and I had my face buried into the back of his trousers. He'd worn them a few days and the smell of his arse was distinct on them. I imagined pressing my nose deep into him, low in his crack and right where his hole would be, and inhaling. In my bed, I used the hand that wasn't working my cock to reach between my legs, to push aside my heavy scrotum and extended a finger into my hot, hairy arse-crack. I drew a couple of circles around my puckered anus and then gently eased the tip of my finger into the moist hole. I slid it in and out a few times, feeling my cock stiffening and stroking it more quickly, and then brought my finger up to my nose to sniff it.

Yes – that's how Adam's arse would smell. Raw and dirty.

I was overwhelmed with excitement as I eagerly inhaled the smell of my own backside on my fingers. My cock swelled to a seemingly impossible hardness and I realised I was grunting as I roughly wanked it, my fist pounding like a drumbeat against my duvet.

I dimly heard Jake get up to use the bathroom but I didn't care that my bedroom door was ajar and that I'd probably woken him. In my heightened state of sexual ecstasy, I was unable to quieten the noise I was making, and it didn't bother me that my bedsprings were creaking frantically like a rocking chair.

I was imagining Adam unbuckling his belt and hitching his trousers and briefs down to expose his naked arse to my face. My face was between his firm, round cheeks and I was inhaling his most intimate, most masculine, of smells – the same as the intoxicating odour on my own fingers. My forehead was wet with sweat and my armpits were dripping as I literally hammered my cock against my bedding.

With a couple of low gasps, I started cumming in copious spurts, surprised that such a powerful climax had managed to take me without warning. Even as Jake flushed the toilet and returned to his room, my fist continued its rhythmic beat against my duvet as I pumped squirt after squirt of semen from my twitching cock, panting for breath until both the outpouring and intensity of my orgasm had subsided.

Afterwards, as I lay there soaked with sweat and recovering my breath, still with my fingers at my nostrils, it occurred to me that at some point masturbation would no longer be enough. I was going to need a real man's arse in front of me.

And I wondered again about arranging to meet up with Guy...

===

The next morning, Jake made some comment over breakfast about not being able to sleep too well and threw me a rather accusatory look.

Blushing slightly, I muttered, "Oh yeah. Sorry about that."

I'd always encouraged openness about masturbation between the two of us, having experienced years of shame about doing it during my own adolescence, but we were normally both very discreet about it.

He shrugged. "It's just that I've got a Chemistry test today."

I apologised again. I felt embarrassed that I'd let myself get so carried away that I'd awoken him with the sounds of my climax.

He said, "It's okay. I guess it happens sometimes."

I smiled. This was Jake being all-grown-up about it.

"It was selfish of me, though," I admitted. "It won't happen again."

"Maybe you should close your bedroom door," he suggested.

I nodded. After Jake's mum left, I'd taken to leaving my bedroom door ajar so that I could hear him at night. It seemed that darkness brought to the surface the hurt he managed to conceal during the day and I'd go to comfort him when I could hear he was upset. He was, by now, well beyond needing my attentions at night, so perhaps it was time to start closing my door again.

As he finished off his breakfast, I considered asking him to mention to Simon that I'd like to meet up with his dad again. But I couldn't bring myself to. It was one thing to fantasize about what had happened between the two of us, but quite another to orchestrate a second encounter with the sole intention of it leading to sex.

I'd have to make do with my imagination and my hand – albeit more discreetly – for the time being.

===

My discomfort about waking Jake with my noisy orgasm went a lot deeper than just the embarrassment of having my son hear me climax. After all, I'd heard orgasmic grunts from his bedroom on more than one occasion and I was sure that, in spite of the great efforts I made to masturbate as quietly as I could, he must have heard me gasping in pleasure once or twice.

I suppose I was disgusted with myself that it had been the excitement of sniffing my own arse on my finger, while imagining the smell belonged to another man, which had brought me to such a state of sexual abandonment.

Not that Jake could know that, of course. But I knew it and that was enough.

I started to wonder if maybe, though, the intense arousal I'd experienced held its own significance; whether, perhaps, I'd inadvertently stumbled across the key to understanding the fascination which had grown inside me since the night with Guy.

One of the books in the library had suggested that an interest in rimming might be borne from a desire to break taboos: the act of putting one's face near someone's bottom eliciting sexual excitement because of being so contrary to our accepted codes of conduct. This had struck me as over-simplistic when I'd read it, and what had happened the previous night served only to support that view.

It seemed, instead, that my fetish might have developed as an offshoot of my interest in the smells of my own body. It might just so happen that Guy's smells had been sufficiently similar to my own to trigger the intense erotic response which I'd experienced.

I was quite reassured by that hypothesis: it couldn't be natural to be disgusted by one's own body smells – one had, after all, grown up with them. It therefore stood to reason that some people might find such smells attractive.

I remembered how fascinated I'd once been by the smell and taste of my own semen; how I used to like to see if I could shoot it into my mouth when I climaxed. I'd sometimes reached down and licked the head of it as I wanked it, as the sharpness of the odour from its swollen head was so sexy to me. Perhaps that explained why I'd found the powerful scent of Guy's cock and balls so arousing.

And since I was so turned on by the smells of my genitals, it wasn't so far-fetched that I would also be aroused by some of the cruder and more carnal smells of my body – even those of another man whose body happened to secrete similar odours to my own. Once I'd discovered that such an unexpected sexual interest had lain dormant inside me for so long, it was inevitable – surely – that I'd seek out information about it on the internet and that my imagination would cook up an array of masturbatory fantasies.

I was greatly consoled by this line of reasoning which cast me merely as a man with a healthy interest in his own biology rather than as some filthy pervert who liked to sniff and lick other men's backsides.

I began to believe that, if I really had applied my face to Adam's backside in the pub toilet, as aesthetically attractive as his buttocks might have seemed from afar, I would have been appalled by the reality of pressing my nose between them. No doubt his odour, being different from mine and from Guy's, would have been rank and offensive to me.