Perverted Science

Time to party.

As much he hated faggots, he had to admit, he had a bit of an appetite for the cock himself. That didn't make him queer, of course, no sir, he had the decency to keep his desires under wraps.

To Costa, fucking and sucking a dude was a vice like doing coke, or gambling. It was one of the reasons he was so deeply offended by boys like Jim and Will. Guys like that didn't understand they were broken, that they needed a shrink to help them keep their tendencies under control, instead of trying to pass themselves off as normal.

It was why Costa took care of his needs on the sly, with the help of rent boys.

Night time at last.

Greg Costa drove to The Green Gables apartment complex in the Southwest part of town, and knocked on the door of unit 219.

Taj opened the door, clad in a maroon lycra wrestling singlet, just like Costa had specified. The older man's eye traced the contours of his trick, admiring the smooth, milky shoulders, the broad chest, the sharply defined abs, and equine bulge between his legs.

"Come in," Taj said.

Greg followed him inside. An old beat-up wrestling mat was laid out on the floor, between the couch and the windows. The TV was on, turned to a sitcom.

"We can do without the canned laughter," Greg said.

Taj turned the TV off.

They stared at each other in the room. Costa had fantasized about this a million times. As a high school wrestling coach, he was constantly surrounded by young tight, and toned male flesh, but there was nothing he could do about it. It was maddening.

He reached forward, and brushed the teen's cheek with the back of his hand. The young jock's knees wobbled a little.

So innocent. So ripe. It was almost too good to be true.

"How old are you, baby?"

"Old enough."

Costa was silent for a few moments. He had no intention of adding statutory rape to adultery, and solicitation.

"No, really. Got any ID?"

Taj's brow furrowed.

"Are you a cop?"

"No. I just need to be sure."

"I'm afraid that's not how it works in this business, honey. You'll just have to trust me."

Costa's cock twitched. The teen's false bravado, borrowed from some old movie, no doubt, excited the older man.

.

He stripped naked, and for a moment, Taj felt a twinge of jealousy. Costa got up every day at five a.m. to run a mile, and it showed. His body was thick, and corded with muscle. There was a thin carpet of hair that swelled across his pecs, tapering away to a narrow trail extending down the length of his torso to the base of his cock, where it widened into a riotous crop once more. He looked fierce, standing with his arms akimbo, like Leonidas about to declare war on the Persians.

"You ever wrestle, baby?"

"Yeah, a little, in high school."

"Let's see how good you are," Costa said.

Costa and Taj circled each other, like wary prizefighters in the ring, until without warning, the older man dove at the teen's ankles. Taj's vision flew, and didn't steady until the gym mat came up and slammed into his back hard.

"You like that? Huh? You like it? You little Puto."

Puto was a Spanish word, meaning male prostitute or faggot. Costa had picked up a few words here and there from some of his students, and he'd always liked this one in particular. This, of course, was due entirely to how crass, and vulgar it sounded.

Taj nodded.

Costa took a pair of scissors out of the pocket of his discarded jeans, and sliced through Taj's singlet, and revealing his sizable cock and balls. He couldn't believe it. It was almost like a caricature of puberty.

He scooped Taj's enormous goose egg testicles into his hand, and jiggled them like pocket candy.

"Mmmm...nice huevos."

Costa took the teen's big, sweaty nuts in his mouth, savoring their buoyancy, their salty taste, and the slick elasticity of his teenaged scrotum.

Inside this stud's balls are the essence of masculinity, he thought. For a second he remembered a gruesome bit of history he had taught in one of his classes. It was just a colorful footnote really, the story of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the infamous sixteenth century noblewoman who had tortured and bathed in the blood of hundreds of servant girls. Supposedly, it had all been done in the belief that it would keep her young. I wonder if bathing in semen of this bull stud will increase my fucking virility.

He let his hands roam free across the mountainous terrain of the jock's tight abs, and bulging pecs, before descending down into the hairy crevasses of his armpits.

Taj moaned. Precum oozed from his dickhead, but it was purely an automated response to the barrage of stimulation his electric nerve endings were enduring. Truth be told, Costa's rapacious hunger made Taj a little uneasy.

He had never seen such brute, animal force in another man.

"Love your huevos, baby."

Encouraged by the effect his mouth was having on the teen's dick, his fingers found themselves sliding down between his ass cheeks toward his hole.

"You want it?"

"Yeah," Taj said, in a barely audible whisper.

"You want me inside you?"

"Yeah."

"Spread those cheeks for me."

Taj slid his legs farther apart on the mat. Costa ran his hand up and down the intergluteal cleft, loving the way the teen's ass hairs tickled his palm, his fingers finding and first massaging, then probing Taj's hole.

The teen moaned as the older man slid a single finger inside, and was surprised by a sudden chill he quickly realized was Costa's class ring.

"Yeah, you want it bad," Costa said, with a chuckle.

Greg's mind turned to the Trojan in the pocket of his jeans, but he decided against it. Fuck that, there was no point in nailing a hot piece of ass if he couldn't feel it.

"Turn around, show me that beautiful boy-pussy."

Taj flipped over onto his toned stomach. Costa lubed up his throbbing seven incher with a glob of KY jelly.

He was grinning ear to ear, as he slid his cockhead into the teen's gorgeous, muscled ass...

The jock groaned.

"You feel me inside you, stud?"

Taj nodded.

Costa began to fuck the teen's ass raw, riding him like a bucking bronco, until he arrived at a sudden violent, wracking orgasm.

"Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh Go-"

He shoved his still ejaculating penis into the teen's mouth, causing Taj's eyes to bulge in a near comical expression of surprise. One, two, three times he shot his load down the startled teen's throat.

"Swallow that shit, bitch."

Taj's Adam's apple bobbed as he reluctantly swallowed the older man's warm, salty spunk.

"Oh God, that was good," Costa said.

The sight of the sweaty, naked adonis lying on the gym mat, with his semen dripping from the corner of his mouth would be etched forever into Costa's brain.

Something was missing, however...

Costa smiled, he suddenly knew how he wanted to conclude this little rendezvous.

"Your cum tastes incredible," Taj said. It was one of his standard lines.

He closed his mouth just in time to avoid having it flooded with urine.

Costa grinned as he pissed all over the young jock. Taj squeezed his eyes shut as the warm fluid splashed across his handsome face...

A little piss gathered in his navel, making a tiny reflecting pool. The jockbot shivered.

"I'll be seeing you, baby," Costa said, as he left his money on the table.

For the first time since he came online, Taj felt something like revulsion and shame. There was no way he'd ever take this guy's money again.

When Will learned about this encounter of course, he felt a certain cold rage welling up inside him. The thought of his gallant knight defiled that way unnerved him.

Jim seemed mildly amused by the whole thing. He leaned his head back against his chair, and rubbed his chin.

"What did he look like?" Jim asked.

Taj described him. Jim felt the corners of his mouth turning upward in a tiny smile.

"Let's go to video. If he's who I think he is, we're in for a good chuckle."

Will hooked Taj's hard drive to his laptop via a bypass patch cord, and downloaded the footage. Taj recorded each and every one of his interactions with human beings. It helped him to learn better.

The video confirmed Jim and Will's suspicions. Jim broke into fits of hysterical laughter.

Will merely cringed at the part where Costa gave Taj a golden shower.

"You guys know this dude?"

Jim's face was red, and he was out of breath from laughing. He wiped a tear away from his eye.

"Sadly, we're very well acquainted. He's our social studies teacher, Mr. Costa."

"You're kidding? This guy?"

"It's true," Will said, with a weary sigh.

"I guess that explains the state of public education," Taj said, dryly.

"I've always taken him for a fag-basher. He's always looking at me and Jim like we're AIDS riddled junkie S&M whores, and just look at him! He's a bigger pervert than either of us."

"What should we do with this?" Will asked.

"Do?"

"Yeah, I mean, this guy's had our backs against the wall all semester. Maybe it's time for a little payback."

Jim studied his friend's face to see if he was serious.

"That's a no-go, good buddy. Taj is our meal ticket. His clients' anonymity can't be compromised, even if the client in question is a blustery, hypocritical son of a bitch who totally has it coming. We'd have to repurpose Taj into cubicle drone, or civil servant."

Or sell him for scrap, Jim thought, although he didn't think it would ever come to that.

April turned to May, and the days began to grow longer and longer. The graduating class of Jefferson Davis High was struck by an outbreak of senioritis, and many of Jim and Will's classmates began showing up late, if at all. Graduation parties began occurring with increasing regularity each weekend as the final countdown commenced. It was during this strange, exciting, and bittersweet time this time that things really seemed to turn around for Jim. He had decided he was going to forge ahead and form his own robotics company, Massive Dynamic. Even better, he had been asked to the Prom by a boy named Emile Hamill.

Emile was a pleasant, clean-cut kid from a well-to-do family in the ritzy River Oaks side of town. Nothing special really, but it was better than having no date.

Will learned of this during lunch. They sat alone in their own corner of a long cafeteria table now. They no longer bothered to eat in the gym.

He was shocked by the sudden pangs of jealousy he felt.

"That's great, man, just great," Will said, as evenly as he could manage.

Jim cocked his head at an angle, and stared at Will, confused. Will panicked, am I so transparent?

"What?"

"Are you okay?"

"Of course, why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know. We don't really hang out as much as we used to. Not that you seem to mind all that much. I guess I don't have to ask who you're taking to Prom."

"Please stop."

"Stop what?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"Oh, for God's-"

"I just don't understand why you always have to be so down on Taj."

"Can we just call him what he is? Please? He's a jock-bot. He's a vibrator with legs, he's a talking blow up doll."

"He's an incredible breakthrough in the field of A.I.! They'll be writing about us for years. You should be proud."

"I am proud. That's not the problem."

"Oh yeah, then what is?

"The problem is you're in love with a fucking toaster oven, my friend."

Will got up and left without another word. He thrust his hands into pockets, and pulled his hoodie over his head, which was his way of telling the world to fuck off.

It pained Jim to see his friend this way, but it wasn't something he could dwell on. He had other concerns at hand.

He had managed to set up a meeting with the neat, fastidiously well-dressed, fifty-one year old C.E.O. of a venture capital firm to discuss financing Massive Dynamic. His name was Peter Driscoll.

Jim knew him only because he was one of his classmate's dads. He'd visited Jefferson Davis High the year before, and given a speech, in which he had stated, "find something-anything-you can invest your heart and soul in, and milk it for every last penny you can. Once you've finished that, don't be afraid to go after more. One's reach should exceed one's grasp, or what's a Heaven for?" It was frank, it was dryly funny, it drew wild applause from the students and faculty, it was, in the end, a tired retread of an infamous commencement speech arbitrageur and soon-to-be convict Ivan Boesky had given at the University of California, Berkley, back in 1986. Even though such sentiments were gruesome and insensitive in a time when the entire country felt hunger pangs unlike anything since the Great Depression, they predictably went over well in a school named after a Civil War hero who fought on the wrong side of that particular internecine skirmish.

He wore his father's Armani suit to meeting, which was held in Driscoll's luxurious office.

"Who's your friend here?" Driscoll asked.

"Sir, you're looking at the future of the sex industry. No more pesky VD to worry about, or for that matter legal penalties, or moral condemnation, because how it can be wrong to pay for sex with something that's not even human?"

Driscoll's eyes widened in surprise.

"My friend Taj here is a fully automated, autonomous artificial sex worker. He really likes his work, I might add. Isn't that right, Taj?"

Taj smiled, blankly. He seemed not to have understood the question.

"I said, "isn't that right, Taj"?"

Taj blinked.

"Hello, Mr. Driscoll," Taj said.

Jesus, what a time for Taj to pick to malfunction, Jim thought.

"This is what you think the wave of the future is? Robotic blow up dolls?"

"Now, wait, Mr. Driscoll-"

"Look, kid, you did a great job making it look real, I'll give you that. Honest to God, it looks perfectly human, hats off to you, my man."

Jim felt his shirt sticking to his back. He mopped his brow with the back of his hand. This was not going at all the way he envisioned.

"But," the man went on, "I don't need a feasibility study to know nobody's going to plunk down thousands of dollars for a...a whore-bot. A market for such a decadent luxury does not exist in the New Economy."

"There's still a market for Ferraris, and expensive watches isn't there?"

"You think anyone who owns a Ferrari has to buy a robot to get laid, kid?"

Driscoll chuckled. It was his way of announcing the meeting was over.

"See ya later, Taj," Driscoll said, with a patronizing smile.

"Hello, Mr. Driscoll," Taj repeated, as if he had just noticed Driscoll for the first time.

The ride back to Jim's house was long, and unpleasant as traffic crawled along Interstate Ten. It was bumper-to-bumper and liable to stay that way for a good half-hour, as scores of working moms and dads returned to their suburban enclaves.

Jim glared at Taj, who simply sat silent, staring straight ahead, his eyes as blank as a ventriloquist's dummy.

"You fucked me over on purpose, didn't you?"

Taj said nothing.

"I know you can hear me. And I know you understand what I'm saying."

Taj sighed. He had never really warmed to Jim the way he had to Will, but he couldn't bring himself to be cross with him. After all, he owed his life in large part to Jim.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Nothing. I don't even give a shit about recouping the cost of building you. You can go."

"Where?"

"To hell for all I care. Take Will with you."

Taj related this last exchange verbatim to Will.

"So that's it, huh? I guess there's no place for us in the glorious future that awaits Jim Goldberg, gay Master of the Universe."

"I wouldn't go that far..." Taj replied.

They were sitting on the couch in Taj's apartment. It had become their regular afternoon thing to make love for a few hours, then lounge around, and watch TV.

Will looked into the eyes of his creation, and felt his head swim. He was by now enamored not just of Taj's pretty face, but his electric soul.

"I don't need anyone but you, baby," Will said.

"That...sweet, Will,"

"I'm sorry about all those things we made you do. It was really Jim's idea. I would never have degraded you in all those ways..."

Taj rolled his eyes.

"Here we go, again. It's not an issue for me, babe. You know that."

"Why?"

"Because I can just delete those memories whenever I want, Dummy."

"Yeah, I guess there's that."

"Not that I'll be servicing your social studies teacher again. I'm keeping him banned out of sheer principle."

"So what do you want to do tonight?"

"I can't go out tonight. I'm meeting a girl."

For a second, Will thought he had misheard Taj.

"You're what?"

Taj couldn't meet Will's gaze. But there was no going back now.

"I'm meeting a girl for dinner tonight."

Will's cheeks burned hot. This was madness, he knew. Had he really grown attached to the jockbot, to the extent that he envisioned some of kind of future for them? He tried to imagine what their kids would look like, and could only envision half-human, half-machine tots who resembled the Borg.

Still, there was no denying the weird feeling of betrayal that swept through him.

"How could you do that to me?"

"Because that's what you wanted you deluded, self-loathing shit," Taj said.

"That makes no sense to me." Will said.

"It doesn't? You programmed me. I'm your ideal man. A straight stud who puts out for you."

This gave Will pause.

"Now, listen, Jim treats me like an object because I am one. Just because I don't particularly like the guy, doesn't mean he's wrong. I've accepted my condition, why can't you accept yours?"

"I have a rudimentary understanding of pleasure as you understand it, and a few basic human emotions. But I can't return your love. All I am, all I can offer is a facsimile."

"Okay," Will said.

"Besides, you're not really mad at me. Any fool can see that."

"So who am I mad at?"

"Jim!"

Will stood up, and began pacing around the room.

"Well, why the hell shouldn't I be? I just don't understand how he could do it."

"Do what?"

"We've been friends for years, and now all of sudden, I'm not good enough for him. He's taking some kid from River Oaks to the Prom."

"You need to go to Jim. You need to let him know how much you really care for him..."

"It's too late."

"If you don't do it now, you're going to spend the rest of your life wondering 'what if.'"

Taj was right.

"You know you've really come a long way."

"I owe it all to your craftsmanship....and, I guess Jim's too."

"Can I use your room for a little bit?"

"Yeah, sure."

Will went into Taj's room, and sat in silence for a while. What if he doesn't answer? It seemed incredible but for the first time in the history of their friendship, Will Durante was not sure that Jim Goldberg would take his call.

A full five minutes passed before he could summon the courage to dial Jim's number.

"Jim?"

"Yeah?"

"Ah...hey."

"Hey."

"Just wanted to see how you were doing, man."

"Well, all things considered..."

"Yeah?"

"Not that great, but I guess you know that."

There was a crunching sound. Will was sure that Jim was eating Lucky Charms. Whenever things went south for him, he liked to drown his sorrows in a bowl of kiddie cereal, and watch re-runs of Charmed.

"It wasn't my idea for Taj to blow your meeting with this Driscoll guy."

"No. It would appear he thought of that all by himself. Kids, these days."

Crunch.

"So how are things going with you, Will?"

Crunch-crunch.

Will considered a lie. He didn't want to come off as whiny when his intent was conciliatory.