Switch Ch. 01

Story Info
Martin gets his first gay handjob.
5.4k words
4.62
67.1k
58

Part 1 of the 3 part series

Updated 10/08/2022
Created 04/17/2014
Share this Story

Font Size

Default Font Size

Font Spacing

Default Font Spacing

Font Face

Default Font Face

Reading Theme

Default Theme (White)
You need to Log In or Sign Up to have your customization saved in your Literotica profile.
PUBLIC BETA

Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.

You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.

Click here
Varian P
Varian P
674 Followers

In "Switch," Martin, singer and guitarist of a popular L.A. band, succumbs to his first gay encounter when he is seduced by the irresistible magnetism of local literary luminary and dominant top Dario. Though ultimately a tender romance, "Switch" is full of my favorite dark pleasures, including the piquant pathos of people dealing with the fears and wounds of their painful pasts, along with plenty of play with boundaries and consent.

Warm thanks to habu, amoveablebeast and Robert Reams for giving me a firm hand and warm encouragement.

*****

I'd known Dario for a few years—three, I think, because I remember he was at Clara and Tom's wedding—but we'd never really gotten over the threshold to friendship. We just moved in the same circles, as they say. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that we moved in different but overlapping circles. His friends were mostly from USC, where he'd studied writing, or from the realm of penniless bohemians who were always putting on art shows in squats downtown or in the old industrial area that was gentrifying block by block, gradually pushing them north and east and finally squeezing them out altogether. Meanwhile, I was doing my precarious little dance, trying to find the time and energy to hang out with the musicians I'd known since I was fifteen, or from college, from all the bands that we'd started and abandoned before even playing at a party much less landing a real gig, and the people from the day job which, little by little, was consuming my time, my plans for the future, basically my whole life.

The truth is, I'd always been kind of intimidated by him. I could be accused of being shy, anyway, but I think the fact that he was so magnetic, that everyone who found themselves in a room with him seemed to go out of their way to stand or sit close to him, to talk to him, made me feel almost like a groupie in his presence. People always seemed to hang on every word of his as if he were Socrates or the Dalai Lama or something, unless the cluster of acolytes in his orbit was bursting into sudden laughter at some witty remark of his—usually profoundly cynical but never sarcastic or unkind—so I felt almost unworthy of talking to him. Which is dumb, because he'd always been friendly enough with me, though sometimes I thought that was just because of Clara.

But then he got the loft on 12th, a huge industrial space that he said he got for cheap because they hadn't updated the interior and it was all raw beams and exposed conduits, but which was probably not really all that much cheaper than was normal for that area (he'd recently published a short novel that had drawn a lot of hype, so my guess is he finally actually had some money). Then, more and more often, instead of attempting guerrilla art events in squats, the artists we knew were doing what they called "openings" or "shows" at Dario's loft, and pretty soon there was a kind of collaborative endeavor that we were all pulled into by Dario's gravity and by the increasing centrifugal force of the people in his circle, and almost every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night a different band would play, and two or three artists would show their work that weekend—paintings, sculptures that were sometimes what I would normally think of as a sculpture, carved out of stone or wood or molded from clay, but which more often were "multimedia" pieces incorporating or completely made out of things like Pepsi bottles or melted vinyl records or old sneakers or what-have-you. Everyone from the inner circle got in for free, but the general public had to pay ten dollars, which included two glasses of beer or cheap wine. Pretty soon it was a going enterprise, the artists were selling some of their pieces (not for a lot, of course, but fifty or a hundred, which no one was complaining about) and the money that was cleared after the purchase of the booze and the plastic cups got divided up between the bands that played each night. Dario never kept any of the money for himself, even though every now and then someone would say, "Come on, man, you should take something. You're the one paying the rent on the place," but Dario said as long as everyone was pitching in to clean the place up after each night's event, he was happy.

And I guess he was, because after a few weeks Tom told me that Dario had said we could rehearse there on Sundays and Tuesdays if we wanted to (the guys from Painful Friction were rehearsing there on Mondays and Wednesdays, so if we wanted to use the space it would have to be Sundays and Tuesdays). The place was so huge, Dario had even said we could store our gear there, which was the best part of the deal as far as I was concerned, because at that point we hardly ever had a gig anywhere but his place, which meant no more loading the gear into Jamie's van three nights a week for rehearsals and shows. Not exactly the attitude of a "true artist," I realize, but I'm practical that way.

Actually, it worked out even better than I would have guessed, because we started putting in about twice as many hours rehearsing as we used to. The first couple of nights we started at seven, and after an hour we said we'd call it a night so we wouldn't be taking advantage of Dario's hospitality, but Dario all but held us hostage, teasingly berating us for our lackadaisical attitude (okay, I'm sure he didn't actually use the word "lackadaisical," but some less dorky synonym) about our craft. I don't know how he could concentrate with us playing, half the time interrupting a song midway to discuss how to do a phrase better or to give Jeff shit about straying out of sync with the rest of us, but most of the time Dario would sit in his armchair with his laptop and write. At first I figured he was surfing the web or checking Facebook or something, but every time I happened to walk past to grab a glass of water or take a leak, if I caught a glimpse of his screen it was full of ever-expanding lines of black text on that white background. I guess I've heard of other people, other writers like that. Things are only quiet enough inside their head when it's noise and chaos outside. So in the end we were rehearsing three or four hours two nights a week, and we got to play at least once, sometimes twice each weekend for an ever-expanding crowd.

It felt almost like fame. Usually there'd be a hundred people or more, and half of them were regulars who'd gotten to know us and our music, and they'd dance (even though our stuff isn't what I'd call danceable) and sing along and beg us for their favorites at the close of each set. For reasons I still don't understand and probably never will, Avalyn broke up with me right as things were really getting going, and I guess I was lucky that's when she did it, because suddenly there were plenty of women eager to take my mind off my heartache. I was never as bad as Jamie, who seemed to fuck a different girl every time we played, but I was definitely getting more action than ever before, which took a lot of the sting of humiliation and self-doubt out of Avalyn leaving me.

But weirdly, through all those months of spending three or four nights a week in Dario's loft, we remained pretty much strangers. Well, friendly acquaintances. Polite hellos and goodbyes and small talk. It's not that I felt like he disliked me, even though it definitely seemed like everyone else in the inner circle—all the band members and artists who helped put on the shows at the weekend—had actual conversations with him, laughed with him, and I didn't. We just didn't click, maybe because despite everything I still hadn't gotten over feeling like he was, well, not better than me—of course not—but somehow on a different plane of existence, if that makes any sense.

So it was beyond awkward when, one Tuesday night I showed up for practice, and the other guys weren't there. I'd even showed up almost half an hour late, like usual, because I never wanted to be stuck in the situation of Dario having to make chit chat with me until the others got there. I was the only one coming from the valley, because of my job; the others always came together in one car, and they were always perfectly happy to have a beer or smoke out with Dario if I wasn't there by the time they'd gotten the gear set up. Dario buzzed me up and handed me a beer when I came in. He seemed a little odd, somehow. Not anything dramatically different, just ever so slightly ill at ease, which actually was dramatically different because he was always so maddeningly self-possessed. But he gave me a smile and clinked his bottle against mine.

"Cheers."

"Cheers." I took a swig, then told him he didn't need to play host—I'd go and practice a new song I'd been working on, because I wanted to let the guys have a listen and maybe add it to our set for the coming weekend.

"You didn't get Tom's text?"

"What text?" I suddenly knew without even touching my pocket—which I did anyway, a gesture of habit—that I'd left my phone sitting on my desk at work.

"He said rehearsal's off for tonight because he has to work late, and Jeff's car is in the shop."

"No, sorry, I missed it. I just realized I left my phone at the office. I'll head out. You can have your place to yourself for one night, for a change."

He grinned, as if I looked and sounded as awkward as I felt. "I've had the place to myself all day. Stay. Practice your song."

"Actually, I should get home. I actually almost canceled for tonight, myself, because there's a project I'm behind on at work."

"At least stay and finish your beer," he said, his smile so easy and so warm that I felt the pull of his gravity first-hand, instead of watching it act on other people, for a change. He sat in his armchair, the faux-leather upholstery already molded in the shape of his body, and I plopped down on the nearest sofa. I think there must have been ten sofas in that place, all decent vintage couches he'd gotten on Craigslist for cheap, but the place was so big and the furniture so well arranged that it didn't seem weird that there were so many.

"You must get sick of having us all around all the time," I said because I couldn't think of anything better to say.

"Why?"

"Because it would make me crazy, having herds of people invading my place every day."

He was quiet, but he gave me another warm smile.

"Isn't it hard to get any work done? I'd think it would take a lot of peace and quiet to write."

"I get enough peace and quiet to write. Too much peace and quiet, and my imagination starts to shrivel up."

"As long as you're getting something out of the arrangement, too, and not sacrificing yourself for our sakes."

"Sacrifice? Hardly." Was it just that warm smile of his that made me like him so much in that moment? Despite the fact that he made me feel awkward and immature because, even though I was pretty sure we were the same age, or that the difference was just a year or two which hardly matters once you're getting close to thirty, he always seemed so composed, at ease, sure of himself the way my father's generation had always seemed, and I felt I never would be. "Want another beer?"

I'd already emptied the bottle without realizing how fast I was drinking. "Thanks, but I should get going."

"Okay. But play me your song first."

"My song?"

"The one you were going to play for the group."

"It's just a work in progress. It's not really ready for a premier."

"Good. I'll feel all the more privileged."

Even though I'm not so great at socializing, I'm not usually shy at all about playing or singing, so I grabbed my guitar and gave it a quick tuning, but as soon as I got going, and I saw how intently he was listening and watching me, I got as nervous as I did the first time I played on stage. I didn't forget the notes or the words, I just felt weirdly exposed. Vulnerable. Maybe it was because the song was more personal than what I usually wrote for the group.

"You really have a beautiful voice," Dario said when I finished, after what felt like ten minutes even though the song is less than five minutes long. "It gets a bit buried under all the instruments, I think, when you all play together. It's nice to hear it like this, no amps, just the delicate—intricate, but delicate—accompaniment of your one guitar."

"Thanks." It felt like a lame reply to such an effusive compliment, but that was all I could come up with.

"It doesn't seem like your band's usual style, but it will probably sound different with the whole group playing."

"No, you're right. I don't know if the other guys will want to put it in the set."

"Ready to branch off on your solo career?"

"Yeah, right."

"Well, you can't let a group vote kill your darlings. That masochistic act of infanticide is for you, and you alone."

"I don't take the music thing that seriously."

"Yes you do." He said it with such certainty, it made me feel like he knew my mind better than I did.

"What are you working on these days?" I asked, honestly more to take the focus off of me than out of genuine interest. I confess I'm not particularly literary.

"A novel. A gruesome tome that will weigh as much as War and Peace or 2666."

I had no idea what 2666 was. "Do you have anything short I could read?"

"Sure." He got up, receded into the distance, took something down from one of the shelves that stretched across half the width and up half the height of the loft, then came back from the vanishing point and handed me a book. "It's for you. I have extras." It was the novel (novela?) he'd gotten published.

I was so flattered I found myself asking, didn't he have anything really short, something I could read right then. I suddenly felt like it would be rude not to reciprocate the attention and praise he'd given my song.

"I don't usually write short stories," he said. "I have one thing, but I don't think you'd like it."

Instead of asking why not, I said, "Try me."

"It's . . . vaguely pornographic. In the most literary sense, of course."

"I can't remember ever saying no to porn," I joked, trying to be cavalier and gloss over what I knew he was getting at, but even as the words came out of my mouth I was regretting them. Or not really regretting, but just feeling that they were false. That I was being fake and putting on a show for him.

He said, "I don't think my kind of porn is your kind of porn," which of course he meant as a red flag, as if I hadn't known all along that he was gay, as if he and his boyfriend hadn't been at Clara and Tom's wedding and at half of the parties Avalyn and I had been at that first year I knew him.

"Afraid of staining my snow-white innocence?" I joked, hoping it didn't sound forced, still masquerading as I don't know what, overdoing it so he wouldn't think I was uptight, repressed, or even some kind of homophobic asshole.

"Alright." This time instead of making the journey cross-country to the bookshelf he picked up the tablet that was on the table next to his armchair, pulled up the file, and handed it to me, now with a slightly coy or mischievous grin instead of his usual affable smile. I started reading. Meanwhile, I heard him get up, then noticed (I don't think I've ever in my life given anything the undivided focus he seemed to give me while I'd sung and played a few minutes earlier) that he was loading a bowl.

"You don't have to read the whole thing," he said, then took a hit. It occurred to me (again, I seem to suffer from some mild form of ADHD) that he might actually be almost as nervous about sharing his short story as I'd been playing my solo number for him. He took another hit off the pipe, then he passed it to me, and even though I wanted to act like my attention was as undivided as his had been for my performance, I took a hit, a much bigger hit than I meant to because I was nervous and I'm not a regular smoker like Dario and my bandmates were, telling myself it was the friendly thing to do, but in the back of my mind I knew the truth was I was medicating my nerves.

I started over from the top. It wasn't pornographic. Not even vaguely. But it was erotic. Not as in erotica. Just, the language was incredibly sensual, making every image of every interaction between the couple in the story erotic, even when there was nothing sexual going on. And about three pages in, I got the shock of my life because for the first time ever I was finding the idea of two men arousing. Not in some vague, abstract way, but in that immediate, physical way where I knew that if I kept reading, if I didn't make a determined effort to stop it, my dick was going to get hard. And then that thought—fuck, it was like being in junior high again—that thought was like some kind of lever that opened the dam or something, because as soon as it leaked into in my mind, it started to happen, and after a couple of seconds I realized that for the first time in more than a decade no amount of willpower was going to stop it. Then—maybe it was the pot—I had the thought that maybe that was the best compliment I could pay Dario; a straight guy getting hard reading his homoerotic story had to be better than anything someone could say, at least better than anything I could ever come up with, just because I'm really not good at that kind of thing. And then I thought—again, I think the pot had a lot to do with it—how big of a coward would I be if I stopped reading his story just because I was afraid to let the author see how it affected me? Especially after he'd frankly been so vulnerable with his reaction to my song? Thinking about it now, I really can't believe I did it. Screw the pot. But I did. I kept reading. I kept reading, my dick swelling with every paragraph, the arousal getting me hard from some confusing mix of the eroticism of the story, and my self-consciousness about letting it happen with Dario sitting there, watching me. Not watching my crotch, but watching my face as if he was studying a chemical reaction in a microscope, as if he was deciding whether he'd succeeded or failed as an author based on what was happening to my expression.

The moment I finished, the second the story wasn't there to hold that part of my awareness, I panicked because I was embarrassed, not even by the fact that a story about two guys had given me an epic erection, but because I'd gotten hard in front of Dario. I just mean in public, in front of this guy I'd been intimidated by through three years of rather distant socializing, and the first time we hung out just the two of us here I was getting a boner in his living room. I let my arm drop suddenly to my lap, faking a gesture of boredom or exasperation or maybe even disgust, just so I could cover my stiff dick with the tablet so he wouldn't see it.

"That's okay," he said quietly, smiling but not quite masking the disappointment in his voice. "I didn't expect you to like it." Then he stood up and started to walk off to some far corner of the loft, and the second he started walking away my embarrassment turned into shame and suddenly the most important thing was not letting him think I'd hated the story.

"It made me feel like I was there," I said, but because I was nervous the words barely came out of my throat. I heard him stop, and a few seconds later the sound of his footsteps as he started walking back toward me.

"What?"

I cleared my throat and said it again.

Then I heard his footsteps again, circling around the couch, and now I could see him, standing there, looking down at me, studying me under the microscope again. Then he sat down, not in his armchair this time, but right next to me on the couch. "How do you mean?" The way he asked it, his voice quiet, his words heavy, somehow, it felt like we were sharing a secret. Or like he was asking for a confession.

"I feel like I heard the timbre of Ferdinand's voice. Like I could . . ." I could feel myself blushing as I said it, but suddenly, because I felt on the spot, embarrassed, all the other examples slipped my mind, ". . . . smell Jordi's skin."

Varian P
Varian P
674 Followers
12