This may read as an autobiography but it is not. That is not to say I haven't seen the inside of video booth or a glory hole but beyond that, this is entirely a work of fiction. If you imagine you recognize yourself in the story, you don't.
The setting is fictional but the conflict and emotion I hope I've captured, however poorly, is universal or damn near so.
All the characters are over twenty-one.
Thanks to LarryInSeattle.
Please provide me with helpful critiques and suggestions.
Sorry. Enjoy (I hope).
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It hadn't been my first trip to a place like that. Every city of any size had them. The trick was finding them. Lawrence isn't big for a city but it's a university town. This was before the Internet and its incredible simplification of the process of finding a dick to suck. Hell, the only person I knew who had a 'personal' computer was a professor with a RadioShack TRS80. It used a cassette tape as a mini reel-to-reel storage. My computer science classes were taught on the school's mainframe.
Every town of any size also had a local paper, with personals and ads for porn theaters in the back. I don't recall what Lawrence's fuck rag was called but it had one. I've forgetten what the bookstore was called, other than "Insert Dude's Name Playpen". I was in town to interview for graduate school. I was a nerd. Yes, that word had already been invented. I loved math and I loved computers. I may have seen only one personal computer but I was sure they were coming. I don't think anyone imagined you'd be able to stick one in your pocket in another thirty years.
I was in town because I wanted to check out the graduate program in electrical engineering and computer science. On this particular night, I was in the back of a porn shop, perched on a wobbly stool in a dark closet-sized booth with a sticky floor because I want to suck a dick. I had been in places like this before but I had never ventured beyond touching or watching and once letting a guy give me a blow job. Tonight, I had vowed, that would change.
We didn't have the Internet back then but we didn't have HIV either. It's sad, almost quaint, to recall a time when my biggest fear was herpes. I would have died of embarrassment if I had to go to the local public health department with the clap or syph but at least a shot could cure those. Fucking herpes was forever, so was HIV a few years later, except at that time forever was only a year or two.
Don't get me wrong. This is not a paean to the glory days of bathhouses and casual fucking. Mind you, I'm okay with casual fucking, as long as that's not the sole focus of your being. Trust me, you want to keep your eyes out for someone you can put up with and who can put up with you. Fucking is great; sharing is better. But as long as you keep your eyes open and don't let fucking destroy sharing, and as long as you don't think some little pill means you can fuck and suck like we did in the late seventies, well then, go ahead and fuck and suck to your heart's content.
I'm afraid that's a mixed message. Sorry. No more words of wisdom or lack thereof.
On the screen, a video was barely discernible, distorted by the shitty video player and the lack of vertical hold on the monitor. My jeans were around my ankles. I was careful to keep my feet on the lower rung on the stool. It was early evening, but the concrete floor was already shiny and sticky with cum. As I was absent-mindedly stroking my cock, my attention jumped back and forth between some hairy motherfucker in a swing getting fucked by a line of equally hairy motherfuckers and the hole in the wall to my left. The hole was dark when I went in. I waited for the glow of light that would tell me someone had opened the door.
I was getting tired of the dudes in the swing. I used a knuckle to click the channel selector button. It amused me that I was using the back of my knuckle. I was planning to suck a baker's dozen of strangers' cocks tonight or at least one. (My grasp often exceeds my reach, even now.) In the scheme of things touching the button with my finger was probably one of the lower risk behaviors I had in mind. I tried to remember the channel number of a video about bisexual fanatasies. That was my favorite type of porn but the selection was limited. Two guys sucking and fucking was totally cool as well.
Bingo. On the shitty screen, two dudes were staring through a peephole into the girls' shower. The dudes and the 'girls' looked to be in their thirties, though it appeared they were supposed to be in high school. I didn't bother with the volume. The volume on those montiors either wouldn't work, be totally distorted, or blare at maximum volume with volume buttons that didn't function. On the screen, a very large breasted black chick caught the peeping Toms. The action shifted to her office. Even if I could have heard the dialogue I would have wanted them to speed it up. Judging by their facial expressions, the lady coach was blackmailing them into sucking each other. All right, about fucking time.
The hole to my left glowed. I heard a soft click as the door to the booth next to mine was latched. After some fumbling, I heard the plastic clatter of the tokens. His screen lit up. At the same time the immediate vicinity was deafened by a woman screaming, "Uh-huh, fuck my pussy." I heard the guy mutter, "Fuck," under his breath, though he could have shouted and not been heard beyond his booth. Thank God his volume control has one of the rare ones that worked. If it hadn't we would have both needed to move. You couldn't hang out in a booth without dropping tokens and no one was going to drop tokens in a booth with the volume stuck on "turn that fucking shit down, asshole" level.
On my screen, it appeared the naughty students were being coerced into one of them fucking the other. I watched that play out as the dude next door went through the channel selections one by one. When he stopped, I leaned back to peek through the hole to see what he selected. The hairy fuckers in leather. At the same time, I saw him lean back to see what I was watching. The channel selector window in my booth glowed a hazy "21". I didn't want to look too closely to see why the Plexiglas was hazy in that spot. The guy's arm stretched out. He punched the button quickly, stopping on "21". I took a breath and told myself I wasn't going to pussy out this time.