My life had been in chaos.
The only thing I could do was to "man up" and make things right.
So I did.
At 20 years old, I'd stumbled through a trades apprenticeship, killed my weekends drinking and partying and managed to knock up my estranged girlfriend Beth. My parents never shamed me outright, but I could feel their deep concern. Beth's family on the other hand hated my guts, and the only way to repairing things with her folks was with a ring.
I proposed to her with balloons and a smattering of friends capturing the moment on social media- the wedding itself was a negotiation with her parents, a quick city hall ceremony, but performed by a minister. As a wedding gift, our families had cobbled together a down payment on a house in the burbs, one town over from Beth's parents.
Best case scenario in a no-win situation for me I guess. Goddamned cock.
Looking at our engagement photos, you'd think we were the happiest kids in town. I was like a teenaged newscaster, gawky, with a big shit eating grin on my face, my blonde hair perfectly styled. In our pictures, Beth smiled wide in the shots often laughing as she climbed up on my back or running from me in a grassy field. I figure, we'd seen enough perfect couples online- we knew how to act.
In reality though, we were two stupid fucking kids way over our heads, who barely knew ourselves, never mind each other. Two idiots stuck in the suburbs with a kid on the way, realizing the time for pretending had come to an end.
I don't think it took a month until we came to terms with how bad things were. For all the hashtag-couple goals we shared outwardly, we soon came to realize we were unfortunate roommates for the foreseeable future. Beth began going to bed earlier, me staying up later- our sex life non-existent. I started taking walks around the neighbourhood to smoke a joint and get my head right for sleep, and that's when I came across "the mudroom".
I was burning late one night when I felt like taking a shortcut through a nearby park. Feeling myself, I climbed up on one of the wooden playground structures and laid beneath the stars, just smoking and contemplating what my life had become. Exhaling into the sky, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a happier time.
I drifted back to when I first met Beth, to our first fuck. My cock thickened at the memory before thoughts of fatherhood crashed the party. I hated myself for fucking up this bad.
It was then I heard a noise and swung my head around to a neighbouring house. I was dizzy but could just make out the details of someones yard. I saw a dimly lit door on the side of an attached garage, my elevation gave me a clear view of the path through their garden. This house had a gate onto the park, which was left slightly ajar. My eyes narrowed as I tried to find the source of the noise- an animal perhaps? Maybe the wind had swung the gate open.
Instead, I slowly realized that the side door to the garage was being unlocked. I rolled over on the platform I'd been laying on and tried to remain as quiet and still as possible. Everything from this point on seemed to move as a fog. Blame the weed or the horniness, but as the door in yard swung open I swear I could see the body of a naked man inside, pressed to the wall, a hole beside him streaming light into the room as another guy made his exit.
The man who was leaving looked to be in his mid thirties, and seemed to be shrugging on a polo shirt. I scanned his face for any sort of recognition, but my eyes were drawn to the unzipped bulge in the front of his pants. What the fuck was I witnessing here?
I shook my head as I collected my weed addled thoughts. This was a normal suburb right? This was a regular old house. Looked like everything else in the neighbourhood, didn't have a red light or anything sleazy about it. Had my hormones just imagined some insane scenario, or did I just see a dude leaving a glory hole?
I split my observation between the stranger who had left, and the side door on the garage. Dude just continued walking on the sidewalk until he disappeared from view, while the door remained closed. I was dying of curiosity now. For whatever reason, I was convinced I had stumbled across a real live glory hole. This was the kind of shit my friends and I would tease each other about back in high school- never in my wildest imagination did I ever think I would see one. I lay there on my stomach for five minutes, waiting for any sort of movement. Then ten became fifteen- but I was immoveable. I had to see this guy come out.
Losing attention of the clock, the side door finally jiggled as it unlocked, and an older man crept out into the garden. He was bald and wore a windbreaker and khaki pants. He had slipped out with such ease, I couldn't even see a sliver inside. My eyes followed him as he peacefully walked to a parked car and drove off.
His departure left me alone with the park, with the yard, with the side door to that mystery garage. All I could do was stare at the door and imagine what was on the other side. Realizing my joint had burned about halfway down, I knocked off the ash and licked my fingers before extinguishing it. That was all it took for my body to spur into motion. I slipped off the playground equipment without a second thought, and made my way to the gate. There was no sober second thought, or fear at that point, just a blitzed out loser with a hard-on making his move. I closed the gate behind me, oddly feeling safe by doing so. I hadn't a clue what was on the other side of the one door, but I may have given myself some security from the rear.
My body felt a jolt of electricity as I touched the doorknob- I was filled with adrenalin believing I was about to bust in on something illicit, not even thinking of what I might be offered. The door swung open before me and the pungent smell of sweat and sex filled my nostrils. I stood there like an idiot staring at everything. The tiny room was painted black with wrist cuffs hanging from the ceiling, and a roll of paper towel place on a stool. A bulk box of condoms had been torn open and placed along a wall stud next to a pump bottle of lube. There were two long ovals cut into plywood on the one wall, both currently covered. I bent over to look at them, noticing the edges had been padded with some dark vinyl. Hearing a little commotion, my eyes darted up to the corner of the ceiling, where I saw a small security camera.
"Shut the fucking door" A voice growled out at me, suddenly breaking my confidence.
I wanted to run, but my brain was somewhere else and my hand was being obedient. I pushed the door closed, noticing the big metal latch and struggling to set it in place. I was young and stupid and high, taking orders had become the norm now- so this wasn't much different from the rest of my life.
"Well? Are we doing this or not?"
I looked at the hole on the left, where the voice seemed to be coming from. My cock was fully upright and suddenly rather uncomfortable in confinement.
"Uh, yeah-yuh, I'm uh..." words stumbled out of my head as I worked open the zipper on my jeans. Still unable to free my erection, I undid my belt and opened my pants in the dark. As if on cue, a red light flickered on, and I felt emboldened. Delicately thumbing at the waistband of my boxer briefs, I pulled the fabric over the head of my cock and put myself on display inside the mudroom. There was a moment of silence before movement could be heard on the other side of the wall.
"You're supposed to take everything off, that's how it goes. Naked or nothing."
Part of the wall suddenly sprung out towards my feet, and I jumped back in alarm.
"You're new- put all your shit in here so we can see if you're a cop before anything happens,"
"Oh, I'm not a cop-" I spat out, trying to be helpful.
