Chapter 7: The Responsibilities of the Job
The week resolved itself into a pleasant routine. I got to know the guys, each of whom was pleasant in his own way. After breakfast, I would go over to the gym where I'd set the guys up with their cleaned uniforms and towels. I'd do the laundry, then join the boys in the gym where they pretty much left me alone. I generally sat in the stands and took notes in a green notebook I had brought along with me. I had taken some precautions with Adam: I had reread a variety of papers on non-verbal communication and control to remind myself of ways in which I might be susceptible, and I avoided looking him in the eye. But after the first day, Adam fairly ignored me. This suited me just fine, as I was better able to document his behavior and interactions.
Adam was astounding. The more I watched him, the more I became convinced he was a true Alpha male. The others deferred to him in everything. Clearly, on the gym floor, he was the best at his craft. Still, while the others competed amongst themselves, boasted of their prowess, and bragged about how good they were, none of them ever did this with Adam. In conversation, public or private, no one compared themselves with him. And when I brought his name up, there was always that moment of uncomfortable silence, as if the very thought of him hurt. When Adam declared it was time to start practice, practice began. When Adam declared it was over, it was over. When Adam told people to follow him, they followed. When Adam told people to get out of the way, they got out of the way.
And every night the same scene played itself out in the commons room. The guys would be hanging out talking, and Adam would walk in. Each time, all conversation would stop. Each time, Adam would motion to one of the gymnasts, who would, resignedly, without complaint, but also without enthusiasm, rise to follow him back to his room. Each time, the rest, save Matt, looked relieved. And no one would talk about it.
I began to be somewhat obsessed by what was happening behind that door. I innocently found myself outside one night, taking a walk by the rooms. The curtains to his bedroom were drawn, and all I could see was an amorphous shadow. Equally innocently, I found excuses to walk back and forth along the hall from my bedroom to the commons room while Adam and his nightly assignation were sequestered, but the only sounds I could hear, while plaintive, were muffled at best. Matt said, again when I asked, that it was to give them pointers on their workouts, but it was clear neither of us believed it.
Adam and his roommate Dan seemed to have a special relationship. From my initial reading of it, while the others feared Adam -- Corey was absolutely terrified -- and Matt yearned for him, Dan worshiped him. Dan was the tallest of the group, and one of the best looking. Like Eric, he was clearly Italianate, but probably had some German or Scottish thrown in as well. A somewhat angular face contained a straight nose, a strong chin, and lips which, in imitation of Adam, he would curl in. He had a little black hair on his chest, mostly in the shelf between his round, perfectly defined pectorals. His forearms and shins were far hairier than the rest of him. Of all the boys in the program, after Adam, his abdominals and obliques were the sharpest, and most defined.
Dan tried to walk like Adam, he tried to talk like Adam. When entering the commons room, for example, he would lean on the door jamb hooking his thumbs into the small front pockets of his jeans just as Adam did, or stand in Adam's favorite pose: feet apart and planted firmly, hips rotated under somewhat pushing his crotch forward, arms akimbo showing off his biceps, pecs, and deltoids. I think the others didn't notice the clear hero-worship. I'm not even sure that Dan himself understood it. But the more time Dan spent with Adam, the more he tried to be like him.
Thursday morning saw me in the stands as usual taking notes while the boys practiced. I was following a particular hypothesis - that the alpha carries himself with a certain inter-fibular angle, when a cry from the pommel drew my attention away from my notes. Brad had fallen from the apparatus, and lay on his back clutching his left knee to his chest, clearly in a great deal of pain. Johnston was there in a flash, and, without thinking, I dropped the notebook to go down to see if I could help. It was nothing drastic -- he had gotten a cramp in his left hamstring. Johnston, having picked him up to his feet, put Brad's free arm over my shoulder and told me to take him into the training room and help him out.
I walked Brad out of the gym, and brought him to the training table, where I helped him hop up. I got him a bottle of water, and told him to down it, which he did without complaint. I laid him down on the table, put a towel under his head, and took off his sock. Standing beside him, I put his ankle on my shoulder, and supported his knee with my hands. His other leg rested on the table.
It was my intention to slowly lean forward to stretch the cramp out of his hamstring. It was my intention to push as far as he could take it, up to vertical, if necessary. It was my intention to stop as soon as I felt resistance. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I'm not a trainer. And while I had worked out cramps before, I was not used to working with athletes. In particular, I was not used to working with gymnasts. His leg swung past vertical so quickly it took me totally by surprise. I lost my balance, and my hands, ready to brace his knee against bending, slid up his thigh, almost to his waist. I fell forward, my face coming within inches of his.
Disoriented, and somewhat shocked at the turn of events, I froze. I became hyperaware of the position in which I found myself: inches away from the lips of a perfectly formed young man, his ankle on my shoulder, leg pressed firmly against my chest, my hands cupped high on his thigh over the blond hairs which led under his shorts. He was, though lying on his back, doing almost a complete split, and with the rotation this caused in his hips, his crotch pressed up through his jock and shorts to be cupped firmly by my abdominals, just to the right of my hands. It was one of those movie moments. My lips inch forward, then his, then mine again, and, with the music swelling a fully as our dicks, we give into temptation and lose ourselves in hedonistic passion.
It was one of those movie moments. My lips inched forward. Then my lips inched forward some more. Then they met his. There was only one thing missing -- he wasn't doing any of the inching, and when the kiss began, I immediately understood my mistake. Totally flustered, I broke contact.
"I'm really sorry," I said, at a loss for words. Brad had been so nice to me -- the first to talk to me when I arrived, the first to become a friend. "I don't know what...fuck, I'm just really sorry."
"It's ok," he said, "really. Could you just lay off the leg a bit?"
I realized that while I had withdrawn from the kiss, I still had him in the very compromising position which had started my folly in the first place. I was virtually lying on top of him, pressing him into a split with his dick mashing into my stomach.
"Oh! Of course! Sorry." I backed off, rising his leg to vertical again, and returning my hands to his knees. "Really, I didn't mean..." The words trailed off to nothingness.
Brad just smiled. "You're gay?"
"Yeh. It was totally unprofessional. I can't believe I did that."
"I'm not you know," he said, as easily as he had said hello when we met.
"I know, I know. I don't know what I was thinking."
"Honestly, Mark," Brad said, "don't worry about it." His tone was matter of fact. He even seemed to be amused by my shakiness.
"No...no. Really. I never go after straight guys. I don't know how that happened." And that was the truth. I found straight guys boring. I was far more interested in being with guys who knew what they wanted, especially when what they wanted was me. Non-reciprocation didn't appeal to me at all. I also didn't particularly enjoy being a teacher in bed. It was difficult enough teaching my undergraduate psych sections. And yet, I had, it seems, totally misread the situation.
"Look," Brad said, laughing at my distress, "put my leg down, let me roll over, and massage the hamstring. Get over it. I told you, it's okay."
I returned his leg to the table, and he rolled over onto his stomach. As I started kneading his hamstring, he began to talk.
"It isn't the first time, you know. It happens to us all the time. You can't look the way we do, and not get hit on constantly. Girls, guys, it doesn't make a difference. Most of us are used to it by now." He turned his head to look at me over his shoulder and smiled. "Of course, when it's a guy, usually he's drunk before he tries anything."
"Oh, god. I'm sorry. Really."
"Will you chill already? It's not an insult. It's a complement. I take it that way."
I realized that Brad had totally misunderstood my horror. "No, it's not that at all. I'm not sorry because I'm gay -- I have absolutely no problem with that. Believe me! I'm sorry because it's so unprofessional. I have to work with you guys for another two months."
"Christ, get over yourself!" he said, laughing, and without a hint of malice. "You're a gofer, not a professor!" This took me aback. He said it kindly, and with such friendly comfort I couldn't help but realize how wrapped up I had become in myself and my research. I broke up laughing along with him. Brad didn't know why I had accepted the job. As far as he was concerned, I was a 22 year old towel boy.
"Fuck, you're right. I'm an idiot," I said, beginning the massage in earnest. I kneaded his hamstring, using my fingers, the palm of my hand, and, where the muscle flared out to its largest extent, my elbow.
"Mmmm. Now that's nice," Brad purred. With the tension (both of the situation, and in his thigh) broken, I began to pay attention to what he had said.
"So you get hit on by guys a lot?"
"Sure," he said, relaxing into the massage, "all the time. We all do."
"What do you tell them?"
"Mostly, `no thanks'."
"Mostly?"
"Hell, dude," he said "horniness is horniness. We travel a lot when we're in season, you know?"
Brad was amazing me, and once again, I kicked myself internally for falling into stereotypic thinking when it came to jocks, or even just generic straight guys, for that matter.
"You don't have a problem with it?"
"With what? Getting a blow job?" He laughed. "Have you ever turned one down?"
"Actually, I have," I admitted, thinking of the girls who had hit on me over the years.
"Guess I'm just more enlightened than you are, dude," he said. I was stunned. Was he right? How could that be? Part of the whole process of coming out was enlightenment. Gays, by definition, had to confront the sexual expectations and norms that society enforced, consciously choosing to accept or reject each one in turn. They had to examine, in microscopic detail, what they wanted and didn't want, what they liked and didn't like. Straight guys never had to do that. They could go through life blissfully ignorant of the interplay between personal taste and societal pressure. They never had to consider their roles. They never had to really question what they wanted, and from whom. And yet here was this straight kid -- this tight, muscular, powerful, friendly, generous, straight kid -- for whom sexual freedom seemed to be as natural as breathing.
"The leg, dude?"
His words interrupted my inner monologue, and I realized I had stopped massaging, and was just absentmindedly stroking the light dusting of short, blond hairs that coated the back of his thigh.
"Sorry," I said, returning to the massage with renewed vigor, "you just...surprise me a little."
"No prob, dude," he said, as easily as he said everything else. "I'm nothing special. Like I said, it's part of doing what we do and looking the way we look."
I massaged his hamstring some more, working from the crook of his knee up to the solid mound of his ass cheek.
"The other guys on the team...feel the same way you do?"
"Most of em," he said. "They've all done it. Some of em are more comfortable with it than others, that's all."
"And it doesn't bother your girlfriend?"
This made him laugh heartily. "No, dude. She has no idea. Whenever I'm around her, I'm totally monogamous. I love her, dude. This isn't about that." He seemed to have worked out a system with which he felt perfectly comfortable.
"In fact," he added, interrupting my massage by rolling over, sitting up, and stripping off his tank top, "why don't you get some of the massage oil over there and get me off now, dude?"
"Pardon?" I was stunned. I looked down into his crystal blue eyes, but there was no trace of deceit, of a trap, of danger.
"Get me off. Give me a hand job. I haven't blown a load in a few days, and I could use it."
Now it was my turn to laugh. "I'm not like that, guy," I said. "Just because I'm gay doesn't mean I want to do every guy I meet. That was a mistake, before. I'm not interested in doing straight guys. I wasn't lying before. And the idea of just servicing a guy is kind of boring, if you know what I mean. It's about love for me."
"So? I'm not asking for a commitment, dude," he said, "I already got one of those. I just want you to get me off."
I took a step back from the table and smiled. This kid was so appealing -- his honesty, his comfort, the total beauty of his face, the perfection of his physique -- his girlfriend was a very lucky girl. If he were gay, I could fall for him big time. But he wasn't.
"Look, Brad," I said, trying to be as open and gentle as he had been with me earlier, "I just don't think it would be a good idea." A look of confusion crossed his face, so I added, "really, just because we're gay doesn't mean we do everyone who asks, even hunks as beautiful as you, kid."
"But that's why you're here," he said simply, and again, I was stunned.
"Pardon?"
"That's why you're here. You think you're here to put our towels into a bin? We can do that ourselves, dude."
"I'm here to give you a hand job?" Try as I might, I could not keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
"Yeh," he said, "what did you think? Didn't Johnston tell you that you were here to do whatever we needed? What did you think he meant?"
"I don't know..." I stammered, "...just what I've been doing. Company, laundry, get supplies..."
"And for that, he's paying you..."
I suddenly realized what he was saying. "...a lot," I replied.
"More than you expected?"
"Yeh, come to think of it."
"And you never stopped to wonder why? Fuck, guy. We're the jocks. We're supposed to be the stupid ones," he laughed.
The truth is, I never had. It all happened so quickly, and I was so excited about the idea of getting to work close up with an alpha, I never had the time to fully process what Johnston meant by `whatever it takes.'"
"So look," Brad said, reaching over to take my wrist.
"You're here to meet our needs. You're getting paid pretty well to do it. I have a need. Meet it." With that, he pulled me forward, and brought my hand to his crotch. "You had no trouble when I needed you to massage my hamstring. Now I need you to massage my dick. What's the diff?" He pressed my hand into the material covering his crotch. I could feel his dick begin to grow, even confined as it was in his jock.
Despite myself, I was trapped by his logic. This, indeed, must have been what Johnston meant, and why he went out of his way to make sure his hiree was gay. And Brad was right. This wasn't an act of love, it was a job. I certainly understood the need to get off, and the joys of the proverbial "quickie". So what if it was sexual in nature? It was part of my job, evidently, and, as I thought about it, was just a natural extension of the kinds of services I was already providing. I didn't need to get emotionally attached to this kid -- he certainly wouldn't with me. It was just a service I was providing, like laundry, supplies, and runs to the drugstore. My fingers closed around his lengthening cock.
"There you go, dude," Brad said, relaxing back into the table and letting go of my wrist now that he was sure my hand would stay. "It doesn't mean anything. You're just helping out a friend."
He was wearing shiny red shorts. I stretched the fabric around his dick, outlining it in glossy nylon, and pulled it, wrapped in its silky cocoon, away from his torso. The waistband pulled away from his abdomen, showing more of the lightly colored treasure trail that led, enticingly, invitingly, beneath. I fisted my other hand, and pressed it into the perineum below his balls. He moaned, and spread his knees, giving me greater access.
"Yeah, bud," he said, eyes closed, "you know what to do alright. Just do it."
I let go, and his dick and shorts slapped back onto him. Taking the waist bands of his shorts and jock in each hand, I peeled them downward, while he lifted his ass off the table. I had to negotiate the removal of his shorts -- it was harder than I had expected. I've been with lots of guys who were in shape before, and a couple of body builders. But never had I tried to strip a guy whose ass was as round as melons and as hard as granite. Once his clothes were dispatched, I surveyed what lay before me.
From the top of his head to the tips of his toes, this boy was prime. His skin glowed with youth and heath and exposure to the sun. Tufts of light blond hair peaked out from his arm pits. The mounds of his pectorals were capped with two dime sized, widely spaced nipples which gently rose and fell with his relaxed breathing. His whole abdomen fell away where his rib cage ended, except for the two pronounced lines of muscle which ran down the center of his thorax. In this position, resting comfortably and breathing easily, his washboard was far less pronounced. It curved in a concave perfection, its smoothness broken only just below its center by his shallow belly button. A thin line of silk grew from there, leading the eye down, down, to where it flared into his pubic bush. The hair in his crotch was the darkest of any on his body, and came closest to being brown, though if that, the lightest shade of brown possible.
Lying slightly off center, its tip extending up past his bush and resting in the furrow over his inguinal ligament just shy of his hip, his dick was a delight to behold. Thick and massive where it grew from his fleshy ball sack, it slowly tapered to the glans, whose pinkness was covered by a pale hood. His balls, moderately large, hung low in their relaxed sack. His balls and the base of his cock were generously dusted with long, straight hairs.
Ok, I thought. A job is a job. Once I got over the shock of it all, it was becoming pretty clear that as jobs go, this one had its perks.
I walked over to the shelf where there was some massage oil. I coated my hands liberally, and poured a lazy curve of it over his crotch. He drew in a breath through his slightly parted red lips and smiled. "Cold," he said, without opening his eyes.
"Sorry about that," I replied. "Let's see if I can do anything about it."
Rather than going right for his dick, I started by placing my hands flatly on the tops of his thighs, with my fingers pointing towards his abdomen. Applying pressure, I rotated my palms outward, sliding my thumbs firmly down the insides of his legs over his gracilis muscles then up, with pressure, to just above his anus. Once there, I started a slow, circular motion at the very base of his erection where it disappeared into the depths of his torso. Keeping this pressure and motion up with one hand, I brought the other to his balls, gently running my fingers around them, playfully tugging the hairs on them, just getting a feel for their weight and size. I ran the loose skin through my fingers, I traced the length of his vas defrons that were available to me. All the while, my right hand was firmly pressing in the area between his ball sack and ass hole, stroking in an upward motion, forcing more and more blood into his now full, stiff pole. Small drops of precum began to puddle in the lips of his cockhead, now fully emerged from its protective sheath. The droplets formed, and with each upward stroke on his perineum, rolled over the tip of the head to fall, in stringy, silky strands, onto his abdomen. His breath was coming faster now, and a little deeper. His chest rose and fell with a greater frequency.
"Fuck, man," he said, breathlessly, "where did you learn that? Homo 101?"
"Psych 435, actually," I replied, hitting a spot I knew would make him see stars through his lidded eyes, "Sexuality in the Human Male."
"Umph. If Wendy could do that, I'd never leave home, dude."
With my right hand still wedged firmly between his thighs keeping pressure on the root of his dick, I let go of his balls with my left hand and, flat palmed, slid my hand up the length of his pole, grinding it against his belly. Involuntarily, his hips rotated forward, pushing it even more firmly against the heel of my hand. Two, three, four strokes like this, and he began to moan, trying to set up a pelvic thrusting rhythm to match my stroking. But I broke the pattern, this time, wrapping my slick fingers over the head of his dick, and with opposing motions, brought my right hand, wedged between his thighs, knuckles pressing into the bulging ridge under his balls upward, while my left hand, wrapped tightly around his shaft slid down.
"Ohhhhh fuckkkkk," he moaned, "that's it, dude."
Twice more I stroked, each time using the opposing motion of my hands to intensify the sensation. With my fingers still wrapped around this young Adonis' shaft, I brought my left thumb around so that it was directly in line with the most sensitive area under the head. Twice more, in that new position. The oil was heating up given the firmness of my grip. His beautiful face was flushed by now, and he was fairly gasping for air. I saw his balls begin their inexorable, unavoidable journey upward. This boy was ready.
On the next thrust, rather than coming straight down, I circled my left palm over his exposed head -- once, twice, then a firm stroke down to his balls, making sure my thumb followed the line of his urethra all the way down. At the same time, with my right palm still pressing against his perineum, I slid my thumb and forefinger on either side of his ball sac just where it began to descend from his body, and squeezed. His knees buckled, even though he was lying down. They bent and came up a few inches toward his body as if his feet were being placed in stirrups.
On the next stroke, he came. It started in his abdominals, which tensed with wild fury, reintroducing the washboard that had smoothed out in his relaxation. His knees buckled up, his chest heaved off the table as if he was doing a crunch. His head thrown back, his jaw dropped as he gasped for air. His balls disappeared entirely, despite the squeeze hold I had on his scrotum. A four inch rope of viscous, dense jiz erupted from his dick and flew over his head, clearing the table and landing on the floor a good five feet from where it had burst. Timing myself with his discharge, just as he relaxed after the first spasm passed I stroked again the full length of his shaft, including what I knew was, by then, the hypersensitive head. His body, recovering from the first convulsion, spasmed again. Instinctively, his hands came to his crotch, holding my hand down, away from the head of his dick. A second shot of pearly cum fired from his cannon, still with enough force to land beside his ear. He gulped a breath of air, all his muscles were tensed, down to his toes, which had curled to a perfect ballet point.
I tried my stroking trick again, but this time it was against the full force of his hand which covered mine, holding it firmly in place. The kid was infinitely stronger than me even when he wasn't in the throes of an orgasm. My left hand wasn't going anywhere without his permission.
Of course, my right hand was still free to minister, and I rotated it around to press against what was left of the crinkled mass of skin that used to be his scrotum. This caused another spasm, and another, and another.
By the time he was done, his face was beet red, he was panting the way I do when I've just finished a five mile run, and each of his hands held each of my wrists in a crushingly immovable grip. His torso was covered with lines of cum.
I let him just lie there and breathe. Actually, I couldn't really do anything except let him lie there, as he had my hands pinned. A minute passed, then another.
"You alight, Brad," I asked finally, as his breathing began to regulate?
"Ooooh, yeahhhh," he said, the smile returning to his lips. "That was the best fucking load I ever blew." He let go my wrists, and, rubbing them some to get the blood flowing back into my hands, I went to get a towel to clean him up.
"Usually gay guys are better at that than girls, but man! I've never had anyone do anything like that to me before."
"You were just horny. Been a while since your last cum, right?"
"Well yeh, but still - that was incredible!"
"Well," I said, grinning, running the towel over his golden torso as he lay there, spent, on the table, "all in a day's work, I guess."
"Fuck," he said with a final sigh as his breathing returned to normal. "The other guys are going to love this."