Some months after I got back from Tunisia the airline bought more 747's, and a number of the most senior pilots retired so my period in the wilderness came to an end. I still had to get through the ground school, safety training, dinghy drills, fire fighting, and type rating exam, and the simulator course, and finally line training. Just as tedious was that for about three months I had to fly with training captains, then line-training captains. During this period when one is under scrutiny one has to toe the line, that's the line in the local bar. In other words I'd stand in whichever of the local watering holes the crews were gathering in and be a regular guy, buy drinks and listen to the same old twaddle night after night. I'd been checked out on 707's by some of these guys and believe me they were still telling a lot of the same jokes all these years later! (The stewardesses always complained that pilots only talked about three things, fast cars, yachts, and fucking airplanes, and they were right too!) But after about three months in purgatory I was free to enjoy myself again. During my exile the specter of AIDS had arrived, but being away from the immediate scene I didn't really know how bad things were. It seemed like another of those newspaper stories that are blown up out of all proportion to sell copies. What I found when I got back to NYC was vastly worse than anything I expected. A few of the baths were still open, but my favorite, The Club, was gone, and those that were still open were under attack by every city official and health expert. Going to the baths just didn't seem to be a fun thing to do any more. (It is a strange thing, all those baths were open every day of the year for years on end, all full to capacity on many nights, but when I mentioned the baths to anyone in NYC in later years they always said, "Oh I never went to the baths, not my scene." I guess they didn't like to admit that they were once so irresponsibly promiscuous. Actually there was one guy I met who admitted to going, and enjoying it very much. When we met we'd reminisce about the 'good old days'.) By this time most of the stewardesses I'd been fucking, with a couple of memorable exceptions, were married or left the airline. Married ladies are dangerous, you never know when they might get an attack of conscience and tell all to their husbands. Bad scene! So if I'd wanted to get the new girls into bed I'd have to go through all the maneuvering to get one separated from the group, buying drinks, maybe a meal as well. It was too much trouble, with no certainty of getting to fuck her. What I wanted, what I needed, was sex with men. Besides, if I met up with a man there'd be no doubt about what was going to happen, we'd get naked, and we'd fuck one way or another. I went to a few movies, didn't turn me on any more, being groped in the dark just didn't compare with having sex with men in the baths. One thing I knew for sure was that the days of unprotected sex were over, it was strictly no exchange of body fluids from now on. I didn't want to suck on a condom so that meant that sucking was out. Even fucking lost its appeal when there was a layer of rubber blocking the sensations. Thinking-men had already changed the way they were behaving, but many weren't thinking.
On my first night in alone Manhattan I wandered around Greenwich Village, not much had changed. The bars were still packed with young, good looking guys being preyed on by older, not so good looking guys. The Ramrod was crowded, the Spike still going strong. I wondered if things had calmed down, went in to look around.
The ground-floor level was pretty crowded, all leather. I bought a beer and wandered around. I decided to go down to the basement, a slow process, easing my way through the crowd. At one point I was stopped by a bunch of guys all milling around in a huddle. As I waited in the crush looking for a way around the jam a hand found my zip. In a second it was down, I wasn't wearing any underwear, my cock was being pumped by some stranger's hand. I didn't even know who amongst all the guys pressing around me was doing this. I know it shouldn't have happened, but I stiffened up fast which of course made the hand pump harder. Whilst we were all jammed together nothing more could happen so it wasn't a problem, but suddenly the log jam shifted, the men around me moved away, except one who dropped to his knees in front of me. I wasn't sure what was, and what was not safe sex, so I twisted away from him as he tried to suck my dick into his mouth.
"What's the matter man?" he sounded aggrieved.
"Oh... I'm not ready yet," I said. It was better than saying, "I don't know if you've got AIDS."
"But look at it...You are ready for it..." he said still holding and squeezing my cock tight. I was terribly tempted, this was the first man to touch my cock in many months. I broke away, but I didn't pull up the zip, it felt so good to have my cock out in the open, to be natural. As I made my way through the crowd many men reached out for my cock, I let them fondle it as long as they liked. My balls too were there for touching, squeezing, pulling, but not for sucking.
When I finally made it down to the basement it was a scene from the past. They were sucking and fucking like there was no tomorrow, which I suppose was true for a lot of them. I doubt that there was a condom in the building. One sight I will never forget. Over to one side there was a table, on it a cage made of quarter-inch chrome or stainless-steel bars. It would have been about 36 inches long, 18 inches high, and maybe 24 inches wide. A young guy, perhaps eighteen although I very much doubt it, was crouched naked in a fetal position inside this tiny cage. His backbone was pressing against the top, his shoulders against the sides, his shaved head was pressed against the bars at one end and his toes stuck out between the bars behind his naked ass. Just looking at him made my muscles ache. Several dozen men were drinking and laughing all around him, but nobody took the slightest notice of him. In that crowded place he was alone. His head had been shaved, and although I couldn't see it all I'd say that his whole body had been shaved too. Certainly there was no hair anywhere around his hole, nor around his balls which hung down low beneath his butt. I was stunned, how could he stay crouched down like that? I couldn't take my eyes off him. There was a notice on top of the cage, "If you fuck the hole at the back use the one at the front to clean up!" As I moved around to the front of the cage our eyes met. His gaze was blank, totally blank. It was like the look you get from a cat, not your own cat, or a friendly cat, but a stray cat. There was no response, no way of knowing if he was suffering in hell, or in his own kind of nirvana. I had to move away.
There was another knot of men gathered around something. I couldn't see what it was that held their interest so I moved over to where they stood. As I approached a guy in front of me turned away shaking his cock off as though he'd just had a piss. He had, right in front of me was a bath-tub, a naked man lying in it his head tilted back, mouth open. All around the bath men were pissing on him. Again I could not believe my eyes, just stood staring. One by one the men around the tub drifted off as they finished pissing. The man in the tub opened his eyes, looked straight at me.
"That's a beautiful cock," he said. I was still hard. "Please let me have yours...Please..."
I had never been turned on by "water sports" or "golden showers" although I'd been asked many times. He really pleaded, his mouth was open ready to take my piss. I'd had two beers by this time, yet I couldn't do it. I don't know whether I should be ashamed to admit that I tried, or more ashamed to say that I failed miserably.
I wandered away, further into the back of the dungeon. In one corner, right at the back there was a sling, all black leather and bright, shining steel, brilliantly lit by three spot lights. I'd seen it there in the past, never seen it used. This time there was a man laying back in the sling waiting, another greasing his hands and his right arm up to the elbow. I'd never seen fisting before except on films and videos. Like many others I waited not three feet from the man's swinging butt. The top moved into position between the man's legs and worked the grease up into the waiting hole. First with three fingers, then four, then the thumb went in as well. The hand twisted and writhed as it slowly worked its way in, I was fascinated, amazed, how could that sphincter open so wide? Soon the whole hand had disappeared, then the wrist, still the twisting continued. The bottom writhed too, not it seemed in any great pain, more to help the penetration of his body. After about ten minutes the top's whole arm, right up to his elbow was up inside the bottom's body. How he took that length, and the thickness of the top's powerful arm I'll never know. Once the arm was all the way in the top started to pump it in and out of the bottom's ass. Long strokes, much longer than any man's penis could ever achieve. After a while the top used his other hand to work on the balls that were up tight and ready to shoot. It only took a few seconds of that treatment and the bottom sprayed his juice all over his chest. Not a drop was wasted, at least three guys were all over him licking up the jism even as it squirted out!
"Doesn't anyone worry about AIDS?" I asked the guy next to me who was fondling my balls.
"AIDS?" he asked, clearly surprised. "You can't get AIDS from cum. You can only get it if you're already sick, if you're healthy you'll never get it."
"But that's not what I read..."
"Never mind what they say, they're only trying to scare off young gays. They know that all the best looking, and the smartest young guys are gay. They don't like it, so they're trying to make them go straight. There's no truth in all that crap."
I wondered if I was dreaming, if I'd wake up in my bed in the hotel. As I made my way back to the stairs I saw the cage again. One guy was fucking the boy's ass through the bars. At the other end of the cage the boy was licking a very long, slim cock that I guess had just come out of his hole. This place was just too dangerous, I had to find a new source of extramural sexual action. I turned to the magazine ads.
I read a lot of magazines. One thing that caught my eye was an article on S&M, and, as the author pointed out, S&M didn't need body fluids to make it hot. I remembered the time I'd been worked on in the Club, then in Rome when Bryn gave me another taste of this exotic sex. That renewed the craving for more of that painfully pleasurable sin. I read more, and the more I read the more intrigued I became. In fact it was a re-run of my working myself up to letting a man touch me in the baths. I wanted it so much, but could I do it? How could I do it? Who could I trust? How would I find him? Well I did find him, and I did let it happen. I know that most of you will think I was totally mad and will have absolutely no interest in reading about what I got up to. I quite understand, BDSM is an acquired taste no doubt about it. Also, since this is the Encounter archive, I'm not sure it's the right place for what came next. I have suggested to the archivist that perhaps the rest of the saga should appear in the Authoritarian archive, he however would prefer to keep it under the one title. To tell the truth I am rather more embarrassed to write about what I did over the next few years, even more embarrassed than writing about my difficulty in accepting that I am bi-sexual. Well I've started down this road so I may as well continue. Just hope I don't turn too many of you off with the coming revelations!