Flesh

For Franz

Our wrists were bound with nylon rope and the rope looped over a hook in the ceiling. The hook was of variable height and could be lowered or raised electronically so that our bare feet were flat on the cold tiles. A catch in the hook that could be pressed inward but not outward preventing any of us so inclined from leaping up and “unhooking” ourselves. It seems they’d thought of everything.

It soon became apparent to me that the purpose of the rope and hooks was not torture but rather to prevent the six of us—six men—from touching ourselves. And also, to drive as much blood as possible to the groin area. We were all naked, in good shape and appeared to be between 35 and 45 years old. I fell somewhere in the middle. The ad had said “Autoejaculation Study” so I should not have been surprised when they began exposing us to various forms of erotic stimulation. But I was. Out of work again, I was in it entirely for the money.

After we undressed we were each administered a shot in the buttocks. In retrospect I feel sure this was some kind of fast-acting erectile drug—aphrodisiac—because even before the variety of stimulants began—the “show” as we called it—each of the six of us had aching, uncontrollable erections. My position was on the far left. Embarrassed by what was happening to me, I looked down the row to my right and was at least relieved to see that my five colleagues also had hard-ons. Thank god!

Someone joked, “I hope they’re not gonna cut ‘em off.”

A more sober voice said, “It’s an ejaculation study.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You don’t know what ejaculation means?”

“I know what ejaculation is but I don’t know why they’re doing it.”

“Who the fuck knows?” It was difficult to shrug under these conditions.

“The ad said AUTOejaculation.”

“OK, I’ll ask again. What’s that mean?”

“It means—”

“Hands free!”

“It’s gonna be fun, that’s for sure!”

“It’s not going to be fun. They’re gonna stick vibrators up our asses and pump the jism out. It’ll be like peeing. There won’t be any pleasure to it at all.”

“You sound like an expert.”

“I’ve read about it on the internet.”

“Oh that definitely makes you an expert.”

“Did you know that the prostate of a horny man can produce up to a third of a cup of seminal fluid? Contrast that with—”

“That would sure make a mess on the bed!”

“Yeah. Just ask your wife after the pool boy leaves…”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s why they call him the POOL boy. Get it?”

“Let’s take a survey. What’s the longest any of you’ve gone without cumming.”

“Ever?”

“No, for the study.”

“The email said at least a week.”

“I’ve gone a week.”

“I’ve gone, like, twelve days. I’m about to burst!”

“When I told my wife we had to abstain from sex for a week she nearly flipped out. She’s insatiable!”

“Yeah, but at least she’s got the pool boy.”

“We don’t have a pool, wise ass.”

“Well you will pretty soon,” one of the others said prophetically. “It’ll be on the floor in front of you.”

“That’s gross!”

“Why did you volunteer then?”

“I didn’t know! The email didn’t say anything about hanging from a fucking meat hook.”

“This is what the Nazis used to do to the Jews. I should know. I’m Jewish.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” someone said, looking pointedly to his right, and down.

“What’re you talking about? Everyone here’s circumcised. It said we had to be in the email.”

“No it didn’t.”

“It didn’t?”

“That was in the personal ad you were reading for some guy wanting his cock sucked.”

Everyone laughed—except me. Was I the only one of the six who preferred men? Not that this kind of macho banter proved anything about secret sexual inclinations.

“That doesn’t even make any sense. If the guy running the ad wanted his cock sucked why would it—”

The door we all faced had opened. A female stuck her face in, looked us over. “Shhh! Keep the noise down. The presentation’s about to begin.”

“Oh, good. We’re gonna get to watch a movie,” someone said after the door closed.

“Hope it’s porn.”

“It will be, trust me.”

“Or just bring her back. Tell her to take her top off.”

“Why just her top?”

“Her? She wouldn’t make me hard. She’s too old.”

“Big tits, though.”

“She’s, like, forty!”

“What are you talking about, dude? You’re ALREADY hard!”

“Not because of her.”

“Shhh! Listen!”

From speakers overhead came the far softer, rhythmic sounds of lovemaking. A man and a woman or perhaps from a threesome. A foursome. It was sound only—just audio.

Someone quipped, “They forgot to turn the TV’s on.”

I could not help but laugh at this. Were the people administering the experiment that incompetent? Directly in front of us were three large flatscreens. They were blank. All we were being exposed to at the moment were the lyrical sounds of sex. I found myself, like the others, continually glancing at the white ceiling—as if at any moment naked bodies in connected motion might be projected on it.

“Well this is boring.”

No one else spoke. The audio went on for a good five minutes. A rather boring five minutes. Needless to say it caused none of us to ejaculate, if this indeed was the first test. The initial stimulus.

As the audio finally died the door opened and two attractive people in their early twenties—a woman and a man—entered. They were runway-model thin and wore nothing but underwear: the boy a pair of black bikini briefs and the girl black panties, a matching bra and thigh-highs.

Someone to my right muttered, “This is an improvement…”

I expected the duo to perhaps couple and caress each other and kiss but instead they spread apart until the boy was in front of me just to my right and the girl further down. To hoots and hollers the girl began to remove her bra. When she was barebreasted and began to pull down her panties the boy did likewise. He was naked now and the girl wore nothing but her black stockings.

The boy was not hard but he began trying to make himself so. He had a beautiful penis and a sweet, plum-sized pair of balls. As he played with and stroked himself the girl alternately felt herself up (modest tits) and made like to pleasure herself between the legs. Or perhaps she really was, I didn’t care.

As they went through their motions and let out an occasional pleasure-moan I couldn’t help wondering where they’d come from. They were far too pretty, it seemed to me, to be porn actors. They looked more like college students. Had they each, as so many kids that age do today, made amateur sex videos and been talent-spotted as a result? As I watched the boy in front of me masturbate I wondered how much they were being paid for this little performance? As participants in the study we were each making $150. Were they making double that?

I noted also that each resolutely refused to make eye-contact with any of us. In that regard they were like bad exotic dancers who wished they were somewhere else, doing anything but this. It also suggested a certain haughtiness, as if the six of us didn’t exist for them and they were each locked inside their own little (albeit highly visible) worlds.

As I salivated at the sight of the boy’s now-hard cock, all seven or so thick inches of it, the man two down from me let out a kind of gargled moan and blurted, “Oh, fuck!” We all took our eyes off the performers long enough to watch a load of sperm arc from the man’s cock and splatter soundlessly on the tiles below.

The man, the source of it, looking down, cried, “Ah, look at it!” He seemed near tears. His cock was still erect and its head was glossy with cum. It was dripping now rather than shooting.

I glanced at the performers long enough to see that they were either unaware of the explosion and mess they’d caused or were trying their best to ignore it. The door opened and they exited, no more than ten minutes after they’d entered. They didn’t even take time to retrieve their underwear.

The same woman who’d shushed us earlier now came in and, avoiding the gluey white mess on the floor, went over and lowered the man’s hook by pressing a button in the wall, then unhooked his bound wrists. Head down, he was led by an elbow from the room.

“Well, one down,” someone said.

“I don’t blame him. I almost came myself. That girl was HOT!”

“Too skinny for my tastes.”

“Well maybe they’ll bring in some fatties next, just for you.”

“I didn’t say fat. Fuck you!”

“Look,” another, wiser voice said. “We have no control over this. It’s their fault not ours. Don’t blame the messenger?”

“Huh? What the fuck are you talking about?”

The man to my right said, “You’ve been awfully quiet. What did you think about her?”

“The girl?” I was thinking about the boy. His beautiful cock. Its swollen pink head protruding from his stroking hand. I was fantasizing about wrapping my lips around it. Sucking his own sweet sperm out while fondling their source: those smooth pink plums he had for balls. “Very pretty,” my reply.

I was left wondering, however, where the man who’d cum had been led. Were they going to pay him his $150 and send him on his way? Were they going to punish him in some fashion? Is that what this was about? Were they going to give him another shot in the buttocks? An antidote as it were? After all, he’d left the room as hard as the moment before he spurted. That wasn’t normal. This drug they’d given us was…killer.

The TV’s burst to life. In media res as they used to say. My colleague was right. It was pure, hardcore porn. Perhaps not coincidentally (on my confidential application I’d checked “bisexual”) the TV in front of me broadcast gay porn; while on the middle TV it was hetero; while lesbian sex was being broadcast, noisily, on the TV to my far right.

Another of my colleagues came nearly immediately, and was unceremoniously “unhooked” and led from the room moments later. The man to my right was the next to cum-and-go. This right after informing me—anyone who’d listen, “I’m not gay but I have to admit this is really…”

Then his sperm began spattering the floor.

The man who’d originally been the fourth one down from me was the next to go. Protesting all the while, “It’s not fair!...Not my fault!...I couldn’t help it!” He was still complaining as the woman led him from the room.

There were now two of us left, and we glanced at each other. The man wore a hopeless expression. His mouth hung open as if to say… “Help. I’m lost.” Then he looked at himself—looked down, as sperm began to fountain from his erection. His didn’t shoot; it just flowed. He was the oldest of our group. The woman brought him a towel before pressing the button in the wall.

He looked back at me as he exited the room. Oddly, he smiled and gave me a thumbs up. His other hand, his right, held the towel between his legs as he awkward walked.

I shook my head and looked to my right, and down of course—at the aftermath: the five irregular streaks and pools of fresh semen littering the floor. Or rather, if I wanted to be generous about it, decorating the tiles like so many strings of pearls. It was like viewing a battlefield after the guns fell silent. These were the casualties. A future, lost. Though in this case, gladly so.

A middle-aged man entered, smiling. He carried a clipboard and walked at a brisk clip. He came up to me. “You’re a tough nut to crack.”

Irrationally I said, “Am I holding you up?”

He laughed. “No. There’s no time limit here. Though it’d be nice if you finished before five o’clock so we could all go home on time.”

I looked at him. He laughed again. “I’m kidding!” He glanced over a shoulder at the TV’s, and their relentless flow of images. “I gather porn doesn’t do it for you.”

“I prefer the real thing: flesh.”

More laughter bubbled from the man’s lips. He was practically giddy. He was like a veritable bottle of Champagne whose cork has just popped. “Who doesn’t?” he said. “Though sorrowfully…lonely men and women suffer terribly trying to find, you know, mates. Partners.”

“Is that what this is all about?”

The man looked startled. “No. That’s totally irrelevant. I’m just saying…”

About yourself? I wondered. About ME?

“It’s odd,” I said, and immediately regretted it.

“What?”

“Well…I’ve had two women leave me because I was hopelessly premature, but here…”

“Immature?”

“Well that too,” I laughed. “The first after a…mere year.”

“Oh. Too bad. Maybe they should have hung you from hooks,” he said. And I was instantly reminded of the Jewish man’s comments about—

“I’m kidding, of course,” he added.

The obnoxious man leaned in. He took hold of my penis and gave it a stroke, though just one, perhaps mindful of what I’d just confessed. He had garlic on his breath:

“What if I could make that happen?”

“What?”

“Flesh.” He waved a hand. “Turned all this…ephemera off and brought you the real thing. I can do that, you know. I have the authority.”

Well hooty-hoo. “Do what?” I asked.

“Another man. A boy. Of age of course,” he added. “And had him—”

“The boy from before?”

The man grinned—evasively. “A boy. Some boy we’ve recruited. To…”

He let go of me. Turned. As he hurried away I couldn’t help wondering if, for whatever reason, he’d just creamed his uniform. Minutes passed. Hours it seemed like. The TV’s went blank, thankfully. After a while it all becomes…boring. So boring. I shifted my bare feet; shifted my weight. I wanted to get out of here—this white room. I wanted to ejaculate and be done with it. Collect my money and go. I would even have settled for the previous soldier’s reluctant hand. That grinning moron! And why had I told him about my disastrous first, short-lived marriage? What was I thinking!

The door opened yet again. A boy entered, tentatively. He was naked. He had a hard on.

I wasn’t sure if he was the same one or not. The same boy who’d performed for us earlier. His hair seemed different. He wore red lipstick.

As he approached I realized he was also wearing blue eyeshadow. Aqua, I mean. Like his eyes. My first wife had had eyes that improbable color. He was smiling. Perhaps it was the smile more than anything else that threw me.

He came over. He didn’t touch my penis but instantly began caressing my spongy ass. His touch was light—almost glancing at first.

He stood on my left side and slightly behind me. He didn’t speak. He caressed my ass and squeezed it. He reached under and squeezed my balls, gently. His right hand began caressing my buttocks again in a circular fashion. He pushed between them; touched my sticky hole.

He finally spoke. “You don’t remember me.”

“From…earlier?”

“Much earlier. Like…over twenty years ago?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, son.”

“So you DO remember.”

“Remember what? What is this all about?”

He reached under again. “Tell you what. I’m gonna squeeze your balls until you let loose and shoot your cum all over the floor. The same seed that conceived me. Remember?”

“I…”

“Mom never told you?”

“Who? We…divorced. Early on. I…”“But not early enough, obviously. My fantasy? To bend you over and fuck you some day. Just the way you fucked mom and me over. But for now? I just want you to shoot your load so these people can go home.”

“What…people?” I was nearly delirious. Was this really happening? Who WAS this boy? It was obviously an act. He was an actor. He must be.

What kind of psycho-sexual shit WAS this?

“You’re hurting me,” I said.

“Then cum.”

“I have no control over it.”

“Is that what you said when you fucked mom that day? Or was it at night? In the back of grandad’s car?”

“Who the…? What’s this all about?”

“Cum, dad. Cum you old fart!”

As I at last shot my load, emptied my balls, arced it out in pearly streaks to the floor thanks to a drug that made me feel, I don’t know, twenty again, the boy, the effeminate performer caressing my ass said:

“Mom’s here. Did you recognize her? She opened the door.”