Infidelity Quartet: 2

By the time he was 25, Billy was sure of his place in the world. He knew what he wanted and where he was going; he knew, with perfect clarity, what he liked.

One of the things he knew was that he was, as they used to say, not the marrying kind. Of course, when they said that, what they meant was queer; although Billy was that, sort of, he meant something far more literal. The very idea of monogamy could induce a claustrophobic panic attack if he thought about it for too long. He couldn't imagine restricting himself to a single gender, let alone a single person. The idea was obscene in its wastefulness. Life was short enough without throwing away all the opportunities for pleasure that it presented.

This philosophy did not spring into being fully-formed, but the foundations of it had been present in him for as long as he could remember. By the time Billy came to actually do it -- which was pretty late, if the bragging of his schoolmates was to be believed -- his sexual identity was well worked out. Years of Penthouse letter columns -- and later, much more furtively, the stories in gay skin mags like Mister, which revealed things Penthouse would never dream of discussing -- had filled his mind with so many possibilities that the first actual physical fumblings were marred as much by indecision as inexperience. Laura from the girls' school down the road bit off more than she'd expected to chew when she agreed to sleep with him, and was more than a little put out when he shoved his thumb up her arse while fucking her. He had to lick her out -- ineptly, he later understood -- for hours before she forgave him, and that forgiveness extended only as far as not telling all his classmates what a filthy pervert he was.

But Billy was a fast learner.

He learned to be realistic, to temper his desires, to respect, or at least only nudge against, each girl's boundaries. And, before long, each boy's. He learned how to be a good lover, so that his nudging was met with good humour. He had no wish to upset or violate his partners, it was only clumsiness and inexperience that led him to do so the first few times, and as his repertoire and sensitivity grew he found he could read each one's limits and play them just far enough. He learned to give them what they wanted; and found that gave him what he wanted.

He also quickly learned just how much sexual yearning is out there, waiting; and how to tap into those boundless appetites. To find sex; and to sell it.

Prostitution was not a hard choice for Billy. It meshed perfectly with his life and his self. He loved sex, with pretty much anyone. He loved to give pleasure, and receive it. He never felt cheap, or guilty, or used. His work and life were one. What he did for money and what he did for fun were separated only by a handful of banknotes. When he wasn't selling his body he would give it away; the two were different -- business was business -- but they were also the same.

Both the selling and the giving were easier with men, on the whole. The apparatus of casual sex, professional or otherwise, was more fully developed on the gay side of things. Sometimes this annoyed him. Not that he didn't want to have sex with the men, it just galled him that so many women were missing out. Not all; but so many.

For gay sex, he could -- and constantly did -- go to sex clubs, and saunas, and hang out online. His escort adverts were in every gay magazine, full frontal, full-face: he had nothing to hide. He had a handsome face, a good body, a big cock. He took good care of everything -- his body was not just his livelihood, but his life. He created himself to fulfill this role: in a club, to be the one everyone wanted; in a backroom, to be the one everyone got. He had plenty of regular paying clients, and plenty of regular free ones, and for each one he made himself the image of their desires. Even for the random men who desired him to be faceless and nameless and barely seen, just a quick grope in the dark, he was assiduous in meeting their expectations. It was who he was.

For straight sex, things were harder, but there was still plenty to go around. There were clubs, there were parties, there were internet services. Sometimes he was open about his bisexuality; sometimes he kept it hidden. It all depended on what she -- or occasionally they -- wanted. And he could always read that. He worked through a discreet, high-class escort service, wining, dining and fucking wealthy matrons; and freelanced through the personals in cheap tabloids.

Occasionally he even worked the streets. He had no need to -- from a business standpoint it made no sense, it was dangerous and uncertain, the punters were unpredictable, the pay was derisory -- but it felt like part of what he was, part of what he wanted, so he did. The punters there were almost exclusively male; from the age of 17 to the age of 25 he met maybe four women that way, and only one of those made any kind of impression. She was young and haughty and must have been very rich. Her chauffeur conducted the negotiations, and then drove them around while they had sex in the car. She dumped him on a street corner in Hampstead, paid well over the odds. Something about her struck a chord with Billy, but he could never put his finger on it. He couldn't read her, never really knew what she wanted. And Billy always knew what they wanted.

By the time he was 25, Billy was sure of his place in the world. He was settled. Comfortable. Life was good.

He had friends, though not many. A few, even, that he didn't fuck, though they were in the minority. The ones he did were more important to him: sex was so much a part of who he was that he couldn't really feel close to someone without it. And some of them he felt very close to indeed.

There were three, in particular, who mattered. Three who lasted while others came and went. Three whose love and affection he came to count on, and returned with interest. Billy was not the marrying kind, but if he'd had to, he would have married them all. They were David, and Jerry, and Sofia.

With any of these three, Billy was something more than he was alone. They could do anything together, with a cosy familiarity; and did. The sex was as easy and tender as it had ever been with anyone; the talking was vibrant, the silences relaxed, the arguments passionate, the outings invigorating. They would go to the movies, out dancing, dine. They would visit galleries and listen to music and cruise the bars for sex. They would stay in and cook and watch trashy soap operas and cry. Once or twice he even shared them with clients, although that felt wrong, somehow -- for him it was work, for them not -- and without ever consciously deciding he stopped doing it pretty soon.

He had no secrets from any of them; nor they from him.

He'd known David the longest; since school. He was the second boy Billy ever had sex with, and had made it so easy; especially compared to the raging fuckup who'd been the first. David had been openly gay from the age of 14, long before Billy really understood what that meant. David, in those days, was effete, and geeky, and sardonic -- and brave and beautiful. Billy was none of those things; his beauty came later, as if holding out for the proper time. Billy was laddy and popular -- his instinct for giving people what they wanted already well in evidence. Somehow, the two became friends. Somehow -- a testament to his chameleon talents -- hanging out with the school poof did Billy no harm at all. Eventually, it even got him the girls.

Ten years later, David was no longer effete, no longer geeky, perhaps no longer brave. He was still sardonic and beautiful, and their friendship was stronger than ever. When they fucked, it was like the first time all over again, but with the whole history of the world behind it.

Jerry couldn't have been more different. He was the unlikeliest of lovers: chubby, middle-aged, closetted, married. Physically unnattractive, by popular standards. When he and Billy were together in clubs, people assumed Jerry was Billy's sugar daddy; what else could it be? But Billy, for whom being paid for sex was routine and uncomplicated, no insult at all, was enraged by this assumption. Once, on one of the very few occasions he ever let his mask of ingratiation slip, he punched, in the face, a queen who'd made a snide remark about Jerry; and spent a night in the cells, and was banned from the Ku Bar for life.

Their first encounter was in a public toilet, Jerry sucking Billy off through a hole between partitions. This was not an unusual experience for Billy -- for either of them, he soon learned -- but the subsequent invitation for coffee, still through the hole, was unprecedented, and so unexpectedly charming that he could only accept. After an hour in Starbucks, Billy felt like he'd known Jerry all his life.

David, like Billy himself, was free to conduct his affairs as he chose; Jerry was much more constrained. He had a life -- and a wife, with whom he was still, after many years, profoundly in love -- to consider. His dalliances with men -- with Billy -- were always illicit, furtive, clandestine. And yet he was never the least bit ashamed or remorseful. Whether out in public or home in bed, he was so straightforward and open that it would sometimes bring tears to Billy's eyes.

Jerry's life was so alien to Billy's experience that he found it utterly fascinating. It was mundane, suburban, and yet as intricate and detailed and lovely as a butterfly's wings. Even without the bisexual philandering to add a layer of bittersweet ambivalence, Jerry's existence was a study in delicacy and joy. His wife, Eleanor, was his whole world. When he spoke of her, he was like a prophet speaking of God; and Billy was a willing convert. Eleanor was Jerry's anchor, his faith and hope, his reason to live. Though the idea of such single-minded love was incomprehensible to him, Billy would melt with romantic longing in the face of Jerry's devotion, which only made him love Jerry all the more.

And then, Sofia.

Sofia, the newest and youngest of Billy's cherished lovers, was a constant surprise. She was the sluttiest person he had ever known, other than himself. He had come to believe that such sexual voracity was an exclusively masculine trait -- he'd been with plenty of whorish women, but none before Sofia had been so committed, so rapacious, so at ease with their desires as the men. The pornography he'd greedily consumed in youth had been rife with stories of "nymphomania", but that had always seemed a male fantasy of availability, its representatives vacant ciphers, straining credulity even in the uncritical abandon of a wank. Sofia was something else -- stronger, more grounded, far more intelligent -- she was the smartest, most intimidatingly clever person Billy ever met -- but her dedication to her own physical pleasure sometimes made her seem like a porno fantasy made flesh.

Billy confronted her with this idea on more than one occasion; and she just laughed and pissed on his face, far too sure of herself to be upset by comparison with a flimsy Razzle stereotype. One winter night, drunk by the fire, she allowed herself to be drawn on the subject, and held forth for hours about her independence, and her selfishness, and her lack of concern for society's odious double standards. People could fantasize as they wished, she didn't care: her desires and satisfactions were her own, the puritans and lechers could go fuck themselves -- or, more entertainingly, each other.

Sofia manœuvred herself into Billy's life quite deliberately. Not only did she instigate their first encounter, she paid for it. At the age of 17 she was already quite experienced. Like Billy, she had developed a precocious understanding of what she wanted and how to get it. Unlike Billy, she never made it her profession, but it quickly became an integral -- a primary -- part of her existence. She found Billy's advert in a magazine -- her older brother was gay, and she regularly raided his bedroom for masturbation material -- and took a shine to him. He was there for the taking, so she took.

He was actually the third male prostitute she called, but the first two turned her down; one even made a bitchy comment about fish. The cunt.

Billy, consummate professional that he was, fielded her call, and took her money, and fucked her repeatedly; and, though it was not part of the contract at all, became her devoted friend.

Sofia was, quite simply, amazing. Her sexuality was amazing. Her physicality was. And so were her heart and mind. She knew, it seemed to Billy, everything. He never found a question that she could not answer. Even when he cheated, resorting to philosophical imponderables like "Why does the world exist?" or "Is the statement 'this statement is untrue' true?" she was never wrong-footed. She could always give a cogent response; even when there were no answers she made the lack of answers seem meaningful and right.

And her sexual imagination knew no bounds. She was unflappable. She was as at ease chaining Billy to the bed and whipping him raw with a cat o' nine tails as she was kissing him on the cheek. Anything he could think of to do with her, she would do; anything she wanted to do with him, likewise.

Billy and Sofia were a match made in heaven. Their depravities were utterly congruent. There was nothing either could do that would faze the other, and they revelled in that. Billy would take Sofia to fetish clubs and pimp her out to everyone; and Sofia would do the same to him. Once, she handcuffed him to some railings at Fist and just left. Went home. Didn't see him again for three weeks. All night, random men came up and fucked him. When the lights went on, he was still there; the bar staff had to cut him free, clumsily, with a pair of pliers.

So you see:

By the time he was 25, Billy was sure of his place in the world. He knew what he wanted and where he was going; he knew, with perfect clarity, what he liked.

And then he found out that Jerry was fucking Sofia.

[Infidelity Quartet: 3]
Posted by matt at November 28, 2003 01:30 AM