Getting to Know Alex

GETTING TO KNOW ALEX by Sebastian Wallace

A few years ago, I went up to Edinburgh with a group of other students from my department to see one of our professors present a talk at a medical conference. The trip was fairly unremarkable (I can't remember the subject of single talk that I attended, they were that good) except for something that happened one night with a guy called Alex. And that's what this story is about.

I didn't know Alex very well until the Edinburgh trip and what I'd seen of him hadn't impressed me too much. He was from near Newcastle and gave the first impression of being a loud-mouthed arrogant lout. I'd see him out around Southampton at night sometimes, staggering from club to club with him mates, trying to provoke local lads or shouting crude jokes at girls in his thick North Eastern accent.

Once while a group of us had been standing around waiting for a seminar to start, Alex had told a story about two girls from History of Art who, as he put it, fancied the bollocks off him. He'd started sleeping with them both, separately, thinking that neither of them knew about the other. This had continued for a couple of weeks until one night when he'd awoken with one of them writing on his back with a black marker pen. When he'd asked her what she was writing, she'd said that she'd been exchanging notes about his performance with the other girl. Alex had found this hilarious and from his pride at relating some of the comments they'd supposedly written, he seemed to regard it as a true testament to his attractiveness and general aura of being fantastic. He'd even repeated the whole story in case we hadn't heard him during the first telling.

So when he asked me in the hotel lobby in Edinburgh if I wanted to share a room with him to save thirty quid, my first instinct was to refuse. The thought of him getting back pissed at three in the morning and vomiting in the sink didn't really appeal to me. He laughed about how many pints we could buy with the money we'd save but I smiled and shook my head. Then made a joke about how he liked blondes but not ones with dicks so I had nothing to worry about and I realised that he must be pretty short of cash and couldn't afford a single room. So I took pity on him and said I'd share.

As we were going up stairs together to get the room he made a comment about how much he farts during the night. I cursed myself for having been so feeble as to let myself to be talked into sharing with him. Then there was some quip about how if I were to bring a girl back, she'd take one look at him and I'd be left to make do with my right hand. I thought, "We haven't even reached the room and I want to strangle him." I wondered if I could back out by saying the room was too cramped for two guys to share, but it turned out to be a pretty generous size. So I figured I was stuck with him.

That evening, the group of us went to one of the pubs in Edinburgh. I ended up talking to a friend of mine called Carol about Alex while he was playing pool with one of the other guys. I said I was sharing with him and made a face like I was going to throw up.

She smiled but then said, "Actually he's a really nice guy... you'll like him..."

I guess my expression mustn't have made me look too convinced.

She went on, "No - really. He's pretty decent when you get to know him."

I got on well with Carol and her good opinion of Alex was surprising. He seemed to personify everything she despised in men.

I said, "He's a tosser."

She shook her head, smiling. "He likes to play up the Northern lad routine. But he's not like that..."

I sniggered. "Aw. Poor Alex. So misunderstood..."

"Seriously, Seb. When you get past the rough edges, you realise he's worth getting to know. He comes from a rough estate in Newcastle. He's had to act like a wanker all his life or he'd have been beaten up all the time. I guess it's just become a habit... he wants to be one of the lads."

I took a drink from my pint.

She waited for me to say something but I stayed quiet. I guess it was obvious that I didn't believe her.

She glanced over at Alex who was shouting good-heartedly about the cheating of his opponent at the pool table, and then continued in a lower voice. "Don't tell him you know this, right?"

I nodded.

"He used to go out with Emma in my flat. He'd be round all the time, hanging around our kitchen, staying over with her. At first I couldn't stand him, like you, but then, as he got to know me, he lightened up and started talking to me. He's a bright guy - sharp as hell - and has read a lot of stuff on psychology. He has some interesting ideas..."

I interrupted her, "You didn't - you know - get too close?"

She laughed. "Jesus, no! He's not my type. And anyway, he was seeing Emma - she meant everything to him. He idolised her - treated her so well, was kind of like the perfect boyfriend to her."

I was surprised. "I can't really imagine that..."

She nodded. "He doted on her. I mean, one Sunday he'd been planning to play football - he was on the university team - and Emma had an assignment which needed to be in the next morning. Alex phoned the team captain and said he couldn't play. He stayed with Emma all day, typing the essay as she dictated it. The guy absolutely loved her.

"Then, when he went back up to Newcastle to see his parents one weekend, one of Alex's mates saw her kissing another guy at a party. Alex found out and... well..." She made an explosion sign with her hands.

I asked, "What happened?"

"He dumped her. She begged him not to, went round to his flat crying, sent him cards, presents... the full works. He sent them back. Wanted nothing to do with her."

I said, "Seems kind of harsh..."

She took a drink from her glass. "I think it had been more than a kiss. At least that's what Alex said. We went for a coffee a few weeks after. He was so upset - she'd broken his trust and, for him, that was unforgivable. He had tears rolling down his face... he was totally devastated by what she'd done to him..."

I looked over at him, waiting at the side of the pool table for the other guy to take his shot. He was tall guy, about six foot two or so, with black hair which was quite long on top but short around the back and sides. His face was pale and angular and his eyes looked dark and solemn. The other guy finished his shot and Alex studied the table. His eyes became serious as he scanned the positions of the balls and his mouth betrayed a slight smirk as a possibility presented itself. I recognized that he would seem, to a female at least, very physically attractive and I wondered whether Carol had, on the strength of this, endowed him with more sensitivity than he really warranted.

Later, when the movements of people to and from the table had forced Alex and I together, I made a few casual remarks about my girlfriend, Kaz. He said, smiling, "I can't cope with the whole girlfriend-boyfriend thing, mate."

I smirked and asked, "You more into boyfriend-boyfriend things, then?"

He laughed. "Not exactly. I'm just into the more, shall we say, biological side of relationships right now. Once things start getting heavy, I'm out of it."

I smiled. What he'd said would have irritated me before my conversation with Carol, but now that I knew something of his past, I could sympathise with his need to appear detached.

Later that night, after we'd returned to the hotel and the rest of the group had gone their separate ways, Alex pulled a bottle of whisky out from his rucksack.

He said, "My dad's trying to get me into it. This is quite a good one, according to him.

From one of the Scottish islands with a weird name." He read the bottle. "Talisker... actually that could be the name of the brewery..."

He poured a couple of generous measures into the plastic hotel cups and we lay on our beds, slowly sipping the whisky. Its taste was powerful but smooth.

He said, "Thanks for sharing the room with me, Seb. I'm totally skint. I shouldn't really have come up here."

I asked, "Why did you?"

"There's a talk on neurophysiology I want to see..."

I laughed. I really thought he was joking. He looked taken aback; almost irritated.

I explained my mistake. "Sorry, Alex. I just thought, knowing you, there'd be some other reason... lower beer prices or something..."

He smiled and looked down at his drink. "No. As difficult as it is to believe, I do actually find medicine interesting. Unlike most of the people on our course, I'm not just doing it for the salary at the end of it..."

I smiled. "Isn't that what everyone says?"

He smiled back but I could see he was serious. His brown eyes were deep and searching. Like he was making sure that, despite my facetious comment, I really did believe him. And then they softened: he was content that I did.

We drank some more whisky and talked for ages about the North East and Alex's family. His grandmother sounded wonderfully aggressive and Alex had lots of stories about how she'd attacked neighbours children with brooms, pushed people into graves at funerals and set fire to her husband's beard at his eightieth birthday party. He had a good way of telling stories and the combination of those, the whisky and his impersonations of his grandmother's dialect had me almost doubled up with laughter.

Eventually he grew tired and his eyes struggled to stay open. I suggested we should call it a night so we pulled off our shirts and jeans and got into our beds.

I lay for a while, listening to his breathing growing deeper and slower as he drifted into sleep. Then I realised that I'd forgotten to call Kaz as I'd promised. The dim light on my watch showed it to be half past one and I figured she'd be a bit pissed off to be woken up. So I turned over and tried to get to sleep.

I hardly saw Alex during the next day at the conference. He went off on his own fairly early in the morning: he'd picked out just three or four talks that he wanted to attend and said he was going to wander into Edinburgh to avoid, as he put it, "all the bullshit".

Initially I followed the rest of the group around, aimlessly wandering into talks of which even the titles were incomprehensible. I soon grew irritated by the way they were making notes and nodding enthusiastically as if the speakers' ceaseless drone and grainy slides contained unsurpassed pearls of wisdom. In one talk, I glanced over at the notepad of this guy called Paul and saw that he was filling it, apparently randomly, with some of the longer words that the speaker was using. I thought, "This is totally pointless. Nobody has a fucking clue." And so I followed Alex's example and took a walk into Edinburgh.

I saw him late in the afternoon, sitting on a bench in the park, drinking coke and reading a copy of NME which he'd spread out on the seat. I walked over and said hi.

He seemed pleased to see me and started gathering the pages up.

I felt like I was bothering him; thought he might want to be alone. I said, "Don't put it away on my account..."

But he was eager to have me stay. "No, sit down, Seb. I only spread it out because some weirdo was hanging about. Kept fuckin' smiling at me."

"It's your lucky day, mate."

He grinned, "He looked about sixty. Had a beard. Going from the look of your girlfriend, I'd say he was more your type."

I smiled and nodded.

Then I asked him how the neurophysiology talk had gone.

He looked pissed off. "It could have been - should have been - a lot better. You'd think the guy would have done his homework..."

He took a swig from his can and I said, "How d'you mean?"

He continued, "Well I don't want to bore you with details, mate, but a couple of years back the theory his research was grounded on was proved to be - putting it nicely - pretty shaky."

"How do you know?"

"I read a paper on it a while back. Some guy called Van Essen or Von Essen or something. Had loads of results which sort of fucked the whole theory up."

I smiled. He stared at me intensely, the deep brown of his eyes radiating with lighter, coffee coloured facets in the afternoon sunlight.

I asked, "Did you point this out to him? During the questions-and-answers session?"

He looked over towards the hilltop castle and, with one hand, brushed his black fringe away from his forehead.

Then he said, "That would have been totally out of order."

"But if you're sure you're right..."

"Yeah, I'm right. But the guy's done three years of work - what right have I to publicly slate it?"

"I'd have thought that was exactly your style."

He didn't like that. He turned to face me again, looking defensive. He said, "Is that how I come across? As arrogant?"

Now it was my turn to look over at the castle. While considering his question, I noticed how indistinct the transition was between the steep, sweeping walls and the almost vertical cliffs; how the castle seemed to grow from the rock.

After a moment, I said, "I guess you seem pretty confident..."

"Confidence is fine. I can handle the idea that I look confident. Over-confident even. Proves I'm a good actor..."

I looked at him and he smiled.

Then he went on, "But there's no excuse for arrogance. Whatever my faults, I hope I don't come over as someone with so little respect for other people's feelings."

I realised that Alex had more to him than I would ever have guessed. I don't know if he was right about the research being flawed; it was his reaction to it that I found surprising. I thought back to the times I'd seen Alex out with groups of other lads in Southampton and wondered whether I'd attributed some of their behaviour to him; whether, perhaps, he had happened to be with a group of louts rather than part of it.

He said, "I'll send him an e-mail about it. See what he says."

We walked back to the hotel talking about our opinions of people in the department. Alex said he found most of the other students humourless and vacant. I agreed.

"I don't know why most of them bother to turn up for dissection classes," he said. "Their heads are stuck so far up their own arses, they already know the human body inside out..."

I noticed that he kept pointing out that Carol was an exception to his observations. And by the time we reached the street our hotel was on, he'd added, "And you, Seb. You seem pretty sorted, mate."

I realised how much my view of him had changed when what he'd said made me feel flattered.

That night we went into Edinburgh with the other students in our group and Professor Ketterwell from our department. We went to see a blues band playing in a large pub with thirties dŽcor at the far end of Princes Street. Most of the students kept saying pompous things to try and impress the Professor ("I've always wondered if blues music stimulates the ifundibulum...") and Alex and I exchanged glances, suppressing our sneers. The Professor seemed bored until Alex said, unexpectedly, that the beer tasted like "fucking cat's piss" at which point he laughed loudly and started talking about the variations between Scottish breweries. The two of them seemed to hit it off and the others looked on with glazed expressions.

Then Alex drew me into the conversation by mentioning my Scottish surname. So the three of us ended up chatting.

Alex and I got back into our room at about midnight. It had been a good evening and, like the Professor, I'd been really pleased to have him around. His conversation was unconventional, but that made it all the more entertaining. The fact that he didn't seem to give a damn about how lewd his remarks were so long as they were funny also added to his appeal.

It seemed that Carol had been right: I really did like him.

He took out another bottle of whisky from his holdall.

Already quite drunk from all the alcohol we'd drunk in the city pubs, I laughed and said, "Most people bring clothes in their rucksacks - yours is full of whisky."

"I get my priorities right, mate."

"Didn't you bring anything else?"

"Only my fuckin' guide to the effect of blues music on the ifundibulum..."

We both laughed.

He poured us our drinks, telling me the name of the brewery the whisky came from, and we both lay on our beds, making each other laugh by remembering other idiotic things that the others in our group had said during the evening.

"That guy Paul is totally fuckin' thick," Alex said, incredulously. "I mean, how do these people get into medical school? I'm not joking, right - I was sitting near him when we were looking at sections of the brain. Dr Morbey asked him what he could see on one of the slides and Paul asked if it was a tentacle. A fuckin' tentacle! He thinks we've got fuckin' octopuses living in our heads!"

We talked for ages, as we had the night before.

Then, at about two o'clock in the morning, we decided to turn in. We were both pretty drunk from the mixture of the beer we'd drunk in the pub and the whisky in the hotel, and getting tired from it.

We stripped to our underwear and I got into bed. Alex couldn't find his contact lens case and started looking through the drawers.

I said, "It's not likely to be in there, is it?"

"Maybe the cleaner tidied it up or something."

He worked his way down the chest of drawers until he got to the bottom one.

Then he laughed and said, "What the...?"

I looked over at him.

He'd pulled something out of the drawer. He laughed again and said, "'Sailors In The Wild'? Jesus..."

"What is it?" Even as I said it, I could see it was a magazine.

He opened it up and shouted, "Jesus Christ!"

I asked, "What?"

"This is top quality stuff, man. The full fuckin' works."

I sat up in bed, repeating, "What?"

He turned a page and laughed again. "Oooh... that's gotta hurt!"

I got out of bed and went over to the drawers he was squatting in front of. That magazine was, as I'd guessed, sexual but it seemed that something was wrong. I was used to seeing straight porn but the pictures in this magazine looked odd: it took me a few seconds to realise that the people in it were all male. Even when I'd realised that, probably because I was so drunk, I found it difficult to interpret the pictures. It gradually dawned on me that the men were having anal sex in a variety of positions. One was lying on his back on the bonnet of a truck, another guy standing between his legs, his thick cock disappearing underneath the first guy's balls. Another man was straddling the cock of a guy in a sailor's uniform, preparing himself to sit on it.

Alex laughed and whistled. "Fuckin' hell!"

I said, "You're getting off on this..."

He laughed again and turned to look at my briefs. He said, "If you ask me, Sebastian Wallace, something seems to be stirring in there..."

I smiled. "I don't think so. This isn't exactly my kind of thing."

He reached up and grabbed the bulge at the front of my briefs. "Definitely a little something going on down there... little being the operative word..."

I laughed and pulled myself away from him, "No way, mate! You're the one who's dribbling over it!"

Alex laughed and stood up. His eyes were intense again, but this time he looked amused. He glanced back down at my briefs. They were a blue pair and the front of them were filled with the fairly obvious outline of my cock and balls. I was limp, but my cock still made a satisfactory bulge, even if I say so myself.

He grinned and looked back up at me. Then he announced, "Competition time!"

I didn't know what he meant so I shrugged.

"You and I look at this for a minute, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then we see who has the... ahm... biggest response..."

I smiled. "What do you mean - 'biggest response'?"

He said, "You know, the longest prick..."

I had to laugh. "No fuckin' way, mate. I'm not getting into a dick measuring contest. We're not fourteen..."

He smiled and said, "Only 'cause you're at full mast already. Just from seeing my arse inside my skimpies..."

I smiled back and then looked at his briefs.

They were a dark maroon pair and, like me, he filled them out quite nicely. His cock must have been pointing downwards, nestling between his balls. It looked heavy and thick and made a generous-looking mound.

I said, "Length is irrelevant - I'm ten inches when I'm limp, no matter what I'm looking at..."

He grinned. "Okay. We'll measure the angle then..."

"What angle?"

"The angle it rises up. After looking at this for a minute."

I sat down on the bed, smiling at the juvenility of his sense of humour. I said, "I suppose you just happened to bring a protractor with you?"

He said, "No. But I picked up a joint flexibility diagram in one of the talks today. Zero to one-eighty degrees on it. Thought it might come in handy one day..."

I chuckled and then thought about what he was suggesting. We were both pretty pissed and it might be a laugh. From the interest he'd shown when he'd found the magazine, I figured he'd be more likely to get a hard-on from looking at it, so I'd probably be on safe ground. So I said, "Go on then..."

He stood up and said, "You go first."

A few reservations presented themselves to me but I dismissed them.

This would just be a bit of fun. Two guys having a laugh together.

So I said, "Okay. What do I do?"

He passed me the magazine. "Look at it for a minute and then I'll measure your dick."

I laughed. "I'll measure my own fuckin' dick, thanks."

"No chance. It's gotta be fair. I'll measure yours, you measure mine. That's fair."

I looked at him and he grinned devilishly. I had to smile back. And I had to agree. He just had that kind of face.

He walked over to the pile of papers on the chair near his bed and pulled out the one with the photocopied angle diagram on it. Then he walked back over to me and knelt in front of me. Looking at his watch, he said, "Off you go, straight boy..."

I opened it somewhere near the middle. The sailors were on a grassy hillside, outside of their tent. One of the guys was sucking another's huge cock. The bell end looked shiny and polished when he'd taken it out of his mouth. When he slid it back in, he could take most of the seven or eight inches of it into his mouth. The guys balls touched his chin.

Alex said, "Look at that fuckin' massive cock. Thick and throbbing..."

I smiled. "Mmm... tasty..."

"His fat red bell-end banging against the other guys' throat. Precum dribbling out onto his tongue..."

I said, "You should write Mills & Boon novels..."

I turned the page. Now the guy who had been sucking the other man was bending over. In the first picture he was pulling the cheeks of his arse apart, showing the other guy his gaping hole. Then the other guy, suddenly and conveniently wearing a condom, stood up and moved behind him. By the end of the page he'd pushed his cock inside right up to his large balls.

Alex said, "Think about how you'd feel to fuck that arse. Pushing your cock into another guy's hole. Feeling your dick inside him, tight and hot..."

I laughed. "It's not working..." I wasn't getting even slightly aroused: the situation was more funny than sexy.

"Sliding into him, hearing him gasp at the size of your cock in his hole, and then sliding out again... using his arse like you'd use a girl's pussy..."

I said, "You know too much about this... this is getting scary..."

He grinned and said, "Okay, time's up. Pull 'em down."

I stood up in front of him. It felt weird to have him kneeling in front of me, waiting for me to pull my briefs down for him to see my cock. He obviously felt the same way because looked up at me with a mischievous grin, like we were both about to be naughty. He looked kind of cute.

Then he pulled my briefs down to my knees.

My cock flopped out from them and hung over the top of my balls. It was still limp but had thickened and lengthened slightly, probably in anticipation of Alex looking at it. Alex looked at, grinning, and then said, "Bet you don't get many complaints with a todger like this!"

My initial embarrassment at showing him my cock dissipated. I suppose that, in its limp but semi-interested state, it did look pretty good. It was about seven inches long and my pale foreskin was very slightly withdrawn, exposing the pink tip of my bell-end. My scrotum held my balls quite tightly, and they stood outwards inside its smooth wrinkled sac like two small eggs. My cock nestled between them, one ball bulging outwards from either side of its stem, and its head, beginning to swell underneath my foreskin, hung down far lower than them.

I smiled at Alex and said, "Nice to know you appreciate a bit of quality when you see it."

Still grinning, he shook his head. "Bet you haven't a clue what to do with it, though..."

"I've got long lists of satisfied customers. Very long lists..."

He picked up his makeshift protractor and positioned it to the side of my cock. Then he grabbed my cock and steadied it alongside the chart, finding the best angle. It felt strange to feel his fingers around me: this was another guy, another straight guy, touching my cock and I felt uncomfortable, perhaps slightly embarrassed.

Then he let it go and said, "Twenty degrees, I reckon. That sound fair?"

I muttered, "Twenty? Yeah, okay...", and then moved back from him, pulling my briefs back up.

Alex announced, in the pompous voice of a barrister, "I think we may conclude that Mr Wallace's heterosexuality is beyond question. Now to examine the rather more dubious case of Mr Davenport..."

I laughed, "'Rather more dubious'?"

"Well it was Mr Davenport, was it not, who was - and I quote - 'dribbling over' the magazine?"

I threw him the magazine. This was becoming silly.

I checked my watch. "Okay. Get started."

He got up from the floor and then sat down next to me on the bed. Then he opened the magazine to a page near the back. Three guys were together. One guy was sitting on a tree trunk sucking the huge cock of another man, standing above him. A third man crouched between the legs of the guy on the tree trunk and sucked his cock. The idea that men could form long chains like that, each with a cock in his mouth and his cock in someone else's mouth, appealed to me.

I tried to play the same game that Alex had and offered a narrative of what was going on. "Look at that cock going into that guy's mouth... ahm... and that other cock...ahm... going into that other guy's mouth..."

He laughed loudly. "Jesus! Is that supposed to be getting me horny?" He impersonated my voice, making it sound like a dull monotone and making my North London accent sound ridiculous: "That cock... that guy's mouth... and that other cock... and that other guy's mouth..." He laughed again, "You make it sound like a fuckin' lullaby!"

I said, "Sorry for not being the expert at describing gay sex..."

"Leave it to the professional, mate. Like this: 'Imagine standing there, feeling a mouth sliding up and down your cock, sucking it gently, tasting your precum... watching while the guy sucking you had his own cock sucked by his best mate...' That's the way to do it..."

He turned the page. Now one of the men was bending over the stump, taking one guy's cock into his mouth, and the other guy into his arse.

I said, "I'm not even gonna try to describe that."

He laughed, "Jesus. Both holes blocked... if that guy in the middle had beans for dinner, I don't want to see what's on the next page..."

I glanced at my watch. "Time's up."

He stood up and, as he had done, I knelt on the floor in front of him. His cock didn't look much harder than it had before we'd started: the mound at the front was large but his cock was clearly still soft and pointing forwards and downwards.

I pulled his briefs down to the tops of his thighs and his cock jumped out. Then it hung over the top of his large balls, nestling in his thick black pubic hair. The guy was pretty hairy down there. He had thick bush of tangled back hair surrounding his cock and a sparser, but still reasonably dense, fuzz of it on his scrotum.

His cock was shorter than mine but much thicker. It looked four or five inches long and was, like the rest of his skin, a pale ivory white colour. His foreskin was partially rolled back, exposing about half of his large, bulbous bell-end. The skin of that was finely puckered and looked delicate; almost fragile. It was dry and a light purple colour, except for around his piss slit which was redder.

My face was quite close to his cock and the smell of it, musky and slightly sharp, hit me. Like the appearance of his cock, the smell of it was similar to that of my own, but subtly different, and the differences were undeniably intriguing. I'd expected to feel very little about his cock except for perhaps mild disgust, but when it was there, hanging in front of my face, I actually thought it was kind of attractive.

He said, "Hung like a fuckin' donkey, eh?"

I smiled. "You've got massive bollocks." They looked very heavy, hanging down between his legs inside his loose scrotum. They hung down much lower than his cock.

He laughed. "Sign of masculinity, mate. It's a Northern thing."

I reached for the chart and held it up next to his crotch. Then I held his cock gently as he'd done with mine. It felt silky smooth and was soft and yielding between my fingers. Its thickness made it feel more substantial than my own and I found it quite fascinating. I moved it around in front of the chart, as if trying to measure its angle accurately, but I was actually more interested in how it felt in my hand: absorbed by its combinations of softness, thickness and heaviness.

He said, "Well - what's the verdict?"

Then I realised that its texture was changing. It was slowly losing its softness and becoming less yielding and more solid between my fingers.

Alex was obviously aware of this and he urged, "Hurry up, mate..."

I let it drop and it no longer flopped down onto his balls. It stood out at an angle of about forty degrees, slowly lengthening. His foreskin was peeling back, exposing most of his fat bell-end.

I said, "It's about forty degrees... forty five..." As I watched it rose upwards and lengthened further, reaching about six inches and becoming even thicker.

He grinned, "Only 'cause you were feeling me up..."

I laughed incredulously, "I was doing exactly the same thing to yours that you were doing to mine..."

"You were just about wanking me off!"

He pulled his briefs up, having a little difficulty to get his now obviously semi-erect cock inside of them.

I kept laughing. "It's another guy's hand, though - surely that's enough to keep you limp..."

He sat down on his bed which was next to mine. Our knees were almost touching. He said, "It's another hand, that's all that matters."

"I think the gender of the person on the end of the hand is pretty significant..."

He grinned. "Not to his lordship down there. He couldn't give a fuck whether it's animal, vegetable or mineral if he's getting a free wazz..."

I looked between his legs and saw that his cock was tenting his briefs outwards, straining the material. It looked like it was almost fully stiff; its thickness was really impressive.

He saw me looking and grinned even more. He made no attempt to hide it; instead, he laughed, "Don't look so stunned - it's your fault it's in this state!"

His reaction interested me: Alex was unquestionably straight and yet here he was quite happily accepting the fact that another guy had made him stiff and seeming totally unashamed about it.

He went on, "It's a reflex reaction... it's just doing what comes naturally... anyone's cock would do the same thing..."

I shook my head. "I think mine would be a little more discerning."

He grinned. "You wanna bet? I could get you rock hard within a minute..."

I smiled back. "Are you offering to wank me off?"

"I'm saying that I'd bet you a bottle of whisky that I can get you hard within a minute."

I laughed and considered his proposal. I found Alex intelligent and witty, but my interest in him was limited to his friendship. He was, admittedly, a very handsome guy but, even though I was comfortable with acknowledging some homosexual feelings in myself, his overt masculinity seemed to represent an insurmountable barrier to my general attraction for girls and all things feminine.

So I thought it seemed unlikely that I would get hard from feeling his hand on my cock. I said, "Yeah. Okay. You're on."

He got up from his bed and knelt down. "Stand up again, lover boy..."

Then he chuckled to himself and added, "This is kind of bizarre..."

I stood up and he pulled the front of my briefs down, tucking the waistband underneath my balls. My cock flopped out again, hanging downwards to about seven inches as it had before.

He said, "This thing can't get much longer...?"

I grinned. "You'd be surprised..."

He shook his head as if appalled by the injustice of it. Then he moved his hand up to it and stroked it gently between his thumb and forefinger. This time his touch was light and sensual and I struggled to dismiss it from my mind so that I didn't respond to it. The prospect of Alex's smugness when he felt me stiffening up in his hand was not one I wanted to face.

But he'd been right about the effect it was having. His fingers caressed me with a gentleness of which I wouldn't have suspected he was capable. I could feel my excitement growing and, despite my all attempts to disregard the pleasant sensations, I knew my cock was beginning to stiffen.

Alex didn't seem very impressed at the results of his labours, though. After ten or fifteen seconds, he stood up. "I can't get the hang of it from that angle. Let me get behind you so that it'll be like playing with my own..."

I turned so that he could stand behind me. He moved around and I felt his breath on the back of my neck. His right arm reached around me and gripped my cock more firmly than before. He curled his fingers around it completely and pressed his thumb into my bell-end: his grip was quite tight and felt good. I immediately felt my cock start to swell in his hand: evidently he did too, because he laughed quietly and said, "Now we're talkin'..."

He started by rolling my foreskin back to expose my pink bell-end, squeezing the stem of my cock tightly as he did so. Then he rolled it back again, sweeping his thumb across the head of my cock. He repeated the movement, slowly, and then repeated it again and again, developing a moderate rhythm. I kept reminding myself that this was another guy's hand that was masturbating me, but by now the pleasure I was getting from it made that irrelevant. My cock rapidly lengthened and hardened, reaching its full eight-inch size within about ten strokes.

I let out an involuntary gasp and he laughed. He said, "So much for the guy with the discerning prick!"

I thought he might stop but he kept going. I was pleased that he did: I was really enjoying the affect his hand was having on me.

I whispered, "Jesus, Alex. That's so fucking good..."

His hand felt so different from my own and from that of any girl who'd masturbated me. His technique was confident and experienced: he knew what he liked and assumed I would too. He wasn't far wrong: it felt fantastic.

He put his other arm around my lower chest, holding me while he masturbated me. In the context of what we were doing, one man stimulating another, it felt natural to be held by him. His grip was strong and steady and I fell backwards into his chest, moving my hips forwards to allow him better access to my by now throbbing cock.

Then I felt Alex's cock pressing against my arse. He was obviously rock hard himself and his cock, still confined within his briefs, jabbed lightly but unmistakably into my arse cleft at the same rhythm as his right hand.

He moved his left hand down to my balls and started gently massaging them as he masturbated me. That's something I really like - I guess most men must - and I groaned my appreciation.

We were like that for a while: Alex's right hand beating my cock at increasing speed, his left hand tickling and playing with my balls. All the time, he kept pushing his cock harder against my arse. Two layers of material - his briefs and mine - separated it from me, but the feel of it, sliding up and down my cleft and occasionally jabbing between my cheeks, was plain.

Both of us were breathing rapidly. I was almost panting in pleasure at what he was doing to me; surprised at how good it felt to have another guy working at my cock like this. Alex was also breathing heavily and I could feel his chest rising and falling against my back.

Then he pulled back and laughed, "Jesus, mate. You've gotta do that to me."

I turned to face him. His face was turning red and beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. I glanced down at his cock and saw that its thick rod was pointing upwards and outwards, straining against the material of his briefs and looking almost painful.

I said, "For another bottle of whisky?"

He pulled off his teeshirt and the smell of his sweat, while not unpleasant or cloying, hit me. His chest was lightly muscular and hairless.

He said, impatiently, "Screw the whisky. I just want you to do it to me."

I was surprised: there was to be no pretence. He seemed untroubled by the fact we were enjoying sex together even though we were both men; both straight men.

Alex appeared to read my thoughts. He smiled and said, "We're both as stiff as hell. We could both use a bit of help. Who's gonna know?"

I considered what he was proposing and, probably because of the drinks we'd had and the fact I was feeling so horny, I decided to go along with him. So I smiled back and replied, "Okay."

He took off his briefs and his cock leapt out of them. It was clearly fully erect and curved upwards to a length of about seven inches. The stem of it was incredibly thick and looked well over two inches across; his swollen bell-end, now a deep purple colour, was moist and shiny and entirely exposed by his retracted foreskin.

Like Alex, I was feeling hot, so I took off my own teeshirt and briefs. My own longer but thinner cock arched upwards in front of me. Alex looked at it and grinned.

He said, "I've never been with a guy like this... it's kind of weird... but not as weird as I thought it would be..."

I walked around behind him, as he had done with me, and reached around for his cock with my right hand. I grasped it and was surprised at how hot it felt, and at how firm it had become. I squeezed its shaft and Alex whispered, "Yeah..."

Then I began working his foreskin forwards, trying to move it across his bell-end as mine does when I masturbate, but he pushed my hand back and said, "It doesn't work like yours, mate."

I realised that when he had a hard-on, the head of his cock was too fat for the foreskin to roll across and that wanking him would instead involve tugging his foreskin up and down his shaft. This was totally new to me and I liked the idea that his cock was so different to mine. It was almost like discovering how girls' bodies worked back when I was at school.

I pulled his foreskin down his shaft gently and then pushed it back upwards to the base of his engorged bell-end. As I did so, Alex pushed his arse backwards so that my cock pressed up against it. I looked downwards and saw that his arse was white but quite hairy and his cheeks were as round as a couple of apples. My cock was pressing into his right cheek. With my left hand I adjusted it so that it pressed between his cheeks, my pink bell-end on the verge of wedging open his crack.

He whispered, "Wank me like I was wanking you."

Squeezing his dick gently, I started rubbing his foreskin up and down his shaft. I was afraid I'd hurt him - his cock felt so different to my own.

"Do it harder... faster..."

I did as he said, grasping his cock more tightly between my fingers and increasing my rhythm. He gasped his approval and I tightened my grip further.

I put my left arm around his middle, as he had done with me, and pulled him towards me. My cock pushed between the cheeks of his arse, and I could feel the heat of the inside of his crack. He obviously enjoyed the sensation of it because he started pushing himself backwards with the same rhythm as my hand was beating at his cock.

He started panting roughly and kept gasping, "Yeah... yeah..."

It felt so good to be with him like that. My fist was gripping tightly at his cock, masturbating him rapidly using a technique I'd never even imagined could be pleasurable. My cock was sliding in and out of his arse crack - not penetrating him, just sliding up and down inside his hairy cleft.

His gasps became louder - unlike me, he didn't seem to be reticent about expressing his pleasure.

I moved my left hand down to his balls and felt them, large and round, dangling down between his thighs in his low-hanging scrotum. But almost immediately he grabbed my hand with his and moved it up to his chest. I knew what he was asking me to do so I started playing with his pecs and pinching his nipples between my thumb and forefinger.

Then he bent forwards and pushed his arse even further out, really grinding it into my cock. I looked down and saw that his cheeks were wide open, my cock sliding upwards and downwards between them. It was wet from the sweat inside his cleft and black curly hairs were sticking to my sticky bell-end.

I knew we were simulating anal sex and wondered how we had got into this. I also wondered why we were both enjoying it so much: straight men weren't supposed to get off on this sort of stuff.

By now he was really making a noise - panting "Ah, ah, ah, yeah, ah" and groaning in pleasure. People in other rooms, including others from our group, could have been in no doubt that we were doing something sexual if they were still awake. But he didn't seem to care - he was enjoying what we were doing together and was not afraid to convey it.

Then he pulled away from me and turned around. His face was purple and sweat was rolling down his cheeks and nose.

His eyes were urgent and he almost growled, "Suck me. Suck me and I'll suck you."

I looked down at his cock, its thick stem bright pink and its large round head an angry purple.

Then I crouched down in front of him and put my mouth around his bell-end. He grabbed my head and I licked and ate at the fat round mushroom of his cock, struggling to open my mouth wide enough to get it in without scraping it against my teeth. It tasted quite nice - a subtle salty taste with traces of something sharper.

I didn't question why I was doing this - I just wanted to do it, so I did it. And I wanted him to do it back to me.

With one hand I reached around and took hold of his arse, pulling him towards me and feeling the hot dampness of his cleft with my fingertips. With the other I gripped my own cock, wanking myself hurriedly, too overwhelmed by the pleasure of what we were doing to savour the moment.

I tried to take more of Alex's cock into my mouth and managed a couple of inches of his stem. His bell-end rubbed against my tongue as Alex thrust himself in and out of me, and it kept smacking against the back of my throat. He was grunting and I could feel the muscles of his arse cheek flexing in time with his rhythm.

I became aware that the salty taste had grown a lot stronger and that my mouth was filling with something warm and wet. At first I thought it was his precum; it was only when I had to swallow because there was so much that I realised he was cumming. He just kept grunting and pushing into me, pumping his semen into my mouth.

I loved the feel of it squirting into me and I loved the fact I was swallowing it. It was so unlike anything I'd experienced with a girl - the force of his orgasm, the very physical evidence of it - that I struggled to breathe as my own orgasm overtook me. I still had Alex's cock in my mouth, now slowing down and with only dribbles of liquid squirting onto my tongue, as my own cum erupted upwards like a fountain and covered his knees.

He pulled away from me as my fist milked the last few drops of my semen out of my cock.

The first thing he did - to my surprise - was laugh.

Then he said, almost shouted, "Fuckin' hell!"

I got up and sat on the bed recovering my breath.

He used his discarded teeshirt to wipe my cum from his legs and to clean up the last few drops of from his cock. Then he threw it over to me for me to clean myself up.

He grinned and said, "Looks like neither of us won the heterosexuality competition..."

I laughed. I appreciated his joking with me about what we'd done. Like it had been just another drunken wind-up between two mates.

We cleaned the carpet and then got into bed. He poured us both another whisky and we chatted about other stuff - I don't remember what, but we both steered well clear from what we'd just done.

Then, at about quarter past three, we switched off the light and tried to get some sleep. Alex seemed to be deeply asleep almost immediately, as he had been on the previous evening, but I found it more difficult. I remembered I'd forgotten to call Kaz again and that didn't exactly help.

When the alarm went off at half past seven, I felt like shit. Alex came back from the shower and stood drying himself while I sat on the edge of my bed trying to open my eyes.

He kept making conversation but I wasn't feeling too chatty. He must have interpreted this as a reflection of my guilt from what we'd done the night before because he said, "Look, Seb. We enjoyed what happened, there's no point dwelling on it."

I muttered, "I'm not dwelling on it."

He dropped his towel, revealing his pale and lightly muscular body. His limp but thick cock hung down from its dense nest of dark hair and his large balls dangled down even further. He sprayed himself with deodorant, smiling at me.

"If you're not that's fine. But if you are, don't."

I looked over at him and smiled. I appreciated what he was saying - liked him more for saying it - even though I wasn't at all screwed up about what we'd done.

He said, "I've never done anything with a guy before and I'm not embarrassed that I did last night. It was good... better than I thought."

"Yeah. It was... cool... I'm not freaked out... I'm just fucking knackered..."

He grinned. "Bear in mind, then, that I still owe you a blow job."

I was surprised that he'd brought that up; surprised that he was relaxed enough to be so direct. But I acted like it was just another joke and replied, "The mood Kaz is going to be in when I get back, that might be the only action I'm gonna get..."

He laughed and I headed off for a shower.

When I got back into the room, Alex had checked out and gone. I didn't see him at any of the talks that day and didn't see him on the train back to Southampton.

In fact, it was a couple of weeks before we met again. By that time Kaz had forgiven my neglecting of her while I'd been in Edinburgh and I'd put the whole Alex episode out of my mind.

But then, in the reference section of the medical library, a deep voice with a North Eastern accent whispered from behind me, "Hello again, lover boy."

And that brought it all back.

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