The Sexual Compass

by Michael Reed

  Even if this did work, what was their long-term plan for each other? Would they have to have cookies each morning and be lesbians all day, or would they save it for the weekend?

  Clearly, she felt a huge relief, now that she had the solution to all of her problems. She said that she had already begun to look at the local property market so that they could get a place together.

  The rest of the article explained her grander plan. Now that the basic problem of sexual partnership had been solved for people like her, there would be no need for men at all. Reproduction would be handled by storing up sperm and keeping a few men around to maintain the supplies. She ended by outlining a wondrous future in which women would take command of humankind.

  What annoyed me most about Julie was that if she had it in for any other group of people, such as gay people or Jews, someone like her would be calling for her head.

  Chapter 8 - Gary

  Simon rang me at 7:30am and told me to get Mum to take the kids to school. He would pick me up as soon as possible and take me to the hospital.

  “Gary isn't very well,” he said.

  I tried to say “Right?” without saying, What does that have to do with me?

  “Look, it concerns you. I'll explain when I get there.”

  Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap.

  I told mum that one of Simon's friends was in the hospital and that I was needed for some reason. Mum was curious for details, but I batted her off and headed for the shower. Quick shower, quick breakfast, anything to fill up the time a bit. Sitting in the lounge was hellish, so I waited outside on the path.

  It was obviously a suicide attempt, and me texting “Fuck off” must be have been a factor. That was the only possible explanation. What puzzled me was why they needed me at the hospital. Did they want me to apologise to him?

  Simon turned up and we drove off in silence. His expression seemed neutral. That must have meant that he didn't know about the text.

  “So, what's this about?” I ventured. I hadn't expected him to smile when he looked at me, but he did. Then he explained what was going on. What a weird, weird situation even for the post-mouse age that we were living in.

  ***

  “Oh right, so I've got to go all the way back on my own?” I mock-protested at Simon as he dropped me off at the bus terminal two hours later. By then, I was off the hook, and Sarcasm Girl had regained her powers. It wasn't suicide and it was weird, but it wasn't, technically, my fault. Oh, and Gary was all right as far as I could see. The sudden feeling of elation was mixed in with other emotions that would take a while to process.

  By the time we arrived at the hospital, Simon had filled me in on what had happened to Gary. It seemed that he had taken some glucose medication that he nicked from a relative to become straight. To be with me. That's right, I was his ideal partner. It might have been the deepest flattery I had ever received.

  When Simon and I arrived at Gary's bedside, he looked embarrassed. I'm not surprised, this was someone finding out you fancy them, times ten.

  “He's been very stupid indeed,” the doctor told us in a weary voice. “He's lucky he didn't kill himself. He did have enough sense to call someone before he passed out.”

  Simon added, “It's lucky that he managed to get the door open before he fell unconscious. He was lying half way out. I thought he'd tried to kill himself!”

  “I did ring to tell you what had happened,” said Gary.

  “I do remember hearing something about a mouse,” was Simon's reply to that. “But you're lucky I even bothered going to see you. I nearly didn't. I thought you were drunk.” Overall, we kept things light, as we were both relieved that he was all right.

  The doctor changed her tone to one that made us all feel like we were about twelve. “He's probably going to be okay. There should be no lasting effects, but–and I want you all to hear this–he mustn't ever try something like this again.”

  It was difficult to tell what her take on it was. It could have been either: daft kids messing around with drugs or idiots not accepting their sexuality in this day and age.

  “I won't,” said Gary with a groggy resignation, and we all believed that it would be his last experiment with mousing it.

  We engaged in half an hour or so of mostly cautious talk. However, I did take my turn to lecture by pointing out that part of the problem was that they spent all this time talking about being gay in a way that never got personal.

  “Simon, you've got such a stick up your arse about the politics of being gay. Neither of you talk about yourselves. And in a way, I think that's how you both like things. But Gary isn't some shut-in that doesn't know anyone else who's gay. He goes to a discussion group, every week, year after year, and look how he's ended up.”

  Even Simon reluctantly nodded along with that. Before we left, I gave Gary a kiss on the forehead. It felt like kissing a friend rather than kissing a sexy man.

  Once on the bus, with time alone to think, I considered Gary's turmoil and that I was at the centre of it. Susan Embarrassingly No Mates had someone else who though she was pretty great after all. There was just one problem: she was a woman and he was a gay man.

  Being analytical, I considered that there have to be four points of attraction in every romantic relationship. Partner A must be romantically attracted to partner B, and the same must be true, vice versa. That makes two points of attraction that have to be fulfilled. In addition, there has to be sexual attraction between partners A and B. So, that is another two points of attraction that have to be met.

  What was going on here? Given the right encouragement, no problem with the sexual attraction between Gary and I, from my side, and that's one of the essential points satisfied. From there on it starts to get (more) complicated. I liked Gary and I'm sure that, if he was a heterosexual man who liked me, the romantic side would be there too. But this means that there is a third force in play, besides the romantic and sexual forms of attraction. This force must be friendship, in many ways the least understood and most underrated, culturally. Gary and I seemed to have potential for that in buckets. So, that adds up to six potential points of attraction that I could think of straight away.

  Other uneven relationships existed. For example, if a man went with a prostitute; sex was had, and the whole arrangement constituted a relationship of sorts. In that example, simple sexual attraction of the man for the woman, along with a desire for money on her part, was enough to keep things going.

  However, if you examine the example of a marriage that doesn't run on sex, things are a bit different. A woman might marry someone, that she likes, but that she doesn't find that attractive. But there would, typically, be at least some sexual compatibility between the two of them. I'm sure that there are many marriages that are long-lasting and “successful” in which there is friendship, but no romance, along with only limited compatibility on the sexual front.

  There are relationships that survive because of sex and nothing else. In the example of the prostitute and her client, sex plus money were two sides of the equation that balance each other out. Every relationship type that is commonplace must be the result of a workable equilibrium.

  It seemed that Gary liked me enough to risk his safety and turn his world upside down to have a relationship with me. What a compliment. As it stood, unless mouse worked, which I was finding increasingly unlikely, we had the beginnings of the mysterious, little-understood friendship component. Whatever happened, I was going to pursue that one now. We'd both been too shy to in the past. I wanted, I had told him, for him to come to my house and go places with me.

  I got the impression that, fifty years ago, we might have had a lot of what it took to make even marriage work. However, there was a problem in the case of a male. I wouldn't be interested in, for example, marriage to a man who couldn't achieve arousal, as the sex would be impossible or incomplete. Asking him to lie back and to think of England wouldn't work for us. Or, not for me.

  I looked at the relati
onship I was forced to now maintain with Steven. Probably, I would not choose him as a friend; the magic just wasn't there. But I had been attracted to him, and I do feel that if a few things had been different, the relationship, as a couple, could have sustained itself and even blossomed.

  Gary could have been successful in his gay to straight conversion, only to find that he didn't fancy me, as a straight man.

  Gary and I were more similar than I had realised until that day. I don't like “girly” things and he doesn't particularly like being a bloke. No wonder he could never find anyone, he didn't have much in common with the tiny pool of possibilities from Gay Club. No wonder I found it difficult to find friends, I preferred hanging out with a bunch of guys. That was my epiphany. I was a friendbian, I prefer male friends.

  How much each of these factors play into each other is hard to say. I had wished, before it seemed like a real possibility, that Gary was straight. Maybe mouse could work or would be perfected one day, and he could make a proper attempt at sexuality reassignment, if he still wanted to. But what if we just didn't have what it takes once he had done it?

  Part II - John's homosexual gamble

  Chapter 9 - Don't doubt the mouse

  I was a thirty-year-old man, working as a lab equipment technician, and I hated my life. Saying that to myself made me feel a bit better about things.

  I'm going to tell you what happened on the day I found out about the mice. I couldn't help but feel excited as I drove home that evening. I have heard that people who are planning to commit suicide can feel a sense of elation about it, and that's how I felt. Things weren't going that well, in general, and I didn't even know if what I had in mind was going to work, but at least I had a plan.

  I've never felt suicidal; perhaps it's something genetic. I always seemed to get pushed down until I was on the floor, and that's where I spent most of my life. People who knew me would have been surprised to learn that I lived on the floor because I was good at fooling them. I always had a joke up my sleeve, and that makes me the fat, funny lab tech; as I went from chemist to chemist, they expected it from me.

  “This should be completely safe for you now… Oh no, something's gone wrong!” I exclaimed before grabbing onto the desk and falling over. The back room staff at the chemist were laughing at the beginning, but seeing the funny fat equipment tech fall over and begin writhing about, while clutching his throat, pushed them over the edge.

  “This guy's crazy!” one of them said to her pal.

  Hey, as women are always going on about how much they like a sense of humour in a man, why doesn't one of you ask me out? I didn't reply to them both. There was no point, as I was the epitome of everything women say they like and actually don't like.

  At my next stop, I flipped my magnifying visor down.

  “I'm going to take you both home with me and perform experiments on you. Come along now,” I said in a creepily serious voice. More laughs. More insulin. I've been stealing it for a while, ever since I found out about reverse-mousing. They keep a careful tally of all drugs in a place like that, but once I'm backstage, as it were, I can take anything I like, if I'm careful.

  I was sick of women. I didn't hate them or anything, but I was sick of being completely sexually inert around them. I didn't feel like I deserved to be a huge success, but I thought that I deserved something.

  A few months before mouse emerged, I had taken a trip down the pub with the lads from work. It was late opening and a couple of women were shouting over the music in the beer garden. They were drunk, they were crass, and yet, they were both pretty. Single mothers blowing off steam would have been my guess. I had very little banter in a situation like that. It was the type of environment that stifled my main asset, my humour.

  Nigel, one of the other techs was chatting to one of them. “Nothing embarrasses you, does it, love?”

  “Well, I don't know–is this embarrassing?” she said with a puzzled expression on her face. And then she lifted up her top to give us all a look, to the accompaniment of cheers from the lads.

  For me, it was an ambition finally realised. I was thirty years old and that was my first look at a pair of breasts. As I had expected, seeing breasts in real life was different from seeing them on a screen or in print.

  The next couple of weeks were an emotional roller coaster for me. I knew this would happen; I'd always held off from going to a strip club or anything like that because I knew that I would end up feeling depressed. I remembered how it felt when the other men returned to their pints as though nothing had happened. What had been an epoch in my sad little life was an everyday thing for all of them, and that woman had given it away for free, as a joke.

  What a way to finally see a pair. I hadn't got a woman home with me for a one-nighter or started a romantic relationship that had led to sexual intercourse. This was in the beer garden of a pub. They were the breasts of someone I didn't know, surrounded by loads of other people laughing about it. This was something I had always thought would be glorious, but the eventual setting had been sorrid.

  The weirdest thing of all is that I couldn't remember what the breasts looked like, even thought it had been my ambition to see a pair since I was about twelve. I couldn't tell you if they were big or small or much else about them. Alcohol must have played a role–and I was drunk–but other than that, I think that my brain had been overloaded. I do remember the areola and nipples, they were about the size of a medium-sized coin and surprisingly brown. Why couldn't I remember anything else about them? I was in a prime position to get a look. I do remember the effect of seeing them: I didn't get an erection, but I felt it in my stomach, and I suspect, in my prostate. I have always found that to be the case when there is a “real” stimulus rather than something on a screen. No stiffy, typically, but potent biochemistry definitely at work.

  When I got home it was the usual routine: stumble around, porn, wank, bed, and the next morning, a mild hangover and an opportunity to mull. As I said, the next two weeks were a bit rough. Reaching this milestone had its good and bad points. Moments of utter frustration kept welling up between times of crawling along the ground as usual. Ashes.

  I thought of the times I had wished there was a service whereby guys like me could go view a pair of breasts, or even a completely naked woman, in a dignified setting. I often wondered if I could ask an acquaintance for a quick look, but I knew that was against The Rules. This was a privilege that you were either born into or had to win somehow, and no one who won was merely fat and funny.

  My conclusion, at the end of the two weeks, was that my dearest wish in life was to somehow achieve a sex life. Having finally seen some boobs, I realised that they weren't, on their own, the answer to anything. A quick look wasn't enough. I sighed to myself when I realised that I was going to have to pay for sex or go beyond thirty as a virgin. Again, it was breaking The Rules a bit, but I didn't feel too bad about doing it; why shouldn't I steal a few crumbs off the table when everyone else was having a banquet?

  I began to plan things out using the Internet, and eventually, I selected an attractive middle-aged woman who was based in the local area. She looked nice, but also looked like she understood what she was doing. Part of the reason that guys like me can't get laid is because we're not willing to take advantage of someone or do anything to hurt anyone. In my experience, the type of men that women adore aren't held back by the same qualms.

  Then, I started making excuses. I'm good at that. I could wait until later in the year and for dark evenings because I didn't want to be seen walking into the flat that she worked out of. Financially, it was no real problem, but better to wait until I had a bit extra in my account. Not too close to a visit to Mum because she might be able to tell by looking at me. And so on, and so on.

  Then mouse was announced. What a daft, quack theory, I had thought to myself. And then something unexpected happened.

  I was calibrating a piece of test equipment in the back room of one of the chemists, and I loo
ked over at two women who were giggling about something.

  “We were talking about mouse, John,” one of them said in a conspiratorial tone. “Have you heard of it?”

  “Heard of it? I am on it!” I replied before adopting a mousey voice, “Squeak! I don't fancy blokes any more but it's had a few side-effects.”

  Much laughter, and an expression on Sarah's face that was half amusement and half annoyance.

  “Well, you sarcastic sod, we know that it does work.”

  “Oh?”

  “One of our suppliers does some defence contracts. Long story short, he told us that the Ministry of Defence discovered mouse.”

  “To cure homosexuality in the ranks?” I asked, now genuinely interested. There is a point in a conversation like this one at which you can be incredulous without offending the teller of the story.

  “No, quite the opposite. It seems that it was going to be weaponised. But it wasn't designed to turn people straight. It was going to turn the enemy soldiers gay. The idea was to cause chaos in the middle of a war by making them fancy each other. As I said, you can't pass this on.”

  Her mate added, “It's true, as far as we know. Simply take a large dose of insulin, orally, and you'll start to go gay.”

  “If I wanted to become gay by doing this, would it be dangerous?” I asked. Clever. Putting things as bluntly as that threw them off the plan that had begun to form in my head.

  “It shouldn't be, there are conditions that are treated with insulin in that way.”

  “That's working again,” I said, pointing at the measuring machine. Did I silently wish that I could ask them both for quick look at their breasts before I left? No, because a quick look didn't fix anything and it made me feel worse. Besides, there may be no need now.

  Two weeks later, the press was full of talk about reverse-mouse, confirming the story that I had been told.

  Chapter 10 - The visit

  “It's so easy, easy