This is not to say that I do not enjoy intellectuals. Conversations about music, theater, philosophy, these are rare joys, and when given the opportunity to partake, I revel. Of course, I need to be a good listener, as I’m somewhat uninformed concerning the goings on in the world outside, and the political landscape shifts just as much as my locale and era, so I have to be careful of what I repeat and have developed a very keen ear for the vernacular. It should be noted multitudes of personalities take to the baths, some of them quite twisted in their desires. Some such incubi I do hold a grudge against, for they are the very opposite of the beast-men who stuff my mouth and rear. For the first couple of eons, I was a bit of a kappa in how I treated the men with malice in their hearts. The beasts here have a sexual conceit that is oceanic, something to relax into, but the creatures formed from spite, either born rotten or misshaped by a world that judges their desire as fetid, these twisted insects have a point to drive home, and they use the saunas less as erotic playgrounds and more as cheerless prisons within which to reenact the repetitive plays that populate the empty theaters of their desiccated minds. These are the men who keep their bodies in good shape more so they can judge their peers than to maintain health. The bathhouses are an important and necessary stage for them. Like spiders, they need a web to attract witless flies. They find each other and gossip, and they entice their victims and withdraw just when the other is on the precipice of pleasure. These spider queens occupy pathetic thrones in every era, and I used to trip them in the shower. Occasionally, I would steal their partners—entice them away, to the great relief of their original trick. I did this for decades before I finally realized that you cannot thwart a dark mind, nor can your examples of frivolity and light crack these sad, gray oysters. Moreover, why are we so sure a pearl is always inside waiting to be discovered? Some shells are filled with viscous slush, bland souls as salty as the sea but not nearly as alive or as mysterious. Best to let them be.
So I finished sucking the cock of a real beast, a real lip-cracker, a farmer or construction worker, a big man who never looked me in the eye or offered me a casual caress but grunted approval when I maneuvered the meat in my mouth to his liking, evidenced by the enormous quantity of writhing sperm he pumped down my throat. That he left his uncut, softening penis in my mouth was a signal that he expected further service, so I remained on my hands and knees between his legs, one bent, the other outstretched. After what I judged to be a suitable respite, I began to slowly nurse the head just so, the slightest, rhythmic sucking at the pout of his slit, with my tongue supporting the weight of his returning girth. He sighed and extended his other leg, and I knew a second load would eventually spiral down into my stomach. I opened my eyes wide on the off chance that fear was his aphrodisiac, but he had absolutely no regard for me. Rather he was absorbed in watching two men penetrate a much younger, lithe boy who, like me, was made to serve.
The man mastering my mouth absentmindedly fingered his own nipple as my ministrations and the show going on at the other end of the sauna returned him to his own engorged stature. Watery semen, his having been diluted from my previous efforts, began to issue slowly forth, and I gulped and swallowed as he shifted to better rock my face. Even hard, the curtain of his ample foreskin swept my tongue, almost making it a game for me to manipulate and teethe on the head. I then felt the intrusion of another supplicant on his knees pressing up against my side, silently pleading to relieve me of the cock between my lips. This happens all the time. I do not fault the competition, for I have visited many venues where the suckers far outnumbered the men meant to be served. I spat the cock out and he quickly slurped it up in exaggerated gratitude, never once acknowledging me, focusing intently on the meat he so desperately wanted to win over. I squatted there and admired his somewhat hasty style. The brute above us did not deign to take note of this changing of the guards. Soon his second load was unleashed and the groveler at his feet whinnied in pleasure. His devotion was so total, he never once attempted to pleasure himself. As the man we both served disengaged and stepped away, my companion in thirst scooted across the floor in search of more viscous rations, the nub of his penis bouncing against its greasy surface.
As I move from era to era, leaping continents like stones that bridge the stream of time, one thing that frequently changes is the length of foreskin. Some men are shorn, their proud soldiers ready to be served, while others retain their natural glory, like subterranean creatures emerging from their sleep, pushing through folds of flesh to find the mouth that needs them most. Mine.
Another, most welcome discovery: glory holes. Some eras and locations are riddled with these wonders, veritable constellations of teething mouths, red wet puckers desperate to receive. I have been on my knees for such extended periods before one of these openings, eager to entertain any and every piece of meat that slid through the slot, that I was once fearful my legs would fuse. I imagined myself a marooned merman with a pink, useless tail, my body weighed down by a rounded stomach with a pearl-filled primordial soup of semen sloshing within, as I would no longer be able to relieve myself. I tried to shake this dark thought, and I leapt through the next steam room and again the next, until I found a bathhouse with a suitably large swimming pool, the better to exercise my body and rid this image from my mind. So far, this is the only nightmare I have had since Neptune placed his curse upon my lucky brow. And it is one I return to guiltily, again and again, imagining myself swallowing so much cum that it flows out of my mouth until the tiny chamber I am trapped in fills up, and I am afloat for the first time as a wholly aquatic being, in a private fishbowl of regurgitated semen. This mental fantasy always gives me the hiccups.
* * *
Back to foreskin. I happened upon a scroll concerning the history of circumcision on one of my rare appearances in a bathhouse in ancient Greece. I devoured every bit of text I could, desperate to absorb as much knowledge between serving some rather pushy and none-too-clean-smelling students as well as an overly entitled but quite hung Roman tax collector. I returned to this book again and again, curious, having been surprised that as I travel through time, foreskin recedes and reappears as if a fleshy but unpredictable tide.
Within this most coveted text, I was shocked to read that the practice had begun with the Egyptian Sun God, Ra. Now the author of the text was a Greek himself, so I approached the work with a healthy amount of skepticism, having been brought up in Rome to believe circumcision was Jewish in origin. The author being Greek, the writings were scurrilously anti-Semitic, though it did give me pause to wonder how the Jewish faith influenced that younger pestilence, Christianity, as the removal of foreskin seemed to coincide with its rise. Of all the religions that bubbled up within the confines of the empire, how much more interesting would the world have become if the Egyptian mythology had taken hold instead of this beleaguered nonsense about Jesus? I would rather have gods with hawk heads than mangy angels with halos any day of the week.
Much later, I found myself in some future Egypt. Upon learning I was in Cairo, I excitedly scoured the premises for a window or access to the roof. I desperately wanted to see if the pyramids still stood. The bathhouse was a cramped affair with a copious amount of cigarette smoke swirling around the low ceiling lights. The men were hushed and anxious to hurriedly connect and quickly leave. I guessed the politics of the time did not allow for any open displays of homosexuality, and thus I could not partake in rooftop sunbathing with vast vistas of buildings and desert and history. Still, I spied a calendar with pictures of the pyramids over the shoulder of a cockeyed youth with a ridiculously high forehead. He was manning the dark hovel where payment was exchanged for towels and a condom. I sighed, wondering how many of Pausanias’s Seven Wonders still stood.
* * *
Shortly after my visit to Cairo, I was in a dank sauna in New York City. I was sure it was close in era to the Continental. The men had similar wiry and hairy frames, and their fingertips tasted of the same mixture of nicotine and marijuana
, but this sauna lacked the festive, charged atmosphere. This was a downtown hunting ground. A dark and lean space, raw wood and chicken wire fencing, cold showers and everyone was on the make, and I was fine with that, so long as they found my mouth an appropriate target.
An impossibly thin man stood in the middle of the breakneck cruising and mouthed words silently. I looked at him and recalled the tutors of my youth. He was speaking to himself in an effort to memorize observations, to piece together a narrative that had hitherto gone unnoticed by the world. He clutched the towel around his taut, wooly stomach as if it were a shield, his compact penis held firm within. He did not want to be touched. He was here to observe. His black, electric eyebrows moved ever so slightly, connoting the swift cursive writing of his mind that his tongue held back. I was a reader witnessing a writer in the very act of composition. I thought to acknowledge this somehow, to let him know that I understood, appreciated, even, that he would soon tell a story that, as far as I knew, had yet to be told.
Men pushed past me, someone cursed, and someone else unseen but close by let out a cry of too urgent release—a veritable shout of ecstasy that gave the more jaded regulars an excuse to laugh dismissively. I spied the author. He caught that laughter and turned it into a wry poem, and I moved on, curious if I would ever stumble upon his book in some other venue at some other time, dog-eared and stained beside a worn leather chair. Would I see him again as an old man, relieved that he finally got it all out? Words on paper, as if that act were somehow both as difficult and as easy as marching into an unknown place in a country you had never before visited, then stripping before others, taking their cocks in your mouth and letting them insert their fingers up your ass for anyone and everyone to see, assess, grade, discuss in class.
Chapter Seventeen
No Avail
The lathered warm water stirred as I stilled myself, not yet ready to surface. I had emerged within the aquatic luxury of a massive hot tub. Wizened toes, bland knees, and cocks wavered within like scarlet eels for my choosing.
Needless to say, I can hold my breath for quite a while.
I latched onto the biggest toe to better anchor my bobbing form and blinked away the chlorine and fragmenting filaments of spunk lashing away at my vision. A massive daddy loomed, his beard flowing above, writhing youths at his side, the head of his penis hanging in the manufactured current like a dull ruby red carp lounging in the surf, puckered slit agasp. I minnowed over and lapped at his opening until it extended further, pushing its way into my mouth. I worked the jaw-challenging cock down my throat, an excess of foreskin fanned out across my mouth. Taking him to the root as the waves lapped around my head, I clutched his mass of pubic hair to maintain my position. The hair was a thick, leafy entanglement, an undulating dark emerald that moved like…seaweed.
Fuck.
Fuck Cerberus three times over with a dirty stick in the hottest pit of Hades.
Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.
It’s my father.
Spitting his cock out of my mouth, I somersaulted between his legs and rose, spewing a dramatic fountain of water and pre-cum. And there lounged Neptune in the corner, a punk Ganymede tucked into one armpit, a doleful Hispanic rent boy with a ridiculously large wristwatch nestled in the other. Each offered the god momentary perfection. Neptune’s large pink feet bobbed in the water as his massive, ruddy hands cupped the available buttocks. From their moans of pleasure, I could tell Neptune had placed a fingertip within the cleft of their asses and occasionally released slivers of delirious lightning into their systems, resulting in fluttering eyes, chattering teeth, and multiple orgasms, which in turn gave the water an extra dose of froth. The god’s white beard, inflated by the swirling waters, roiled across the vast expanse of his chest like a wistful stream. His knees cropped out like craggy boulders. A familiar purple barnacle dully sparkled. I fumed as his penis surfaced, ruefully looking for more prey. He eyed me, and my anger deepened as I realized he did not even recognize his own son. Well, as one of his many, many offspring. I should not have felt so dejected. After all, he had only been to my mother’s house a few times that I could remember. I had never cared for his drunken philosophizing, the puddles that pooled on the marble floor, filled with the struggling minutiae of sea life his immense being had unmoored, the dank smell he left behind in the kitchen, having devoured whatever seafood the cooks had brought home from the market that day. It was always such a heavy scent, one I now recognized as blood diluted with seawater.
The Hispanic prostitute grinned a sharky grin and licked his thin mustache, momentarily exposing the barest crank of a harelip. He rolled over and presented his moist hole to the god. Neptune’s attention drifted over to the proffered ass, and his penis lengthened, splitting his beard into two separate white rivers. His large hands flowed through the water, upending the punk with a splash. Pink mohawk ruined, he struggled to regain his composure. The god mounted the rent boy, who, now far less sure of himself, struggled to catch his breath whenever his head came above water. He sputtered and moaned, and Neptune rode his back as he had ridden whales and underwater mountains, as he had ridden other gods and their mistresses and their mothers, and how, as a young child, eyes wide at the sight of his hanging shaft, I initially formed the idea that he might ride me some day. His ejaculate flooded the hot tub to such a degree that some of his goop was caught in the machinery and all its swirling bubbletry came to a stop. The prostitute was grimly still, floating facedown in the churning waters, as the punk smugly nestled back into Neptune’s embrace.
I struggled to speak, to defy him, to renounce his curse as a blessing, but he silenced me with the dismissive wave of a giant hand, flinging water droplets from the emerald webbing between his fingers. A black seahorse bespeckled with its just-spawned young swam within a haze of amber in a ring on his wizened forefinger. Turning to the jaded youth by his side, he relaxed into the water; a scrim of his writhing sperm defined the surface.
“Look, little one, look at all my babies. I have been quite prodigious, that is for sure, but just look at them. Only a few know how to swim in the right direction.”
With that, he fixed his gaze upon me. One eyebrow arched, he casually flicked the surface of the water, and wave after wave commenced and the tub was once again aswirl. The resulting whirlpool pulled me downward. The surviving hooker panicked as the wristwatch was sucked from his arm and spiraled down into the unknown. I did not struggle but dove toward the dark center, eager to flee my immortal father and let the salty tide rinse his horrid brine from my mouth. I was flung violently into another bathhouse, in another time, another country. Hong Kong, I believe. A group of lanky boys ignored me as they crowded together to observe a muscled hunk soap himself beneath a cascade of steaming water. The chain of his silver necklace was consumed by perfect pectorals. The heavy lace of his raised armpits elicited soft sighs of appreciation from his naked audience. I stood beside him and took the longest shower. Afterward I worked assiduously to dry myself off in the locker room, going through towel after towel.
To no avail.
* * *
I had been to this bathhouse once before. What little I knew of Hong Kong told me it was a large city, crowded, frenetic, stylish—teeming with tourists from all over Asia and parts elsewhere. Though I did not know the name of this establishment, it was such an exquisite oasis I had extended my previous stay. I gathered from overheard conversations that this sauna was renowned for attracting the young and beautiful. They had a discerning door policy that stocked these dark mazes with a myriad of curious, shuffling, naked youths. Towels were hung at the entrance to the basement warren so everyone was on equal footing, that footing shifting across a slick, sticky floor spotted with semen, sweat, and discreetly discarded tissues. I entered the darkened labyrinth. As long as I cruised at just the right speed, I could make occasional contact without rebuffing anyone, and was thus at once on the make and alone with my thoughts.
This journey was meant to willfully rele
ase me from family ties, yet the jarring encounter with my father left me shaken. I turned corner after corner of shuffling young men cupping their genitals, edging closer to one another. Newly formed couples ducked into dark alleys. After eons lost in revelry, that the untethered connection with my past could so easily reassert itself…a hand squeezed my buttocks, and I nearly swatted it away. A crush of bodies made passage both difficult and enticing. Instead of indulging, I felt confined and stepped out of the maze.
Beyond the showers, a stairwell led to a dimly lit resting area lined with bunk beds stacked with powder blue vinyl mattresses. Each was occupied by a tanned ephebe, his waist wrapped by a crisp white towel, mesmerized by the ghostly hue of his cell phone, conveniently recharging in the outlet beside each chamber. Certain eras are populated by these hypnotic devices. I am amazed at the power they possess over their supposed owners, who cannot tear away from the lucent screens even when a freshly showered and naked Adonis is making every effort to catch their attention in the locker room.
I lingered here, thinking about how these youths also had to flee their families to become what they were meant to become. What possessed me to think, or even desire, that such an escape would be permanent? This row of splayed boys, some newly arrived, some freshly fucked, all would, at some point, need to go home. So, I guess my discarded struggle, after all these years joyfully adrift, lies in deciding what place I will eventually call mine.
The Lurid Sea Page 9