Sorting It Out

When someone you haven't even spoken to for most of a year turns up on your doorstep on a Sunday evening, a fat duffel bag dangling from one hand and a laptop clutched in the other, it can disturb your plans a little.

Paul was a former colleague a few years older than I am. He and I had worked in the same department for a few months. We were never more than office-friends, people who'd smile at one another in the corridor and exchange the sort of casual chat you'd hear around any water cooler. When he went to pursue visions of sugarplums at a San Francisco startup that had offered him a piece of the company, I wished him well, but thought no more about it. Most such ventures fail pretty quickly. Not that I had any interest in or expectation of following him there; as I said before, we were no more than cordial coworkers. I certainly never expected him to appear on my threshold, hoping for a place to stay.

"Hi, Minh," he said. "Do you think you could put up with me for a few days while I get myself sorted out?"

Not knowing what to say--not being perfectly certain what was proper--I beckoned him in and waved him at the sofa. He dropped his bag at his feet, seated himself, and hunched forward, awaiting the quizzing he knew he was about to get.

I assumed that "crash" is what his startup had done. It was a saddening thought. He'd told me before his departure about the company's product concept: a system that would analyze the interaction between custom integrated circuits entirely from their designs, so that a circuit board based on the eventual chips would enter the world far more reliable than they usually do. As startup ideas go, it was one of the more promising ones I'd heard. That shouldn't be taken as a measure of anything; I'm only twenty-six years old and have only had one job. I was curious about why the company had failed.

I didn't trouble to hide my curiosity. He did his best to talk around the subject, which only made me more determined to know what had happened. In a perfect demonstration of positive feedback, the harder I pressed him, the more resistance he exhibited.

Eventually I realized the futility of my efforts and backed off.

"Have you had any dinner?" I said.

He shook his head. "On the road all day."

I wasn't about to take him out to dinner. Either I'd wind up paying for the two of us, which would embarrass him, or he'd insist on splitting the check, which would embarrass me.

"Well, I haven't got much in the fridge. Grilled cheese sandwiches okay with you?"

He nodded. I headed to my little kitchen and went to work.

Fifteen minutes later we were chowing down on greasy sandwiches and a side of greasier potato chips when out of the blue he said, "Sex."

"Huh?"

"That's what made me leave Jackrabbit."

I peered at him. "What, you were all having too much office sex to get any work done?"

His face twitched. "Not...all of us."

I wasn't sure I wanted to hear any more about it, but the little devil at the back of my skull sure did.

"Don't leave me hanging, Paul. What was the problem? Did all the office romances get in the way, did someone get really pissed about being left out and start trashing things, what?"

He looked away. I waited.

Presently he said "San Francisco is different."

"Yeah, a lot of ways. So?"

"Sexually, I mean."

Oh. "There were problems because some of your coworkers were gay?"

He locked eyes with me and shook his head. "Not quite," he said. "Because two of us weren't."

Well! I hadn't expected that, though maybe I should have. "Out of how many?"

"There were twelve of us. "Ten gay, two straight."

"All male?"

He nodded.

I hadn't known Paul well, but he'd never struck me as the sort who'd make trouble over other people's sexual orientations. Especially when he was heavily outnumbered. So I leaped to the opposite assumption and decided to let the subject drop. After a moment's silence, we returned to our vein-cloggers.

We'd finished our sandwiches and I was clearing the table when he spoke again.

"The company's still there," he said. "I had to get away from it to get it all sorted out. The pressure to...conform was something else."

That halted me in my tracks. "They actually tried to...convert you?" It sounded too bizarre for words.

He shook his head again. "No, Minh. It was the other way around. I couldn't stop feeling that I was an outsider--that I couldn't be one of the gang unless I was...one with the gang. You know. In the bars and the bathhouses."

"But you're straight," I murmured.

He lowered his eyes to the table. "I hope so. I'm not sure anymore."

No Dodger ever faced a curve ball with that much of a break on it. I took the dishes to the kitchen and washed them as if I were trying to wear holes through them. I scrubbed them until my hands started to shake, and then I dried them and started looking for anything else to do that would be a good excuse for not returning to my living room and keeping my unexpected guest company. That effort ran down pretty quickly.

Don't let anyone tell you different: there isn't a straight man on Earth who doesn't harbor at least some doubts about himself. Especially now that the gays are so in-your-face about it. The way they prance around can make it seem as if their side of the street is easier, more fun, even somehow more natural. And I can see at least one thing about it that is a little easier to cope with than heterosexuality.

Women can be a real trial: bitchy, demanding, erratic, even cruel. We're never straightforward. We often expect men to read our minds and treat them like naughty little kids when they don't get it right. We tend to be at our worst toward the men who show an interest in us and try to get us interested in them. Take it from a member of the species.

I could see it in myself. I thought of it as Bad Minh, a second personality that lived in the dark corners of my skull. I didn't like her, never had, tried to keep her locked down tight, but she was there. Every now and then Bad Minh would slip her leash despite everything and leave a mess for Good Minh to clean up afterward.

It never occurred to me that the prospect of not having to cope with us ladies and our little ways might constitute an attraction to the other side of the fence. Wasn't sexual orientation supposed to be inborn? At least, that's what I'd heard.

Maybe I heard wrong. Or maybe I wasn't listening to the right people. Hard to say.

You can get a lot of stuff wrong if you just accept what you're told. Most people know very little, and most of it about a very narrow range of subjects. That doesn't keep their mouths closed about stuff they know nothing about, though.

Why had Paul brought his issues to me? We'd never been romantically entangled. I had no idea whether he found me attractive...but then, I couldn't have said why he came to me looking for a place to stay.

What was I supposed to do with him?

I didn't know that, either.

The next few days were pretty routine. I headed out to work each morning; Paul went "pounding the virtual pavement," cruising the Web looking for job openings anywhere in the greater Los Angeles area. It wasn't a boom time for the region, but it wasn't terrible, especially for an engineer with a few years' experience. I expected him to turn up a few possibilities at the major job-hunters' sites, and maybe a few more through people who remembered him approvingly from before his sojourn north.

I also expected him to talk about what he'd found. He didn't. I considered whether it would be intrusive to ask him how it was going, decided it would probably sound like I wanted to be rid of him, and suppressed the urge.

He was tolerable company, even pleasant. But as the days passed and his silence accumulated I began to wonder whether he was making any progress at all. I hadn't signed up for a roommate in perpetuity...and I still hadn't figured out why he'd come specifically to me.

On the eleventh day after his arrival at my door, as we sat to another of the Spartan dinners I'd been preparing for us, I finally worked up courage enough to broach the subject.

"How's the job hunt going? Any possibilities?"

Paul nodded but said nothing.

"Has anyone invited you to an interview yet?"

"Yeah. Actually, I went to one last Thursday."

He didn't look happy about it.

"Not a good fit, huh?"

He grimaced and stared down at his Greek salad.

All the warning signs were up, and for a change I decided to respect them.

Presently he said "I didn't impress them. I couldn't concentrate on what the interviewer was saying. I couldn't get the...other thing out of my head."

Ouch. "This is turning out to be that much of a struggle?"

Pain washed over his features. "I honestly don't know, Minh. That's the hell of it. I started to feel a pull toward one of the other guys, and it scared the hell out of me. I don't know whether it was natural to feel an attraction, or natural to feel scared, or whether the whole mess was just because I hadn't had a regular date since moving to San Fran, or what. I was almost unable to think about anything else. I wasn't pulling my weight, that's for sure."

He looked up at me in obvious pain...and with an equally obvious plea.

I took a moment to wonder why me? As I said, we'd never been more than casually friendly, office mates whose proximity required a certain amount of impersonal comradeship. He'd never asked me out. He'd never shown any interest in me romantically. In fact, we'd never even sat to lunch together. But here he was, baring his soul to me, and for the life of me I couldn't imagine why.

It took me a few seconds more to conclude that the why simply didn't matter. Paul needed to know what he was, and I was the investigator he'd assigned to the case. Either I was going to help--to try to help, anyway--or I was going to leave him as he was.

Deedee tells me I'm a soft touch for a stray. Maybe so. But if that's me, so be it. I wasn't about to rewrite myself just because this particular stray was unexpected. Aren't they all?

We were near enough to finished with our salads that I decided to move. I rose, waited for Paul to notice, and looked directly into his eyes.

"Come with me."

He rose without speaking and followed me to my bedroom.

Paul stood motionless in the middle of my bedroom, as if he had no idea how he'd gotten there. The lead was obviously mine. He was waiting for me to tug on it.

I took his hands.

"We're going to find out...about you," I said. "Right now. That's why you came to me, isn't it?"

He nodded.

The why bubbled up again. I forced it down, knelt before him, and unbuckled his belt.

He let me do as I pleased. With his pants and briefs pooled around his ankles, I addressed his groin. His cock had stiffened into quite a respectable erection. It wasn't porn-star caliber, but it was nicely sized, shaped, and circumcised. From the pattern of his pubic hair, he put regular effort into keeping it from becoming excessive or unruly.

I took his balls in my hand. They were warm, velvety soft, and almost hair free. I fondled them gently, relishing their weight and texture. I ran a fingernail gently along his perineum, felt him shudder, and probed further back to run my fingertip around the rim of his asshole. He moaned.

"You like that?"

He nodded.

It was time.

I laved the head of his cock with the tip of my tongue. Smooth. Mildly salty. And clearly sensitive from the spasms it sent through his body. When I settled my lips along the coronal ridge, he moaned again. On impulse, I let my fingertip press gently into his asshole. It started him shaking, brought his hands to the sides of my face as I began to suck.

I'm a good cocksucker. Partly it's from practice and paying attention to the man's responses, but it's just as much because I love having a cock in my mouth. It's one of the most intimate sex acts, and it can bring the woman a surprising amount of pleasure if she just gives herself over to it. I have the extra advantage of an unusually tolerant jaw hinge, so even prolonged fellatio doesn't cause me any discomfort.

I'm not adventurous enough to have more than one man in my body at a time...not yet, that is...but if I ever get there, I'll make sure to have one cock in my mouth. I enjoy it that much.

Paul was into it, as obviously as any other man I'd ever sucked. His moaning and tremors were unfaked and unforced. He caressed my face with obvious affection. I found myself warming to him as well as to the act itself. He didn't get carried away and try to shove his cock down my throat, thank God; that, I can't handle and wouldn't have tolerated.

When I felt him at the edge of the magic moment, I took as much of his cock as I could into my mouth, pressed my finger deep into his ass, and stroked his prostate.

He spasmed and came like a firehose. Yes, it's hyperbole, but his spurts were more powerful than I'd experienced before, certainly more powerful than I expected. And he had plenty of cum for me. I had to swallow and suck in rapid alternation to keep it from dribbling out of my mouth.

No, I don't mind swallowing. It's the right thing to do. You're being given the gift of a man's seed, his half of the future of our species, and you should accept it graciously. Anyway, I'd rather not make a mess by spitting it out.

When Paul's spurts had stopped and he'd ceased to jerk from the ejaculatory spasms, I pulled my lips slowly and caressingly back along his shaft, allowed myself a final gentle suck and lick of that lovely, velvety head, looked up at him and smiled.

"Did you like that?"

He nodded, eyes wide in astonishment.

I grinned. "You're acting like you never had your cock sucked before."

His mouth fell open, but no words came out.

"Paul?"

There was an electric moment of silence.

"I haven't."

I peered up at him.

"Really? You're what, about thirty?"

Another nod. "Thirty-one in September."

"And that was your first...?"

He looked away.

"Paul?"

"I'm a virgin," he said.

I fell backward and plopped my ass on the carpet.

Astonished is much too weak a word. Try dumbfounded. Or flabbergasted. Or maybe stunned out of my shorts. Which I still had on, by the way.

Paul wasn't an Adonis, but he was more than acceptable: pleasant-looking, not overweight, clear skin, straight white teeth, a full head of hair, and perfectly well groomed. He worked in a good field--my field, so I have to say that--and made a good living. At least, he had, and I was sure he would again. His social skills were at least adequate. But there he was: a male virgin who'd lived the first thirty years of his life in Southern California. In Los Angeles, for God's sake!

It was almost more than I could accept. I had to accept it. The effort it had cost him to say it was plain on his face.

His wasn't the only agony in the room. He'd started me wondering whether I'd made a terrible mistake.

Something else became clear at the same time: why he was able to doubt his own orientation. He'd had no experiences of either sort, so how could he be certain which sex he'd prefer--or reject?

I was torn. On the one hand, I was afraid I'd committed about twenty-three different sins, starting with "corrupting the morals of a major." Along with that, it's not uncommon, even in hypersexual LA, for a man to fall in love with his first girl, and I certainly wasn't ready for that. On the other hand, he'd been in such obvious pain that I didn't think I could have held back, and so shy, pliable, and downright grateful that I couldn't help feeling very warmly toward him.

I don't know. Maybe I just enjoy cocksucking too much. But sitting there on my bedroom floor, struggling to absorb the absurdity of having just fellated a thirty-year-old virgin, I realized that what I wanted just then was to make him happy. Really happy. The kind of happy that's supposed to result in extravagant gifts and huge bouquets of flowers the next day.

I knew I had the tools to do it with.

I clambered up off the floor, pulled off my clothes so swiftly that it's a miracle I didn't ruin them, and stood before him as his eyes panned over my body.

He didn't move.

"Well? Do you like me?"

He nodded.

I pointed to my cleft. "Know what's in there?"

Another nod.

"Well," I said, "it's time for a return of service." I stepped backward, half-lay on my bed, and spread my legs, displaying my freshly shaved cunt to him. "Think you're up to it?"

He knelt between my legs, laid his hands on my thighs, and put his lips and tongue to work.

Talk about a "natural!" The boy had skills. Paul was every bit as good, and as enthusiastic, at cunnilingus as I am at fellatio. He was so gentle, reverent, and skillful that I could hardly believe that mine was his first cunt. He kept me going for twenty minutes, alternately teasing and pleasing, first laving my outer lips, then delving deep into my channel, then retreating to nibble on my clitoris, then restarting a whole new cycle. I juiced like crazy, and he lapped it up like the nectar of the gods. Who knows, maybe that's what ambrosia really is; if I ever get to Olympus, I'll make sure to ask. One way or the other, it was the licking of a lifetime.

Why hasn't some genius engineer come up with a way to record and play back the sensations from a sex session? The market for such a thing would be fantastic. I really wish I'd had one that day.

What started as an act of charity was shading into a think-I'll-chain-him-to-my-bed experience.

I came hard. Shaking and screaming. Paul must have sensed it coming, because just as it struck he dug in deeply, hands clutching my ass, pressing my cunt against his face, thrusting his tongue as far into my channel as it would go. He drank down my girly cum eagerly, leaving not a drop. He loved it so obviously and so much that I found myself wishing I could make more for him.

I can't say how long it took me to recover. When I finally did, I found him still kneeling at the foot of my bed, still in his button-down shirt, as if he were waiting for permission to move.

I forced myself onto my elbows and looked him over. He was hard again.

"What are you waiting for?" I said. "Get the rest of your clothes off. Bring that thing up here and put it where it will do some good."

He did.

We kept at it far into the night. Paul seemed able to recover his erection at will. As for me, I'm nearly inexhaustible, and I used all of it that night. I wanted as much as he could give me. I got it.

I woke the next morning with him cuddled spoon-fashion against my back. There was a sizable wet spot right next to my groin, the consequence of being too tired to get out of bed, empty myself out, and clean myself up before I let sleep take me. Paul had been very generous with his sperm.

I couldn't tell if he was still asleep, so I didn't move. I just lay there, reliving the previous night in all its sensual glory.

I wasn't in love with Paul. I wasn't ready to go through that again. Having your boyfriend go out and get himself killed because of something you said puts quite a damper on your emotions.

I wasn't in love. I was in lust. Pure, 200-proof sexual greed, so strong it crowds all thought right out of your head. It made it hard for me to resist waking Paul up so we could go through it all again.

For a while I contented myself with replaying the night in my head. When he woke, I turned at once in his arms and pressed my lips, chest, and groin against his. He responded swiftly and powerfully.

Presently I said, "I think we got you sorted out."