Fridae

"Come look!' I didn't have time for all this. My train was leaving from Grand Central Station in less than an hour. Back to Boston and the start of a long, miserable journey home. The end of yet another sexless adventure. I had been in the city that never sleeps, had hardly slept, and still hadn't managed to get laid. Drag queens, leather boys, hairy chests and waxed legs in minis, they just don't do it for me. I am more of a man-on-the-street kind of guy. Looking for the boy next door. Except boys next door never live next door to me.

"He's gonna jump!"

"If one's sex life consists solely of shagging missionary style in the bedroom with the lights out, then lighting a candle and shagging doggy style could be considered kinky. Using the candle as a sex toy could be considered as wildly kinky; and lighting it after insertion would probably be in the realms of perversion. Sex with food is good. Things like trifle and messy foodstuffs and ice from a drink passed from mouth to mouth or even inserted. I like to sleep with lads who leave their T-shirts on and have a single bed and don't put the cat out, though I'm not sure if this is kinky or annoying." (Brad, Adelaide)

The boy who had once been attentively trying to sell me a discman was now staring up at some obscure point in the distant sky. It took me a while to follow the line from his finger to an open window and the tinniest speck of a man with his legs dangling down the side of the Empire State. I heard the sound of the fire engine racing down 5th Avenue.

"Yep, he's going."

I turned my gaze. This boy was no ordinary onlooker. He was a well-wisher of doom for a poor lonely man sitting on a windowsill, on the verge of taking his life, leaving behind a wife and kids who would spend the rest of their lives wondering why. I could see nothing but misery in all that. The boy saw a joke. I liked him.

"Not sure if this is a kink or a fetish, but I gotta real thing going for has-been Australian actresses from the 1970s. Anyone that is over 50 and that has appeared on the Restless Years, Prisoner or the Young Doctors gets my juices going!" (Jackie, Melbourne)

It was a warm day. He was wearing a sleeveless singlet that allowed me a good glimpse of the dark patches of hair that jutted out from the crevices of his armpits. He was about my height. Boys of my height are a rarity in a world that seems to stretch up higher and higher everyday. This city and its size had proven to be out of my reach. Soon everybody except me would be living with their heads in the heavens, like the man I suddenly watched plummet to earth with a splat.

"Well that's that!"

For a New Yorker, this might have been an everyday occurrence. For me, it was something unique.

"Wanna come back inside and see what else I've got?"

I stared up at the point where it had all started. My cock was so hard it was sickening.

---

"I don't have any kinks. I am a boring old fart. I have fantasies of orgies the same as any man, but nothing ever comes of them. What is wrong with me? I have to say that at Mardi Gras, whilst assisted by my 'vitamins', I was turned on watching a guy drink another guy's piss at the urinal. Not that I want to do it myself. But I did enjoy watching it. Does that count?" (John, Sydney)

"First time, hey?"

"No. I've been here once before."

"I mean the suicide."

"Oh, yes."

The man smiled, showing bright white teeth surrounded by his dark, brown skin. Italian. Maybe Mexican. This was the big melting pot of human culture. Any mish-mash would do.

"Makes you quite excited to watch it, hey?"

"Hey!"

I could see the way he kept noticing the hard line of flesh that veered off towards my left thigh. He never once fixed his eyes on it for long, but they kept on coming back.

"Have you ever thought of doing it?"

"Getting so close to death and then not going through with it, just for the pure pleasure? Stroking the hand of god?"

The placing of a pillow over my face with a firm hand on top, pressing down hard so I can't breathe. My aggressor jerks me off. Only at the very last possible moment, only when the cum is right at the tip of the penis, only when I have less than a second of life left in me and I'm crawling and clawing for that fatal breath to save me from dying, only then is the pressure released, the pillow removed and the flow of white semen allowed to spring forth with a gasp.

"Sure I have."

The boy grabbed hold of my throat.

"Is that like the fact that I don't do drugs and don't really like those that do, but, um..., if it's being offered, then it would be rude to say no? Or could it be the fact that water sports kind of interest me? But there would be no way I would discuss it with a partner 'cause it's a little dirty. There's no way Cammy would be interested in that, so I'll leave it alone and just stick to the good old vanilla sex!" (Cameron, Sydney)

I could have tried to struggle. I did for a second, but then he squeezed tighter on my Adam's apple until I thought it would burst. Draining the breath from me, he forced my face to meet his stare and dived to explore my mouth with the roughness of his tongue. The harsh stubble of his face ripped my softer skin to shreds. I knew it would be sore afterwards, with layers of dead skin flaking off. People would think I was just one more foolish white boy caught out by the sun. Another tourist with no fucking brains. There are hundreds of them walking up and down. Faces staring in through the large glass windows at the front of the shop. They search for tax free electronic equipment to pick up for a bargain and find me pushed on all fours, my head pulled back so far that my face is parallel to the ceiling.

---

"Well, sometimes. But I find stretching them overnight and occasionally working in some Vaseline will return even the most twisted kink to flexible straightness." (Stephen, Sydney)

The roots of my hair screamed out as he wrenched on a tuft at the front that I had gelled so neatly into place that morning. He yanks my head back further.

"Wanna die, fucker?"

I thought I might. It'd be a death of pleasure. One worth the wait. Worth all the money it would cost me to pay for any item he forced me to buy after this. Worth the thrill of seeing that poor, lonely man die.

"Can you see him falling? Falling all the way down, head first and twisting, smacking off the side of the building as he goes, can't be long now until he's on the ground, with a splat, dead, fucked, smashed, smashed to fucking shit, brains all over the place, oh fuck, oh jesus..."

He let out one huge gasp of air like he'd been holding it back. He'd fucked me to the brink of insanity and one step closer to the ecstasy of death. I think New Yorkers are like that.

"I have tried a lot, but I haven't ultimately got the kink factor I initially expected when I was sitting there putting the fantasy in my head, building it up in my mind with my penis engorging like another hand raised in agreement. I've tried all the normal stuff: sex in public places, bondage, group sex, drugs, the adrenalin you get from the men's baths, and even some TV times. Had a great time with two other guys once. I played submissive fuck boy, let them bind me and fill my mouth and ass for hours. I love to see people devoured by those pleasuring them to the point that the one at the centre of attention can barely keep reality in check. A friend who I regularly play with loves double penetration, anal and vaginal, so we organise a session every now and then. I am not one to listen to social conditioning or religious crap that segregates us into male-female, black-white. Life is simply not like that. And people's dreams, fantasies and kinks are certainly praise to the latter." (Phil, Sydney)

I paid for the discman and left. Outside, I looked up at the colossal height of the Empire State Building and thought about taking one more trip to the top. An elevator ride to the observatory desk on the 86th floor, where maybe I would find one open window. I checked my watch. My train wasn't due to leave for another fifteen minutes.

Biog: Dean Durber is currently enrolled in a doctorate degree at Curtin University of Technology in Perth. His area of research is the homosexual's construction of self as an oppressor of sexuality. His works of fiction have been published in a number of anthologies including Bar Tales and Boy Meets Boy. His latest fictional endeavour is a collection of Forbidden Desires. He can be contacted on deandurber@hotmail.com