3 comments/ 18293 views/ 14 favorites The Film By: cupbearer It all started . . . I was about to write "so innocently", but the truth is that it didn't start all that innocently. There was always an element of sin and fascination in the making of The Film. To begin with, anyway, there were four of us: Vanessa, Kelly, Daisy and myself. I was separated from them in more than one way. I was the only guy, for a start. Then there was the fact that Kelly and Daisy were art students, and Vanessa was a film major, and I was a literature boy. But we shared common ground in that we all liked film and art and books, and there was also a certain will to hip, plus a dislike of rigid boundaries. So it was that, in the first two years of us knowing each other, I had a fling with both gamine, dark-haired Kelly and also hippyish, red-haired, cheerful Daisy, and each of them at various times also had a bit of a thing with curly-haired, earnest, round-faced, long-nosed Vanessa. I for my part was on the skinny side, with short-cropped dark brown hair, and I had a couple of piercings and a modest tattoo, as did we all. So we were linked by more than just interests. We had some intimate knowledge of each other, if not all that much. If anything, Kelly marginally preferred boys while Daisy marginally preferred girls, while Vanessa was so determinedly intellectual that it was hard to tell what she was into. I was flattered by the friendship of these three very interesting young women. We liked to think of ourselves as a Group of like-minded people. We read the most interesting books, saw the best films, went to the coolest art shows and had the smartest opinions. None of which quite explains how we came to make The Film. The Film was, I guess, interesting, but it was also quite a bit more than that. It went somewhere very unusual. It began when we were watching a bad Roger Corman movie one night. Vanessa noticed, as she tended to do, that the films followed a rigid pattern; there would be a point somewhere at which one or more of the women would get her clothes off and then there would be a more or less consensual sex scene. If there were monsters, chances are that one of them would molest one or more of the women. Vanessa used to find that kind of thing really irritating. "How come there are never any movies where the men get molested!" she complained. "Who wants to watch that?" I said. "I would," she said. "so would I," said Kelly, grinning. "Oh god yeah," said Daisy. "Really?" I said. "To see a man being the object of desire?" said Vanessa. "Sure, why not?" "Alex," said Kelly, 'do you know how many movies we watch in which the women are the ones who get fingered or stripped or ogled or raped? I'd love to watch a man in that position. To see him be that vulnerable." "Nothing sexier than a vulnerable man," affirmed Daisy. "What kind of thing do you mean?" I asked. " . . . I dunno," said Kelly, "just . . . maybe if it was men being molested by a monster. Yeah." "Ohmigod," said Daisy fervently. 'so hot." "Yeah," said Vanessa, "if it was men . . . I'd love to see that in a movie." We all watched the actress writhing and squealing for a moment. "Why don't we make a movie?" I said. "What kind of movie?" said Kelly. "The kind we're talking about," I said. "I think I could write that." "Could you?" said Vanessa, looking intrigued. "Sure," I said, shrugging. "What would it be about?" she said, sitting up and putting the movie on Pause. "I dunno," I said. "I'm sure we could think up a story. I could write it, you could direct it. Kelly could do special effects. Daisy could do . . . other stuff." "I could be the action hero!" said Daisy brightly. "Brilliant!" exclaimed Vanessa. "Of course! You be the heroine, rescuing all the men from the monsters!" "On condition that I don't get molested myself." "Oh no." "Cause I'm not doing that. I don't mind maybe having a hot sex scene with another girl, but not being raped by a monster." "Not gonna happen," said Vanessa. "Alex, take notes." "What kind of monster?" said Kelly. "A . . . a sex monster," said Vanessa. "Well, duh." "No. A, um . . . " "A plant monster," I said. "Plenty of opportunity there for hentai stuff." "Genius," said Vanessa. "Right," said Kelly, thinking. "Yeah, that would work . . . some sort of tentacley planty thing that could tie the men up." "Got to have lots of scenes with guys being tied up," said Vanessa. "Oh yes," said Daisy. 'so I can rescue them!" "Absolutely," said Kelly. "Tied up," said Vanessa, "and molested." "Mmmmm, lots of naked men," said Kelly, grinning. "Being molested." "Nummy." "Practical point," I said, raising a finger. "What?" said Vanessa. "Where are you gonna get all these men?" "We'll cast them," said Vanessa. "Problem there," I said, "is that you're not gonna get a lot of actors willing to play those characters." "We will if they're gay!" said Daisy. "But then," I went on, "you'll either have a lot of gay boys who just want to get sexy on camera or you'll get serious actors who happen to be gay and don't necessarily want to get typecast as sex puppets for the rapey plant monster." "Good point," said Vanessa. There was a silence. I looked at them all. "There is a solution," I said. They looked at me. "Don't have lots of men. Have just one guy, and have it all happen to him. That way you only have one guy actor you need to worry about. Cast the right guy and keep him happy and he'll do the job." "Alex," said Vanessa, "I want you to write this." "I will," I said. "Now," she said. "Okay," I said. "Get your laptop." And so we sat down, and by four a.m. in the morning we had a treatment. *** The treatment evolved over the next week or so. It turned out that I had a rather baroque imagination for the kind of thing we were doing. Our hapless hero, who I called A for want of an actual surname, was a normal, okay-looking, relatively shy guy who for unknown reasons becomes irresistibly attractive to various kinds of sinister creatures with darkly perverse designs on his body. Over the course of the story he began by being attacked after a swim in the forest and messily raped by a plant monster; then he was raped in his own apartment by an invisible ghost; then he was stalked and chased by a mysterious froglike creature and finally molested and sexually assaulted; then he was kidnapped by a strange cabal of non-human creatures, placed on display and doused in gunge before becoming their sexual plaything; finally it was revealed that all of these attacks were being orchestrated by a demented and vengeful ex of his who had acquired magical powers and sought to punish him for leaving her. In each situation he was rescued by his plucky and gorgeous girlfriend. The climax of the story came when his girlfriend acquired the ex's magic book and turned the ex's powers against her, causing the ex to become a terrible victim of her own evil creatures, whereupon the heroine took her grateful boyfriend to bed and taught him who was boss. The catch was that the girlfriend wanted to top the boyfriend but he didn't want to, and it took the whole ordeal of the film to make him realise that he actually craved it. When we had finished the treatment, Vanessa was delighted and I was pleased but a bit disturbed that I'd come up with this story. It worried me and excited me and when I thought about it, it tended to arouse me too. But at least I'm just the writer, I told myself, and it wasn't as though we were ever going to get to make the movie anyway. That all changed when Vanessa's aunt died and left her €600,000. *** Suddenly the film went from something that we were half-seriously toying with to a thing that was going to happen. Vanessa bought a new Power Mac, a lot of hard drive space, a very expensive digital video camera and a copy of Final Cut Pro, and Kelly started making monsters in her studio. Daisy was designing the costumes as well as starring as the plucky heroine, who we called Daisy for convenience's sake. Basically, we only needed two other actors: a guy to play A, and a woman to play the ex, who we called X. We managed to get in touch with a young and emerging actress called Fiona who seemed to happy to play X, in spite of the fact that much of X's final scene - her comeuppance - wasn't really written, and all we knew was that it would involve nudity on her part and be rather prolonged and messy and horrifying. Fiona had been nude on stage twice, so she claimed to be fine with all that, but we would have very little time to rehearse with her. The real problem, though, was A. We asked every actor we knew, and nobody would touch the part with a ten-foot pole. Some actors professed to find the whole thing offensive. I could see their point. A was a rather passive character who spent most of his time being attacked, subdued and sexually assaulted, often in messy and humiliating ways. It wasn't exactly the kind of part that a young actor wanted on his CV. It was one night after an especially unsuccessful casting session that we all went to the pub, Vanessa, Kelly, Daisy and I, and we got very drunk and wound up back at Vanessa's. "Nobody wants to make our movie," Vanessa shouted at the ceiling, between swigs on a wine bottle. "Can you blame them?" I said. "We've written a male lead character who gets raped up his arse four times and has to be covered in gunge and exposed to complete strangers. It's a nightmare for an actor. We'll have to change it." "I'm not changing a thing!" she cried. "Good," I said. "I don't want to either, but nobody's gonna do it." 'the reason nobody wants to do it," said Kelly, "is that nobody understands where the character is coming from." "I do," said Vanessa. 'so do I," said Daisy. 'so do I," I said, "I fucking wrote him." "But nobody we"ve seen has that basic understanding," Kelly lamented. 'there probably is someone out there, but our chances of finding him are zero. We don't have the money or the time. We start shooting the weekend after next." "If we could just find a nice guy who looked good and who understands the character and who can be natural on camera," said Vanessa, "we'd be sorted." "Well," I said, "good luck." We were silent. I drank some more beer, and when I looked at the others I realised that they were all looking at me. "What?" I said. "Alex . . . " Vanessa said, smiling. And suddenly I realised what they meant. "Oh no," I said. "No no. No way." "Oh but come on," said Vanessa. "You're the only one. It has to be you." "No fucking way," I said. "If you think I'm gonna let myself be stripped naked and ass-raped for a film . . . no way. No. No way at all." "But it'd be pretend!" Vanessa implored me. 'the rape might be," I said, "but I'd still have to take my clothes off." "But you look great with your clothes off," said Kelly. 'does he?" said Vanessa. "He has a beautiful arse," said Daisy. "And a nice cock," Kelly added. "You're perfect," said Vanessa, scrambling over the furniture towards me, her eyes shining. I shrank back, in real fear. "No," I said. "Uh-uh. No way. Absolutely not. No fucking way. Not gonna happen." "You're the only one," Vanessa breathed, climbing on top of me and staring down at me, her eyes shining with booze. I had never been so close to her before. "No!" I said. "Please," said Kelly, grinning and simpering at me. "Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease!" Daisy begged me. "No," I said. This went on for some time, until they began to get genuinely impatient and even upset with me, until finally Vanessa had another swig of wine and held up her hands for silence. "I'll tell you what," she said. "If you do it, I'll pay you a thousand quid." "Vanessa," I told her, "even a thousand quid is not enough to make me take my kit off for you and this film and pretend to be raped by a plant. It's not gonna happen. End of story. Full stop. Okay?" Which is how I ended up playing A. *** We simplified things further by renaming A Alex. The more I read and reread the script, and saw Kelly's monsters come together, and rehearsed with Daisy and Vanessa, the more nervous I became, but paradoxically I also became more reassured; after all, it wasn't going to be real but a technical process. I would have to lose my clothes and my dignity, but the rest would be acting, and acting had its own dignity. I wouldn't really be being attacked by a plant monster, I'd be faking it for the camera. Kelly showed us the complex workings of the first plant monster, how it had various tentacles that did different things, some shooting out liquid, some designed to hold me, some designed to probe or caress me and one meant to look as though it was the one that would "penetrate" me, and the more our technical our conversation became, the more I was able to quell my doubts. We rehearsed everything carefully, but fully clothed. Vanessa thought it would be easier on me that way. I soon acquired a healthy sense of the ridiculous when it came to lying on my stomach and pretending to be sexually assaulted by a vine, but of course I knew that on the location it would be different. Daisy was encouraging, and was having a ball as the plucky heroine, perfecting her looks of cool resolution and urgency. We went on location trips and found the perfect spot in a distant corner of a wood near Vanessa's family's holiday home. There was a shallow pool for Daisy and I to swim in, and plenty of thick but not-too-thick undergrowth for me to be trapped in, and to give Kelly the cover she needed to operate the monster. We also dug a pit, to make the pit that I would fall into and which the monster would trap me in so that it could have its way with me. We joked about it, all the time, but we were all nervous. We knew that we were basically making a semi-pornographic movie with no previous experience of that kind of thing. I felt the pressure but I kept up a calm, practical front. Then the day dawned. *** I awoke in darkness from uneasy dreams, showered, ate some breakfast and was ready on the pavement by 6 a.m. Kelly picked us all up in her car and we drove out to the location. First we prepared the pit, lining it with plastic sheeting and then filling it with some kind of sticky, opalescent, pearly fluid which Kelly had devised. She called it 'monster juice" but it looked like nothing so much as semen, but stickier and thicker. It tasted quite pleasant and I was assured it was non-toxic. Then we set up the location by the pool, setting out a picnic blanket and our fake picnic. Kelly prepared her monster. I noticed that it was connected by various tubes and hoses to a number of large bottles and pumps. "What are they for?" I asked, nervously. "Oh," she said casually, "just effects. We'll explain when we get to the bit." "Is that to do with the messy aspect?" "It might be," she said, smirking. Daisy and I changed into our swimsuits and then we were ready to roll. The opening scene began with a simple sequence of us having a picnic and a swim in the pool. There was to be a scene before this, of us having unsatisfying sex the night before, but that would be shot later. First, we began by trying to establish the tone of a couple who were having some difficulties but who were trying to get through them. Daisy swam, then she beckoned me in but I said no, until she finally got exasperated and said she was going for a walk. Then Daisy left the pool, wet and pink in her swimsuit, and I waited for her to go before going in myself and having a rather stiff paddle. Vanessa and the others laughed quietly at my portrayal of "Alex" as an uptight, rather virginal guy. Then it was time for the big first scene. We broke for a light lunch. I didn't want to eat too much because I was too nervous. I was about to do a scene where my character got attacked, stripped and raped, and I was going to do in front of my three best friends, all of them girls, two of them one-time girlfriends of mine. It was embarrassing, to say the least. I only hoped that I'd manage to be reasonably convincing. After lunch we had a short rest, and then Vanessa looked at us all and said, with a gleam in her eye, "Okay, girls and boy, let's do it." She had carefully storyboarded the sequence, and for the next two hours we took painstaking close-up after painstaking close-up as my character emerged from the pool, his hair still dry, and then walked into the woods in search of his girlfriend Daisy - during which time branches and vines started to clutch at him, and he got scared and began to run. It took a long time and was rather boring, but it did at least relax me until we finally got to the beginning of the attack proper. "Okay," Vanessa said, "now, we only have so many effects, and as much as possible I want to get this in one take, if that's okay?" I nodded seriously, and so did Kelly and Daisy. "So," Vanessa said, "Alex - you come up here, and then the vine trips you, and you fall into the pit. I'd like you to fall right in and get it on your face, okay?" "Okay," I said. "Then," she said, "when you're in there, do the whole shock and disgust thing, and then Daisy will be operating the vines that will, you know, pull your trunks off." I was wearing only a pair of tight swimming trunks, which Daisy had carefully modified to be breakaway - a not very strong pull on them would make them tear in two and fall off me. I blushed. "Then," she said, "we'll do some inserts of the vines trapping you, which Kelly's sorted out, and then all being well, I'd like to have a go at doing the actual rape in a single take. I think it'll be better that way." "Okay," I said, nodding. "What'll happen," Kelly said, "the vines will be holding you down, and if you just concentrate on keeping your head up, the flower will come down and go over your head, and then the, uh, phallus vine will go to like, actually rape you. The vines are linked up to the reservoirs so when we get to the climax they'll pump liquid out." "What sort of liquid?" I asked. "Oh, it's harmless. Mostly marshmallow and water. The flower will also pump stuff and that'll be more messy, so just be aware." "And obviously," Vanessa said earnestly, "if you can play up the whole terror and arousal thing, terror mingled with arousal, that would be brilliant." "I think I know what to do," I said. 'do you want me to have, like, an orgasm?" "Well, if you can pretend, that would be great," said Vanessa, "but don't worry too much - just make it look like you're hating it and aroused by it at the same time." "Shouldn't be too much of a challenge," I said. "So, while the monster is still pumping," Kelly said, 'daisy turns up and kills it with the machete. We'll do that with inserts. Then she helps you up and cleans you." "I know," I said. "I know," said Kelly. "I, just. Okay." '"So, are you ready, Alex?" asked Vanessa. "As I'll ever be," I said, flushing pink. This was it, and they all knew it. They were about to do something completely outrageous to me and nobody was envying me at that moment. It took us about forty minutes to get the trip shot right, with me tripping and continuously falling onto a conveniently placed inflatable bed, and then it was time for what Vanessa called the Money Shot - me falling into the pit. I took my mark. Vanessa had the camera, and Daisy had a second camera that we'd rented for extra coverage. Kelly was crouched in the bushes, with the control panel for the monster. "Camera!" called Vanessa. "Speed!" called Daisy. "Kelly!" "Ready!" "And . . . go Alex!" The Film Finally it slackened and I fell off Daisy and lay next to her on the floor. She was lying prone, trembling, her upper naked body completely coated with the sticky opalescent grey fluid, and when I stirred feebly and tried to touch her, she muttered "Don't touch me," and struggled to her feet and staggered out of the room towards the bathroom. Or rather, she just made it outside the bedroom before all four of us collapsed with helpless laughter. Kelly emerged from her position to one side of the bed; she had stripped down to her underwear to operate the hose and she, too, was bespattered with the sticky goo she'd devised to be fake semen. The four of us rolled on the ground aching with laughter at the utter absurdity of what we'd just shot, and then Daisy, Kelly and I showered together quickly and sat wrapped in towels to watch the playback. We agreed that the film needed something as utterly silly as this, and then we quickly plotted out the end of the scene and shot the pickups. The scene ended with two classic shots of both Daisy and I sitting naked on the floors of our respective showers, each of us hugging our own knees and sobbing. The scene told everything that needed to be told; Daisy had left me. After that we went to the pub, because we had lost any remaining awkwardness after the pool scene and we needed to unwind after the daftness of the spunk-bucket scene, as Kelly called it. *** It was after shooting that scene that we ran into a problem. We had realised that our initial treatment wasn't really going far enough. After I had been sodomised onscreen for real, and had (apparently) come all over Daisy, how could we top that? Being raped by someone in a frog costume was hardly going to cut it, even though Kelly was prepared to don a sticky, sweaty rubber costume and mime being my rapist. Also, now we had filmed the breakup between "Alex" and "Daisy", my character had to be on his own for a while, or at least apart from her, so that he could get into more peril. We talked about it a lot over late night drinking sessions and afternoon coffee sessions and we could never come to a satisfactory solution. And then, one night, we were in Kelly's place after she had cooked us a fabulous vegetarian chili. We all drank a lot of beer and then some tequila and then we were sitting looking at wet and messy videos on the internet. "I have it," said Daisy slowly. "What?" said Vanessa. "Alex and Daisy can't get together again right away," said Daisy. "Right." "So he needs to be away from her. Maybe he needs to talk to someone else about it. He wants answers." "I like it," said Vanessa. "He's being proactive." "So he looks up people who can help and he finds . . . someone. Someone who claims to be an expert in when supernatural forces are attracted to be humans. Specifically guys." "Okay." "So Alex goes to him. And it's a guy. Maybe an older guy or maybe the same age. Not sure." Daisy stopped and looked at us. I had a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. "And the guy agrees to study Alex and see if he can figure out what's going on. And this involves Alex going to live in the guy's flat for a while. And after a while the guy starts to put Alex through tests which are designed to see how susceptible he is to, you know, paranormal entities. But of course they're actually . . . " Daisy raised her eyes and grinned. I looked at the other two. They were grinning too. "Hang on a sec," I said, "what are we talking about exactly?" "Well, the guy is enchanted and he's working for the ex, right?" said Kelly. "Of course," said Daisy. "Oooh, wow," said Vanessa. "Loads of possibilities." "But what exactly are we talking about?" I said, my mouth dry. "Well I was thinking we could build slowly," Daisy said. "Like maybe it begins with him making you take your clothes off and then using various machines to sort of test the atmosphere. But then it gets more, um, physical." She grinned again, wickedly. "What do you mean, physical?" I said, and I was alarmed to find that I wa getting an erection. "He blindfolds you and makes you jerk off while describing how you feel." "Oooh," said Vanessa, delighted. "And then he has other machines he uses on you. To see what you're like under certain conditions. Like handcuffs. Then soon he's making you spend your entire time naked because he's not getting a result." The girls were listening, fascinated with Daisy's idea. I was fascinated but also horrified. I hadn't signed up for being in a film where I was some man's plaything. "And then," Daisy said, "he builds a machine which he actually uses to fuck you. He straps you into this thing and it buggers you out of your mind. And he still doesn't get a result." "How does it end?" said Vanessa. "Um . . . I suppose I come and rescue him," said Daisy with a shrug. "Bit anticlimactic," said Kelly. "There's only one way it can end," said Vanessa, and she looked at me carefully. "Alex," she said earnestly, "you know what it is, don't you?" "Tell me," I muttered. "He's got to fuck you for real," she said softly. There was a silence, because Vanessa had proposed something much more radical than we had ever planned. It was supposed to be a fake sex movie in which all the intercourse would be simulated, but already it was becoming something between an arty porn film and the documentation of how my three women friends got me, their closest straight male friend, to agree to let myself be fucked in nearly every conceivable way. I really didn't know what anyone would think of me if I went through with it. I just knew that I didn't fancy men, but on the other hand I found the whole prospect of acting in Daisy's idea terrifying and arousing. I had never even kissed a man, and now we were talking about me being the passive partner in anal intercourse, for real, on camera. "The only way I can see it working," I said, "is if we get a really good actor and he plays it like he's really in love with me. If it's just a shag thing it won't work. It'll have to be a love scene." Vanessa came over to me and hugged me. "Alex," she said, "after this, I swear I'll never make you act in anything again. And I'll tell you what else. I will personally be your fluffer on the day." And so I committed myself. *** We didn't have to look too hard before we found our David, as we called the character. He was a slim, good-looking, red-haired young actor, very pale and rather innocent-seeming but entirely at home with his sexuality. John was friendly, professional and I wasn't sure how good he'd be on camera but my doubts were stilled when we rehearsed - he lost all his slightly nervous, effeminate quality and became much more still and charismatic. He was interested in what we were doing and when we showed him what we'd already shot he was gratifyingly impressed - especially with the opening scene, which he pronounced "very hot". ("Alex," you said, "can I just say that you have a great ass." I blushed.) Then Vanessa got a job on a film set that meant her being away for eight weeks. We had to shut the film down, but secretly I was relieved, as it meant that my moment of humiliation - the long sequence we would have to shoot with John using me as his sexual plaything - was deferred. Vanessa had encouraged us to hang out as much as possible, so that John and I could be comfortable around each other. It was one thing to do a nude love scene with Daisy, with whom I'd once been intimate. It was quite another to do one with a man I didn't know. I found myself wondering what it would be like to make love with another man, and with John in particular. But I liked him a lot - he was warm, enthusiastic and intelligent, and good company. He and I started meeting for drinks to discuss the film and other things related to it. After a while he started to invite me to the gay bars where he met his friends. He introduced me to his friends, all of whom were perfectly friendly but who never seemed to find me even remotely attractive, which annoyed me. Eventually, one Saturday night, as we sat in the noisy corner of John's favourite hangout, I summoned up the courage. "John," I shouted in his ear - it was a very noisy corner indeed. "Alex," he said, touching my arm in a friendly way. "Can I ask you something personal?" "Of course you can, sweetie." "I've been having a really lovely time hanging out with you and your friends, and they're really lovely people." "I know." "But there is one small thing." "Uh-huh." "None of them have ever even slightly hit on me." John nodded and waited for me to say something else. When I didn't, he looked at me quizzically. "Well, am I so bad-looking?" "You? Not at all. You're very cute." "Thanks. But I suppose I just thought . . . " "You thought what?" "I kind of thought that someone might find me cute enough to at least flirt with me." "But, Alex, you're not exactly celibate. I mean you used to go out with Kelly and Daisy and they're absolutely gorgeous." "Yes," I said, "but I suppose I just wanted . . . oh, never mind." I stared moodily ahead, aware that he was watching me with great amusement. "Alex," he said finally. "Yeah?" "I'll tell you what it is." "What is it?" "You just don't project a huge air of . . . you're just not . . . " "I'm just not sexy?" John looked at me with an "Oh please" expression. "Hey," he said, leaning into me, 'don't forget, honey, I"ve seen the footage. I know you can be sexy. Trust me, if you want to be, you can be a babe. You just don't really want to be one. You come across as very, very straight. I mean, it can be a little bit intimidating." He laughed, and I had to as well. "So I'm just a little bit scary?" "Yes, you are. I mean, you've read everything and seen nearly everything and you're kind of alarming. But don't worry. Are you worried about the scene?" I nodded. He looked at me with compassion and stroked my arm. "Don't be, sweetie. It's gonna be fine." "You do know it's supposed to be real, right?" I said, feeling strangely emotional. My throat was tight. He gazed at me. "Yeah," he said. "I"ve never done this," I said, looking back at him. "I"ve never been with a guy. I"ve never even looked at a guy. Well, no, correction - the only guy I"ve ever looked at is you, and that's because we have to do a scene together." "You make it sound like it's gonna be such an ordeal," he said, smiling. "John," I said, and I felt like I was about to cry, "I just don't know what I'm doing. I'm doing this film with the girls and I love them all and it's our thing, but already I hardly know who I am. I'm feeling all this stuff and it's just so fucking weird. And I don't know who to talk to about it. The girls are just so into it but the things that we do . . . they're so outside anything I'm used to. I don't know how I should feel about it." "Nobody's saying you have to feel any particular way about it," John said. He had turned so that he was facing me, and was leaning in close to me. I could feel the heat of his body in his tight t-shirt. "So what do you think I should do?" I said, looking at him, feeling the tears pricking at my eyes. He looked back at me, frank, young, younger than me by a few years and yet seemingly so much more experienced. "I think you should relax," he said. I nodded, dumb. He looked at me. "Alex," he said, "I'm not a great judge of character but I think what you need most right now is a really big snog." "That would be okay," I said softly. He leaned in, and we kissed, at first rather tentatively but as I got used to his male face and body, more confidently. Then his tongue was in my mouth, and we were kissing harder, wrapping ourselves up in each other, shutting out the world in the private universe of the kiss. He put his arms around me, and I relaxed into it, allowing his tongue to enter me, and then feeling his legs against mine, and not flinching away as I would normally have done but opening my body up to him. He pulled back and looked at me. "I think I know what you're thinking," he said. "What would that be?" "You're thinking we should get a cab." "You might be right." "And we should go back to my place or your place." "Yeah." "And get it on. Right?" I nodded, shy, eager. He wrinkled his nose - a cutely feminine gesture. "Yhere are so many reasons why that would be wrong," he said. "And a few why it would be right," I said, looking him in the eye, enjoying flirting with him, enjoying being brazen. "But you know it would be wrong," he said. "We can't just go home and fuck. It's gonna take away all the tension from when we shoot the scene. Of course I'd like to do it, god knows, I think you're cute and I"ve seen what you look like naked, but . . . we have to think about the film." "You're right," I admitted. "Even if I just let you fuck me," he said, "which would be my normal preference with a straight guy, except, straight, whatever - I mean, that's what I'd really like to do, if you want to know." "Oh yeah?" "Yeah," he said. "Well, not necessarily just let you fuck me. There's a million things we can do in bed that aren't just about taking it up the ass, you know." He mouthed the last few words in a mock-confidential tone. "Tell me about them," I said, genuinely curious. And so, John told me. I learned a lot that night from listening to him, about the different ways men had devised to get around the way that their bodies were not necessarily optimally designed for mutual sexual pleasure. He told me about how to give a proper blowjob, about mutual masturbation, intercrural intercourse, 69ing, rimming, stuff I'd read about but had never heard anyone describe from firsthand experience. "So you see how it's not all about just ass-fucking, right?" he said, and laughed and took a pull at his drink. "I'm sorry if I jumped the gun," I said. "It's not that," he said. "We're gonna have to do this scene, and I want us both to want it by then. I mean, don't you?" "I suppose," I said. "You've got to be more than just curious, Alex," he said. "You've got to really want it. Or else it won't work. Right now you're horny and you like me and you're in love with the idea of what it would be like to go to bed with me, but that's not much fun for me. You know how many drunk straight boys I've taken home?" "I'm sure it's more than the number of drunk straight girls I've taken home," I said. "Well, so am I," he said and grinned. "But . . . it's all going to be leading up to the scene where I . . . you know. I'm going to be fucking you. And I don't know what you've talked about with the girls, exactly, but . . . " "We"ve talked about it," I said. "I said I would do the scene on the understanding that we wouldn't be faking it." "Right," he said. 'so, at some point in the next few weeks, you're gonna be naked and I'm gonna be pushing my cock up your bum in front of your girl friends, and you'd better believe that I want you to be begging for it. I don't want you to be thinking about them. I don't want you to be thinking about anything but my cock in your ass. Because when I go to bed with a guy, that's all I think about. If we went to bed now, I would so be your girl." "Would you?" I said. John reached out and took hold of my cock through the fabric of my cargo pants. I made a little gasp. "Oh, god, yeah. My ass would be yours, Alex. I've seen your cock and I would love to have it in me. I can do sissy like you wouldn't believe. You would ride me all night and I'd be begging for more. But in the scene it's going to be the other way around, and I don't top very often, so when I do I want my bottom to understand that I'm doing him a huge favour. Not that I don't fancy you, you understand." "You fancy me?" "Of course I do, you eejit," he said, giving my cock a squeeze that made me gasp. "I wouldn't be doing this film if I didn't. And I must admit that it is a bit of a treat. Most straight boys are so not into taking one for the team. They want to find out what it's like to do me. So I'm honestly grateful that you're stepping up and offering yourself." "God," I muttered, "I just want you to fuck me, at this point." "I bet," he said, amused. "But we can't do it." "No." "Which is not to say that I can't make you come, right now," he said. "Follow me." I followed John through the dark club and into the surprisingly roomy gents. He led me into a cubicle and within a moment, he had gently but firmly reached inside my cargos and taken out my still mostly erect cock. He started pulling on it expertly while kissing me, and I was so surprised that I barely had time to react before I felt myself squirming in his embrace and moaning into his mouth as I felt my orgasm build up. He quickly dropped to his knees, took me in his mouth and swallowed as I came, whimpering quietly with surprise and shock. As I panted for breath, coming down from my orgasm, I opened my eyes and looked at him. He looked up at me and swallowed, smiling. "The next time I make you come," he said, "you won't be so collected about it. And I'll tell you what else. You won't be standing up, and you won't be wearing any clothes. Come on. You owe me a drink." He led me out of the toilet. *** After then, my crush on John faded. I stopped seeing him as someone new and fascinatingly different and I started seeing him as a friend and a colleague. Which was just as well, because the time soon arrived when we had to shoot the whole scene between "Alex" and "David". We used Kelly's apartment for this, because it was relatively spartan and it was therefore conceivable that it would have been used by men. We shot the initial conversation scenes in a day or so; it wasn't hard to do and John and I were comfortable with each other for the conversation to have an edge of something without toppling over into instant intimacy. And then the day came when my fantasy was going to become a reality. Vanessa had scheduled it so that we could shoot the sex scenes between David and Alex in as short a time as possible. She wanted it to stay "fresh". It felt at the time more like she wanted us to not get too comfortable with the whole thing. I also felt more than a hint of prurience from Vanessa, about this sequence. I felt that she was distinctly eager to get down to the man-on-man business, and I wasn't sure how comfortable I was with that. Still, I told myself that it was all for the good of the scene. And so we gathered, one Sunday morning, in Kelly's flat, and I dressed in my "Alex" clothes of t-shirt and cargo pants and sat sulkily opposite John in his expensive shirt and slacks. DAVID: I'm a little concerned that we haven't got a result yet. ALEX: Well, I'm not. I'm relieved. DAVID: Alex, you seem to forget that the point of these sessions is to ensure that nothing like what's happened to you before happens to you again. For that to work, we have to be sure that you are no longer a target for them. And you haven't been one, but it's only a matter of time. ALEX: What do you mean? DAVID: I mean that I think we have to provoke them. You haven't been presented to them in a way that will entice them. If we can entice them, we can figure out a way to send them off. ALEX: [looking uncomfortable] What do you mean? DAVID: Do you trust me? ALEX: Of course I do, doctor -