“I like to watch,” my girlfriend Elle said and stuck her chin up and out like she always does when she feels like she wants to challenge me or flirt with me or both.

“I’d like to watch you with another man,” she said to me her chin still up, her eyes going all sparkly. We were, I recall, making a late breakfast. Elle held a cantaloupe in her hand. I held a mug of coffee in mine. Elle’s chin jutting and her assertion, “I’d like to watch”; that was how it started.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t been with a guy before; it was just that I hadn’t been with one recently. Elle knew my history—the late nights of heavy drinking and minor drugging with my college theatre group that would inevitably devolve into the splintering couples of various configurations and sexes, each of us pairing—or sometimes tripling— with another and traipsing off all tipply into the night.

She knew that I’d been manhandled, that I’d done some manhandling, and that I liked it. She knew too that I hadn’t done it in a long time, not since leaving university and getting this straight job and this straight life and this straight relationship.

It wasn’t like I’d missed it—the scruff of beard, the rough of lips, the hard body, the hard cock—it wasn’t like I’d missed it. But when Elle lifted her chin and said something, I realized it wasn’t like I hadn’t missed it either.

The odd thing is this: as easily as the idea got planted by Elle, it was harder than I’d expected to find a guy. My college theatre group had grown up, gone straight and narrow—or gay and narrow—gone some way or another, just as I had. Plus, even with the ones I still talked to, the dynamic was gone, that glamour of youth had lifted and the Puckish magic that made it possible for us to shift shapes had drifted like a dream.

I realized that it would have to be a stranger, then; it would have to be a strange man who I’d fuck. And that felt weird to me. I’d always only been with men I’d known, guys who were mates well before we’d mated. Guys whose girlfriends I knew, whose voices were already familiar. I knew what their apartments looked like, what kind of underwear they favored. I’d crashed on their couches long before I’d ever fucked them in their messy college flats, trying to keep from banging furniture and waking roommates.

I’d never fucked a guy I didn’t know before. I don’t think I would have done it without Elle whispering sweet naughty nothings in my ear.

“I want to watch your face as you come with your cock down another man’s throat,” she said, gutter-talking below me, her hands on my hips, pulling them faster and harder toward her wide-spread thighs, my cock sliding in and out of her pussy.

“I want to see you fuck a man like this,” she’d say over her shoulder to me, her black hair pooling on her white shoulders like dark water.

“What about that guy?” she’d ask, pointing across the bar to a whip-skinny hipster in an ironic tee-shirt. “Too thin?” Elle would ask. “Then how about that one?” she said and pointed to a slightly grizzled Goldfinger-era Sean Connery type.

At Elle’s urging I started to see the world as a walking man buffet. Some of that, please, that slick Asian in the minimalist designer suit. Some of that, that man-sweaty construction worker with the tight shirt and loose jeans. I found I’d be standing in a market queue and I’d be undressing the man ahead of me. I’d see his ass naked; I’d see his cock spring free of his jeans; I’d see it go boing! and I’d feel its live weight in my hands.

I wanted him, whoever he happened to be. I just couldn’t seem to meet him.

I signed up for an dating services. I’d put up a profile and then I’d taken it down. I’d post pictures that Elle took of me: one showed my chest, mostly denuded of hair and slim with my swimmer’s muscles. Another of my cock tenting my boxers. Another of me lying prone on my sex-rumpled bed, my ass gleaming white against the sheets. All of them struck me as simultaneously goofy and hot. I tried to resist the narcissist song, but I had to admit when I looked at them that I’d fuck me.

Like my profiles, I’d post the pictures and take them down. I just couldn’t commit to the hot-and-cold running desperation-slash-excitation of the online dating thing. Elle would ask me if I saw anyone I’d liked, if I’d emailed, chatted, something. I looked, I told her, but I couldn’t. Online dating wasn’t for me.

But Elle’s urging, and her susurrations all demon-like in my ear while we were fucking in my big white bed, drove me. To be honest, I hadn’t realized I’d wanted to fuck a man until Elle gave me the permission to want it. And with all of her gentle orgasmic urging, my imagination was in overdrive. Which is exactly as Elle wanted it.

“I want to see your hand like this,” she whispered and gazed at her own hand wrapped tight around the shaft of my cock. “I want to see your mouth like this,” she said and took the tip of my cock between her opened lips.

I considered going to a gay bar. I’d been, of course, with friends—I like the energy of gay bars. Sticky with alcohol and sex, they’re practically humming with testosterone. I considered going to one not as a tourist but as a trepidacious native. I walked the street in front of one, and I found I could not enter.

And still…Elle’s voice, her slender-fingered hands on my cock, my image in the mirror obscuring her body, her voice hushed and husky h in my ear behind me. “Imagine my hands were rough,” she said, “imagine you could feel my cock pressing into your back.” I did, I could.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

Yes, I said,.

Then, just when I felt myself caught between the Scylla of my desire and the Charybdis of my reluctance, I met Guy, or to be more strictly correct, Guy met me.

It was at a party, a gathering, a work affair. Guy didn’t work with me—he was a peripheral client. The advertising company I wrote for had some celebration for some big account and there was Brazilian barbeque and there were free-flowing mojitos and there was Guy.

He was a few years younger than I, very cool in his expensive jeans and jacket. He had creative facial hair and a top-of-the-line PDA that kept buzzing, ignored, in his pocket. He looked at ease. Me, I’m equally uncomfortable in a group and alone. Not Guy. He was confident.

Somehow we ended up talking, somehow we had a lot in common. Somehow I kept on looking at his tongue when he laughed. He had this habit of sticking it out between this teeth just as his eyes slitted with laughter. Somehow we exchanged numbers.

Somehow, it escaped me until I told Elle about it later that Guy was hitting on me.

The sound of his voice stayed with me, so did the vision of his triangular tongue between his full lips. When Elle, her saliva-slick finger circling the “O” of my anus, asked me how I’d like to feel a man’s cock, I thought of Guy, his pointy tongue, his pervert’s mouth, his expensive jeans, and said I’d like that very much.

Why, you might ask, would it surprise me that Guy texted me about a week later? Why, you might ask, what with all of my mind’s man-made fantasies, and all of the very twinkly conversation bouncing between me and Guy that night at the company party, why would I be surprised that I was meeting him for a drink one evening?

Why, you might ask, given the months of preparation and conversation and half-hearted but full-cocked plotting, would I be surprised that it actually happened? That I invited Guy to my apartment. That Guy accepted my invitation. That when he entered the door, Elle hid comfortable on a chair behind the slatted doors of my closet. That Guy took my hand in his when I gave him his second glass of scotch.

That Guy pulled my face close to his with his free hand and pressed his pervert’s mouth on mine. That we abandoned our glasses full of scotch and that we entered my bedroom together. Why, you might ask, would I be surprised?

Because I always am when I get what I want. I lack Guy’s—and Elle’s—unshakeable confidence.

I wanted it, and I hoped for it, but I was still surprised when Guy, his mouth still on mine, started peeling my tee-shirt from my body. “I have a girlfriend,” I said to him between kisses.

“I know,” said Guy. “I asked.” He palmed the back of my head, prised my mouth open under his mouth and swirled his pointy tongue against mine.

His scruff caught in mine. His smell mirrored mine. His cock strained against his jeans, as mine pressed for release against mine. His hands ran up and down my body, feeling my flesh, as mine groped his. It all returned, that feeling of a man—that hard and sinewy verisimilitude, that sharp musk, that same but different.

Guy stopped and pulled away. He looked at me, unbuckled his belt, popped one button after the next on his jeans, kicked off his loafers, and let his jeans fall into a puddle on the floor.

“Your turn,” he said, stepping naked and glorious as Michelangelo’s David out of his puddled overpriced jeans.

I untied the drawstring of my linen pants, unzipped, and let them and my boxers drop to the floor. My hard cock curved up toward my navel. Just a couple of feet away from me, I could see that Guy’s did too.

Guy ran a finger across my abdomen, turned away and laid himself on the bed so that his head dropped off the edge. I looked at him, his face upside down; we laughed. He told me to come closer. I did what he told me to.

You know, the weird thing was that it didn’t feel weird. I mean, it did and it didn’t. Because, let’s fact it, it was weird. There I was naked with my first man in over a decade, my girlfriend of a couple of years hiding in the closet watching us, and my cock quivering at this guy I’d met at a company party just a week or so ago. Weird. And yet not.

Guy reached out his hand; he took me by the head of my cock; he pulled me closer, and he put the head of my cock in his mouth. His mouth felt like a man’s—something about the pressure or the lips—I don’t know what it is, exactly, but a man’s mouth is never like a woman’s mouth. But a mouth is a mouth, so maybe it was just that I could see his body lean, almond-colored and masculine, laid out on my bed. His pecs jumping under his thin skin as he reached up both hands to guide my cock more deeply into his throat. His cock a bit thicker than mine pointing up towards me, tempting me.

I could feel that Guy’s head was completely off the bed, his hair brushing against my thighs, my cock deeply down his throat, my knees bent with the pleasure and the angle. It felt good, but how could I not feel like I was performing? Guy had unwittingly lined us up perfectly parallel to the closet where Elle was hiding. It was all I could do not to look at those nearly closed slatted doors; it was all I could do not to strain to hear Elle’s rustle over the slurping of Guy’s mouth on my cock.

The weirdness of the tableau, can you see it? My girlfriend seated in the closet, this strange and beautiful man on my bed, my cock down his throat, my secret awareness, and the exquisite pleasure of it all.

It kind of hit me, and sooner than I wanted, I felt that yearning burning of coming start to shoot from my balls up through my cock, but I didn’t want it, not yet. I pulled my cock out of Guy’s open throat with an audible pop! and bent forward. One hand on either side of Guy’s hips, I lowered my lips to his cock.

A tiny drop of pre-come stood beaded on its tip, and I licked it up. I swirled my tongue around the pulsing tip. I suckled on its velvet hardness, savored its mouthfeel, the porpoise-boiled-egg springy resiliency, the tiny pucker of rough skin below the head, the tiny-baby-bird mouth of its slit at the top. I let Guy’s wide cock slide into my mouth slowly and deliciously, taking it a millimeter at a time into my mouth like it was some delicate comestible. Fine chocolate. Truffles. Foie gras.

All the time, I knew that Elle was watching.

I heard Guy breathing and moaning behind me. I felt his hips writhing against my mouth. I felt him take my ass in his hands, and I felt him pull my cock into his mouth. His mouth on my cock felt like mine on his, his cock in my mouth felt like mine in his. His crazy-keening burn rolling up his cock from balls to tip was like mine. His hips pushing up toward my mouth pushed like mine. I felt Guy’s balls press high and tight into my nose, and this vertiginous circular pleasure rolled over me.

A hand on my mouth pulled me off Guy’s cock. “Stop,” he said, “or I’m going to come.” He pushed me off him and rolled over on the bed. He reached up and took my hand and spit into it, a long pearly strand of blow-job saliva. Splayed on the bed, he put my spit-covered hand on his cock. I rubbed the tip.

Guy spit in his hand and rubbed my cock’s tip. I kneeled above him, Guy below me, one of his legs between mine, one of my knees between his legs, each of us with a cock in our hand, the closet doors, slightly ajar and hiding my girlfriend as in a French farce, right in front of me.

I paused, turned and grabbed a bottle of lube from the table next to my bed. I squirted some into Guy’s hand and some into my own. Squirt. Squirt. Two hands. Two cocks, twins, hard and pressing against one another.

His hand felt like my hand, but not. It felt strong and hard, and it rubbed knowlingly, pausing and pressing, holding and pulling, drawing my cock away from my body at a pleasant angle. His cock in my hand felt like mine and it didn’t. I tried to listen to his breathing, to get his eyes to narrow in pleasure, to bring him closer to off.

Guy’s other hand rose to cup my balls, one finger pressed against my asshole, insinuating itself gently into my ass, burrowing. As I rubbed his cock faster and harder, I lost myself, lost the closet doors, lost the watching Elle, lost it all as I pushed myself onto Guy’s finger. I lost myself in his capable hands. I lost it, lost it all, lost it to pleasure, lost myself and lost control, lost in the swell and break of the pump-pump-pump of my pulse and the keening burn up and out of my cock.

Lost, I covered Guy’s belly with a white baker’s glaze of come. And Guy, watching me come, feeling my cock contract under his hands and my asshole around his finger, watching and feeling me come, came too, so as my orgasm’s meteoric rise subsided, his crescendoed. Like two well-timed fountains we came, first me and then him, shooting twin white streams of come.

And then, what? We kissed. I got a towel. We joked, said something banal. He dressed. I saw him to the door. We said we’d do it again. Post-coital platitudes. Hail, fellow, well met, that kind of thing.

The door shut behind Guy. In the narrow hall, I turned, and there was Elle, eyes blazing, face luminous, naked and white. She palmed my quiet cock, restive under my drawstring pants, and she said feverishly, “Fuck me now.”

How could I not? She was hot, wet-hot and waiting. She had been waiting for this, she said. She had wanted this, she said, she had thought of it. She had dreamt of it, fucking me after I had been fucked. She said she’d sat in the closet, her hand in her pussy, and she had watched. She had come, she said, she hoped she had been quiet.

I assured her she had been. She untied my pants, she slid them to the floor, she fumbled feverish.

She held my cock and she kissed my neck, biting it. She slipped her hands, more delicate than I’d ever remembered them feeling, around and under my cock;she tugged at my balls and she pulled at my cock and I felt it get hard.

“You were so fucking beautiful,” she said in my ear and she pulled me against her, flattening her back against the wall. Elle slid down the wall, her hands holding me like the clenched fingers of a drowning person. We fell to the floor.

She told me to fuck her. What choice did I have? What choice did I want? I slid my cock into her pussy like a hot knife into ice cream. I could feel her in, under and around me. She felt impossibly wet, impossibly swollen, impossibly open.

Elle’s hands gripped my hips, the same spot that Guy had touched just a little while ago. Her hands urged me on. Faster, her hands said, harder. More. The floor hard below my knees, Elle was soft under my body. Her hips rose to meet mine, again, again, more, and harder.

I could hear her begin to keen, that low mongrel-song that announced her coming. Her fingers dug into my ass with her urgency; she was below me, but she was fucking me, her hips bucking, hungry below me.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” Elle intoned aimlessly in my ear, and so I did. She opened around me, she flowered, she flowed, she burst and she sang a long string of meaningless vowels into the echoing hallway.

And in her song, I joined, letting loose as I could with someone I knew, someone I loved, someone who was different from me, but someone with whom I could share so much.

It’s a gift she gave me, you see. She knew what I wanted. She put a word to it, and she gave me permission. I thought I was doing it for her, that sloppy seduction of Guy. But I was doing it for me, you know what I mean?

So that’s the backstory, how Elle and I started experimenting, how we really came to know each other. It began with Guy. Yes, Guy was the first.

And you? Are you interested?

Would you like to be next?