Semen and Cigarettes

I was gay for about two years starting around 2002. I had graduated high school in 2001, and sallied forth into university life with an open mind and a free spirit, my whole life ahead of me. It was a time of change for me – my high school girlfriend and I broke up, and I was meeting new people, making new friends. Eighteen and legally able to drink, I started going to bars and parties and, newly single and with the social awkwardness of high school largely removed I began to experiment sexually with strangers.
My first sexual encounter with a man happened on the night we celebrated my nineteenth birthday. My friends and I had been out for dinner and I was drunk. We had wound up at some sleazy dance bar; the kind of place that plays songs from Grease remixed with a dance beat under them. I was drinking vodka oranges, I seem to recall. Dancing, I placed my drink with many others on one of the small high tables that punctuated the dance floor, only to see someone stagger over and immediately drink it. “Hey” I shouted, struggling to make myself heard above the music. “What are you doing? That’s my drink!” I was met with an uncaring sneer as he reached for another. Still filled with the morals of primary school, the lesson that violence is never the answer, and not yet confident enough in myself to be involved in any kind of fist fight I skulked away annoyed. I returned alone to the table upstairs where my friends and I had left our coats and bags and so on, thinking that if drinks weren’t safe on the dance floor, what manner of crime must be being perpetrated against my undefended jacket.
I glowered alone in the dark, and after a time I was joined by a good looking young ethnic in a pink polo-shirt. I thought at the time that a friend had introduced us, but in retrospect I’m not so sure. He sat close to me, our thighs touching, and we made small talk, him asking about what I did and so on. He stretched his arm out along the back of the seat, then after a time he asked me to kiss him. I laughed it off and told him I wasn’t gay. He seemed surprised. “C’mon, just kiss me, nobody can see.” I told him I was flattered but I just wasn’t gay. After a while my friends returned and he stormed off.
Cheered up somewhat by the comedy of the experience I resumed my drinking, enjoying myself. I didn’t see him again till nearly three in the morning when the crowed was starting to thin out. He was standing near the bathroom door, and for a moment our eyes locked as I went in to have a piss. I was standing at the urinal, my pants undone when he banged the door open and came in. He stood close, his arm around me and looked at my dick. “Just kiss me” he said. “Nobody’s looking.” I smiled. “Just suck my dick.” I laughed. “I’ll suck your dick.” He began to pull me into the cubical, and I laughingly pulled away, but not hard. I allowed myself to be led. He sat me on the toilet and stroked my dick. I was hard. He dropped to his knees and sucked me to climax. I laughed the whole time, but it felt good. When it was over I let him kiss me. He tasted of semen and cigarettes.
The next day was the first morning of the mild queasy hangover that would last me almost two years. I could eat, but any more than a little and I’d feel ill. I struggled with my sexuality for a few weeks. Women no longer interested me sexually, but men had gained new appeal. I like strong jaws and wiry muscled arms. I lost weight. My friend Will, a bisexual, took me to a club where men danced shirtless and gave each other handjobs and blowjobs on the dance floor. I lost myself in that orgy of sweating flesh, my own body being poked and prodded with the same probing hands I used to explore the crevices and bludges of my compatriots. It was like a drug to me, a feeling of unmitigated ecstasy. I realised then I couldn’t go back. I was a total homo.
I spent the next few weekends exploring that club and others like it, and soon I had a posse of queers of my own. Carl was a twenty year old Swedish boy with blond hair and blue eyes. Formerly a professional soccer player, he was in Australia at the whim of his boyfriend Alistair, a millionaire in his fifties with Robert Redford good looks that Carl and met on the internet. Their large apartment was right on the waterfront, and Alistair’s yacht was berthed outside. Jason was as mincing a faggot as you can imagine, who squealed and pranced and drank a case of Redbull daily. He’d grown up in the country, a solid farmer’s lad and moved to the city at age nineteen to study. He told us that the bright lights and busy streets had gone to his head a little. We all fucked each other the first night we met, and from that point on were inseparable.
Much of the next two years for me is a whirlwind of Redbull and vodka, base notes and bright lights. Girls can be sluts and some men are womanisers, I know that, but nothing in the straight world can approach the life of a young and horny gay man in the club scene. We had no prejudice for young or old, for weight or colour. Fidelity means nothing. Gay is an apt term for homosexuality, because that’s what it was; an experiment in joy. No cares, no consequences: physical pleasure is all. In the fog of smoke machines my friends and I fucked and sucked our way across Melbourne, the older men keeping the vodka and Redbulls flowing, getting far more back in return. From each according to his ability. For a while I worked at Alistair’s company, and insurance brokerage specialising in the gay community, where every memo was a string of innuendos. I had a string of boyfriends, but the longest and the last was Nick. Five years my senior, he was balding and a little overweight, but I liked him. We were interested in the same things. We hung out at his house, watched movies, played video games and sucked each other off.
Toward the end of 2004 my friend Allan, who I had known for a decade or more, announced that he was getting married and asked that I be a groomsman. He rented a resort up in the mountains for a long weekend, and as it was off season for skiing we had the place more or less to ourselves. The bridal party and close friends arrived on the Friday night, with other well wishers arriving over the next few days for the wedding and reception on the Sunday. Jason, Carl and I drove up in Carl’s Mazda MX5, a small Japanese convertible. Nick had to work, but was to follow on Sunday morning.
We arrived after dark and found the bridal party lounged around an open fire laughing and drinking cocktails. One of the bridesmaids drew my eye immediately. Sophie. She was a model. Thin, but with a full bust and a round behind. Soft blue eyes and thin blonde hair. Her skin was paper white, her cheeks a little flushed from the fire and the drinking. I supposed I lusted after her then, but didn’t admit it to myself, confused by my homosexuality. I certainly knew she was beautiful. I appreciated her as a work of impeccable genetics.
As the weekend continued I found myself often in her company. She laughed at my jokes. We played scrabble together. I was charming and flirtatious, I suppose, and so was she, although I wasn’t conscious of it at the time. It just felt natural. The wedding came and went. At the reception I was seated with Sophie on table one, Nick off with the other gays on the floor someplace. Jason staggered over around midnight and told me Nick had thrown up from the champagne and gone to bed. The guest drifted off into little groups.
One o’clock found me and handful of others nude and frolicking in the unlit resort pool. In the deep end Sophie and I kissed, and my hands explored her naked body. Her soft stomach. Her heavy breasts with their hard nipples. Stealing towels we went back to her room and made love, her vagina warm and wet around my dick. I’d been drinking for nearly eight hours, bottle after bottle of champagne, but my erection was ramrod straight and painful in its intensity. The shudder of her climax shook me. The smell of her hair. Her skin. Her feminine juices.
It was almost five when I snuck back naked through the hotel corridors to my room. Nick lay there naked on our bed, a doughy sack of skin and hair, with stretch marks across the bloated belly that sagged over his shrivelled penis. I went to the bathroom and my stomach churned. I leaned into the toilet to throw up. The smooth mush of dinner came first (I had the chicken), diluted by and still fizzing with the champagne. I wretched coughing and spewing out mouthfuls of bitter fluorescent yellow bile. Next was the mucus: deep brown, traces of blood, the flavour not so bad, sort of sweet. I leaned against the wall, out of breath before one final wretch. The last mouthful of vomit was pure black. Not much of it, maybe a shot glass full, but with the appearance and consistency of crude oil.
My body voided I found myself filled with an energy and exuberance I hadn’t known in years. I felt vital and healthy. I was conscious of my movements. Of my beating heart and the warmth of my blood as it circulated around my body. I walked, revelling in the stretch and contraction of every muscle. With no desire to rest and with the rest of the world still sleeping, I slipped naked out of the resort and into the surrounding woods. The crisp morning breeze was cool and pleasant on my skin. The birds were singing, heralding the dawn. After a time I found myself on a rocky outcrop overlooking the entire valley. I sat a while and watched the sun rise from behind the opposing mountain range.
The sun risen I continued to walk, coming upon a small, clear mountain stream. I scooped up a handful of the icy water to rinse my mouth, trying to wash out the taste of that last mouthful of vomit - the taste of semen and cigarettes.