The Lurid Sea Read online

  The rotund young man recovered and squatted nearby, his mouth open, offering my tall man a choice. He pulled both our heads together and we lapped at his shaft in unison. This dual action brought him to climax as we competed to devour every drop of semen. The young man signaled his eagerness to suck me as well, but I waved him away. He nodded in complete understanding and moved on to help himself to a new arrival. However, the steam was on the wane, and snoring redoubled throughout the room. Time for me to take my reluctant leave.

  * * *

  Perseus handed me my toga in the changing room. As I dressed, the young man from before came in naked, wet and shivering from a dip in the frigidarium. As he toweled himself off, I noticed he kept glancing over at me. Not knowing what to do, I smiled, curious about someone who shared my rapacious predilections. He styled his hair in the oddly endearingly though very outdated Cesarean fashion, though he had no impending baldness to disguise, as far as I could tell.

  He shuffled on his sandals next to me and blurted out, “I am studying law.”

  I could not think of an appropriate response, so I said, “I study anatomy.”

  Cheeks blossoming, he smiled and tilted his head back toward the steam room. “Then I’ll see you in class.”

  After that, my perspective of the baths changed. No longer did I view myself as a magical nymph afloat within a sea of men. I had competition, friendly or otherwise. Some of my fellow pathicus knew each other and some were coldly cordial, while others were fiercely competitive, blocking one another’s view of the finer specimens. I discovered a tantalizing range of tastes: men who stole glances at other men’s feet, youths who stared at men old enough to be their grandfathers, pert pink erections breaking the surface of green water. Sodomy was a strong thirst for many, one that was more prevalent among certain nationalities, or they were just less circumspect, judging from how friends and colleagues would openly assess the bodies of young athletes while getting massaged or sharing wine. The less discreet cocksuckers, however, were quite a school of sharks. One dandy cruelly tripped another as he rushed out of the swimming pool in a frenzy, hypnotized by the long member wagging between a giant Gaul’s legs. This was a world within a world, a cunning, quite secret society of looks, gestures, and asides. A language of glances and silent understanding. So I started paying attention to the graffiti scrawled in the toilet stalls, sheepishly looking for my name, for public praise, banners proclaiming my abilities. There I was surprised to learn that “The slave Perseus, ass no longer tight, sucks and sucks with all his might.” A rival, and so close to home! Well, the Baths of Caracalla held men by the hundreds, so there was enough to go around. Every time we visited, I saw the plump student, Publius. By then we had introduced ourselves, him wryly stating that when his parents had named him, little did they know how his mouth would indeed be “public” property someday. I left my heritage unstated. The webbing between my toes tended to recede whenever a large number of mortals were present. We acknowledged each other, briefly chatting, but both of us were focused on our duty—nay, our purpose.

  * * *

  One sultry afternoon, hot and rainy, the baths had yet to fill up, though within the first hour, I gleefully consumed the cum of two strapping young blond brothers, who were eager to feed me at the same time. I was cherishing the memory of their dueling swords pushing against my cheeks while soaking in one of the hotter tubs when Publius slipped into the tepidarium I occupied.

  “So you’ve had the brothers Califrax. Tasty morsels each. Hard to tell them apart, though I think one of them grunts where the other groans.”

  At first, I was annoyed he had interrupted my respite, much less with the announcement that I had just eaten from a dish the lawyer-in-training had already licked clean.

  “How many times have you had them?” I whispered conspiratorially.

  “Only once.” He shimmied closer.

  “They only ever take to someone once, though I think they bugger each other when they can’t find fresh relief. Imagine that, brothers…” I immediately thought of Obsidio, how of every cock I had thus far tasted, his was the one that fit my mouth just so, like a muscle removed from my own body and achingly returned. I blushed and submerged my head under water to wash the thought away. I rose and shook droplets from my hair. Publius was close enough that I could smell watered-down wine on his breath. He glanced down into the pool and stared at the fleshy minnow bouncing between my legs.

  “So. Do men do this anywhere else in Rome?” I said, redirecting his eyes to my face.

  He blinked and looked back up.

  “Yes, all over the place. I went to the Coliseum once, late at night. I heard that willing gladiators would lean against a column if they were interested, but all of the ones I approached wanted money.”

  “So…”

  “So I paid for it!” He laughed and dunked his head under water.

  I thought he was going to make another move on me, so I crossed my legs, but he rose instead, spurting water out of his mouth.

  “But I like coming here instead. Here if there’s no action, at least I get in a good swim.”

  With that he launched into a leisurely backstroke and I didn’t see him again until we were both on our knees in the steam room, side by side, in fraternal cadence.

  * * *

  Publius and I grew closer over the months. One afternoon, Mother held Perseus back to attend to her before a particularly significant banquet on the Palatine Hill, so I was able to go to the baths unaccompanied. Obsidio never went, as he despised people and found the large, open-air swimming pool especially repellent, as it was a place of sun and exercise. He preferred to watch wrestling or stand in the shadows during slave auctions. At the Baths of Caracalla, while my friend and I were both getting our skin scraped and oiled by masseuses, he casually asked if I was going to attend one of the many festivities held during the evening of Lupercalia. I thought he meant the circuses set up near the open-air markets and told him I had long ago outgrown any interest in trained animals or acrobats. He guffawed.

  “I’m talking about a different kind of acrobatics. Surely you’ve heard of the Fellatiolympics.”

  I shook my head. My eyelids were heavy with sleep. My face had been pummeled beforehand by quite the variety of cock, so I was ready for a nap.

  He shot up and waved the masseuses away.

  “By the gods above and below, you don’t know what I am talking about, do you? This is the event, here, in the chambers beneath the caldarium. A contest for all of the best cocksuckers in Rome! Real beauties offer themselves up, the best meat in the city, swinging enormous serpents between their legs and the like, all administered and judged by the high priests of Priapus. The winner is awarded a crown of pearls, naturally.”

  He looked around conspiratorially and lowered his voice.

  “Look, I’ve never been before, but I’m told the competition is so intense that the heat pouring off the bodies of the participants condenses on the roof and drips down on everyone’s heads.”

  His voice dropped to a whisper.

  “It’s said that at that point, even the gods cum.”

  I rolled back over on my stomach, to better conceal my fledgling erection.

  * * *

  After Publius’s tale, I left the baths restless, and I ordered my litter to swing by the Coliseum. I hadn’t been to the games since I was a young child. My mother despised the rabble and I loved my scrolls, so it had been quite some time since I had stood within its damning shadow. I was impressed and a bit intimidated by the massive structure, made all the more ominous by torchlight in the night.

  The panting slaves gladly set the palanquin down, and I alighted onto the dusty road. I could already make out figures lingering between the thick columns. Men are always men, lust a permanent, driving force. A variety of males, including impatient members of the Praetorian Guard, off duty and drunk, all stood beneath the arches, outnumbered by the stooped men groveling for their sex. This cadre came in a variet
y of ages, sizes, and stations, yet all were equal in their desire to serve. I wove between graffitied columns, marble adorned with etched proclamations of love and curses cast on enemies long dead in every language of the empire. The sweaty shoulders and backs of these soldiers worked quietly to erase said claims of immortality as men moaned beneath them. The sounds of so much sucking and fucking wafted through the Coliseum’s antechambers like steady waves lapping the walls of a brackish grotto. Enraptured, I loosened my toga, nearly intent to run naked through the columns, drunk on the noise, the smells of sexual congress, so different from the baths, yet so similar.

  Here men gathered in pools of shadow and made their own steam.

  A large, broad-shouldered man marched slowly toward me. I could tell he was from the provinces by his bad haircut and oafish sandals. His flat nose betrayed the occupation of a wrestler. His tunic was short. He pulled at the barely concealed bulge beneath it and gave me a hard, cold look, silently commandingly my complete and utter servitude. I demonstratively swallowed, hoping to appear more fearful than I felt, having learned in the baths that some men scoff at the willing while hungry for the demure. I nodded consent with a feigned hesitancy. He turned to the darkness, and I followed. His calves were like melons, his haunches those of a well-worked stallion. I raced after him as he swiveled his head back and forth, searching for a corner to call our own. He stopped beneath a low archway, spread his legs, and lifted his tunic over a wide leather belt. Even in the darkness, I could see his sneer of pride. His cock was that magnificent, an expansive muscle that opened like a giving hand, holding an orb of the most precious, veined porphyry marble, pink and polished. My lips parted involuntarily as I sank to my knees and breathed in his animal musk, nestling my cheek against the lush pubic forest that burst forth around his now-quivering totem. He sighed and relaxed against the wall as I grasped the large, rough big toe of each foot, the better to steady myself. He filled my mouth fully. I choked down his length while teething on the perfect, plump head, a salty effluence already leaking from the puckered tip. His large hand rested atop my skull. Flat, simian fingertips dug into my brow comfortably as he regulated my speed of service. Occasionally, he would pop his penis out of my mouth and slap away the excess saliva across my cheeks. I used such reprieves to gasp for air, correct my position, and swallow hard to better clear the path for re-entry. At one point, his considerable thumb began to stroke my eyebrow as his breathing turned quick and shallow, and I correctly interpreted this to mean he was near release. Just as this thought entered my head, he flooded my mouth with a charge of salty, milky cream, a continuing, forceful surge. I gulped it down as my own little soldier spurted involuntarily on the sand between his legs. He collapsed onto the ground, exhausted. His weight pulled me down and forced my face into the dirty sand, my semen smearing into my closed eyes as I coughed.

  He reached out and pulled my toga up across my torso and lightly massaged my ass as cum continued to issue forth from his flagging cock. Sated, he exhaled deeply and sank farther to the ground, his legs extending to either side of my body. A snore issued from out the thick pout of his mouth. I stood, dusted myself off, and left him there to be robbed of whatever paltry coins weighted down his purse.

  * * *

  My body, drunk on sperm and emancipated by sexual exertion, hummed its own song as I made my way through the columns, wondering where my litter had been parked. My slight nipples were erect, my palms sweaty. The sand beneath my feet felt as if it were about to give way, as if I danced within a swirling hourglass, the ground about to open up to exciting escapades. The air was intoxicating, so different from the atmosphere of the baths, with its impounded smells of men and oils, the din of conversation resounding throughout. This was a new playground. One of many. I wondered what other erotic arenas existed throughout the city. Torchlight flickered off the archways above as two drunken youths hung off one another, their disheveled togas soiled with spilt wine, laughing and kissing as they sought deeper shadows. What other alleys and avenues attracted such activities throughout the city? What other locations and erotic secrets had Publius yet to reveal? Better yet, what did he not yet know? I realized this was happening all over the empire. Everywhere men congregated, men fucked, men sucked, men grunted, men sighed. If I ever happened to fancy a certain race, I needed only travel to that corner of the world to satisfy my tastes. What books had been written about my particular practice? Were entire libraries dedicated to vice? A sense of adventure brimmed within. I would branch out, explore, spread my budding wings and make the world mine.

  Light-footed, I was practically skipping, I felt so blissful and carefree, when I tripped over the prone body at my feet. I landed forcefully and wrong, knocking the wind out my lungs. I gulped air and flipped over on my back to push myself away from the cold, inert form. I had touched enough clammy, cold flesh to know this wasn’t an unconscious drunk or freshly mugged tourist.

  This was a dead body.

  The lifeless eyes staring back at me belonged to our servant, Perseus.

  His blue, parted lips were smeared with a clotting black wax only I could recognize: the mark of Obsidio. What would, at some sad, future point, be called Pluto’s Kiss.

  Chapter Four

  Magic Happens

  The locker room was empty. A dank citrine of fog, the lingering stench of bleach and cum assailed my nostrils as I stepped out of the sauna. Two older men in saggy underwear chatted in low voices among the dimpled and oft-painted lockers, their body hair in electric cameo from the red light of the Exit sign. They did every subtle maneuver imaginable to look me over without appearing to look me over. Otherwise, the bathhouse appeared to be nearly deserted.

  Full, empty, the midnight frenzy of men and the boys-who-are-just-now-only-men, their furtive steps into the locker room, the loudly dropped keys and embarrassingly hard cocks poking out of fearfully gripped towels low on lanky hips, trapping the sweaty aroma of poorly wiped asses, or the calculating bathhouse veterans, stationed near the door at five o’clock to assess the latest numbers as the after-work crowd streams in. The attendant staff circulates. Tanned and bored shirtless towel boys in tight red shorts with perfect hair stand beside an empty bin, comparing biceps, coveting the fact that they are being coveted. They tell their girlfriends when they get home just how sick and perverted some of these men are, how much they miss their girlfriends while they commit drudgery. The boys neglect to inform their girlfriends about how their former high school swim team coach comes to the baths every Saturday. Their version of overtime entails taking turns with ankles in the air, cold whistle grazing hot chest, sly laughter and deep, probing kisses, as if his tongue were trying to reach back into time and reclaim the first time he saw them raise their arms to dive—I value any and all scenarios.

  Just as happy to ford vacant halls for a change, I strode naked and sweaty, stretching as I walked, breathing in the stillness. I absorbed the quietude of an abandoned barracks, a place for men absent of men, but their essence remained. Smells, impressions, shadows, all hung like malevolent, rain-soaked capes from invisible hooks.

  Walking through the cement halls was like performing a silent ballet. I wanted to skip and launch into a light run, to remain alive and vibrant until the men I require arrived. To run until I danced, danced until I dove off a cliff, returning to the dark ocean of my lineage. Instead, I chose to take a nap. Finding an unlocked cabin with a heap of damp towels, I made a nest. And of course, while I slept, I sucked my thumb.

  And dreamt.

  Oh, how I dream. Dreams so different from childhood: Those landscapes were traced by fear and literature. The fingerprints of mighty myths, stories told by tutors and slaves, were pressed into my nighttime imagination. The terror of looming adults, thunder and thwarted need informed the nightmares that bubbled up into cries my wet nurse tried to stop with a tired tit. Now my dreams are so much like my waking world that more than once I laughed aloud, disturbing the owner of the cock placed between my sleeping li
ps. Even when I take a rest, men come to me. I am often woken by the needy caress of a hefty erection nudging about my face. I recall how I had to apply myself with even more zeal than usual to appease that particular fellow, as if my amusement were directed toward him when really, it was the realization that he was a conscious being and not the imaginary feeder of my permanent lust. The surrounding sweaty delirium was so delicious as to seem unreal. Many times, I had to reassert tongue to cock and tighten my hold on the calves before me to reassure these dreamy paramours. And to reassure myself. Conversely, I have woken teething at the very air, lips parted and tongue out, the vivid dream of a scarred and muscled centurion unloading in my throat so real, so physically believable, that I rose mid-swallow to better engulf the imaginary penis stabbing my wanton mouth. Now, though, a silent, assertive licking between my thighs caused me to stir. Some old goat had slipped into my cabin and knelt quietly, lifting the skirt of my towel to sup at my divine cock.

  My penis is neither tiny nor impressive. It is an adequate aqueduct of urine should my bowels process the occasional water I accidentally imbibe from the pools and showers. I reach orgasm only rarely, through the culmination of an intensely hot scene, when I have returned to a favorite bathhouse in Japan or Turkey, for instance. It is always hard for me not to cum at the Continental Baths in New York City. The glittering music there is maddeningly arousing, the men somehow different, their collective energy the zeitgeist of lust. Music! The silver bells of automated human hearts beat throughout the dance floor. Plus, the Continental is one of the few saunas with rooftop access, affording me a most infrequent view of that oceanic tapestry, the sky. I miss the stars, though the constellations are something of a painful reminder of my family tree. But the city. Oh, that city. New York City. Of course it is “new.” It vanquishes Rome with its size, the teeming masses. From above I see that chariots have been automated, with glowing eyes and strange blares of lament whenever they gather in large numbers, which is often. A diadem of light seen from Olympus, no doubt.