The Lurid Sea Read online

  So I work up from my sundry dreams and patted the top of the old goat lapping away between my legs, unsurprised to find the familiar dull nubs of worn horns. Zotikos. An actual satyr. We had crossed paths before. I had long known I was not the only mythological creature who haunted the baths. Though they were exceptionally rare, particularly when my travels took me forward in time, I found their occasional presence reassuring. Magic happens. Nothing was routine in the couplings of men. I had seen Zotikos throughout the eons, usually wintering in the warm confines of European bathhouses. No doubt, he summered outside, in sylvan plains. Wherever I discovered him, he was bounding about, his long, speckled brown and pink penis erupting from the goatish white hair that plaited his thighs and hind legs. Only I could tell he possessed a tail he had neatly trimmed into a nub, so he could traverse the human world without notice.

  I shifted, and the old goat shot me a toothless grin and went back to work, the purplish knobs of his spine rolling with the ministrations of his mouth. I leaned back on my elbows and concentrated on the rare treat of pleasure given. The tongue that swabbed my tip might be gray but it was masterful, knowing, possessing a philosophical grip and a soulful surrender.

  I intuited that the randy beast dutifully wished to swallow. The taste of my semen induces madness, however, blinding mortals and even the mythic with an ecstasy that melts their suspicious minds with its lightning sincerity. I had to deny him. I had only made the mistake of allowing a partner to sup from my rod once before, back in a Grecian bathhouse, when I was new to my travels and this divine aspect of my sex was unknown to me. My stricken patron was kept by the bathhouse in question, a fool on a golden chain staked to the floor in the middle of a low-ceilinged basement. Patrons fed him and cooed after this lost soul while they gently fucked him, for he was granted a certain amount of my allure. On occasion, I would find myself back there. My presence would always elicit a frenzy of orgiastic behavior from him—drooling, shitting, and animalistic groveling—reminding me that humans are, above all else, fragile.

  With orgasm mounting, I gently pushed the satyr away with my blackened foot. The old goat was disappointed, but his mouth was still agape, hoping for a stray drop of semen. I wanted to both spare him madness and reward such a faithful servant. I stood above him, arching my back while working my member with lithe fingers. Head back and lips parted, with a swivel of my hips, I ejaculated a vigorous torrent of golden doves up into the air and when they plummeted back down caught the molten flock in my mouth.

  I swallowed with a dramatic gulp, smiled, and did a slight curtsy. The old goat literally fell over and struggled to right himself, blinking, unbelieving but knowing. He offered rowdy applause and the slow, polite bow one master gives to another maybe once or twice in a lifetime.

  Chapter Five

  Surrender Complete

  The sounds of Rome at night: the gallop of horses, the anxious and whispering feet of speeding messengers. The retching of drunks and the occasional, distant sob of an exhausted whore and her doorway paramour.

  My brother’s confident footsteps coming down the hall. I curled beneath my sheets into an even tighter ball, knowing he would mistake my position as that of ready plaything rather than fearful recoil. Until that night, I had thought his brusque brutality that of all boys entering manhood and about to don the toga virillus, not indicative of darker tastes. However, as we grew, I noticed more of our individual father’s attributes emerging from within us. I could hold my breath in the bath for quite a long time. For Obsidio, the occasional black sparrow would drop dead from his unwavering gaze.

  A bath previously drawn by Perseus, a hint of lavender in the cooling water to please me.

  The bumpy ride home in the palanquin had been a journey toward terror. I was unsure if I had left him behind or if my brother would somehow beat me home. I thought briefly of telling our mother but then recalled that she was out, that Perseus was in charge of the household and, absent him, my lethal brother. I shook as I cried. Silent slaves let the palanquin down softly. They probably assumed my whimpering was over some immature love affair or a paltry comeuppance between me and my brother. They stood quietly at attention while I remained frozen among the pillows within what amounted to a silken casket, for I had been carried to my doom. Surely, Obsidio would silence me to keep me from telling Mother about his deadly secret. That’s when I realized how valuable I was to him. Our shared maternal blood and immortal seed made me immune to his deadly semen. I was the only being on earth whose service he could enjoy more than once. I was the only one who knew how to please him. Everyone else was an inevitable victim, a roll of the dice in terms of whether he actually enjoyed the encounter, and if he did, it was never to be repeated. The guards opened the doors to our mansion, fortress-like in the torchlight. I entered, grimly aware of the role I must play.

  * * *

  His footsteps came to a stop, but he did not enter my room.

  I shivered to think he had moved on to additional prey in my absence. The entrance to the basement slave quarters was just down the hall.

  Never once had I thanked Perseus for the lavender.

  I let out a slight whimper, to tempt him, giving out the impression my sleep was troubled, that he could enter my dreams as easily as he could part my lips. If I could take enough of his seed, he would be too spent to visit others. I rolled and stretched in the bed as if stricken with nightmares, knowing my perceived terror would draw him in. The door opened. I could hear him circle my supine form. He pulled my sweat-soaked sheet away, and I gasped as he raked my chest with sharp nails. Pretending to be startled awake, I kicked against the mattress and ran my hands over my goose-fleshed skin, so sure was I his uncut nails had turned into ebony talons and that he had cut me, that I was bleeding.

  “Not yet, little one,” he whispered. “But I could make you bleed, if you’d like that.”

  The moonlight filtering through the window bounced off his slice of a smile. My room was Spartan, a few scrolls. In one corner a simple pedestal held an erotic amphora I had spied in the market one day and cried until Mother had purchased it for me, but not before she examined the gladiators entwined across its baked clay. With a finger, Obsidio tickled the bottom of my exposed feet.

  “What’s this? Sandy soles after a visit to the baths? Usually only your knees get dirty.” He chortled drily. His laughter always had this slight echo, as if reverberating in an unseen cave, a low place of cruel rites and panicked sacrifice.

  His toga dropped, and he arched his back, awaiting service. His body was icy marble in the darkness. An emerging tumescence beckoned. I flipped onto my stomach and swiveled to catch his cock in my mouth. Better to serve him than answer questions. I instinctively found his erection. Its stony hardness battered at my lips as I pretended to hesitate, to better provide him the mastery he craved. He sighed as I parted my lips and found his root with my tongue. He had not bathed since his visit to the Coliseum, and I tasted the sweat of other men, his own dried spore. And perhaps Perseus’s last breath.

  At that thought, I let out a brief cry, which he interpreted as the pain of submission and thrust deeper, harder. Movements made more to conquer than satisfy. I choked, tongue flat and eyes wide. Tears of vexation gathered at the corners of my eyes as I struggled against the onslaught. His thickness stretched my throat as I struggled to maintain some semblance of control, participation even. I meekly gripped his shaft to better assist his mounting orgasm, but he hissed the most serpentine noise and grabbed my wrists. Lissome hands pinned above my head, I relented. He leaned in to lick my tears. The bleak, utter coldness of his tongue, a genuine instrument of the underworld, burned my flesh. It was as if my face had brushed up against a dew-covered tombstone on a moonless winter’s eve. Invisible spiders raced across my body at the very thought. My willpower dissipated, and I limited my efforts to simply sucking, to receiving his demanding penis and erasing any reminder of my corporeal being. All mouth, my surrender complete, he let go of my hands, and I
clutched the back of his thighs to lock us together, the better to keep all of Rome safe. I had swallowed my pride, the pride of others, much salty semen, and the occasional lungful of pool water in my brief erotic life. Now I swallowed the darkness that could engulf so many others if I did not do a good enough job.

  * * *

  Mother would report Perseus as a runaway in the morning and have the rest of the household beaten, mostly in punishment for unspoken collusion in his escape, but also for a bit of sport.

  Chapter Six

  Ocean of Lust

  The line to enter the Baths of Caracalla was unusually long, and I was glad I had agreed to meet Publius beforehand. We were both excited and nervous, though Publius was able to relax a bit in his role of veteran, offering tidbits of advice. I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not when he told me to gargle with salt water and then suck on a lemon, a spectacular and expensive fruit recently introduced to Rome by eastern traders, so its potential medicinal powers were only now being discovered. I took his advice, meant to both massage my internal throat muscles and improve upon my pucker. I did both privately after a meager lunch, thinking even if it was a trick, it couldn’t hurt. I kept lunch down to a few figs and some Parthian bread, as I wanted my bowels empty. Though fucking was forbidden at the event, I wanted to be prepared lest I was taken by surprise.

  * * *

  The statue of a now-forgotten emperor loomed over the entrance like a disapproving tutor, admonishing his students for a lack of cleanliness. As this was the first time I had ever had to wait to gain entrée, I pondered the statue. The hands and head had been replaced. The faint necklace of a scar encircled the throat, barely concealed by peeling paint. An army of repurposed statues occupied Rome. When the rabble turns on an emperor, statues are pulled down during the ensuing riots. Less sturdy models lose a nose, and hands often break at the wrist. With order returned, typically after a desultory round of executions and perfunctory donations to the Praetorian Guard, with the senate having passed grandiose proclamations in support of whoever snatched the bloodied purple, said statues were rarely righted. For when the populace of Rome turns against its ruler, there is no going back. For example, I had never seen the likeness of Nero or Commodus. I was fascinated by both, as they were rumored to have the same predilections I had. What most considered egregious slander caused me to read every bit of gossip I could about their ruinous reigns. During his rule, Nero publicly married another man. I’ve not been able to locate the infamous panegyrics detailing the ceremony, though I have read that several prominent pathicus imitated the ritual to curry imperial favor, as did many others regardless of their actual preferences. The body of the statue above had most likely belonged to Caracalla, the fratricidal emperor assassinated while taking a piss along a dirt road in Turkey. His only lasting contribution to the empire, as far as I knew, was the construction of this beautiful bath, one of the architectural jewels of a city filled with bathhouses, public and private. Or so I was told in the caldarium one afternoon. We Romans love to cleanse ourselves while submitting to the dirtiest gossip imaginable. Though imported from ancient Greece, we improved and expanded upon the concept of the bathhouse to such a degree that we easily surpassed those modest civic efforts. Our public bathhouses could hold several thousand people, though the wealthiest had private baths installed in their homes. Our mansion in the city was old and the neighborhood built up, so thankfully this was not possible for our household. However, I was deeply disappointed that our villa in Baiae was expansive and modern, meaning it possessed the most luxurious bathing facilities available, placing the rumored profligate local bathhouse forever out of my reach.

  Once, when I was shopping with Mother for a statue to adorn the new fountain she was planning for the portico, I had caught her wrinkling her nose at an adorable Cupid the merchant had shown us. The shop contained a dusty army of philosophers and Olympians, as well as half-finished tombstones awaiting payment on the next installment, past due. In the confines of our curtained palanquin, I asked her why she had passed on what I thought was a delightful, spritely figure.

  “Because that was a statue of a very young Caligula, dear. Back when he was called Little Boots and adored by the army. After his assassination, his statues were tossed to the ground, but some enterprising artisan must have hauled one into his workshop, glued some wings to his back, and sanded off that infamous smirk. It’s been passed around as an antique ever since.” As the slaves hoisted us up, she smiled with a sense of self-satisfaction that would have rivaled anything that ever crossed Caligula’s face.

  “And besides, we don’t want him in our delightful garden. What does a dictator know about love?”

  I looked at my mother in a rare moment of admiration.

  Caligula. However, now our garden was trammeled by something much darker than a mere mercurial, moody, and very mortal emperor.

  * * *

  Publius and I made our way to the entrance beneath the shadow of the decapitated dictator. I thought again of Obsidio. I had been hesitant to leave him home alone and had barely stepped foot outside our house since that night at the Coliseum. I was as servile as possible toward my brother, and this morning had woken my dark sibling by taking his hard cock in my mouth while he was still asleep. He had barely acknowledged my service between his spread legs, grunting in his sleep as his satisfaction issued forth. Once again, after our morning exercises with the tutor, I studiously drained him in the library while he rested a scroll atop my head. I paid special attention to the glans, enough so that I felt him shift in appreciation as I gulped down a prodigious amount of seed. I visited his room after our Greek lessons, pretending interest in his sparse collection of scrolls until he noticed me and wordlessly beckoned me onto the bed with an impertinent nod of his head. There I played with his feet and toes and then licked his thighs. Working my way up, by the time I made it to his tunic, his penis had tentatively extended, like some hibernating animal seeking sustenance. I again took it in my mouth. While I sucked and teethed I prayed that, suitably depleted, he would drift off to sleep and that it would be safe for me to again leave him alone for the night.

  Chapter Seven

  The Threats of Desire

  Having arrived at the baths, the challenge to remain chaste until the Fellatiolympics was good cause to explore the reason I had started coming there in the first place, the public library. An amazing amount of knowledge was arrayed within these marbled halls. History, philosophy, poetry—so much was contained in the baths that, along with the shops and food stalls that connected the libraries, one could spend all day here luxuriating in the various pools hot and cold, with new ideas in reach and wine and food just around the corner. However, we were not interested in corners. Our next adventure was beneath the baths, hidden in basement chambers supporting the furnaces that made the heated waters of the caldarium possible. At first, time moved slowly. No scroll I pulled from the shelf could hold my attention. I tried not to study the men and guess who was here to take in a good soak and who was here to participate in the evening’s ceremonies. I spied foreign men who I had not previously seen at the baths but tried not to let my eyes linger on their equipment, in an attempt to store my erotic energy for what was to come.

  As the afternoon waned, I lost sight of Publius and grew concerned that he would think I had lost my nerve. I strolled around, hoping I was as conspicuous as possible so my friend would easily spot me. The baths were crowded as usual. The clamor of conversation reached a near roar around the more populated pools. I wanted to linger every time my eye caught a glimpse of a floating penis of interesting girth or length, but I needed to keep moving. In our excited chatter about the event, I had never bothered to ask exactly how I would gain entry, so I was relying on Publius. If he had lost nerve and left, all was lost. I slowly circled the outdoor pool. The shimmering mosaic at the bottom of the pool illustrated Pompey the Great’s victory over a pirate fleet. The tiled images of sea monsters gathered beneath the dangling feet
of resting swimmers. Dejected, I thought to take one last plunge before heading home. Suddenly Publius put a hand on my shoulder. Relieved, I smiled. He motioned with his eyes for me to look up. The sky had darkened and attendants were lighting torches. I knew that certain columns concealed doorways that the bathhouse attendants used to access the areas below the facilities. A discreet stream of men and boys slipped behind the blue shadows of the columns. Publius took my hand and we followed. The games had begun.

  The Fellatiolympics. Rich, ecclesiastical incense clung to the ceiling of the winding corridor, curving around the brick, rounding it out until I felt as if we were being ushered down into a cave where a sibyl would speak of our futures. Beneath the main furnaces of the hypocaust, the massive heating system, lay a warren of tunnels as well as a large ancillary room where the Fellatiolympics was hosted every Lupercalia. A tall, thin eunuch with an appropriately droopy, bulbous nose knowingly divined who was here to serve and who was to be serviced, silently separating the herd of men with nothing more than a raised eyebrow beneath a phallus-shaped headpiece. His own clipped testicles, tanned into leather pouches and filled with magical spices, hung so low from his wizened ears that they grazed his shoulders.