During my second and third years at University, I realised how meaningless the labels "gay", "straight" and "bisexual" are.  Until then I'd always considered myself as firmly belonging to the almost overwhelmingly large group of males who regard themselves as unquestionably straight, and who are perhaps a little smug at finding themselves in such an uncomplicated state.  But during those couple of years, a few things happened to me which at first made me doubt that assumption and eventually dismiss the whole idea of categorising a person on the grounds of what they consider attractive as utterly absurd.

Beauty, and a person's response to it, is so malleable and so fluid that to say that I find, for example, red roses beautiful today and will therefore always find them so is simply ridiculous.  I have an inquisitive mind, my tastes change and my attention moves to other things; sometimes, in certain moods, maybe pink roses will be more my thing.

One particular incident had a big impact on me and I think eventually led to me coming out of the closet, at least to myself, as being "not heterosexual".  I eased myself out of one group and found that I had no immediate urge to mentally place myself among another: I just accepted myself as being "me", whatever that happened to be at any particular moment.

It was late in the Autumn and I'd just started dating a girl who would, even during this time of change and evolution, become very special to me.  She was called Katherine, though she preferred her name to be shortened to Kaz, and she lived a few blocks away from me in the University accommodation at Southampton .

We were only a few weeks into our relationship: riding on the crest of a wave of screwing as often as we could and just beginning to fall in love with each other.

Much to our mutual irritation, she'd arranged, before we'd started getting serious, that her parents would come down for the weekend to visit her.  Our courses, particularly mine, gave us so little free time, that weekends were precious; so having to share one with her folks was not entirely welcome.

Having said that, they turned out to be nice people and it wasn't exactly a chore to meet them.  They also seemed to adore me - blatantly and unashamedly regarding me as the perfect potential husband for their daughter - and so spending time with them was quite enjoyable.  They laughed at even the lamest jokes I made, found my stories about Norway unfeasibly fascinating, bought me lots of drinks and even invited me up to Keighley, with Kaz of course, to join them for a family Christmas.  I lapped it up.

The problem with them, just because it happened to interfere with my sex life, was their devout Catholicism.  Kaz and I had got into the routine of staying together most nights but that turned out to be virtually impossible with her parents sleeping on inflatable mattresses in her kitchen.  I don't think they quite believed that Kaz was still the blushing virgin, but they almost certainly deemed that we wouldn't have yet done the wicked deed so early in our relationship.

I remember saying, "I'll just say goodnight when you do and we'll turn in together.  If we're totally cool about me staying over with you, what else can they do but just accept it."

Kaz didn't like it.  "No.  It'll upset them, Seb.  They won't say anything, but they'll be hurt."

"If I'm going to come up at Christmas, they'll have to grin and bear it then..."

"No, you'll be sharing with Michael.  My brother."

"Oh."

We went quiet for a while.

Then I suggested, "Look, why don't I make as if I'm going back to my room, yawning and saying I'm looking forward to a nice book before bedtime, and then sneak back in when they've gone to sleep."

She considered the idea.  I could see she wanted me in bed with her as much as I wanted to be next to her.

After a few minutes, she said, "I've a better idea.  Why don't you climb up on the roof outside and get in through my bedroom window."

"This isn't fucking 'Romeo and Juliet'."

She grinned and then crooned, emphasizing her Yorkshire accent, "Aw, Seb.  It'd be so romantic, like!"

I laughed and then put on a camp voice.  "You know what I'm like with heights, though.  I'd have one of my funny turns."

She smiled but then became more serious.  "No, really.  I'm not joking.  If you sneak in through the door and they catch you they'd be really pissed off.  They'd see it as complete disrespect of their religion.  You've got to come in through the window.  Seriously."

"What if they hear me?"

She shook her head.  "They won't realise there's a roof outside my window.  And once you're in, well we'll just have to keep things pretty... ah... quiet..."

I smiled.  "All right..."

And so that's how ended up sitting on the flat roof outside of Kaz's bedroom window at two o'clock in the morning one Saturday night in mid-November.  Shivering and cursing her for accepting one last drink from them in the kitchen after I'd supposedly turned in for bed.

I could hear them talking and became more and more irritated that their conversation seemed to be showing no signs of abating.  The curtain kept flapping through the open kitchen window, sucked outwards and then blown inwards by the cold wind.

I wandered along the roof of the building - the top of the laundrette which adjoined the residence - from the wall which I'd climbed up to the one at the opposite end, past the darkened windows of a multitude of students' rooms and shared kitchens.  Then I walked back again.  Pacing up and down along the length of the roof, listening to the chat from Kaz's kitchen every time I walked near it.

"Just say goodnight and go to fucking bed," I was thinking.  Surely she'd noticed I hadn't brought my jacket and was hardly dressed for standing outside like this?  The thought of climbing down the wall and going back to my own, warm and cosy, room kept occurring to me but I kept dismissing it.  She'd say goodnight soon.  She had to.

Then, as I was walking along the length of the roof, trying to keep warm, I heard a voice I recognised coming from inside one of the rooms as I passed it.

It was guy's voice; a deep voice.  He was asking, "Do you want a coffee, then?"

I wondered how I knew him.

I'd have kept walking past, ignoring it, if the person he was talking to hadn't replied, "I'd prefer your cock."

I stopped.  Primarily because the second voice was also that of a male.

I went back to the window and looked in through the gap in the curtains.

I could see the first guy, looking down at the second guy who was sitting on his bed.  Both of them were grinning.

The first guy was tall and had short black hair.  His face was masculine and handsome, with a short growth of stubble on his cheeks and chin.  I realised that I vaguely knew him from one of the veterinary modules I'd taken in my first year.  He played football on the University team and had a really hot girlfriend with tits like melons.  She was called Katie.  What the hell was he called?

He kept grinning and said, "I could throw in a Snickers..."  His voice betrayed the fact he was feeling very slightly uncomfortable.

The second guy reached up to the first guy's groin and fondled around the front of his jeans.  He said, "I didn't come up for coffee and biscuits... and neither did you by the feel of things down here..."

The first guy grinned more broadly.  After a couple of seconds of silence in which the other guy started making masturbatory movements against his crotch, he said, "Jesus - you don't mess about, do you!"

I assumed that this must be a joke between them; that they were, perhaps, mates from school or something.  Guys who hadn't met up in a while but were used to pissing around together.

But, even though they were grinning, their manner seemed too serious for them to be that: it was jovial but with a distinctly awkward undertone: like this was the genuine flirting of two people who had just met.

Then I remembered his name: it was Rod.

What the hell was he doing pissing around with another guy when he had a girlfriend who guys would queue up to fight for?  Jesus, what I'd have given for a date with her if she and Rod parted...

The second guy stood up and embraced him.  At first they just hugged, and I noticed Rod seemed uncertain about what to do with his hands.  Then, after a few seconds, the second guy moved his face in front of Rod's and gently kissed his lips.  It wasn't exactly intense mouth-to-mouth, but there was a lot more to it than just a quick peck.

This definitely wasn't two guys messing about.

Rod pulled away and laughed nervously.  He said, "Sorry, mate... I just..."

The other guy said, "This isn't, like, your first time with a guy...?"

"No, no.  It's just... you know... still a bit new..."

The second guy moved towards him again and ran his fingers through Rod's hair.

His voice was low and soothing.  "It's okay... we don't have to do anything..."

"No - I want to!"  Rod's tone was too urgent, his eyes imploring.  The two of them looked at each other and Rod's expression softened.  He smiled.  "Sorry.  I don't mean to sound like I'm scared or anything.  I just find the kissing and stuff a bit... well... kind of weird!"

The second guy moved his hand down Rod's face, caressing it gently.  I heard the slight scraping sound made by his fingers against Rod's stubble.

He kept his voice gentle, almost a whisper.  "You're more used to doing this kind of stuff with girls?"

Rod kept back from him, his body language wary even though his expression was soft and relaxed.  He said, "Yeah... I guess..."

The other guy smiled and leaned forward to peck his lips again.  "We'll take it as slow as you like, Rob..."

After the kiss, Rod grinned broadly.  His teeth were almost perfect and his smile warm and genuine.

He said, "My name's Rod, actually."

The other guy looked embarrassed.  "Oh.  Shit.  Sorry.  That kind of broke the mood."

Rod laughed.  "It doesn't matter.  It was difficult to hear anything over the music in there.  I didn't catch anything of your name."

The other guy laughed.  "It's Charlie."

They'd obviously met in a nightclub.  Maybe one of the gay clubs on St Mary's Road.  I imagined Rod sneaking off from his mates; them assuming he'd gone back to Katie's or laid some babe; him sneaking over to Edge or Magnum to pick up a guy.

Charlie said, "Maybe a coffee would be nice, actually."

Rod grinned.  "A couple of cans would be even better..."  Charlie nodded as Rod walked towards the door.  "I've got a six pack in the fridge."

"And elsewhere..."

Rod put on an effeminate voice.  "Oooh you are a one!"  They both laughed and Rod popped out of the room.

Charlie sat on the bed and looked at himself in the mirror which was on Rod's desk opposite him.  He had an attractive, boyish face, with deep blue, thoughtful eyes.  Unlike Rod's, his face was smooth with only the lightest evidence of stubble on his cheeks and chin.  His hair was bleached blond and looked like it was naturally brown or maybe auburn.

He sat for a few seconds, staring intensely at himself in the mirror as if wondering what he'd got himself into.

"Seb!"  A voice whispered loudly from the side of me.  Kaz's voice.

Charlie looked towards the window and I ducked out of the way.

I walked back along the roof to the window out of which Kaz was leaning, past the kitchen in which Rod was pulling his beers out from the fridge.

As I approached, she whispered, "What were you doing along there?"

She ducked back into her room and I climbed through the open window.  "I was watching girls get undressed.  It turns me on."

She giggled.  "I thought you said you had good eyesight... that's a guys' flat."

I managed to knock her desk lamp against the wall as I climbed over her desk.  The light went off momentarily and then back on.

"It was dark.  And an arse is an arse, whoever it belongs to..."

"Oh that's great," she laughed.  "My boyfriend spies on other guys' arses... not quite the perfect potential husband now, are you?"

I jumped onto the bed with her and groped her arse.  "Yours is pretty nice, but not up to the standard of the guys next door..."  She giggled and tried to push me away.

I kept grabbing her arse and she kept trying to push me off, both of us laughing like little kids.  Then, just as I was getting hard, the bedsprings started creaking loudly and she stopped us with an abrupt "Shhhh!"

I looked at her quizzically and she whispered, "Remember my parents are just down the hall..."

"Aw, come on.  They can't hear us..."

"No, seriously.  You'll have to make do with spying on naked guys for tonight.  If they hear us it'll be awful.  Christmas will be off for both of us..."

We got undressed.  As I pulled off my briefs she smiled at my stiff cock, arching upwards in all its eight-inch glory.

I looked down at it and gave it an affectionate squeeze, retracting the foreskin fully to reveal my bulbous, red bell-end.  I said, lamentfully, "It'd be kind of a shame to waste it, wouldn't it?"

She was firm.  "No Seb.  It's not happening tonight.  Wasteful or not."

When we'd got into bed, I lay behind her and held her.  Cupping her breasts in my hands, I gently worked my cock up and down the cleft between her arsecheeks.  She liked that, and I did too.  I kept it slow and sensual, enjoying the feel of her solid, round tits and her pert, hard nipples between my fingers and thumbs.  And enjoying the feel of the hot valley of her arse as my almost painfully hard cock probed up and down.

After about ten minutes, she was fast asleep.  I pulled back from her and rolled onto my back, staring upwards into the darkness at the ceiling.

I started thinking of Rod and Charlie again; wondering what was going on between them.  How often Rod had done this; when he'd realised that he enjoyed playing around with other guys as well as - or perhaps in preference to - girls.

He didn't strike me as being in any way stereotypically "gay" or even the kind of guy who you suspected might swing both ways if the mood took him.  Maybe my views back then had been over-simplified by people who I knew to be gay, but I guess I assumed that an interest in other guys went hand-in-hand with interests in fashion, dance music, clubs and working out.  Rod didn't seem like the kind of guy to be into any of what I thought of as the "gay lifestyle": he seemed more of a pub kind of guy, more comfortable in checked shirts than tight-fitting vests and was heavily into football.  To say nothing of him having an amazing-looking girlfriend.

He just didn't strike me as being gay, which was what I found so fascinating about seeing him with another guy.

I think I lay there, listening to Kaz's slow deep breathing, for over half an hour.  The thoughts of Rod and Charlie kept bugging me, preventing me from relaxing.  And my hard-on was still aching.

The possibility of getting up and climbing out of the window to take another look at them occurred to me but I dismissed as being a bit creepy.  Catching them was one thing; actively setting out to spy on them rather another.  It was the sort of thing perverts do.

But then I realised that I needed a piss and that to go down the corridor to the bathroom would be impossible.  The bathroom was opposite the kitchen.  I might be caught.

So there was no option but to climb out of the window.

I got up and pulled on my briefs and my shirt.  Then I opened the window as far as it would go and climbed onto the desk, surprised at how loudly it creaked under my weight.  As I balanced on it and tried to squeeze out through the gap, I knocked against the lamp again and it clanged against the wall.

Kaz stirred in the bed and mumbled something.

I wasn't sure if she was conscious of me being half-way through the window, but I whispered over to her, "I need a piss."  Just in case she was.

She muttered something else and turned over in the bed.

I got out through the window and stood on the roof, pissing against the wall.  As I did so, I glanced along the wall of the building to the window of Rod's room.  The light was still on but it looked dimmer.  Maybe he'd turned off the overhead light and had switched on the desk lamp to make it more cosy.  Or more likely Charlie had: it didn't really seem like Rod's style.

I finished off my business and then stood there, starting to shiver, wondering whether it would be perverted to take a little peek at them since I was already outside.  It couldn't do any harm, I told myself.  Just checking how things were going between them.  Just showing a little curiosity; hardly a crime.

I wandered along the roof, past the kitchen of Rod's flat.  I expected it to be empty, even though the light was on, but three or four pissed-looking guys were slumped around watching late-night television.  I ducked into the darkness, without being noticed.

Then I walked further along to Rod's room, staying back from the windows; hidden in the shadows.

The curtains were still slightly open and Rod was standing up with his back to Charlie, staring at a poster on the wall.  His eyes were intense, as if he was scrutinizing the poster - a studenty thing with smutty versions of road signs on it - for clues on what he should do.  His face was solemn and serious, like he was seething at himself, angered by something he'd done.

Intrigued, I moved a little so that I could see more of Charlie.  He was sitting on the bed, his expression slightly bewildered, looking up at the back of Rod's head.  The bed sheets were a bit disorganised and Charlie's face was flushed pink.  Maybe they'd been messing around together, maybe kissing or something, and then Rod had backed out.

Rod turned around and looked down at Charlie.  His expression softened.  For all his anger, he clearly didn't feel anything but affection for the other guy.

He said, "Sorry... I... I dunno why I get like this..."

Charlie stood up and smiled slightly.  He put his hand on Rod's shoulder and left it there, squeezing it slightly.

Rod continued, struggling to find words.  "It's just... well... it's like I get all... oh I dunno..."

Charlie kept smiling gently.  A warm and compassionate smile.  If a guy is able to care about another after only a few hours of knowing him, Charlie's face said that he did.

He gave Rod a quick peck on the lips and then smiled more broadly.

He said, his voice as gentle as his smile, "Look at it this way..."

Then he fell to his knees in front of Rod who looked down at him surprised and puzzled by what he was doing.  I guess, like me, he'd expected Charlie to stare into his eyes and say something philosophical.  Some pearl of wisdom that would ease Rod's turmoil and settle his conflict.

Instead, Charlie unzipped the front of Rod's jeans and, in one swift movement, pulled Rod's limp cock out through his fly.  It hung downwards in Charlie's fingers, thin and anaemic against the faded blue denim.

Rod said, "No," but made no attempt to push Charlie away.

Charlie made a quiet shushing sound and took a couple of inches of Rod's shrivelled cock into his mouth.  He sucked noisily at the lifeless flesh, his fingers trying to pull more of Rod's flaccid cock through his fly.

Rod just stared down at him, looking confused.

Charlie kept working on his cock, his mouth confidently moving around on the head of it and his tongue occasionally emerging to lick along its stem.  From the occasional glimpses I got of it, I noticed it was rapidly thickening in response to the attention it was getting.  Charlie kept making slurping noises as he busily devoured it and, within a matter of seconds, I heard him trying to stop himself from gagging as Rod's cock had lengthened so much that it was pushing against the back of his throat.

Rod started to loosen his belt and undo the button on his jeans.  Charlie pulled back from him to give him better access and Rod's wet cock was revealed, arching upwards at full mast.  It was impressively large: probably eight or nine inches long and as thick as a beer bottle.

I was amazed by its transformation.  Only half a minute ago it had looked soft, thin and almost pathetic: now it was pretty incredible - a bold, pulsating expression of the bubbling cauldron of frustration Rod had been suppressing.  The stiff, curving stem was interlaced with bulging veins, encircling it like the patterns rivers make on a map.  The head was a shiny pink, slick from the back of Charlie's throat.

Charlie stared at it for a few seconds, evidently as fascinated by it as I was, and then muttered, almost to himself, "Jesus.  That was worth the wait!"

I thought, "Yeah.  This must be a gay guy's dream."  Then I realised I was getting pretty stiff in my briefs too.

Charlie quickly went back to work on it, and now started licking the swollen bell-end tenderly, as if it was delicate and sensitive.  Rod groaned his approval, and his cock grew even longer in his excitement, the head swelling and throbbing forwards as if to try and encourage Charlie's tongue.

Charlie groaned as well, clearly enormously enjoying the sensation of pleasuring such a large cock.

Rod grabbed the back of his head, trying to push him back onto his cock, eager to have him to take it in his mouth entirely again.  But Charlie pulled back, adamant on keeping things at his own pace.  Rod took his hands away, accepting that, for the first time in the evening, Charlie was calling the shots.

Charlie started tracing patterns on Rod's bell-end with the outstretched tip of his tongue.  Rod squirmed and moaned, gasping his pleasure.  Charlie made swirling patterns around the broad reddened piss-slit at the end of Rod's cock, his tongue dancing over the taut, throbbing flesh like it was particularly expensive ice cream that needed to be savoured.

Then he lightly ran his teeth over the length of Rod's bell-end, gently biting the last half inch or so.  Rod threw his head back and panted, sounding like he was somewhere between pain and pleasure, "Fuck... ah..."

Charlie clearly knew what he was doing; the guy looked like he was an expert in the geography of other guys' cocks.  He knew exactly which areas were most sensitive and gave these little more than short flicks of his tongue; and knew those which could take something a bit rougher and combed his teeth along the flesh of these.

Rod couldn't take it.  I saw him stop himself from grabbing Charlie's head a couple of times, but then the pleasure became too much.  He reached out and grabbed the other guy behind the ears, drawing him onto his cock, and called out, "Please... eat it... please..."

Even with the massive cock in his mouth, Charlie was able to grin.  He looked like this had happened before.

Rod pulled Charlie's head towards him, getting five or six inches of his thick cock into the other guy's mouth.  Charlie's face became more serious and I realised he was mentally relaxing his throat muscles to accommodate the intrusion.

Then Rod, still holding Charlie's head, started fucking his mouth, thrusting his hips in and out and sliding his cock in out of the other guy like he was impaling him on a curved sword.  Charlie clearly found it difficult to take the battering his mouth was receiving: he kept trying to pull back, to withdraw from the huge rod that was assaulting him.

Rod pulled his hands off the other guy's head, offering him some respite, and pulled his jeans down so that they fell around his ankles.  Then he grabbed Charlie's head again and held his mouth steady as he renewed his frantic fucking motions.

I saw Rod's exposed arse, white and with solid round cheeks, flexing as he pushed his cock into the other man.  He was panting and gasping like this was something he'd been waiting for.

I wondered how often Rod had done this.  He seemed awkward with it, so maybe this was still fairly new to him.  But then, actively seeking sex with other guys, as he had done, was something which brought with it difficult issues to be dealt with.  I wondered, then, how often he'd had sex with his friends when he was younger - during stop-overs and camping trips - reassured by the fact these were one-off events, spontaneous acts between straight guys forced together in intimate situations.

My own cock strained inside my briefs.  The soles of my feel felt like they'd frozen solid with the surface of the roof beneath them and my thighs knocked together like something out of a cartoon, but I was compelled to watch these two guys: I had to know what was going to happen between them.  I thought of myself in Rod's position, as a straight guy venturing into new territory, and found myself fascinated by the prospect.

Rod's eyes were closed and his head tilted back.  He hammered his cock in and out of Charlie's face, his pace quickening, holding the other man's head in place with both hands.  His balls, large and densely covered in black wiry hair, banged upwards into Charlie's chin on each stroke.  His cock, looking impossibly thick, managed to penetrate Charlie's mouth to a depth of maybe seven inches on each rough inward thrust.

Charlie's eyes were wide open, staring into Rod's dense bush of pubic hair; vacant and expressionless like he was uncertain how to feel about having his mouth treated so brutally by another guy's cock.  He wasn't able to savour the moment, to tease and play with the organ with his lips and tongue: he simply opened his mouth as far as it would go and allowed the other man to hold his head in place and pummel him with his cock like he was just a masturbatory aid.

Then Rod's thrusting stopped: he steadied himself and just held Charlie's head in front of him, impaling his face with six or seven inches of his big cock.  Charlie's eyes moved upwards, trying to work out what was going on, but Rod kept holding his head firmly in place.

Then I noticed that Rod's fingers were moving around on the back of Charlie's head, gently combing through the short hair.  His thumbs were on Charlie's sideburns and cheeks, caressing the other guys' light fuzz of stubble, exploring the rough growth in front of his ears.

Rod's head was still thrown back, his eyes closed but directed up at the ceiling.  His mouth was open; he was panting quietly, overwhelmed by the pleasure of what he was doing.  Excited to the brink of orgasm by the feel of having his cock deep inside the mouth of another guy.  He must have done this kind of thing loads of times with Katie but, evidently, that wasn't enough.  It was the fact this was another male - someone with masculine features like short hair, sideburns and a light growth of stubble on his cheeks - that seemed to be so appealing to him.

I half expected Rod to be overcome by his pleasure and to see Charlie swallowing rapidly as Rod squirted his semen down his throat.  But instead he stood like that for a thirty seconds or so: just pressing his cock deep into Charlie's mouth, caressing the other guy's head with his fingers and thumbs.  Relishing the sensation.

The he pulled back, pulled his thick arching cock out from Charlie's mouth, and, still gently panting, said, "Jesus, mate.  I need a fuck... I really need a fuck..."

Charlie closed his mouth and rubbed his aching jaws with both hands.  Then he grinned.  "I think I've got lockjaw..."

Rod repeated, his face serious, "I really need a fuck... like now..."

Charlie stood up and, still grinning, said, "Your wish is my command..."

He pulled off his boots and socks in a couple of impatient movements.  Then he pulled down his jeans, revealing a pair of dark red briefs in which his cock made a hard upward rod as it strained for release.  There was a small wet patch where the round head of it pressed against the material.

Rod looked at the front of Charlie's underpants, and his embarrassment seemed to wash over him again.  As if the realisation of what he was doing had hit him again and his guilt, or shame - or whatever emotion it was that had so deeply affected him earlier - had once more reared its ugly head.  He looked away from Charlie and down at his own cock, as if suddenly aware of how excited he'd become.

Charlie pulled off his briefs and his cock, about seven inches in length and straight as a ruler, sprung upwards.  He said, "Have you got a johnnie?"

Rod looked over at him, staring blankly.  He seemed not to want to look at Charlie's cock, instead focusing on the other guys' face.

Charlie said, "You know... a condom?"

Rod said, "Oh yeah... yeah... sorry..."  And he stumbled over to his desk, hindered by the trousers around his ankles.  He took out a packet from his top drawer, and removed a condom from it.  His face was solemn and dark: doubts raced across his deep, thoughtful eyes like the shadows made by clouds.

I thought, "He's not going to be able to go through with this."

Charlie pulled off his shirt and the teeshirt he was wearing beneath it.  He stood naked in front of Rod, smiling slightly, his body almost hairless except for under his armpits and around his cock and balls.

He said, "How d'you want me?"  He looked down at Rod's cock, now beginning to soften and shrink, but chose to ignore it.

He turned around and bent over, supporting himself with his outstretched arms on the mattress.  His arse was white and, like the rest of his body, virtually hairless.  His buttocks were slightly open and looked, if not to Rod then certainly to me, intensely inviting.  He looked over at Rod's face, and grinned.  "Like this?"

I was getting really turned on by the idea of seeing Rod fuck Charlie.  My hand was on my own cock, gently squeezing it inside my briefs.  I thought, "Yeah, exactly like that.  Fuck him from behind..."

But Rod moved towards Charlie and gently pushed him over onto his back.  I was confused and, from the quizzical look on his face, Charlie was too.

Rod looked down at Charlie's body, lying on the mattress side on, his arse and legs spilling over the side of it, his feet supporting himself on the floor.  He said, "Like this... I want you like this..."

Charlie smiled again.  "Okay... I'm up for anything you want, mate."

I think, like me, Charlie had assumed that Rod would want him in a masculine pose: in the stereotypically gay position of bending over to receive Rod's cock.  But maybe Rod wanted what he was used to doing with girls: to fuck from the front, face to face.  Maybe this way he could keep his guilt at bay: to tell himself that this wasn't really a "gay" act at all; after all, what can be as straight-laced and conventional as the missionary position?

I thought he would put the condom on but he didn't: he threw it down, still in its wrapper, onto the bed.

Then he knelt down on the floor next to Charlie and put his hand on the other guy's cock.  Charlie nodded his approval and Rod started playing with his stiff cock, running the foreskin slowly up and down the shaft between the finger and thumb of his large hand.

Charlie relaxed his body onto the mattress, enjoying the sensation of Rod tenderly caressing his cock, and closed his eyes.  Rod moved his left hand up to Charlie's balls and gently kneaded them, rolling them around inside Charlie's loose scrotum.  His right hand started masturbating Charlie's cock, his movements clumsy as he struggled to come to terms with the unfamiliar proportions.  Charlie's cock was shorter and thinner than Rod's, was straighter and the head less bulbous, and Rod's hand seemed uncertain about how best to pleasure it.

After a few awkward jerks, Rod gave up trying to masturbate him and instead just held Charlie's cock upwards, directing it straight up towards the ceiling as if studying it.  Then, after a few seconds, he moved in closer to Charlie's crotch and looked up at the other guy's face.  Charlie opened his eyes and smiled at Rod.

Rod said, "Let me know if this hurts.  I've never done it before..."

Charlie nodded.

Then Rod leaned forwards and took Charlie's cock into his mouth, licking the end of it gently.

Charlie gasped and Rod pulled back.

Rod said, "Jesus.  Sorry.  Did I hurt you?  I don't know how to do this, mate..."

Charlie laughed.  "No!  It felt fantastic.  Just go for it.  Be as rough as you like!"

Rod smiled back.  "You asked for it..."

He returned to Charlie's cock and started eating it in earnest, taking about four or five inches into his mouth and then withdrawing it.  Charlie closed his eyes again and lay back, seeming to enjoy it.  I don't know whether Rod was any good but if he wasn't, Charlie was far too polite to tell him.  In any case, the fact he was being sucked by a novice straight guy was probably exciting enough for Charlie regardless of the crudeness of his technique.

Rod got into it extremely quickly.  He started sliding his tongue around Charlie's purple bell-end, licking the precum from the piss-slit like it was the juice from a melting lollypop.  He was panting more than Charlie was, slurping his tongue around the knob of the other guy's cock then taking as much of the stem of it into his mouth as he could.

After a minute or so, he pulled away and stood up.  He said, breathing quickly, "This is fucking amazing...  I never dared do it before... I always wanted to, but I never dared..."

Charlie smiled and looked down at his wet cock.  It was stiff enough to hang in mid-air above his stomach, throbbing gently and dribbling a string of precum onto the smooth skin below.

He said, "Yeah, it's like Christmas is supposed to be.  Giving's a lot better than receiving..."

Rod pulled off his shoes and then freed his ankles from the strangling confinement of his jeans.  He threw them, plus his briefs and socks, into a pile and then moved back over to Charlie.  He opened the guy's legs and moved in between them.  His cock arched upwards again, fully restored to its former glory, thick and impressive with a shiny red glans.

He muttered, "I think I like both, actually."  He knelt down between Charlie's thighs and started kissing the guy's cock as if worshipping it.  He held it upwards and licked the end of it again, running his tongue in circular patterns around Charlie's bell-end.  He kept returning the isthmus of skin connecting Charlie's foreskin with the slick purple head, flicking his tongue over it and feeling Charlie's cock stiffen and swell in his hand in its approval.

Then he went lower, moving his face down to Charlie's balls.  He started licking them, kissing them, feeling the sensation of them moving around inside their sac as he explored them with his mouth.  He kept holding Charlie's cock and gently tugged at his foreskin, slowly sliding up and down, as he nuzzled into the other guy's balls.

And then, to my surprise and excitement, he went even lower.  He opened Charlie's legs further and pushed his face down into the other man's arse cleft, breathing and inhaling the most intimate smells down there.  I expected to come up for air quickly, sobered up by the difference between the smells of a guy's arse to those of a girl's pussy, but he didn't.  He plunged in for more, applying his mouth to Charlie's arsehole, licking around it and into it with his tongue.

His right hand left Charlie's cock and moved down to attend to his own.  He gripped himself and started masturbating quickly; relishing the sensation of having his face buried in another guy's arse; excited to the point of needing to relieve himself.

His head began pushing in and out of Charlie's arse and I realised he was fucking him with his tongue.  I started masturbating myself at that point: I'd never even thought of doing anything like that, or of having it done to me, and to see one guy doing it to another was unbelievably hot.

Charlie gripped his own cock and got to work on it.  He was gasping, "Ah... yeah... come on... ah..." and his hand became a blur of movement up and down the stem of his cock.

Rod pulled back panting and then stood up.  His cock curved upwards like a branch in front of him, his foreskin reddened from the frantic movements of his hand.

He said, between rapid gasps for breath, "I don't wanna come yet... I wanna fuck... we've gotta fuck..."  He fervently pulled off his shirt, oblivious to the ripping sound the left sleeve made as he yanked it off.

Charlie released his own cock.  He was panting too.

He said, "Go for it."

I kept masturbating.  I needed to see this.  I needed to see Rod mount Charlie and fuck him with that massive cock.  I needed to see him cum inside the other guy.

Rod grabbed the condom and impatiently tore open the wrapper.

Then he leaned over Charlie and unfurled it down the other guy's cock in one swift movement.

Charlie looked surprised.  So did I.

Then Rod climbed onto the mattress and sat over Charlie, reaching down for his condom-sheathed cock.  He directed upwards between his buttocks and then plunged himself down onto it.  Charlie gasped.  Rod winced and grunted.

He held himself down on Charlie's cock for a few seconds before slowly withdrawing it from his and then pushing down again.  After he'd done this a couple of times, he seemed to grow accustomed to the feeling of having something penetrating him and then, his rhythm rapidly increasing, he began pushing his arse up and down on Charlie's cock.  His chest muscles bulged and flexed with the effort of holding him upright, and his thighs and calves struggled with the strain of him bobbing up and down in mid-air.  But he kept going, growing even faster as I watched.  It looked like he really needed to feel this guy's cock inside him and no pain from his muscles was going to stop him from doing that.

I was masturbating myself quickly as I watched them.  I didn't know if it was Rod or Charlie I was identifying with: the idea of what was happening to both of them was appealing.  I'd thought about fucking guys before - which straight guy hasn't - and had found the idea illicitly attractive.  So the prospect of Rod, as a straight guy like me, pushing his cock into another guy's arse had really turned me on.  My excitement had come from the anticipation of that; from the thought that maybe this could be me about to penetrate another man.

But now that he'd turned things around and was getting fucked himself, half of me wanted to dissociate itself from him: to reject the idea that what he was having done to him was maybe something I would enjoy having done to me.  But the other half of me really wanted to take his place: to feel sensations I could never experience in the confines of my straight relationships with girls.

Rod reached down and started masturbating himself as he bobbed up and down as quickly as he could on Charlie's cock.  His hand was a frenzy of movement, beating almost aggressively along the upper half of his large tool as his arse was fucked.   Charlie looked up at him, an expression of surprise still on his face, panting quickly from the squeezing of Rod's arse muscles around his cock.

I wondered how often Rod had thought about doing this with another guy; how often he'd fantasized about it, invented scenarios in which he ended being fucked, looked at his mates and thought about how it feel to have their cocks inside him.  And how he'd felt when it had first happened; how he was feeling now if this was first time.

As if in answer, Rod started gasping and thick gobs of semen began shooting out of his swollen bell-end.  The first few squirts of it hit the wall above Charlie's head, but then, as his orgasm subsided, white splashes of it rained onto Charlie's face and then splattered across his chest and stomach.

Rod pulled himself up from Charlie, his arse expelling the other guy's cock with a slurping fart, and fell forwards, gasping and panting, supporting himself against the wall.  Charlie pulled the condom off his cock and began wanking himself rapidly.

Whether Rod intended to push his dick into Charlie's face, I'm not sure, but Charlie leapt at the opportunity and began hungrily licking Rod's semen from his piss-slit as the last dribbles of it oozed out.

Then he squirted his own load upwards into the air, some of it hitting Rod's splayed buttocks, most of it raining down onto his own stomach and chest.

I climaxed almost immediately after Charlie.  The sight of Charlie, his face a deep scarlet in his excitement, licking the cum from Rod's curving cock was too much for me.  The enthusiasm of the guy, the eagerness of him to drink from another man's orgasm, was too intense a sight.  As his tongue licked the milky gelatinous gobs of semen from the slit of Rod's massive cock, my own cum began pumping onto the wall beneath the window.

"We had this letter from the Warden yesterday," Kaz said when we met up for a coffee between lectures a few days later.

"Yeah?"

"You're not going to believe it."  She was grinning.  "But this is the truth.  It said that we should be careful when we're getting changed in our rooms because there's a peeping Tom looking in peoples' windows.  He was seen on the roof of the laundrette on Saturday night."

I smiled.  "No... come on..."

"Honestly."  She was nearly laughing.  "I'll show you the letter when you come over.  Some girl saw him from the path outside our block.  Standing on the roof looking in people's windows."

"Jesus," I laughed, feeling slightly uncomfortable but confident that I wasn't showing it.

Just then I saw Rod come into the coffee shop on his own.  Kaz looked out of the window, still laughing about the letter, and I watched him choose a sandwich from the display.

Then Charlie came in behind him and tapped his left shoulder, grinning and dodging behind the other like kids do.  Rod turned one way and then the other.  But instead of laughing he looked irritated.

Charlie kept smiling and said his hellos.  I couldn't hear exactly what he said; we were sitting too far from them.

Rod said something back and Charlie stopped smiling.

Rod said something else and Charlie shrugged a "Whatever" gesture and walked away.

Then Rod walked over to get a coffee from the machine looking furious.  As he waited for his drink to pour, he glowered at the machine like it was all its fault.

After the machine had finished its thing, he retrieved the cup and walked over to join the queue for the cashier.

Kaz started talking about the latest exploits of one of the characters in one of the soaps she followed.  Revelations about his relationship with one of the barmaids in the pub.

Rod waited to be served and as he did so, he made a backwards glance at the doorway.  Charlie had gone.  He turned back to stare at the heads of the people in the queue in front of him.  His anger seemed to evaporate and he looked tired and miserable.

He turned again to the doorway and I willed him to put down his sandwich and coffee and go and find Charlie.

But he didn't.

That would have been, for the moment at least, a step too far.  Sex with another guy was just about okay but any possibility of a continued relationship seemed to be totally out of bounds.

Kaz got up and put on her coat and the queue edged forwards.

As we walked out, past the line of people, I said to her, "Look at it this way..."  Rod turned and from the corner of my eye I saw him looking at me.  I hovered over the flapjacks as if considering buying on and continued, "What he just did to that guy was totally out of order.  He should be ashamed of that far more than of the fact that he doesn't - shock, horror - fit comfortably into the label 'straight'."

Then we walked on, away from him, and Kaz said, "What?"

I said, "Sorry?"

"Which guy?  What are you talking about?"

"Sorry - did I lose the thread again?  I thought you were talking about that bisexual guy in 'EastEnders'..."

"The bisexual guy is in a totally different programme..."

"Oh yeah.  Jesus.  You know what I'm like with these things..."

She gave me a funny look but not as funny as the look I felt Rod giving my back.

I don't know whether Rod chased after Charlie that day or whether he looked him up later.  But a few weeks after all that happened I saw the two of them walking around Southampton together, as comfortable with each other as a couple of old friends.

I never found out what happened to Rod's girlfriend Katie.  I guess she found herself single again: knowing her, it would have been short-lived.  By that time, though, my interests had moved on.

"Look At It This Way" is based on the first time I picked up a guy rather than a girl in a nightclub and expresses some of the combination of awkwardness and excitement that I felt when we got back to my place.  I chose to frame it from the point of view of a third unseen party in order to avoid the story getting too bogged down in the narrator's emotions, and also to enable a cunning jump from Rod and Charlie arriving at Rod's room to the beginnings of their sex.

The story was quite popular at the time of its writing although the voyeuristic aspect of it put a few people off.