Chapter 1-2
811 Words
Stefan had a love-hate relationship with gay bars.
The love side? He could go after guys and not get beaten up.
The hate side? He could go after guys and get called straight.
But he wasn’t up for pulling that night, and avoided the clubs in favour of the bars and pubs instead. He just wanted to drink. He wanted to get absolutely hammered, and forget both what he’d just done, and what he kept doing over and over again.
God, why couldn’t he just be f*****g normal?
“I want a bottle of vodka,” he said when the barman came to him. “I don’t care how many glasses you have to put it into, just a whole bottle, neat.”
The barman gave him a funny look, but shrugged when Stefan dropped a couple of twenties on the wood.
“Just don’t cause s**t,” the barman said, and began to measure out shots.
“Sure.”
It was busy—Friday night, Christmas on the approach, Stefan wasn’t overly surprised—and after polishing off the first six shots, he turned to watch the other patrons. Mostly clusters of friends, femme gays, obviously on their pre-drinking session before heading off to the nightclubs. A couple were groping near the toilets, obviously intent on using them in a few minutes. The bouncer was removing a lesbian couple having a drunken argument about someone’s sister.
And Stefan felt so apart from it all.
In his baggy jeans and hoodie, he felt like he’d wandered into the wrong place. He wasn’t one of them. He was into guys, but he would never be guy enough to count as gay. The odd woman occasionally showed interest, but it felt like lying because he wasn’t a woman. He didn’t fit. And the bars were filled with femme guys, guys who’d be horrified at his fantasies, think he was sick and twisted…
Bitterly, he reached out and started to down the next set of shots. What was the bloody point? He was sick in the head, twice over, and nobody in their right mind would sleep with him. Maybe callmeSir was right; maybe Stefan should get therapy. It couldn’t be normal, wanting what he did.
But then, Stefan was wary of therapists. They’d all tried, when he was a kid, to turn him cis again. Called him confused and messed up and going through a difficult patch. One had even said he was probably repressing some s****l abuse, because happy childhoods didn’t create kids like him. Why bother going to a therapist again now? They’d only make him feel worse, and it probably wouldn’t even solve the problem.
“Maybe I should stop taking them,” he said aloud.
A guy standing next to him gave him an odd look.
“Sorry,” Stefan said. “Talking to myself.”
“Fair enough,” the man said.
“I think I should stop taking them,” Stefan repeated.
“Taking what?”
“My hormones.”
The man frowned. “You take hormones?”
“Yeah. So I can be a guy. Only since I started, my s*x drive’s been crazy.”
The man’s frown deepened, and he glanced around.
Then, to Stefan’s surprise, the man pulled up a bar stool and sat beside him.
“You’re drunk.”
Stefan shrugged. “Maybe.” He did feel a bit floaty.
“You probably should stop.”
“No. Need to forget about today.”
“What happened today?”
“I got talking to this guy and it was going good and he was going to f**k me in the back seat of his car to pay for a date, only then—”
“Wait, to pay for a date?”
“Yeah. I’ve got these fantasies, see…”
“Okay,” the man said, and tugged the shot glass away from Stefan. He downed it, and planted the empty glass upside down on the table. “So this guy, what, dumped you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause he doesn’t do women.”
“Right…”
“Only I’m not, I’m a guy, I’m just not finished yet.”
The man laughed.
“I’m not!” Stefan insisted. “Only I take these hormones and my s*x drive is crazy and I wanked in a toilet earlier at the bus station.”
“You wanked in a toilet?”
“Yeah.”
The man laughed again, and waved away the bartender. “You’re definitely drunk.”
“I was sober then.”
“Oh, wow.”
“I just—this guy dumped me and I thought if I’d told him face-to-face he might have dragged me into the toilets and f****d me to punish me, and I got off to that, I mean—”
“You might want to keep your voice down.”
The man was suddenly closer. He smelled of cologne and aftershave and some kind of incense. He was dark in the low light, with thick, wavy black hair to his chin, but he had these bright blue eyes, like police lights in the dark.
“Why?” Stefan whispered.
“Because from what I gather, you’re a little bit kinky. And that can be like a red rag to a bull in this place.”
“Little bit.”
“Mm. You like a man to hold you down and do what he wants with you?”
Stefan’s breath caught. The room was suddenly too hot and too close, and the man’s mouth was just inches away, and—
The kiss was sticky with alcohol, and full of promise.
Then a hand caught in Stefan’s hair and tugged him back.
“Ah-ah,” the man said. “Getting ahead of yourself. You like tequila?”
“No.”
“Have some anyway,” he said, flagging down the barman again. “It’s good for forgetting. Then perhaps we can take your mouth someplace else and get it under control, yeah?”
A hand slid over Stefan’s thigh, hot through the denim, and squeezed.
Stefan’s heart jumped, and his blood headed south. Rapidly.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Sir.”
- Writer
