WARNING

This story details explicit gay sex between men, teens and boys. If you find this kind of thing distasteful, or if you are underage wherever you live, then stop reading this now, and delete this file. The story is completely fictional; the author does not condone or encourage any of the acts contained herein.

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Craigslist

Chapter 77

By: Tim Keppler (nemoami@yahoo.com)

 Edited by: Bob Leahy

 

So, now I have to confess that I'm starting to really get off on sex with Dinh, and I think he's been waiting for that. Let's face it, I'm a little soft-core as far as authoritarian goes. But Dinh isn't. Dinh has some imagination, and he reads a fair amount of pretty...provocative stuff. He's by far the most sexually adventurous of my guys, and, surprisingly, he's also the most nurturing father to our kids. Why is that surprising? Probably only because I've had misconceptions about guys with this kind of interest in kink. But he would no more strike or in any other way hurt Kevin or Kai than he would...umm...fly though the air upside down. That doesn't mean that he doesn't reprimand them, though. He does. Kevin slapped a classmate, a girl, and the teacher told Dinh about it when he went to pick the boys up at school. Dinh was very angry, and Kevin knew it. "You don't ever slap anyone," he told him in the fastest, angriest Vietnamese you have ever heard. He was very upset with Kevin, and made that very clear. Kevin was in no doubt that his fondest daddy was really mad at him. He'd screwed up. By the time they got home, Kevin was in tears and was sent to his room.

"Call Kev for dinner," Jason said at dinner time, several hours later.

"No!" Dinh said, authoritatively. "He's not eating dinner with us. He doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve to eat at all tonight." Jason went in later to tuck Kevin into bed, and he was sobbing.

"Please, can Dinh come in to put me to bed?"

Dinh did. Dinh went to his room. He hugged Kevin, but he was firm. "I don't ever want to hear that you've hit anyone again. That is not acceptable behavior. Do you understand me?"

Kevin cried, and they hugged, and then Dinh tucked him up. It was an emotional evening, but Dinh had gotten the message across -- you communicate with words, not with hands. Hands off. Hands are used to express love, not to express anger.

But...umm...what if you're Dinh. For Dinh, anger can often be love. Well, that's not true. But the difference would be seriously confusing to a ten year old.

My mother was the queen of the single smack. She'd smack me on my ass to get my attention, and then she'd talk to me...seriously. "Don't you ever say that again," she might say. Or, "If I hear that you've done that again, you will be seriously punished." She never told me what that serious punishment might be, but I knew it would be serious because she said so, and because my mother was...formidable. She did not fuck around. If she said it would be serious, I knew I would hurt more than I wanted to by the time she was done with me, but she never hurt me. I believed her because of her conviction, but I realized later that she could never lay an angry hand on me. It wasn't in her. She could make me believe that she'd beat me within an inch of my life, but that one single, angry smack was all she was worth.

But Dinh wants more than a smack. He's very turned on by nipple clamps, and I'm thinking that's a gay thing. Statistically speaking, women don't play with men's nipples. Men play with women's nipples, but not vice versa...apparently. I get all this from a study done a couple of years ago on the sex practices of American couples. Heteros are different from us. They're less...experimental. We're more...inventive. Who knows why? (The heteros would tell you that we have to be, but these are probably the same people who would tell you that homosexuality is unnatural, that the body of a woman and of a man are more complementary to each other. Yeah, right! I have a dick, and he has a place for me to put it. In fact, he has several good places for me to put it. What's not complementary?) Dinh doesn't just like for me to play with his nipples, though. He likes for me to hurt them a bit. He likes those Japanese butterfly clamps that tighten as you pull on them. Leave it to the Japanese -- engineers to the end.

He's also big on what he calls CBT -- cock and ball torture. I'm not sure what cock torture is, exactly. Well, I sort of am, and I won't do it to him. Anything that draws blood is well outside my range. Ball torture, though, is pretty straightforward. I squeeze, he screams (and often cums) and we're done. Lately, I've been using my ball "flask" on him, and he is just wild for it. It's a two-pound stainless-steel cylinder that you attach to the scrotum -- with the balls inside. On the bottom of this cylinder there's a compression screw that allows you to apply exactly as much pressure to the balls as you desire, from something very light, to really nasty. How is this different from just squeezing his balls, I wonder? I think it's the idea of it, the idea of having a mechanism of torture that turns him on. And it does turn him on! I'll strap him to the table downstairs, and attach the ball flask, give the screw a couple of turn, and he'll begin to thrash his head back and forth, moaning. One more turn, and he starts to scream. One more turn and he's very likely to cum...spontaneously...without my ever having touched his dick. This can be a little...disheartening. I mean, I'd sort of like to be sucking on that dick when he cums. I'd sort of like to think that I had something to do with his ejaculation beyond tightening the compression screw. Still, it makes him crazy wild, and what he usually wants next is for me to fuck him, so we usually both get off in the end. Dinh is truly fascinated by pain.

So, I'm not surprised at the third film he and Shawn decide to make. The first film was a love story, part fictional and part real. It was a story that Shawn wrote describing dominant/subordinate relationships. It was modeled on the relationship between Dinh, Kenny, Jason and me, and on the relationship between himself, Ian and Leslie. But in the course of casting it, a similar relationship formed between his two actors, Thanh and Jeremy, and Thanh's boyfriend Howe. They now seem very much like us -- Jeremy is the dominant partner, and Thanh and Howe are submissive.

Dinh and Shawn's second film was a more traditional gay love story. Boy meets boy, boys fall in love, boy spanks boy, and then they make passionate love. The actors they used in this video were less...passionate than Thanh and Jeremy, and the action was less...surprising. But, like the first movie, it did very well in terms of sales, although not as well as the first. TLAVideo, which reviews videos such as these, said that it was "pale in comparison to Brutal Loving," Dinh and Shawn's first video, "but has a really-attractive cast of hot, hot men". The video was profitable, very profitable, but, again, not quite as profitable as Brutal Loving. What it did give them though is a new actor, an actor they add to the cast of their third video, Brutal Passion. And, it is both passionate...and brutal.

Brutal Passion, video number three, is pretty astounding, at least to me. First, I'm amazed that they found an actor who is willing to do what the script demands. There's a lot of...pain. They found the guy on Craigslist. Kale is just eighteen. They vetted him for their second film to make sure of his age. The last thing they needed was to be charged with using under-age actors. He's Australian, so vetting was complicated, but Bob Titus, my attorney, was able to steer them on a course to prove his age. This kid is drop-dead gorgeous. He was worth the wait. He claims to be blond, but isn't. His hair is sort of auburn, and he has a mop of it. His eyes are brown. He has a cute nose, a dimpled chin, and a really nice ass. I told you before what I look for in guys. He seems to travel through life with a perpetual smirk, but if he does what's in the script of Brutal Passion, I don't think that smirk will be permanent. He's excited, though, and that's the part I find...surprising. This'll be some video.

With the profits Dinh and Shawn made on the first two videos, they buy their own lights, lighting board, microphones, and...cameras -- four of them. Four fucking high-definition cameras. They're used, and have a couple of dings, but who cares? They work perfectly, and cost something like 50% less than if they bought them new. And, their cadre of camera people know how to use them -- because they've used them before. These are exactly the ones they rented.

So, the script... It, too, is a love story. Boys meet boy, boys fall in love, boy spanks boys, and then they all make passionate love. Along the way, though, there's some...pain. Dinh asks to borrow my ball flask, and a pair of my nipple clamps, and the TENS unit. TENS, as I think I said before, can either be intensely erotic (and notice that the word TENS lives in the word inTENSely), or it can be pretty painful. The script is very clear about which direction they plan to go. After all this, though, they have something else planned, and that something violates all my unwritten rules. That's a problem because they want me to do it. Dinh asks me to be in this film because...well...because...Kale wants someone he trusts...to do what...needs to be done. I have no idea why he trusts me. We met and chatted for maybe half an hour, and an hour later Dinh is in the office begging me to...participate. "Please, Tim. He trusts you. We can't get a professional to do this. No one will agree to be filmed. Kale trusts you. He'll let you do it. Please. Can you?"

I finally acquiesce, but only on condition that Dinh can find me someone to watch...umm...doing it first. A professional. Someone who knows what the hell they're doing. That he can arrange, he says, and he does. So, while Dinh and Shawn are in our basements hanging lights and getting the sound equipment set up, I'm in a local piercing studio learning how to be a...piercer.

There aren't a lot of guys who will let you watch this...being done to them. Especially straight guys. They're...concerned...about how they might react. They're concerned about the...pain. They don't necessarily want anyone to see their response. In fact, they don't even want the piercer to see their response. They're concerned about being...pussies. So, it takes some heavy sales work to make my presence possible, some heavy sales work and a willingness to...subsidize the procedures. We agree to pay for three of the piercings so that I can watch...and be trained. And they are...intense. One guy starts to cry after the first of two piercings, and another guy screams. He screams louder than I've ever heard anyone scream in my life. One guy is stoic, which I find odd considering how much he's bleeding. At the end of the day, I have what I need. I've seen it done, I've been instructed in sepsis, and I have the...equipment. I know what I'm doing...more or less.

Years ago, my second boyfriend convinced me to have a tiny heart tattooed on my left ass cheek. It's probably half an inch wide. It hurt like hell. I sobbed through the procedure. I've no idea how Kale will respond to what we're going to do. Dinh and Shawn are hoping for a response...an intense response, but who knows? The piercings were Kale's idea, it turns out. They're something he's wanted to do anyway. "Why not film them?" he asked. "Why not get the full impact? I've no idea how I'll respond. I've no idea how much they'll hurt. But...umm...who cares? You might as well get your money's worth, eh?"

Might as well. But...before we begin the actual filming, Ian, Shawn and Leslie want to take a short vacation. The parents of one of Leslie's colleagues at Stanford own a vacation home some twelve miles from Lake Tahoe. They, the parents, like to go up in the winter to ski, but the place is mostly unused during the summer. It's too hot, the parents think. But it's not too hot for Ian, Shawn and Leslie. For them it's perfect. It's warm and private, and judging by the look in Ian's eyes when he describes the place, it's the privacy that's most attractive. I get the distinct impression that what the three of them are looking for has nothing to do with nature -- well, nothing to do with any nature but their own. With their boys around, I think the three of them have had trouble finding time to...be together. So, this is their time. Ian was so cute after dinner a day or so ago. He cornered me in the office. He looked like a plaintive puppy dog, if such a thing exists. "Daddy," he said, sort of whiny. I don't think Ian has ever called me "Daddy" in his life. I guess my eyes narrowed because he backed up just a little. "Tim," he said "could you guys look after Feng, Quan and Tan for a few days?"

"How few?" I asked, giggling. Now, to be honest, I love their kids almost as much as I love my own, but I wasn't going to let Ian get off the hook so easily.

"Umm...five days," he said, embarrassed. He knew he'd been caught trying to manipulate me. "Please."

"I dunno, Ian. Five days is a long time..." I was trying desperately not to laugh, but I'm sure I was probably grinning...just a little. And just a little was just enough. He knew he had me. He ran over and hugged me.

"Thank you," he screamed, and flew out of the office to tell Shawn and Leslie.

Caring for Ian's boys is very different from caring for ours. Kevin and Kai are in school. They're in class for nearly six hours a day, and then they end up at the local YMCA for another two hours swimming, playing soccer, and generally running around. Ian's kids are younger. Feng is in pre-school, but Quan and Tan are at home. Leslie had pushed for day care, but Ian and Shawn didn't like the idea. They didn't like the idea of other people raising their sons. So, they arrange their schedules so that one of them can always be at home with them. We'll need to do the same thing for these five days, but when I tell Kenny, Dinh, and especially Jason, they are all just so excited.

"Cool," Jason says. "No concerts this week or next, and that means no rehearsals. I have plenty of time."

"Me, too," Dinh chimes in. "I just have papers to grade and programs to run, but I can do that at home."

In truth, we all love kids, and the thought of having three more for a few days is pretty great. Dinh wants to take them to Great America, and Jason wants to haul them up to the city to see one of the San Francisco Symphony's lunchtime concerts, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. Me? I'm thinking I'll take them to the zoo, the Oakland zoo. I'm not sure they've ever been to a zoo. I know they've been to Disneyland, both in L.A. and in Hong Kong. They loved it both times. But, I don't think they've been to the zoo. Becky, our neighbor across the street and one of Shawn's "camerapersons" is a part-time zookeeper at the Oakland zoo, and will be the perfect guide. I call her and we arrange to go on Thursday. This will be very cool.

Leslie, Ian and Shawn leave on Wednesday, so my outing is the first, and the boys are just beside themselves with anticipation. Ordinarily, I would have put off the zoo until the weekend so Kevin and Kai could join us, but Becky doesn't work there on the weekends. Dinh's Great America adventures will be on Saturday, though, and Kenny wants to take them to the beach on Sunday, so Kai and Kev will have plenty of fun as well. So, our pilgrimage to the zoo will just be me, Quan, Tan, Feng, and, of course, Becky. They can't wait...and, frankly, neither can I.

Becky ferries us to the zoo bright and early on Thursday morning. We're there by 10:00am, and the boys are...what? Rapt? No, rapt implies a level of awe. They're not awestruck. They're mesmerized. They want to touch every single animal -- from the tigers to the monkeys, from the lizards to the ducks. "Birdies," Quan says when he sees the swans.

"What kind of birdies?" Becky asks him.

"Duckies?" he asks.

"No, those are swans."

"Shwans?"

"Yeah," she says, giggling, "more or less."

"What that?" Tan asks, staring into the eyes of a monkey who is as fascinated with him as he is with it. The monkey is hanging from a tree branch by its tail.

"That's a monkey," Becky tells him.

"He have a...hand...on his..."

"That's a tail," Becky tells him. "He can swing by his tail. That's a prehensile tail." Tan is so cute. He looks at her as if she's from Mars.

"Perhas..."

"Prehensile," she repeats.

He looks absolutely lost, and then catches sight of an alligator, and is gone, running to the lagoon to watch the slow, reptilian meanderings of this huge lizard.

All three of them are just fascinated by the different animals. Feng wants to pet the snow leopard, and Becky had to explain that a snow leopard isn't like Thumper, Kai's cat. "A snow leopard could eat you," she tells him, and he looks amazed. Tan wants to touch the "piggy," and that's something we can accommodate. The pig is part of the petting zoo, and Tan is amazed at how coarse his hair is.

"He not soft," he says, his eyes wide.

"That's true. He's pretty prickly, isn't he?" Becky replies. Tan nods, but is still surprised.

Quan has a chicken fly up and perch on his head, surprising and scaring him. He starts to cry, but Becky plucks the bird off of him and presents it to him. She holds it carefully, and Quan pets it. It starts to cluck, and Quan giggles, and then starts to imitate the clucking sound, something that surprises the bird who eyes him suspiciously.

In all we're there for five hours. We see "fishies," and "birdies," we see pretty much every animal they have, and the boys get to pet lots and lots of them -- sheep, pigs, rabbits, cows, koalas, mice, and even a pony. Feng is chased by an aggressive duck that bites him on the ass, causing him to start to cry, but it doesn't last long. Feng is the most naturally curious of the three boys, and while that duck may have hurt him a little, it doesn't put him off at all. Pretty soon he's chasing an ostrich, and Becky has to rein him in. "No, no, Feng. The rule is that they can chase you, but you can't chase them." He nods. He gets it on some intuitive level -- these are animals and need to be protected. I wonder, though, if he wonders why it's okay to chase Thumper. I wonder if he understands the difference between an animal that knows you well, and one that doesn't. I think he does.

At the end of those five hours, the boys are exhausted. We pile them into the back of Becky's car and drive them back to San Jose, feed them, and put them to bed. They're fast asleep the minute their heads hit the pillows.

Great America is equally exciting for the boys, although we have a lot of tears as we explain why Kevin, Kai, and Feng can go on the Vortex, the roller coaster, but Tan and Quan can't. They get over it soon enough, though. Jason plunks them on the merry-go-round, on the "horsies" and they're happy again. I detest Great America. I had a boss at one of my early big-software-company jobs who just loved roller coasters. She took us to Great America as a reward for a really-good quarter. She forced me on a roller coaster, and I nearly threw up. I felt ill for two days. But, Dinh just loves this place. I have no idea why. Well...maybe I do. I think it has something to do with his interest in pain. Between the six roller coasters and that fucking "Drop Tower" that drops you the equivalent of twenty-two stories in four seconds, I can pretty well imagine his fascination. What we do, ultimately, is split up. Kenny and Dinh go off with Kai, Kev and Feng. Jason and I take Quan and Tan on the tamer rides. These are the rides they're tall enough for and that won't make Jason and me sick. We spend three and a half hours at this place, and at the end of that time, we're all spent. We take the boys home, feed them, put them to bed, and then we crash, so exhausted that we can't even be bothered to make love.

The beach is Kenny's contribution to the boys' vacation. We take them all to Santa Cruz on Sunday, and they are just beside themselves. When we get to the beach, we face the same dilemma we faced years ago when Jason, Kenny, Nathan, Gary and I came -- there's nowhere to change. The boys don't care. They strip in an instant right there on the beach and slide into their bathing suits. All except Quan, who strips and starts running around naked. He's two years old. He doesn't care, nor should he. Dinh, Jason, and Kenny look around furtively, and then look at each other. They giggle, and then strip, putting on their bathing outfits. I do the same. If anyone cares that we're naked for an instant, I don't much care about them. Big fucking deal, for god's sake. We all have the same stuff, don't we?

After Gary died, I bought his Santa Cruz condo from Nathan, so we have a place to stay tonight. After a three-hour romp in which we all participate, we make our way up the road, and hose off. Kenny has brought a box of groceries from San Jose, and makes a sumptuous meal -- Chicken Parmesiana, Stir-fried Broccoli, and fresh mango for dessert. We know that Tan doesn't like broccoli, and I've never been a believer in forcing kids to eat stuff they don't like. They have to try it, but if they don't like it, they don't like it. But, he loves fava beans, so that's the alternative veggie that Kenny brings. Fava beans sautéed with garlic in olive oil. It's utterly scrumptious. After dinner, we play a little Twister, an ancient game that forces you into contortions as you try to place your feet and hands on colored circles on a mat. Those colored circles may not be adjacent, hence the name -- Twister. My folks had the game, and as a teenager I found it was a really-good way to get to touch boys I liked without appearing to be gay -- or maybe that was just my imagination. Maybe they were as excited to be touched as I was to touch them. For younger kids, it's a sure-fire giggle engine as they try to figure out how to contort to hit the colored circles they have to hit. After about a half hour of Twister, we get the boys into bed, and...umm...go off to play our own version of Twister, a version that's a bit more provocative.

When I bought the condo, it came fully furnished. I mean, what was Nathan going to do with all the furniture? He sold it to me with the condo. Gary had a really-comfortable king-sized bed, a "California King" as they're called. That equates to two twin box springs rolled up against each other with a mattress that fits over the two of them. For four of us, it's just about the right size. Tonight I've been longing to fuck Kenny, and Kenny is only too happy to oblige...as long as he can fuck Dinh. Jason is going to get his later, and so he agrees to suck Dinh. Oh...my...god... We are so ready for this. As I slide into Kenny, my world changes. I basically just lose consciousness, and so does Kenny, I think. He moans, and Dinh screams, especially when Kenny pinches his nipples. Kenny knows what Dinh likes. He pinches for real. He doesn't mess around, but he does that way too early, because when he pinches those nipples, Dinh starts to cum, and that starts the dominoes. It's probably good, though, because we're all tired, so tired that Jason doesn't even want to get off. He's the first to fall asleep.

We spend our last day in Santa Cruz at the march. The California Supreme Court, in its wisdom, has decided that Proposition 8, the initiative that stripped gay Californians of their right to marry, is constitutional. I guess it's a good thing to be able to vote away someone's "fundamental rights". It's democracy in action. I'm so pleased! There was an editorial in the San Jose Mercury News by some asshole claiming to have been against Proposition 8 talking about how thankful we should be that we have a "robust voter initiative process" enabling citizens to easily amend the state constitution. I suspect he'll want to amend that amendment process quickly to ensure that Proposition 8 isn't repealed by a bare majority in the next election. It may be time to look into moving to Canada again. I've done this twice before. What holds me back is my kids. Evan and Joaquin are fine living in Mexico, but I really like living next door to Ian, and I love his kids like my own. I see them every day. I get to tickle Tan, and he seriously needed to be tickled when Ian and Leslie first got him. He was so...unhappy, and so depressed. Now, he's a bundle of giggles.

Tan, Quan, and Feng, of course, have no idea what this march is about. Even Kevin and Kai are confused. Still, they know that it's important to us, to Jason, Kenny, Dinh and me, and so they scream like crazy, and their voices are so high-pitched that they resonate. "Two, Four, Six, Eight, It is time to stamp out hate." These phrases aren't particularly original. I'd hoped for something more topical. "Two, four, six, eight. Is it time to Obamanate?" Obama, let's face it, hasn't been much help to us. It's not like the fags have been thrown under the bus...yet. But, we haven't been given much attention, either, have we? It's as though it would have taken too much energy to throw us under the bus. We're not even on the new president's radar. He got our votes, and now he's no longer interested in us. Well...that's not true. He'll be interested in another four years. He's just not interested now. Would McCain have been worse? I wonder. All I know is that Obama isn't going to do anything for us until he gets to his second term. Until then, DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by the "gay-friendly" Bill Clinton) isn't going to change. Obama will tell us that he doesn't have the votes to get it done. And "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" won't change either. Frankly, I don't give rat dick about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". If there's ever a draft again, I don't want gay people drafted if they can't get married. My feeling about this particular piece of legislation is similar to that of rock singer Melissa Etheridge about paying taxes to a country in which she's third-class at best. She's making a boatload of money, but isn't allowed to marry the woman she loves. Why should she pay taxes? What does she get for those tax dollars? Roads that are nearly undriveable because we're paying nothing for our infrastructure, frivolous wars, stupid and extravagant politicians, and still she can't marry. Why shouldn't she be tax-exempt, like the Mormons and the Catholics who voted away our "fundamental rights"? I'm not a big fan of Melissa's music, but her position on taxation for fags is dead-on. I just hope she's got the money to fight the IRS.

Anyway, the boys have the time of their lives, and they get really-good tans. That may seem a bit incongruous, but Kenny, Jason, Dinh and I decide on a course of civil disobedience for this march. In San Francisco, civil disobedience consisted of marchers joining hands across intersections near the Civic Center, effectively stopping traffic on all the major thoroughfares around the offices of the Supreme Court Justices. You can bet that those justices stayed in those offices very late into the night, because there was no way for them to get home. In our case, our civil disobedience is a little more...essential. The Supreme Court has stripped us of our "fundamental right" to marry guaranteed in the California constitution, at least for a while. We -- and about three quarters of the marchers -- decide that a good metaphor for that is to strip ourselves...of our clothes. We march naked on this warm spring day, and while we didn't ask the boys to join us, they do anyway. Our handmade signs read "Stripped...of fundamental rights." The cops in Santa Cruz, like those in San Francisco, thankfully, are a forgiving bunch. Or is it that they don't know where they'd put nearly 700 naked people if they arrested them all? In any case, our civil disobedience goes uncontested. Well, that's not quite true. It is contested by a small group of "christians" waving signs that read "God Bless America and God Damn Homosexuals" and the like. Kenny gets into a bit of an altercation with one of them, a guy who tells him that he loves him but hates his sin. You know the argument. For whatever reason, this excites Kenny. He gets a minor...erection. "You know this has nothing to do with my sin," he says to the guy. "It's me you hate. Own up to it! But I love you!" he says, looking down at his erection. "And I can prove it." The guy goes nearly berserk and starts swearing at Kenny using some descriptive phrases I've never heard before. So animated is he that he draws the attention of one of the cops, who gets right in his face and tells him to calm down and shut up. This, I think, is the highlight of the march. What depresses me is that nearly three quarters of the crowd is probably under twenty years old. Where are the older gay guys and lesbians who I know damned well live in this town? They're nowhere to be seen. They're letting children fight their battles for them. How sad.

The march takes nearly two hours, and by that time, we all have really dark and even tans -- well, all except for me. Asians tan very well for the most part. My heritage is Dutch. I looked like a cooked lobster by the end of the march, and earn many giggles from Quan whom I carry throughout the march and who just can't help touching my reddening shoulders in awe as we walk to City Hall. After the march we walk back to my Volkswagen Wesfalia, get dressed, and drive back to San Jose. It's a really beautiful day. I think we're all a little sad to be going home, but we all need to get on with life. Quan, Tan, and Feng have had a wonderful few days, but are just so happy when their daddies get home. When we go away, Becky takes care of Thumper, the cat, and she's mentioned more than once that he seems quite depressed when we're not there. I've never honestly thought about what a depressed cat might look like, but I have the same feeling for Ian's kids. Quan, Tan and Feng had a really-good time with us, but at the end of the day, I sensed a little depression, a little sadness. And, when the boys see Ian, Leslie and Shawn, there is pandemonium. They fling themselves into the arms of their daddies and cling to them for the rest of the night. Shawn is actually quite teary-eyed. "I missed you!" he says, cuddling with Tan.

"I miss you!" Tan responds, hugging Shawn oh, so closely. It's really touching.

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So, now that Shawn's back home, he and Dinh can start to work on the next video. The things that make their videos better than most...than almost any other gay videos -- can be summarized in three points: (1) plot; (2) dialog; and (3) acting. I don't know if "plot" is the right word. It's not so much that he develops complex stories, but that he develops his characters. His plots, I guess, are pretty pedestrian. Jeremy's character meets Kale's character at Youth Renewed, the gay community center I run. Jeremy is giving a talk on marriage, and Kale is in the audience. Kale comes forward to meet Jeremy after the talk, and they go to lunch. They talk. Kale admits that he's homeless, that he basically has nowhere to live, and Jeremy offers him the couch at his apartment. But...there's a complication -- Thanh. Jeremy tells Kale that he's "married", that he's coupled with Thanh. That's fine, Kale says, a little forlorn. He won't intrude.

But, he does intrude...sort of. It's actually Thanh who intrudes. Thanh is immediately attracted to this easy-going Australian, and before long we find the three of them making out, and kissing passionately. Kale can really kiss. Really! Then we have a montage sequence like what Dinh used in their first video to convey the passage of time, but instead of using short segments from other porn videos, he films these himself using his three actors, and it really works well. They become increasingly "explicit" until we find ourselves in my basement with Thanh strapped to the punishment table on his belly, and Kale hanging from the whipping frame. Kale is the star of this scene, and even Thanh is watching him...struggle. Kale is hanging from the steel frame by his bound wrists. His feet are also attached to the frame, but he's bent at the knees. His feet don't touch the ground. All his weight is supported by his arms. He's sweaty and clearly...exhausted. Slightly behind him is a small platform. If he can hoist himself up by his arms, he can move backward and sit on this platform, relieving the strain on his arms. But...in the center of this platform is a seven-inch dildo, a dildo that becomes progressively wider until, at its widest point, it's probably three inches in diameter. The only way for him to sit on this platform is to allow the dildo to penetrate him, and he's pondering that dilemma. Dinh hadn't told him about this scene, he told me later. Kale thought he was going to be spanked. He can, of course, refuse to do the scene, but Kale is adventurous, and is being paid very well for his work.

He starts to cry. The strain on his arms is massive. Slowly he tries to lift himself high enough to center himself on the platform, but he doesn't have the strength on the first try. He pulls himself higher on his second attempt, but again, can't get quite high enough. On the third attempt he manages to line himself up with the dildo, but can't hold the position long enough to make a slow, orderly descent. He slumps, and as he does the dildo enters him in an instant. It enters him completely, stretching his anus to a full three inches within the blink of an eye, and I have to believe that that blink will cause a lot of viewers to "rewind" a lot of times -- to see it again. Because, when that dildo impales him, he shrieks louder and longer than I've maybe ever heard a shriek before. "No...no...oh...fuck...no!" Then he starts to sob, his eyes scrunched tightly shut, and we dissolve the shot so we can get him off of that nasty thing, but not before he cums. He cums in buckets. He is just more turned on than you can imagine. Don't get me wrong. He's in terrible pain, but the amount of spunk that pain produces is monumental.

"Umm...you okay?" Dinh asked him a few minutes later, after they got him up and off that dildo.

"No," he sobbed. "That hurt more than anything I've ever felt. I don't think that my ass will ever be the same."

"Oh, christ, I'm so sorry!" Dinh was really upset.

"No, I mean I think I'm spoiled for life. I can't do that every day, and that's the problem," he said, giggling through his tears. He loved it. He absolutely loved it.

This is the last scene before my sequences, and my sequences take a lot of resolve...on my part. Dinh couldn't find a piercer who would agree to appear on camera. I find that odd. I mean, I'd think this'd be a really-good advertisement for their services. But, no one would do it. Maybe it has something to do with the scene itself, although I'm not sure why that would be, either. The scene is not that provocative. Well, maybe it is.

The premise is that Kale's piercings are part of his punishment for infidelity. He's been playing with Thanh...without permission. I know this is sounding really close to home right now, but I'm not especially fond of piercings, and would never have defaced Kenny in this way as punishment for his infidelity. But, this is the premise of the scene, something that Kale had dreamed up because he wants to be pierced, and because he wants me to do it. Having spanked Thanh thoroughly for his part in this affair, Jeremy brings Kale to me for his punishment. As the scene opens, Kale gets out of his clothes and climbs up onto the table downstairs. Jeremy straps him down, and then starts to lecture him. It's improvised dialog, the usual shtick -- How could you do this to me? How could you abuse my trust? You know the rules. Nothing very original, but as he lectures him, he also kisses him, and you get a sense of the feeling between the two characters. Soon, Jeremy is sucking him. That's when I enter. I nod at Jeremy and smile at Kale.

"So, what are we doing?" I ask Jeremy.

"Nipples and a Prince Albert," he says.

"What size jewelry?" I ask, sounding very efficient.

"Sixteen gauge for the nipples, and 10 gauge for the Prince Albert."

"And the jewelry?"

"14 karat yellow gold. All captive-bead rings. Do you have them?"

I nod. I open a drawer and select the jewelry, presenting the rings to Jeremy for approval. He nods, and I place them on a rolling surgical tray, along with two bottles, three sealed needles, one sealed receiving tube, cotton, and two pairs of sealed sterile latex gloves. I roll the surgical cart over to the table. By this time Kale looks really frightened. For real. "Nipples first?" I ask.

Jeremy nods.

I mark Kale's nipples for the piercings and look to Jeremy for approval. He nods. Next, I open the two bottles, snap on the gloves, take a piece of the cotton, and swab Kale's nipples with clear a liquid, isopropyl alcohol. Dropping the cotton into the trash, I take another piece of cotton, and swab his nipples with a red liquid from the second bottle. It's Betadine, a disinfectant. Then I tear open the first sealed needle. "You were sucking him off when I came in. Did he cum?"

Jeremy shakes his head.

"See if you can get him off now."

Jeremy starts to suck Kale, and after a couple of minutes, Kales breathing gets ragged. At that moment, I pass the needle through his left nipple. He scrunches his eyes shut and gasps, but he's okay...mostly, although I think he deflates. I leave the needle in place, and unwrap the second needle. "Keep sucking," I say to Jeremy, and he does. I wait...three minutes, four minutes, five. And then Kale starts to cum, and just as he does, I pass the second needle through his right nipple. He screams, and starts to cry, either from the orgasm or the pain...or both. Again, I leave the needle in place. We'll deal with the jewelry later. Pulling off the gloves, I move to Kale's dick, and mark it. The Prince Albert pierces the penis from the outside of the frenulum and into the urethra; that is, from the bottom of the penis just behind the dickhead and through to the urethra. The jewelry, a ring, enters from the piercing hole and emerges from the head of the dick. This piercing is usually not especially painful, I'm told. (Holyfuckingjesus). Often, what's more painful than the actual piercing, according to my Google research, is the insertion of the receiving tube into the urethra. How can I describe this? In piercings such as this one, the exit hole (where the needle comes out during the piercing) is in a tight location -- like in the middle of your urethra. The needle can do a lot of "collateral damage," as the military would say of napalm. To combat this problem (maintaining the military metaphor) a receiving tube is used to receive the needle as it comes through. What that means in the case of a Prince Albert is that we have to stuff a quarter-inch stainless-steel tube about one inch into your dick. (Well, not into your dick. Don't worry. We have to stuff it into Kale's dick.) We have to stuff it in there far enough so that when the needle comes through the base of his dick it's deflected from going straight up and through the top of his dick. Instead, it bends, and is redirected out the tip of his dick.

Have I got your attention?

I've never fucking done this before.

This is my first time.

Which of us is more scared? Kale or me?

Kale looks at me with tears in his eyes. He looks at me with a mixture of longing, pleading, and fear. He's flaccid, thank god, because everything I've read tells me that you can't do this if he's hard. But BMEZine.com -- the Body Modification website, the bible in this field intended to make amateurs feel better --tells me not to worry. It just doesn't hurt that much. It'll be okay. You can do this to yourself. (Holy-motherfucking-jesus-fucking-christ!) Did I say that loudly enough? I put on a new, clean pair of gloves, swab his dick with alcohol, and then with betadine. I tear open the sterile packaging of the receiving tube, and insert it into his dick, making sure that the long side is on top. Then I feel along the underside of his dick to determine where it is in his urethra. I think I have it right. I better fucking have it right! I open the 10-gauge needle. "Kiss him," I tell Jeremy, looking him in the eyes. "And make it a good kiss but not a great kiss. I don't want him hard." Jeremy smirks, leans over, and begins to kiss Kale. Just as he does, I pass the needle into Kale's dick. Thank-Jesus-Joseph-and-fucking-Mary, it hits the receiving tube, which does just what it's supposed to do. It deflects and passes out the head of his dick. Kale doesn't flinch. I think he was so scared that the actual event was a complete anti-climax. It's a good kiss, but, as specified, not a great kiss. Kale remains flaccid. It's now time for mounting the jewelry. This, too, is an anti-climax.

Making the holes is the hard part of piercing. Well, I don't know about "hard part". It's the painful part, the scary part. The needles are hollow, though, and razor-sharp. Again, I'm not sure how to describe this. If you're making a ten gauge hole in someone's penis, what you don't want is something like a big nail. What you do want is a tube with razor-sharp edges that will effectively slice away a small cylinder of flesh that is ten gauge in diameter. I don't mean to gross you out, but if you do this right, the pain is minimal apparently. If you do it wrong, the result is what piercers call "blunt trauma." You're stabbed with a blunt instrument. It hurts -- a lot. And you'll probably get an infection. This, at least, is how it was all explained to me.

I attach the ten-gauge ring through the end of the hollow needle and pull it through. It curls in through the piercing and out through his dick head. I expand the ring just enough to get the captive bead inserted, and let the ring close around it. The dick is done. Then I do the same for the nipples, closing the rings right around the captive beads. They look really stunning. The yellow gold matches Kale's coloring perfectly. I'm not big on piercings, as I've said, but these all are really beautiful, and I wonder if this is why we've done this. Dinh has wanted piercings for years, and I've refused him. I didn't want to mutilate him. But, now...

Once the jewelry is in place, I swab Kale off with a bit more betadine, and release the straps. He looks really good. He looks at himself in the mirror and smiles. "Cool!" he says. And then he and Jeremy leave the scene. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be.

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From a revenue perspective, Brutal Passion turns out to be Dinh and Shawn's hottest seller, but we're not sure why. Is it the content, or the increased advertising? They end up placing some pretty-expensive print ads in targeted gay media -- Bear Magazine, Freshmen, Bay Area Reporter, Out Now, and Gay Times in the UK. Personally I think this is what does it, because their orders increase eight-fold over Brutal Loving. And, of course, when you advertise in something like Bear or Gay Times, you make it onto their radar screen for editorial notice. A review of the video in Bear called it "seminal" -- a play on words I guess -- saying that piercing videos had never been made before, and piercing had never been conceptualized as an S/M activity. The "new take on piercing was an exciting addition" to the gay male video genre. Gay Times said more or less the same thing: "The Yanks have extended the S/M genre with some very provocative content." Who knows why, but the sales have dramatically increased, and that seems to be a mixed blessing.

The trouble is, Dinh is just about to graduate. He successfully defended his dissertation two months ago, and with his work on the Dark Angel series of video games, he has quite a reputation in both gaming and academic circles. He has academic offers from UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, San Francisco State, Carnegie Mellon, and, of course, his alma mater, Stanford. He also has engineering offers from about seven software companies that would pay him twice as much as any of the academic offers. What complicates the choice of jobs is the fact that whoever he affiliates himself with will want to own any intellectual property that he produces while he works for them, and the intellectual property he's produced thus far has been significant. The other problem is that he's been living a double life, hasn't he? By day, he's a mild-mannered teaching assistant, and by night he's a pornographer, and not just any pornographer. He's not making soft-core twink features. He's not making Bel Ami stuff. What he's making is triple-X. If any of those would-be employers ever discover that my sweet little Dinh was the director of Brutal Passion, he'll be toast.

"So, what is it you want to do...really?" I asked him one evening as he sat on my lap after a particularly-aggressive spanking.

"I'm not sure," he sobbed.

"Do you love the teaching? Kenny does. Do you?"

"It's okay," he responded, passively.

"What about the game development?"

"Yeah, I enjoy that. It's where I put my creative energy."

"And the porn?"

He looks embarrassed, shamefaced. "Yeah, I like that, too."

"So, Dinh, I'm wondering why you'd take any of these jobs. I mean, you work...one works...for social and economic reasons. You work because you need to make money to put food on the table, and you work so you can socialize with your colleagues. But you're not especially social, are you? None of us is. Kenny's the most social of all of us, but even he's INTP on the Myers-Briggs personality scale. He's very...introverted. Like you are. Like I am. God know, like Jason is. So, if socializing isn't a motivation for working, what's left is making money. Between your game development and your porn, you seem to be doing okay. You seem to be doing better than okay. As a lowly teaching assistant for Kenny, you've brought in more income than either Jason or me. Only Kenny, a full professor, brought in more than you. And, what percentage of Kenny's income do you think comes from teaching?"

"I don't know. Half?"

"It's actually about 7%, and the only reason I know that is because I had this discussion with him not long ago. He teaches because he likes it, not because it pays well, at least not in terms of everything else he does. Games, songs, operas, and West End musicals are how Kenny makes his money. So, just for fun, let's assume you took one of those engineering jobs. And, let's assume that your initial salary was better than average. So, take the $200,000 that you'd make as an engineer, and add it to the proceeds you make from the games you've written and from the porn you've produced. What percentage is that $200,000 of your earning power? Ballpark it."

Dinh does a quick calculation, and smiles. "17% roughly." Dinh is a very good programmer. Now you know why.

"Exactly. So why do it? Why not work for yourself? Write your games, publish them through any number of distributors that I can put you in contact with. Write academic papers and attend conferences to boost your credibility, and...umm...make porn on the side."

Dinh nods slowly. This is not the life he imagined for himself, but it's as though a vista is opening for him. It's as though he's visualizing a new frontier. He looks into my eyes and nods. "Yeah," he says with a smile, "yeah, that'd work." We kiss. I really love this guy.

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Dinh slaps Kevin across the face. It's not a hard slap, but it's not soft either. Kevin looks incredulous, and absolutely shocked. Then...he starts to cry. They're sitting on a bench in the lunch area at Kevin's school. Kai is with them. Dinh pick Kevin up off the bench and sets him on his lap, hugging him as he cries. After maybe ten minutes, Kevin winds down and Dinh, who has been hugging him for those ten minutes, pushes him away and looks him in the eyes. "Is that what you want someone to do to you? Do you want them to walk up and slap you like that?"

Kevin starts to cry again. "Nooooo," he wails.

"Then don't you do it to them! We talked about this before, Kevin. Mrs. Murphy says you slapped Brian. Did you?"

Kevin nods.

"Why?"

"I don't...knoooow," he whines.

"Never, never again, Kevin! Do you understand me this time?"

"Yeeaaahhhh."

"Keep your hands to yourself!"

"Okay."

Dinh hugs him, and sets him on the ground. He picks up Kai, who is freaked and close to tears, and gives him a hug. Then he takes Kevin's hand, and leads him off to the car for the trip home. No dessert for Kevin tonight, and it's Mango Pudding, one of his favorites, so this is some serious punishment!

Published first at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nemo-stories/