The People of the City

Lisa's Idea

His breath tasted of the vodka that the three of us had been drinking, but underneath there was the tang of something sharp. I brushed my lips across his, my tongue moving over their softness and smoothness and then over the sandpaper-like roughness of the stubble on his cheek. Again I brushed my lips over his lips, but again he didn't respond. It was like kissing a beautiful flesh-and-blood statue but a statue all the same.

I pushed my tongue at his lips, but they remained closed, as solid as a locked door, and then, in a moment of surprise, they opened and my tongue was able to slip into that beautiful mouth with its white and almost perfect teeth. I swirled my tongue around and stroked it over those almost perfect teeth, but there was no response in return.

With a backward jerk of his head, Ethan broke off our kiss, leaving me almost hanging in mid-air, my mouth open like a lost goldfish. I snapped my eyes open and my mouth closed.

"Sorry mate, I didn't feel anything. It was all right but not for me," Ethan said.

"What ... nothing?" Lisa replied, her face falling with disappointment.

"Nothing," he said.

"Not even a little swelling downstairs?" Lisa asked, staring at him.

"Nothing, it didn't even twitch. Sorry, Nick, nothing personal, but it isn't for me," Ethan said.

"No hard feelings," I said as I shifted around on the sofa trying to get comfortable again. There wasn't much room inside my underwear for my own excitement.

Lisa had invited me there that night to meet her new boyfriend, the very attractive Ethan. She obviously wanted to show him off to me, and Ethan was certainly pretty. His blond hair was cut into a very flattering floppy-fringed style. His chin was graced with dark blond and carefully trimmed stubble. His bright and open face seemed to almost command the room, always drawing your eyes back to him. His lean body rippled with just the right amount of muscles to give him careful definition, which I could easily see through his skin-tight, ribbed T-shirt. But as the evening progressed, I soon saw Lisa wasn't just proud of her pretty new boyfriend, she was also insecure about him.

As the wine flowed, it was Lisa who brought up the subject of "gay experiences" and she actually seemed shocked when Ethan said he hadn't even kissed another man. As we moved on to drinking vodka shots Lisa's questions became more insistent, ending with her suggestion to him:

"Go on, kiss Nick."

"What?" Ethan was lounging back in an armchair, his groin thrust forward as a he sat. With his legs open his whole posture seemed to drag my eyes down to that groin.

"You've never kissed a man, Nick's here and he's gay, why don't you kiss him? How do you know you don't like it if you've never done it?" Lisa asked, staring straight at him.

"Will this turn you on?" he asked.

"It might." She smiled at him.

I felt as if I was invisible then, in the middle of their flirting, and for a moment I felt embarrassingly uncomfortable.

"I'm game!" Ethan said with a sudden burst of energy. He then jumped up from his armchair and in the next moment he was sitting beside me on the sofa. "Come on, pucker up," he said to me.

Then I kissed him.

I left Lisa's flat not long after that kiss, it was her who showed me out; Ethan remained lounging on the sofa. On the flat's doorstep Lisa whispered to me, "Thanks for that."

"For what?" I whispered back.

"I was really worried about Ethan. I mean he's so pretty that I couldn't believe that he wasn't just a little bit gay, a bit bisexual. You know what I mean. Well, you kissing him has really put my mind at rest. He didn't react at all, not a flicker. I really feel happy now, he's all mine. Thanks, Nick, you're a real friend." She lightly kissed me on the cheek.