Page 16 of View From the Bottom

I wouldn’t dare make that kind of mistake. I had no desire to fuck up my relationship with my boyfriend or destroy the life we’d spent the last seven years building together. A comfortable life in a nice building in a nice neighborhood that Frankie and I wouldn’t even have been able to dream about when we’d first met.

My family didn’t have nice things when I was a kid growing up in a run-down building across from the projects in Spanish Harlem. We had a permanent hole in the wall from the time my pops implanted his fist in it after a stupid fight with my ma. We had dishes and utensils that didn’t match, some of them plastic—and warped after being washed in water that was too hot. A lot of them found their way into our apartment in plastic takeout bags from the Chinese restaurant down the block. We had a TV that didn’t work half the time, an open window to a fireescape that served as an air conditioner in the summer, and the occasional pet roach that managed to find its way into what it must have assumed was some kind of poorly run hostel.

Frankie’s childhood was similar, if not slightly more charmed. He grew up on the other side of the city, in what felt to me like far-flung Brooklyn. His building was in Bushwick and he had a live-in super. To me, that seemed like a high-end amenity. His family’s utensils were all made of metal and their cockroaches were more like occasional nuisances than live-in pets. His pops hadn’t beat on his ma, but then, his pops hadn’t really been around to beat on anyone.

Frankie and I didn’t know each other as kids. We never would have run into one another outside of maybe a random Saturday night excursion to Coney Island to cause trouble with friends. And we probably never would have met had we not ended up in the same bar in Chelsea seven years ago, a bar that’s not even around anymore. But he scoped me out waiting on line for a drink, and I caught him checking out my ass from the corner of my eye. I tossed him a confident snicker and a coy smile.

We spent the rest of that night together bonding over growing up poor and sharing plans about our respective futures, strategies to work our ways up in the world, to make sure we never ended up on the brink of poverty again.

We made something of ourselves, Frankie and me. We’d scraped our way out of hopeless desperation—out of the dilapidation that surrounded us in our youth—and went to college, working our ways up at jobs that would have never given either of us a chance thirty years ago. It took both of us fifteen years, the last seven of those working as a team, but we finally made a nice life for ourselves.

I work as a project manager for a high-end tech company, one of those buzzword-friendly start-ups that grew too big toofast, went public, and got eaten up by a tech giant. It’s the type of place that changes its mind about strategies every three months, causing its entire workforce to shift course on their projects right in the middle of completion. It’s frustrating but manageable, and as long as I hang around for a while and let my stock options vest, we’ll be set.

Frankie works in real estate development and travels to jobsites often, sometimes for weeks on end. Spending so much time away from one another hasn’t been ideal, but he likes what he does and makes good money. It hasn’t broken us yet. But it’s the reason I’m so fucking horny now.

The kind of horny that might get me in trouble if I weren’t so committed.

The kind of horny that had me checking out the ass of the hot guy standing on the line in front of me for coffee. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him in the coffee shop I frequent on my way to the office, but that didn’t matter. I’d never spoken to him outside of a cordial head nod and ahow’s it goin’?And I probably never would.

He was tall and built—not too built—and filled out the seafoam-green polo he wore nicely. The sleeves hugged his biceps and the fabric tapered in slightly at his torso. The hem was untucked and rested just below his narrow waist. His fitted gray slacks were tight—not too tight—and framed his perfectly round ass like a shimmering fucking halo on the head of an angel.

My cock plumped in my briefs when those high, tight cheeks shifted as he stepped forward with the movement of the line. I’d had to wear tight briefs. I was too horny to walk around the office in anything looser and more comfortable. The dire threat of an inappropriate and embarrassing visible erection in my pants at work forced me into restriction.

It hardly mattered. Even within the confines of my underwear, the outline of my firming cock displayed itself proudly, a hardening bulge pointing at the man in front of me, leading me in vain to the insincere possibility of release.

As I licked my lips, my cock grew and strained against the fabric to the point it ached. I wanted to take him right there in the coffee shop, that man I only knew in passing; the one that could be straight but seemed to be flaunting his ass in my face as he stepped forward. I wanted to push him against the refrigerated display case from behind, pull his dumb shirt over his head, and lick my way down his back. I wanted to yank those stupid slacks down his thighs and bury my face between his firm cheeks. I wanted to fuck him, to ease myself into him again and again while I used my hands to steady myself on his shoulders until that beautiful, familiar feeling welled up inside of me and brought me to the point of blissful explosion.

I was so horny I wanted to claim him.

I didn’t even know his name.

Minor, insignificant detail.

The daydream in which I’d been lost for God knows how long fizzled like a can of carbonated soda left out and ignored as the cashier motioned to me. My nameless friend had ordered and moved to the side to wait for his drink to be prepared while I fantasized about taking him over the display case. My cock pushed uncomfortably against the fabric of my pants and I quickly stepped forward to conceal my noticeable bulge from the cashier behind the counter.

My cock ached. It had been hard for days with no relief. It felt like what I imagined taffy on a pull felt like, stretched and strained and distended. When I woke up in the morning, I was hard. When I went to bed at night, I was hard. And I remained hard for almost every activity in between: the gym, the subway ride to work, eating dinner, watching TV. The stiffness betweenmy legs waxed and waned, but never fully dissipated. Not completely.

For the last few days, I had been eyeballing every guy on Ninth Avenue with a cute smile, with nice eyes, with a bubble butt or a bulge that probably shouldn’t have been in plain view. Hell, they didn’t even have to be attractive. Maybe they made a simple gesture that should have seemed completely innocent, as innocuous as stretching their arms above their head on the corner while waiting for the traffic to stop so they could cross the street. Or hailing a cab. But in making those gestures, their shirts would rise with the movements of their bodies to expose defined abs or inviting V-lines dusted with unruly fur. Those gestures appeared so masculine, so rugged, that I couldn’t help but notice.

Guys on the subway with their legs stretched out scrolling through their phones, guys playing handball at the court at the park, guys simply walking to work, guys hosing down the sidewalks outside of apartment buildings, guys hanging on to the backs of fucking garbage trucks as they barreled down the street… all of them had appeal. All of them had some sort of power over my brain when I’d gone without sex for so long.

Work would serve as a needed distraction today. I was in no headspace to actually get anything done, but I could sit at my desk and stare aimlessly at my computer screen to make it look like I was busy with something very important while mindlessly responding to pointless emails and signing off on expense reports and requests for time off. My desk would conceal my perpetual erection from my coworkers—from my team. Besides, it was a Friday in August. Our European clients, the ones toward which this current project was geared, would all be off on holiday to the beach or the mountains or wherever the fuck our European counterparts spent their summers while we wasted away in dull, frigid office spaces.

And Frankie would be home tonight after three long weeks in Mexico City where he’d been working out the final details of a multi-use high-rise build that would be breaking ground next month. He’d been supervising the planning of the project for what seemed like a year, and it would finally be seeing the light of day soon. He’d be in a good mood. He’d also be on a plane for much of the day with not much work to get done. That would allow his mind a lot of free time to wander, to think about the deviant things he wanted to do to me, to fantasize about exactly how he wanted to use my body when he got home.

That was our game. When Frankie was away, I wasn’t allowed to play. I wasn’t afforded the luxury of getting off. His dominion over my cock—even from thousands of miles away—excited him. I could look at porn, I could fantasize about anything I wanted to, I could even touch myself. I just wasn’t allowed to come.

We had stopped short of chastity, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. The outcome was the same. I’d be hard up, horny as hell, and unable to do anything about it. Nothing to release the pressure, nothing to cut the tension that ran through me like subway trains in the tunnels underneath the city: grating and shrill and painfully unpredictable, but constant. It felt as though every hormone that should have been expelled from my body during ejaculation had simply seeped back into my tissues and nerves, multiplying in intensity and stimulating my sex drive even more, spiking my anxiety in the best kind of way.

The desire to get off without the ability to do so made me desperate and willing to submit to anything Frankie wanted when he returned from a trip. There was a freedom so powerful in denying myself a sexual release, one that bred feelings of accomplishment and pride and desire beyond belief. One that allowed me to access dark recesses of my mind, places that weren’t navigable when daily orgasms were an option. Theywere too far beyond the scope of a sexually satisfied brain, buried too deep to be chipped away at by someone with no need, no drive. These places were considered forbidden by most; pockets of sexual deviance that weren’t meant for the faint of heart. Dark tunnels that were only traversed by those so denied, so full of need for something they simply weren’t allowed to have, that they were perpetually damp and dusted in cobwebs, speakeasy-like in their clandestine prohibition.

It wasn’t so bad when Frankie traveled for only a few days at a time. A week wasn’t even unreasonable. I could handle that. In fact, the wait could be kind of fun. A pleasantly erotic sense of control could be triggered by denying oneself a release with a clear end date to the lascivious torment. But by the time week two of this current trip had come to an end, the waiting had become excruciating. I was hungry for my boyfriend’s touch, for his kiss, for his cock. Week three had been nothing short of torture, a sick, crushing game of restless sexual repression. And these last few days, the game had been taking an emotional toll on me.

But those were the rules. I’d agreed to them. And I loved them.

And now, I was so sexually charged for his return that I wasn’t sure I could wait. I had to. I needed to. But it was hard. Nearly as hard as my dick.

Frankie and I spoke daily when he traveled. We’d discuss work and the events of the day; things I’d seen on the streets of New York and things he wished he could show me in whichever city he happened to be working. We’d remind one another how much we loved each other, how much we missed the other’s touch. But while Frankie had free rein to jerk off in the shower or pleasure himself before bed each night, he made it a daily point to confirm that I had not spilled any seed, that I had not succumbed to the filthy thoughts he knew I was having abouthim. Frankie made sure that my eventual orgasm would only arrive in his presence.

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