First of all, I’m straight. This is something I’ve thought a lot about in the past week, and I’m convinced of that. What happened in the bookstore was a fluke, a weird combination of circumstances. I don’t regret what happened, but it’s not going to happen again. I just want to write the story out so that I can be really clear in my mind what did happen, so that I can be on my guard.

The bookstore is huge, a full city block and many stories, a veritable labyrinth of wooden and metal shelves, with old books and new ones, of every conceivable type. I had found the book I came to get, a used copy of Faust, and I was going toward the cash registers to pay and leave when I stumbled into the art section. Before I realized it, I had wandered into a back room with erotica, some narrative but most of it books of paintings, drawings, and photographs—all very explicit and sexual.

There was no one around, and I happened to pick up a large handsome book that turned out to be filled with pictures of naked men in hard-core sexual action, man on man, sometimes in groups. The photography was top-notch. It was an anthology by different photographers and some sections contained gritty black-and-white pictures that had been taken in actual sex clubs while other sections were clearly made up of posed encounters in studios with refined lighting and beautiful full color. There were some full-page close-ups of erect cocks, with dark purple heads, delicate blue veins running through the pink flesh of the shaft, taut testicles with melon-skin texture, and sometimes flows of white-grey semen shining against the white or chocolate skin of the models.

I had never realized the great variety of male sex. There were barely legal guys with slim but firm bodies and cute, almost feminine asses and then there were huge, hard-bodied men with beards, and there were even cross-dressers who looked alluring in sheer stockings and high heels.

Among some of the pictures of younger men naked and kissing one another there were several that made me think of my friend Tommy. I remembered skinny-dipping with him and stealing furtive glances of his cock while we lay on the sand. In these pictures, though, the cocks were fully erect.

In spite of myself I was getting aroused, I felt hot and I realized that I was crossing a line, but there was no one around to see, and I figured I’d never come back to this section again, so I continued to turn the pages. Each new image seared itself into my brain. I almost had the feeling that my psyche was morphing into some new pleasure-seeking spirit with each picture that I gazed at.

I lost all sense of time, my imagination transported into this different form of sexual pleasure that I would never personally enter. For a moment I thought of buying the book. It was second-hand and not really expensive for something so beautiful, but the embarrassment of taking it to the cash register and especially of waiting in line holding such a large book that was so obviously…well, homoerotic…just was not thinkable.

He must have been behind me for a minute or more before I realized he was there. I almost dropped the book with fright.

“That’s a beauty,” he was saying, “I love the way the head is just starting to push its way into the mouth, and you can see that little drop of pre-cum on the lips…”

There was nothing to do except agree. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t enjoying the pictures. He asked if he could look with me. So we leaned against the wall and I continued to turn the pages.

He was much younger than I, college age I would say, and very athletic looking. It felt strange to be standing so close to another male—our arms were rubbing as we shared the book—while I had a hard-on.

Why did I feel that I needed to say, “I’m straight, but these are great photos”?

He replied, “I’m straight too. It’s hot to see how other people do it, like lesbians. I love seeing girls on each other, making out, finger-fucking, licking and sucking their clits. Man, that is so much hotter than looking at straight boy-girl sex! And these gay guys have got a lot going for them too. Did you ever see harder, straighter cocks? It’s contagious! Man, is it ever contagious!”

I admitted that it was a turn-on.

We continued to look, and I loosened up. He had such a relaxed attitude, I didn’t feel ashamed as much as I had at first.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve got to let some of the excitement out,” he said, and he unzipped his fly and unbuckled his belt. His cock sprang from his briefs as soon as he pulled down the elastic. I had trouble keeping my eyes off it. He could see I was looking.

“That’s all right! You can look! Cocks on the page or off the page are hot. In fact, a real cock is hotter than a picture, right?”

I nodded, noticing that there were a couple of little droplets on his cock-head.

“How can you stand it to look at these pictures without touching yourself?” he asked, while he started to stroke.

That was all I could take. I felt the need too, but I was holding the heavy book.

“Put the book on the table and then you’ll have your hands free.”

I followed his suggestion, but even without the book I had trouble unzipping. My hands were trembling and my heart was pounding.

“You’re really nervous, aren’t you? Look, I can do it for you.”

I thought that my heart was going to burst through my chest. I started trembling. He undid the belt buckle, and then pulled the zipper down. I felt the pressure of his hand against the front of my jeans as my white cotton briefs appeared.

“You’ve got a mighty stiff one,” he said, “and it looks as if you’re a little damp.”

Without asking, he pulled at the waistband and my cock leaped out, touching his hand. The feeling of his warm hand against my penis sent an electric shock through my body. I was so scared and so excited that I couldn’t move. When he pressed his palm directly against my shaft I began to faint, and he put his arm around me to hold me up while he caressed me.

The next thing I knew we were kissing and my hand was on his cock too. I was doing what came naturally, just grasping his erect member and stroking it up and down. It was warm in my hand and I loved touching it. Somewhere in my mind I must have realized that we were doing something that I had just been looking at in the pictures for …what was it? An hour?

All of a sudden I realized that I wanted to stop kissing him and to fill my mouth with his cock. So I just let myself fall to the floor, bending my knees (I was still faint) and then taking his cock into my mouth. By now there was a lot of pre-cum to lick, and the taste was salty and sweet. It excited me still more and I sucked hungrily.

Until that day I had never seen a man sucking another man’s cock, but I liked to watch lesbians lick pussy so why should I have hesitated to enjoy the sight of male oral? Now my head was just full of these images—these images that are still haunting me—and I could have licked and sucked for all eternity, but he began to throb and soon my mouth was flooded with cum. I had to stop sucking to swallow and a bunch ended up on my face. I licked what I could off of his cockhead and shaft, but as soon as he stopped spurting he got nervous and bolted. He was gone in an instant, leaving me with cum in my mouth and on my face and with my stiff cock in my hand.

Now I was alone again, kneeling on the floor of this little room. I jerked off, totally out of control with excitement, and came, making a puddle on the floor. I felt guilty about the puddle, so I looked around and found some old sheets of publicity that I used to wipe it up. I zipped up, dried off my hands as best I could.

I was in an afterglow of erotic arousal and I wanted to take one of the beautiful books with me, so I picked up a book with nice photographs of young women going down on each other and headed to the cash register. I figured that no one would bat an eyelash at a man buying a book of lesbian pictures. After all, what can be more normal?

Now I’m trying to fight the temptation to go back to the bookstore. I love the lesbian erotica that I bought, but I know that I want to look more at the men, too. Do I want to risk meeting someone there again? Could I be sliding down a slippery slope?

Just thinking about the bookstore makes me hard. I need to stop writing so that I can release some of this excitement.