The Man Who Couldn't Look You In The Eye

by Nicolas Papaconstantinou, Southampton, UK of elephantwords.co.uk

"Seriously, though, look," your partner said to you, pulling down bookmarks and selecting the site in question. Within seconds, there was a guy on the screen, mid-twenties guy, an everybloke with a classic cut-and-goatee. Right there, looking out at you both, smiling, eyes flicking to one side.

Nothing much was happening, and you started to ask her "what?" But of course, you knew exactly "what?" - it was all she had been talking about for that past half-hour. Details started flickering into view, almost at the same pace that the everybloke started an accumulation of flickers himself, lids heaving, lips licking... low murmurs bubbling up to his mouth from the general area of his off-camera libido. You saw that his hair was flat against his face, he was hunched oddly, and, of course, it was because he was on his back... the camera, your eyes, looking down at him from the ceiling.

You and your partner, sitting there on the corner of the bed, fixed to the screen but not really, her casting nervous but not really nervous glances at your face every few seconds, trying to get a sense of your reaction. Both of you, stuck in place, for the five minutes and eleven seconds it took the unfamiliar man to reach orgasm.

"Like I said," she said when he was done. "Isn't it strange?"

"Isn't it though?" you replied.

"I mean, that this has been out there all this time, all these people, and we didn't even know?" she clarified.

"Hm," you said, but you weren't really sure that you felt it.

You never really considered yourself kinky, but really, what counts any more? You sense that the strangest thing about your sex drive is that you have to pretend to be turned on by the ever more complicated pornography that your partner nightly finds for you both. You haven't had the heart to tell her that for the last six years of your seven year thing, you've found sex with her to be quite arousing enough without it.

But that video, what it signifies, and the conversation following it, has stuck with you down through the weeks since.

"All those people, just... wanking themselves silly. For no reason other than to do it. As if they needed to prove that they did it."

Maybe back then, you suggested, they felt that they did.

"True. And... this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is from thirty years ago - people are still doing it now!"

Your partner was pretty blown away by the rush of discovery. The two of you watched seven more videos that night. You spent the next day at work red-eyed and vestigially horny. More than that, you were preoccupied with the thought that this was something out there, something that so many people must know about, and yet you'd been oblivious all this time.

Not kinky, no, but one thing you are, you are queer for patterns. And data? Data breaks you.

Since the turn of the century, people laying it all out on camera, slipping under the radar simply because they weren't naked on screen? What, how many, a hundred odd that first year, three hundred the next? And that's before the surface tension broke, between it being on the sub-cultural boundaries and it becoming vogue. Historians talk about the 'net being the beginning of the end for societal attention span, but one thing you notice, you notice patterns, and as far as you're concerned, on the 'net, no trend ever dies. Between the bleeding edge and the place where your grandparents are over it, an idea can last decades.

Your guilty secret quickly became that you were watching the vids sans partner. She wouldn't have minded if she knew, but she might have started to question the fact that they were no longer turning you on. You were becoming obsessed, and you knew it, but you figured, hell, it's supposed to be a valuable quality.

The men in your family, two or three generations back, had what would have been called hereditary mental health issues - OCDs out the arsehole and an attention to detail at the expense of all else that bordered on autism. In the new England of the early century, though, where nobody really knew what they were supposed to do or who they were supposed to be, your smart old grandad gift-wrapped his dysfunctions and became a vocational data-miner for one of the hot-shit new corporations coming out of London-as-was.

This is how it is and how it always has been in this country, as far as you know - one person does it well, they're made employee of the month. Just one of their offspring does it too, suddenly it's a family tradition. The English don't have much to offer the world these days, but we do have an ingrained willingness to become really very good at doing jobs that nobody else wants to do.

So you watch and watch and watch these videos of ordinary people orgasming, you've got them running in the background while you're at work, while you're brushing your teeth, and pretty soon you've seen thousands. You daydream about millions of these noisy, silent, wet, shy, invigorating cumfaces, gasping and crying across the 'net.

Then one day you're in a meeting with your supervisor, this dour old lady, in her fifties. And you realise that you've seen her cum - that she kept sweeping her then-long and flowing red hair out of her eyes as tears rolled down her face, smiling at you the whole time.

Once you notice her, you start to notice them everywhere, the familiar faces. Really, everywhere. But no one mentions anything, like they filmed their own, but never watched anyone elses'.

So now you're the man who can't look people in the eye. And they are starting to find it strange.

SOUTH SIDE

by J. Cheek, Austin, TX, USA

The car looked out of place as it rumbled over the freshly paved, jet black surface of Manor Rd. The neatly manicured leaves on the little trees planted on the median stirred as it drove past, as if in revulsion at the small trail of blue smoke wafting sickly out of its tail pipe. All around, everything new and fresh looking, and here, a ‘41 Ford with a maroon paint job and a light blue right quarter panel lurched past, hung over on off-brand gasoline and oil oozing through cracked gaskets.

Marcos sympathized with it as he stood on the bright, clean concrete curb, watching as it drove through the intersection, around a bend, and out of sight. Thank goodness for a little cloud cover this morning, so that he could bear to be outdoors. In his head was a dull pressure and in his muscles, a jittery tiredness. His eyes had bags and his short, black hair was flattened and pushed upward at odd angles all over his head. In his mouth was an odd taste, a combination of morning breath, liquor, and her. Two flights of stairs were a chore, but he kept his head upright as he climbed up them deliberately, fumbling in his pocket for the keys to his condo as he reached the top.

Walking in, he set them on the counter, and crossed the hardwood floor to the fashionable sectional sofa, on which he dropped down unceremoniously, yawning. The clock on the TV told him it was 10:42 on this Sunday morning. He pondered this as his phone buzzed insistently in his hip pocket. According to the caller ID, it was Steve.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end came back far too enthusiastically for Marcos’ current state: “Southsiiiide!”

After a brief grunt, he replied, “What up, pimp?”

“Shit. Just tryin’ to be like you, man, gettin’ down with them freaks.”

“Shut up, puto. Don’t even hate. That’s what I get for goin’ down to SoCo.”

“Man, that shit was fun. I’m not even hatin’. ¿Que te pasó? How was it?”

Marcos wasn’t in a condition to relate everything that had gone on that night. Even if he had been, the exact details were a little bit foggy, due to the liquor and weed. A few details stuck in his mind clearly, however. He traced back the start of their evening to Fusion, a swanky lounge on 7th with glowing blue glass tubes and pricey drinks; the sort of place where one could meet a pretty, blonde personal banker or paralegal, hoping eventually to find someone a little higher up the food chain, but you’d do for now.

Austin had grown rapidly in the last 45 years. The technology industry continued to be good to the city, and brought tens of thousands of new jobs to the area, and people to fill them all. The city had nearly doubled in population since the millennium and there was a lot of money here, much of it in the interest-bearing checking accounts of young professionals such as Marcos and Steve. The University of Texas continued to be a major hub in the city, with a population of roughly 72,000 students. These two facts combined to make an ever-expanding demand for nightlife, and the already large downtown nightclub scene had nearly tripled in size in the last 50 years.

Thus, they had to take a train when they took the 13-block trek down to Florentino’s on South Congress Ave. to meet Steve’s cousin. The bar was dim, and a mix of Tejano, dance, and slow jams boomed roundly out of the jukebox. The crowd was a mixed bag, but the two young men stuck out in their dress shirts and expensive-looking shoes. Truthfully, they may as well have been white people in this crowd, because once you took the bridge over Town Lake, it was like a different city. Austin was always segregated to some degree, but gentrification on the east side, former home of its lower-income (and mostly non-white) citizens had pushed them south. Even Marcos’ luxury condo sat on land that had been check cashers and low rent apartments 20 years ago.

He’d taken a break from the loud, joyful, drunk conversation of Steve’s cousin’s friends to speak to one girl, however, and ten minutes later, found himself dancing to a sad, slow Mexican waltz with her. As the tune faded out in the flaccid jukebox speakers, she whispered something to him, and a nod to Steve was all the notification he gave that they were leaving.

“Oh you know,” he spoke into the phone. “We went back to her place, it was good.”

“Right on. Did you…?”

Indeed he did. Tiny ,one room apartment. Squeaky bed. Roach end of a spliff still burning in the ashtray. Heaven.

A simple “Yup,” was all he related of this to his friend.

“How was she?”

At this point he became slightly more animated, “Man, shit is crazy down there. You wouldn’t believe.”

“Right on, right on. Manchaca mackin’. I see you, pimp.”

In truth, she didn’t live near Manchaca Rd., but this was no time to get caught up in details. The ride home in that world-weary car hadn’t been too pleasant, but it was nice of her to offer, anyway. When he got out, he kissed her and said he would call, but they both knew that was unlikely. She was quite clearly from the south side, and he, equally as clearly, was not.

Steve asked, “What are you doin’ later?”

“Pssssh…sleepin’, fool. I’ll holla.”

“Holla at me then, guey!”

As he flipped the phone closed and set it on the floor, his eyelids were already closing.