The Good Neighbors

A couple of years ago I got a message on Manhunt from a guy who (surprise!) wanted me to fuck him. I remember it was one of those nights on which I’d been searching online for some time, and only when I was about to call it a night and hit the sheets did I get the guy’s email asking if I was looking. I was, I told the guy, but I think I’d better get to be bed at this point.

You’re in my zip code, he told me. We can’t be far. My boyfriend’s away for the night. Come bang me hard.

I asked the guy his closest major cross-streets, and was a little surprised when they turned out to be mine. Through mail on the site we danced back and forth a little, until we at last determined that the guy couldn’t really live any closer—on the street behind mine, in fact. My heart did a little palpitation there for a moment when I learned that fact, since I hoped and hoped it was the back-yard neighbor on whom I had the crush, before he moved. But no, this guy wasn’t quite that close. He lived on the other side of the street to my north.

It was at about a quarter to midnight that I found myself pulling on some shoes and a jacket and jogging out into the cold past the four houses it takes to get to the cross-street, over a short block, and then up another three houses to the address the guy had given me. His front door was unlocked. I slipped inside the bungalow and found him upstairs, as he’d promised, sprawled on his bed in a pair of white Calvin Klein briefs. He hadn’t had anything beyond a murky chest photo in his Manhunt profile, but I’d overlooked that because of his proximity. He was a stocky guy, built well but definitely on the husky side, with a nice, full round butt.

The house was expensively furnished. I remember being more preoccupied by the details of his bedroom—the framed photography, the recessed lighting illuminating the glazed pottery, the neat rows of expensive designer shoes on a rack in his California Closet. The fuck itself was fairly good. Not spectacular. Not so memorable that I found myself begging for more. But decent. I left him dripping with a load, pulled my meat back into my pants, and jogged back home.

It was about three weeks later that I got another message on Manhunt. Hey neighbor, it began. I recognized neither the screen name nor the again-murky chest photograph. Want to come over? My boyfriend’s in Chicago.

Oh, I realized, after some confusion. It was the guy from the next street over. With a different screen name and profile. Well, okay. The previous fuck had been nothing sensational, but I was horny and he was close. I told the guy I’d be over in a couple of minutes. He told me that great, he’d be upstairs in bed waiting.

Once more I grabbed a coat and some shoes and slipped into a cock ring and ran out into the cold night to the guy’s house. I slipped inside, padded up their carpeted stairs, and took off my coat and pants when I reached the bedroom. This time, there was a figure between the sheets, his head resting on a pillow, as if he were asleep. I pulled off my T-shirt and slid in beneath the blankets next to the warm body, where I pressed my hard dick against. . . .

. . . someone completely different from whom I expected. Though the man in the bed was of roughly the same build as the first neighbor I’d fucked, he was a little narrower and younger. Plus his hair was a light brown instead of black. The guy must’ve seen the confusion on my face. “You fucked my boyfriend a couple of weeks back,” he said. “Now I want some.”

“Well, you might have told me,” was my entirely legitimate response.

“C’mon,” he wheedled. He planted a kiss on my neck, which is my weak spot. “I’m better than he is.”

I couldn’t really pinpoint the source of my mild outrage. The whole setup seemed like some kind of fishy bait-and-switch, though I couldn’t say that the boyfriend was a dud, by any means. He was downright cute, in fact—and more attentive, as he went down on me. “Well, all right,” I graciously conceded, as I lay back and started to enjoy the head he gave me. “Just this once.”

The sex, I am happy to report, was good.

It was about a month after that I heard from the first guy, the one I’d originally met. Again, it was late at night. My bf told me you gave him a good pounding, he wrote. Let me remind you what I can do.

I didn’t say no.

I kind of took a perverse pleasure in fucking both men for the rest of the winter and spring. The only time they’d contact me was late at night if I happened to be on and the other of them happened to be away on a business trip, or tending to the cottage they kept across the state. The weird and unexpected thing that happened over the course of time was that both of them got increasingly sluttier. The first guy, who’d been relatively restrained when I’d met him, loosened up and got more and more verbal every time I fucked him; the second one wanted me to teach him how to be pissed on, and took some preliminary fisting work.

At the end of any session with either of them, though, they’d ask the same question: “Which one of us is a better fuck?”

“You are, baby,” I’d say, regardless of who asked it. Because any answer that started with “Well . . . “ and ended with lots of pauses and consideration was not going to be well-received. I just knew.

I stopped seeing the guys after about six or eight months. They sold their cottage because of the recession, and their respective places of work cut down on the travel time. It never seemed to occur to them to invite me over while they were both there; they only wanted me for themselves.

Sunday afternoon, Spencer came over to spend the evening. I’d planned to make him a dinner of roast chicken over hummus and almond rice, but since the hummus (and most of a bag of blue corn chips) mysteriously disappeared while I was taking a shower, we had to make a quick trip to Trader Joe’s down the street. It’s only a few blocks, and the extra daylight was night, so we walked.

And surely enough, although I’d not seen either of them in over a year and a half, who should be walking down their street and across the road that divided us, but my slutty neighbors. I saw them coming and knew we couldn’t avoid meeting. One of us would have had to turn around in our tracks and wheel back in the direction we’d come, for that to happen. They were walking a prissy little dog. I was walking . . . well, a six-foot-one long-legged dancer.

I decided to bite the bullet, when they crossed the street and paused a dozen feet in front of us while their dog investigated a fence post. “Hey guys,” I called out.

They turned and stared at me blankly. Only then did I realize that I could’ve gotten away with saying nothing. Neither one of them had recognized me outside of the context of their bedroom. What’s more, they seemed very surprised to see me with another man. “Hey,” they said. I watched as they silently put the puzzle pieces together, remembered who I was, and why I seemed so familiar. They looked at each other, and then at Spencer, who was also investigating the fence post. Unlike the dog, he wasn’t peeing on it. Just using it to stretch out his leg.

“I haven’t seen you guys in a while,” I said, trying to sound friendly, but not to give away too much. “Hope all’s well.”

We made a little bit of small talk about the neighborhood and the weather, but all their attention was focused on Spencer, who preoccupied himself in the polite way people do when their friends are talking to people they know. They both kept staring at him as if they were imagining me doing to him what I’d once done to them.

At last we parted. Spencer and I walked on to Trader Joe’s—him blissfully unaware, me feeling slightly dirty. When I looked over my shoulder, I could see the pair of them watching us, and then pretending to each other they weren’t.

“Friends of yours?” Spencer wanted to know.

“It’s a long story,” I replied. Then, because I knew I’d get to hear him laugh, I shared it with him.