Chapter 13: The Good Seed

Alex

2024

Never before had Alex felt as much like he was playing a walk-on part in the story of someone else's life. He was like a minor character in a soap opera who'd somehow been allowed to stay on for more than one episode. Even though he'd been seeing Gabby for nearly a year now, there was no doubt which one of the couple was calling the shots in their relationship and it wasn't Alex.

To make matters worse, Gabby made no pretence whatsoever that Alex wasn't just one of several men with whom she regularly fucked. He shared her with lovers whose presence in Gabby's life rarely survived more than a single night. This wasn't the stuff to boost a man's ego, especially one whose score rate was so wretched in comparison.

It was mostly because Alex had achieved a small level of success with the women he'd met through internet dating sites that Gabby continued her relationship with him. Alex didn't want to elaborate too much on encounters which only occasionally resulted in him enjoying the sex that he and—presumably—the woman he was dating had been anticipating. For a start, his dates shamelessly lied about their age. Few women in their forties, let alone their fifties, had looks to match Alex's chosen target age range of 20-35. Alex would have chosen a younger age bracket if he hadn't been aware that few women in their teens would genuinely seek the affection of a man approaching his thirtieth birthday. And those women who did were unlikely to have a romantic reason for such a choice.

In exchange for the tales of sexual conquest she wheedled out of him, Gabby recounted her own exploits which, unlike Alex's, needed no gloss or elaboration. Alex didn't want to elaborate too much on his dating disappointments with women who in one way or another rather deserved to remain single. It wasn't their looks alone that persuaded him to make this assessment, however important this was to Alex. There were other important considerations like neuroticism, body odour and sometimes hostility towards men like Alex who weren't acceptably clued-up on the issues of the day.

"Well, there isn't much you're sure about, is there?" Gabby asserted while she pumped his penis. They were sitting in his tiny living room with the television in the background tuned to Fox News UK. Zak Goldsmith was ranting about a Green conspiracy that was somehow certain to wreck the economy. "Although I'm no great fan of the Greens, even I can see that this is just paranoid conspiracy bullshit. Why do you watch it?"

"I like to get the other side."

"The other side of what?" wondered Gabby. She lowered her tongue towards Alex's lap to lick the tip of his glans while she kept her eyes fixed on his. "This is nothing more than news porn. It's not real opinion. It's propaganda. You just watch it to see how far it'll go. It's like those porn movies where you wonder whether there'll be DP, piss or scat. And, believe you me, those are better options than what I'd like see happen to turncoat fascists like Goldsmith."

"We'll watch something else," said Alex who switched the TV to an internet porn channel that was showing at least two of the sexual activities Gabby had mentioned.

Gabby turned her face towards the screen. "At least it's not farmyard porn," she remarked while continuing to pump Alex's prick. "You wouldn't believe the number of times at school and university the guys got me to watch that kind of crap. 'Ever wanted to make out with Dobbin?' 'Are the sheepdogs on your farm as good at fucking as they are at herding sheep?' 'Ever sucked a horse's cock?'"

"You haven't, have you?" wondered Alex who'd occasionally succumbed to that fantasy.

"Of course I fucking haven't. I'd have to be fucking demented to do something like that. And you have to be fucking demented to even suggest it."

However much Alex felt like a bit-player, he had to admit that the best sex in his life so far was definitely that which he had at least once a week with Gabby. It was always her who'd initiate it and she rarely gave Alex the chance to choose otherwise.

"Get ready," she'd say on the phone. "I'll be over in half an hour."

"Are you sure?" said Alex who might be watching a movie he'd just downloaded.

"Why? Who're you with?"

"No one."

"Don't be fucking soft, then. Just put some cans of beer in the fridge."

The text messages, e-mails and even surprise calls that Alex received from Gabby never followed a predictable pattern. About the only valid excuse he could offer for not being able to see her was that he was with another woman. On other occasions, he'd have to apologise to colleagues for having to return home early rather than joining them for a pint after work. He'd have to scurry home as fast as he could if he was on a lonely prowl in the streets of Rickmansworth. If he was working late, he might arrange to meet Gabby in a city centre pub and then go out for a meal afterwards. This was a relatively rare treat for her and one she probably enjoyed at least as much as the sex they'd soon be having on Alex's couch or on his well broken-in double bed.

Despite his nocturnal fantasies or the more graphic ones he watched on the porn channels, Alex's taste in sex wasn't remotely adventurous. Sex involving animals, urination, fisting and transsexuals were strictly off limits in real life.

So when Gabby suggested a threesome, Alex wasn't enthusiastic at all.

"With a woman?" he asked hopefully.

"Is that what you want, Alex?" she asked as she held him against her bosom, his penis still deep inside her.

"If that's what you want."

"Well, I don't," she said firmly. "I'm not a dyke."

"And I'm not queer."

"Don't worry, sweetheart. I'm not asking you to have your arse violated," laughed Gabby who was clearly quite excited by the idea. "That is, unless that's what you want?"

"Fuck no!" gasped a genuinely terrified Alex.

This was one ménage Alex didn't look forward to. Besides his entirely genuine worries about anal violation, he was anxious about how well he would perform when exposed naked and erect in front of another man.

He tried to escape into Virtual Reality where he could sample a kind of simulated sexual threesome, but since he was the one determining the terms of engagement it wasn't especially realistic. Alex wondered just what sort of perverse rules Gabby might come up with. Perhaps he ought to break the whole thing off. But then the thought of having to rely on nothing more than women who pretended to be younger than they were and frequently made unreasonable demands on his virility persuaded Alex that maybe what Gabby wanted wasn't so bad really.

Most of the time he spent in Virtual Reality—togged up in bizarre equipment that simulated muscular movement and presented a 360 degrees vista of an imagined world in front of his eyes—wasn't so much for sex or entertainment but for work. And most of that was to scan the latest news and information generated by an ever-growing community of online users in the many Virtual Reality worlds. After he'd captured enough screenshots, Alex could then return to the real world by terminating his connection and tugging off the equipment. Then he returned to his desk, which was in a different room from where he did his research, to write his daily column. Most of this was nothing more than a verbatim account of what he'd seen and it was in that sense that he offered the world a kind of news amalgamation service.

However, he had to do more than simply that to earn his salary. Reuters-Fox wouldn't be very pleased if that was all he ever wrote about in the column he submitted every day to their news services' internet pages. He had to do a bit of private research, which entailed surveying weird VR sites that promised a lot but were the sole preserve of fans of Tolkien, Star Wars and Harry Potter who were probably many decades older than their avatars suggested, and where the principal activity was to engage in tedious debates that Alex never featured in his column.