I barely noticed as Jean walked into the store, approached the counter and asked, in perfect English but with a delightful French accent, if I had a copy of 'Les Miserables' by Victor Hugo. I heard the words clearly, but my eyes and brain were focused on the sashaying rear end of a lovely piece of ass with gorgeous tits and nice round hips who had somehow even again resisted my best efforts at seduction and was on her way out of the store. Without even buying a fucking book! Bitch! Cunt! Dyke! Damn, damn, damn!

To tell the truth, I don't know why I refer to her as a bitch or dyke — cunt doesn't count because they're all cunts. Far more than half of the browsers in my store wind up walking out without making a purchase. She called herself Karen, a regular customer who occasionally bought a book. As for her personally, her conduct in turning my hints down contained nothing truly offensive, except of course for the horrible fact of the rejection itself. And even then, she didn't reject me, she just politely ignored the lust she could see in my eyes. But I won't apologize. I generally don't; it's not in my nature.

I'm Bernie. I own a used bookstore and spend most of my working time trying to get almost every woman who enters the store into the bed in the back room of the store. Sometimes it works; more often than not I strike out. As a result, every few hours I have to go into the back room to get myself off. Old Peter The Great, hanging down there between my legs, can be a very demanding fellow. Sure, he's not really that great size-wise, but my fantasy nickname for him stays with me.

Jean followed my eyes to watch the ass that I had been ogling.

"You'd love to fuck that, wouldn't you?"

"Of course," I said, turning. "Who..." My voice dropped to an involuntary whisper, "... wouldn't?"

Then, after a pregnant pause, I continued. "I guess you wouldn't, would you? Such a shame though to waste something like that."

Jean is often pronounced 'Jeen', as in, 'I'd like to get into her jeans." Alas, Jean could also be pronounced 'Zhon', as in Jean Valjean, the protagonist of the book this Zhon had asked for.

"No," he said with a smile, "I guess I wouldn't. But you never will either; she's a lesbian."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Oh, guys like me can tell. We're always looking for kindred souls, even if we march to a different drummer."

One look at him, at his clothing, his hair style, his gentility, and I could tell that we would never be competing for the cunt who had just left the store. Which was, in the abstract, actually a good thing, for Jean was devilishly handsome, as tall as I but slender. I could tell that if he preferred the female of the species, I would come in second in many a head to head battle for the favors of a lady.

'Favors' of course is the politically correct way to say cunt.

He wore his homosexuality casually, openly expressing it but not flaunting it. He was like Popeye — 'I yam what I yam' - and he didn't care who knew it. He recognized that some people disapproved but he allowed them their prejudices so long as they did not act on them.

"Have you ever?" I asked. In retrospect, it was a stupid and offensive personal question, yet he took no umbrage. Also in retrospect, it was the kind of stupid and personal question that many people, strangers like me, have probably asked him.

"Not for eons," he responded, almost dreamily, as if remembering some fine piece of ass from his uncertain formative days, perhaps before he had ever thought about boys or men in a sexual manner, long before he had ever come out, as was clear then that he had. Then he added "Have you ever?"

Now, my lawyer could argue that his question was ambiguous, and thus any answer I gave would not be a lie since I must have misunderstood the question. But I knew what he meant and the answer unequivocally was 'NO'. On the other hand, that didn't mean that I hadn't thought about it every once in a while, especially while giving Peter The Great his frequent exercises. Yes, I had wondered what it would be like, on the doing side and on the receiving end. I might even have thought of it as the 'dark side' but that would suggest homophobia, which was not one of my hang-ups.

And so I answered it like a lawyer might. My single whispered word, 'no', communicated past truth and at the same time future curiosity. Did I do that deliberately? I'm not sure. Again like a lawyer, I can neither admit nor deny. But if I had to guess, the answer to the question about deliberately would be a definite maybe.

Jean on the other hand had spent much of his life looking for those little signs, 'tells' the poker players would call them, that indicate that the man in front of him may not be totally hetero, and may even be outright gay. He heard it in the sound of my voice when I answered his question; I knew that he heard it because his eyes showed a flicker of recognition, of understanding about my thoughts. He continued like a good cross-examiner, asking soft questions when he already knew the answers.

"But you've thought about it, haven't you, Bernie?"

Peter The Great sat quietly inside my jeans, listening carefully, awaiting the signal from me to telegraph my brain to send him more blood, to fill him to the hardness his needed to perform his sacred duty. And my answer to Jean would tell Peter The Great whether to send that requisition or just to go take a nap. At the same time, in my own head, I knew that the 'wrong' answer — if 'wrong' would possibly be the 'right' word — would send me down a path I had never taken.

Gay I was not; curious certainly, adventuresome maybe.

"I guess I've thought about it, Jean; yes I guess I have." Jean waited patiently, like an attorney or a police officer, for me to continue, to tell the whole story. "When I was about fourteen, some guy came up to me and asked if I wanted to make a few bucks. I asked how and he nudged my groin. I told him that I wasn't interested and he said 'it tastes good.' I said no again and he walked away."

"I've always wondered what it really tastes like," I finished after a final sustained pause.

"But I'm sure you've tasted cum, Bernie, your own for sure, right?"

"That's not the same." Even as the words came out of my mouth, I wondered why the fuck I was arguing for something that the other guy was trying to convince me about. "It's not really the taste, it's the concept of having another guy's cock throbbing and shooting off in my mouth. That's what I'm curious about."

Jean looked at his watch. "Why don't you lock up and we can go down the block to the Olympus for a drink?"

I shook my head. "That's a gay bar. I'm not ready for that. But I do have a bottle in back." I couldn't tell if Jean took offense at that remark; I didn't care. I would doubt it though. He wanted me naked, that was for sure, and if I had sensibilities about being seen in a gay bar, he would be quite happy to be alone with me and no doubt my mouth and ass in my back room.

I hung the 'Closed' sign on the door, locked it and pulled down all the shades. In addition to the bottle of bourbon, the back room also contained a small refrigerator that made ice cubes, two clean glasses and two straight back chairs. I couldn't give him any drinks with little umbrellas, though. Does that sound homophobic? I didn't mean it to.

We sat next to the desk, facing each other. We spoke about our backgrounds, about the guy who had tried to pick me up way back when, about the girls I fucked on that bed. He told me about how he came to realize that he was gay, and the difficulties of living gay in a straight world. We circled around but didn't address the main question, which had to be, was I willing to take his cock into my mouth. Until...

Jean's eyes burned into mine. He took one of my hands into his and dropped his voice to a whisper. "How would you like to begin, Bernie?"

I knew all the possible answers: I blow him, he blows me, etc. etc. There was also one more answer, which sounds like 'I don't'. That issue had to be resolved in my mind before we moved on to the 'who goes first' question. This was not for Peter The Great to decide, it was for me; my trusty cock would be taken care of somehow. Shit, I whack off pretty often to keep him happy. Did my psyche need to feel and taste this handsome stud's ejaculate in my mouth? Did I really want to experience something that I had always thought of as weird, sick, even disgusting? Like I said, I had no problems with gay people — shit, I love to watch a movie with two lezzies going down on each other — but that didn't mean that I wanted to do something that gay guys do, like eat cock or take it up the ass.

But I had never forgotten that stranger's words on that street corner. 'It tastes good'. And damn it, I wanted to find out for myself. Much as I hated to admit it, I had always wanted to find out how it tasted.

"Let me get you off first, Jean."

He did his best to restrain a smile of victory but I could see the corners of his mouth fighting to turn upward. No matter. Peter The Great meanwhile had jumped to attention. In silence I reached for the hangers which had never held any man's clothing except my own. In silence we undressed ourselves, deliberately avoiding each other's eyes. My own focused on the member that I would soon take into my mouth.

I had taken enough showers in locker rooms and health clubs to know what other cocks looked like. I had seen enough cocks to know that Peter The Great was nothing special, despite the fancy name that I gave him. And to know that the sight of a naked cock had never been of interest to me or to Peter. Jean's cock though was the first one — outside of a porn flick — that I had ever seen fully engorged with the blood of lust, primed for insertion into some willing orifice. As such, it looked as adequate as my own, neither immense nor puny. I saw that I could handle it. And I knew that the anticipation of being inside my mouth, my warm wet mouth, the anticipation of my tongue licking and circling it, accepting his spurt, had been the cause of it being that hard.

Jean lay on my bed, his torso supported on his elbows, his legs slightly spread. As I knelt between them, he suddenly grabbed my head, pulling it to his face. My mind rebelled in shock as our lips met, until I realized, in for a penny, in for a pound. Women kiss, why can't men? My tongue responded to this unfamiliar sensation with surprising eagerness, though my eyes stayed open. So did Jean's, emphasizing that our time together was pure lust, without emotion. For my part, it was simple curiosity, the exploration of life, the grasp for experience. Bullshit, you say, and you're right; I was simply as turned on as I had ever been in my life. I wanted to suck his cock and feel it explode its creamy goo into my mouth.

Both of our cocks were squeezed between the two bodies as our mouths connected. Then he relaxed his grip, allowing me to slide back to my intended task. Though I'd never sucked a cock, I certainly knew how the cunts did it to me. And how difficult could it be? Babies suck instinctively, and a cock is just a big nipple, albeit producing somewhat thicker and possibly tastier sustenance.

I took Jean's meat in hand. It felt like Peter The Great, warm and smooth, loaded for action. He had been circumcised, just as I had; to my eyes, the uncut ones that I had seen in locker rooms always looked funny. I guess their owners didn't mind. A small droplet of pre-cum peeked out from his piss slit. Every woman who's ever blown me has licked it off; I did the same for Jean. It tasted like nothing; I hadn't expected anything noticeable. My own pre-cum titillates my brain, not my palate. I lifted Jean's cock, pointing it toward his face so that I could lick the underside.

His hand rested softly on the back of my head. I felt like a whore. Let go of my head, I thought, I know my business. But I didn't say it. I took his crown in my mouth and gave it a single hard suck, my saliva making an embarrassing slurping sound. Then I twisted my head this way and that, enabling me to kiss all up and down his shaft. I ran my tongue around the ridge behind Jean's crown and gave it another slurp.

I tried to remember who had first taught me that a blow job requires kissing and licking the cock in addition to sucking it. Her name escaped me; she was in my class in school. Julie; that was it. It happened soon after the incident with the gay man. Julie's reputation as the school slut brought her lots of attention. For me, it constituted my first ever ejaculation caused by anything except my own five fingers. My occasional visits to her mouth and cunt — she never let me near her anus - lasted a full two years, for me and probably a hundred or so other guys, until she graduated. For all I know, she's turned pro. But by then, there were plenty of other cunts ready and willing to satisfy Peter The Great.