“Suck it, slut,” Walsh demanded none too pleasantly.

I didn’t want to, and I sure wasn’t going to without permission. It was six months to my final exams, and I had no intention of spending them on the street. I glanced over at my boyfriend Rhys. He shrugged, but smiled encouragement. I noticed, too, that he was hard as stone in his jeans. I didn’t like this change in the schedule, but I had to admit my socks were bulging with cash, so a quick mouth job on the wedding boy, and then out of there. I’d kept my identity secret, coincidentally making enough in tips to see me through next semester. I’d actually be able to contribute to the household budget for a change.

It had all begun when Rhys had that fucking whine in his voice again. “What else can I do? I’ll have to resign from the faculty. My career is over.”

“Don’t be such a drama queen,” I admonished. I’d been putting up with this all morning since the stripper had canceled. “Just ring and get another one.”

He exploded. “You don’t think I’ve already tried that? It’s Saturday, for fuck’s sake. They’re all busy. And most of them don’t do gay. This same-sex wedding shit is all uncharted territory. Who knew there would be a demand for gay bachelor parties?”

“Some enterprising gay stud with more sense than money,” I said. Sadly, I hadn’t seen the trap coming.

“Someone like you, Cal?”

In a way it was my fault. I was doing a major in Small Business at a medium-sized liberal arts university and I’d facetiously suggested as a subject for my end-of-year paper, emergent small business in the gay wedding industry. Not the catering, reception, photography, or all that pomp and paraphernalia that goes with any gender’s wedding, but small businesses that were intrinsically gay. Gay men catering to bachelor parties, for example.

I wasn’t surprised to discover a few of the local gay male sex workers had taken to advertising their services to this burgeoning field of endeavor, those of the get-rich-quick mind set, showing how little they knew about the inherently stingy nature of gay men when it came to sex. With the rush to gay marriage before the law could be overturned by a fundamentalist backlash, there was a scarcity of the raw commodity—strippers. Considering the reputation that hetero buck’s nights had attained, I was surprised any monogamous gay man would allow his partner the opportunity to indulge.

Rhys and I had been together almost eighteen months, all of them filled with constant whingeing when he didn’t get his way. I was trying to make our liaison work as best I could, but I was green. This was my first relationship of any duration, a weekend being my previous longest. At twenty-one, I suppose I was too young to put down roots. Plus, and I say this in all modesty, I’m quite a catch. In fact, Rhys couldn’t believe his luck when I said ‘yes’ to his offer of a place to live.

Truth be known, my agreement was to a place to live and that alone. It’s not much fun for a poor boy trying to get by on two part-time jobs and a scholarship so measly I had to borrow lube just to party. When Rhys offered his spare room at a nominal rent, and, I assumed, services rendered, I jumped at the opportunity. Rhys was pleasing on the eye, and we had already been there, done that, and enjoyed the experience. Now I could get it on a regular basis, ensuring I didn’t have to trawl the bars and waste my time and money, and I had regular meals and a nice, warm apartment with my own room.

I may have seen us as fuck buddies, unfortunately, Rhys saw us as a lot more. He saw me as a boyfriend. I argued against it as best I could, but the comfort I was experiencing as opposed to my hand-to-mouth existence prior to my move lulled me into a complacency that eventually saw Rhys move my belongings into his main bedroom. There I stayed, putting up with the odd shag and the incessant whingeing ever since.

He was a youngish lecturer at the university, fifteen years my senior, madly seeking tenure so he was sucking up to every benefactor and faculty member who could advance his career. I suspect that on the odd occasion Rhys had literally sucked, possibly even bending over and touching his toes for a few of the older gay gentlemen on the board. Rhys would not have considered this as being unfaithful to me: all was fair in the pursuit of his career. Not that I cared particularly, except for the hypocrisy, although I was expected to remain as monogamous as a monk despite the snotty-nosed faculty members groping me and suggesting clandestine assignations behind Rhys’s back.

At first I told him about them, but his distress was obvious, and he blamed me for encouraging them with the way I dressed or my supposed slutty behavior. He was in major denial. His future mapped, he would do everything to make sure he fulfilled that dream, his every action motivated by that need. My needs, my wants, were secondary, subordinated to his career advancement as well. This was a cause of friction in our relationship. That, and the fact I would not legally marry him. When he’d asked to legalize us, I realized Rhys was not the person I wanted to spend the remainder of my life with. It had hit me hard, and I’d begun experimenting behind his back.