I sat there afterwards, totally amazed at what Dan had done. And before I could say or do anything more, the moment I let go of his head Dan got to his feet and stumbled up the stairs. I heard him cleaning his teeth in the bathroom, and then make his way into the bedroom, but there was no sound of lovemaking that night.
The following morning Julie again woke me with a big mug of tea, but this time I was prepared as I’d kept Dan’s boxers close to me so I could pull them on before throwing the blankets aside. Dan stayed out of the bathroom when I was in there, and the first time I saw him was when I was already tucking in to my breakfast. He sat there, glum and silent, and pushed away the stuff Julie had prepared for him – which she therefore promptly gave to me.
“You’ll be late”, she finally said to Dan, who had sat there silently.
“I don’t want to go this morning.”
“Oh don’t be so stupid! You need the exercise – when I look at you compared with Steve here, you need a lot more, in fact! And you can’t let the team down – you’re always telling me how hard it is to get eleven of them together. So stop sitting there like a pudding, and go and pack your sports bag.”
“I don’t want tot leave you here with Steve.”
“So take him with you! I expect he’d like to see a bit of countryside as he spends all his time in the city.”
Dan looked a bit rebellious, but after a few more similar exchanges he went upstairs, came back with a typical sports holdall, and muttered to me “Come on, then.”
As we drove along there was a stony silence in the car, and finally I could bear it no longer. “Dan, about last night….”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Steve.”
“But Dan, you….”
“Shut the fuck up, OK? I said we’re not talking about it. I don’t know what happened – it must have been the wine. But it won’t happen again.”
“Dan, you can’t just ignore something like that….”
“Didn’t you hear me? I told you to shut the fuck up.”
I shrugged. After all, it was his life, it was him who’d wanted my cock, and had gone up to his wife straight afterwards. So we sat there in a kind of sullen peace.
You see lots of these amateur team games in parks up and down the country, and I guess this was fairly typical – a big collection of cars parked along the road at the edge of the playing fields: mostly five or six years old, as the players were plumbers, electricians, tilers and people like that who didn’t buy new, mixed with blokes like Dan who had not very good jobs down in London, who couldn’t afford to. There was a changing block on the site, but it didn’t open early and so the players mostly arrived changed, or stood there at the roadside a bit self-consciously pulling their jeans off and their shorts on whilst trying to hide their underpants with their shirt tails.
One of the blokes hadn’t turned up for Dan’s team as he was a gas fitter and had had an urgent call out, and they seemed reconciled to playing with only ten men, as it seemed that this was a fairly regular occurrence. I was standing there, and one of them turned to Dan. “Dan, couldn’t your mate play for us?”
“He’s not my mate – he’s a slave.”
“Fuck me, Dan, have you come into money or something? He looks expensive….”
“He’s just borrowed, from work.”
“Well, can’t he play?”
“Yes, I’d like to”, I cut in. “I sometimes go to Hyde Park and try to get a kick-around on a Sunday morning…”
“Shut the fuck up, Steve”, Dan snapped. “I told you to keep that trap of yours shut this morning.”
His mate looked a bit surprised at hearing Dan like that, but pressed on “Come on then, Dan…. Order him to play, will you? You know how awful it is with only ten of us, and we need the points from this game….”
Several of the others chipped in then, urging Dan to “do the right thing” and all that sort of stuff, and he finally shrugged and said “OK, then. But if anything goes wrong, remember that it’s you who asked….”
The problem then was that I didn’t have any kit, but my work boots had pretty good soles to give me a grip, and so I said I would play in them (which is what I did on Sundays in Hyde Park). And then Dan rummaged around in his sports bag and found his dirty shorts and shirt from the week before, and tossed them to me.
They smelled of his sweat and were obviously not very clean, but there wasn’t much choice, and so I pulled them on (seeing the other blokes start to snigger as they made exaggerated sniffing gestures at their armpits, and telling me that they didn’t want to be too close to me… You know how blokes are like that, always wanting to joke about things). The scent of Dan, stale though it was, didn’t rouble me much – after all, when a bloke’s been sucking your cock and that close to you, what does a bit of sweat matter?
It was a good game, actually. I like football, and I’m really fit – much more so than the other players, so I can keep running and running. And being physically bigger than most of them, and wearing sturdy work boots rather than light football boots, I frequently got control of the ball as they didn’t want to take me on in a tackle. So, unusually, it seems, Dan’s team won that morning, and we were all in a pretty happy mood as we trooped off towards the changing block at the end of the game.
It’s funny, isn’t it – perfectly normal blokes who wouldn’t even think of touching another bloke in the showers somehow lose their inhibitions when one of the men is a slave! It was all good-natured and light hearted and not serious, but once one of them had said he wanted to “feel what a real slave was like” and had felt my biceps as we stood under the showers, they all began touching me… Cautiously at first, then finally one of them had my cock in his hand and stroked me to an erection so “they could see if I was as big there as I was everywhere else”. And all this time Dan just stood there, soaping himself and not intervening or anything – and I didn’t think I ought to protest and stop them myself, as otherwise they’d think that Dan wasn’t very good at controlling slaves.
We went to the pub afterwards, and Dan told me to stay in the car, but one of his team mates came out a couple of minutes later. “Come on, Steve! We only won because of you, and the lads want to buy you a drink….”
“Dan told me to stay here….”
“…and we told him not to be so fucking stupid! It’s OK… Come on.”
It was a long time since I’d had the company of mates in a pub like that… That proper companionable atmosphere of blokes standing around drinking together with a pint in their hands, and it really made me think of what I’d lost – when I was in the army and not away, we always went out on Friday and Saturday nights like this, and talked about the football, and the TV, and racing, and, inevitably, sex! Dan didn’t seem to be joining in much, though, and he kept scowling at me. And after I’d had three pints and the talk was now all about sex, one of his mates slapped Dan on the back and asked “So why have you got this slave, then? Julie’s a real looker, isn’t she – but I guess she’s pretty close now to popping your next kid out? So you’ve given up fucking her, and use Steve instead?”
“Yes”, another one added, laughing. “That’s typical of Dan. Once they’re close to it, most of us have to put up with a blowjob, or even just a wank, from our wives. But Dan’s found a better way….. “
They all laughed uproariously, in the way that men do who are slightly drunk. One of them came and stood next to me, and ran his hand suggestively over my arse. “You’re a lucky man, Dan…. This feels like it could give a bloke a good time….”
Dan looked furious, and tried to stop them, but the more he protested his “innocence”, the more his mates goaded him, suggesting all sorts of things that he might have been doing with me, until Dan told me to drink up, as we were leaving.
The drive back looked as if it was going to be in silence, too, and I didn’t want an “atmosphere” over lunch, so I I said quietly “Dan, it’s OK…. Last night…. I won’t tell Julie or, or anyone.”
“Shut the fuck up, Steve….”
“Dan, if I’d wanted to, I could have joined in with your mates back then and told them that although you’d never tackled my arse, you were a pretty good cocksucker! But I didn’t, did I? I just stood there and took all the jokes. So stop worrying, OK?”
We’d stopped at a traffic lights, and he turned to me. “Steve… I don’t know what came over me…. I didn’t mean anything by it….”
“Sure. It’s OK. Now, let’s try and be cheerful, shall we? I bet Julie’s cooked a smashing dinner, and I really want to enjoy it… It’s a long time since I’ve had a proper roast on Sunday, as the canteen’s closed and all we get is some pizzas and stuff that they leave for us to microwave.”
I reckon it was a good thing to clear the air like that, as it was indeed a fantastic meal – roast pork, with proper crackling, and a big plum crumble and custard afterwards. By the time I’d had two portions of both I was really bloated, and combined with the effects of the three pints I’d had at the pub, all I wanted to do was slump in a comfy chair and doze off!
Dan and I went to watch the football on the TV, and I felt my eyelids closing even though it was a really good European Cup match, and Dan was the same – so much so that he did fall asleep, and lolled towards me, ending up with his head resting on my shoulder. Julie came in after she’d finished the washing up, and I realised what it must look like, and tried to push Dan off me. “Shhhhh, Steve! Leave Dan be, if it’s not bothering you: he’s always so tired on Sundays, and he’s got a tough week ahead of him – let him snooze for a bit, it won’t hurt.”, Julie whispered.
I think I fell asleep then, as I came to with Julie shaking me, and Dan sprawled half across me. In some strange way it felt good to have a body in such close contact with me. “Come on you two!”, she shouted loudly, to make sure it got through to both of us. “Time for a walk. Shane needs to go out, and you two do, too – it’s not good for you to sleep away the entire afternoon. So come on, the sun’s come out…..”
Dan got to his feet, looking a bit embarrassed, I think, as he realised how he’d been lying across me, and rubbed his eyes and stretched. Then it took ages to get everything together – Shane into the pushchair, and all that kind of thing, and we went out.
There were lots of young families about, just aimlessly walking, and it was really odd for me as I’d never done anything like that before. Some of them had kids, some of them had dogs, and some had both. But, as I said to Dan, I bet we were the only group out that afternoon with a slave.
Instead of wandering aimlessly Dan thought it was a good idea to head for the station, as I’d need a ticket for the following morning and there were always long queues on a Monday, so we headed down there – it seemed a long way, and Julie said that Dan could do it in twenty minutes- just – as he didn’t want to leave her without a car for the day, or make her get up and take Shane there as some wives had to. “He’s so considerate, Steve”, she said as Dan was buying my ticket. “I’m so lucky to have such a good husband. And unlike a lot of women, I don’t have to worry about Dan ‘straying’ – he only wants me.” Well, I felt a bit guilty then, knowing how Dan had gone for my cock the previous night, but it seemed unlikely that it would ever happen again, so I just mumbled something in agreement, about how he “seemed like a nice bloke”, and left it at that.
Nothing “happened” that night, and I was shaken awake by Dan at what seemed like an ungodly early hour the following morning, told that there was not time for a shower and that it didn’t matter anyway as I’d be working on the site all day, had a slice of toast thrust at me, and told to pull my stuff on quick, as we needed to leave! Dan caught the 05:23 which got into Liverpool street just before half past seven, and he had it down to a fine art: we went out into the blackness of the morning and he walked fast – very fast – down the footpaths and bye-ways to the station: even with my longer legs I found it almost hard to match his pace! We ran up the steps on to the platform just as the train pulled in, and Dan smiled at me. “Done it again! Julie always says that if my shoe comes undone I miss the train as I have to stop for ten seconds to do it up.”
The train stopped two or three times, picking up more passengers – mostly young blokes, like Dan, but a few women – and it gradually got fuller and fuller. Dan slumped in a corner seat, dozing off, but as the sun rose I was quite interested in sitting there and seeing the scenery. The last stop was Chelmsford, and the train now filed up completely as this was the last stop before London, and Dan half opened his eyes.
“On your feet, Steve!”, he told me.
“What?”
“There are free men standing! Apart from the fact that it’s bad manners for a slave to be occupying a seat when a free man needs one, I only bought you an ‘accompanying slave’ ticket last night as they’re cheaper – but the rules requires that the slave is not occupying space when there are full-fare passengers standing…. So on your feet…. It’s only fifty minutes into town from here.”
Another aspect of slave life I hadn’t even thought about, that was. And when you’ve got a full day’s hard work ahead of you, having to stand there in the swaying train for almost an hour isn’t good – and I was going to do tough physical graft, remember, not sit at some comfy desk, like most of the people on the train who looked as if they could do with using their muscles a bit more and who would probably have benefited from standing.
We strode across the City very fast as Dan said it was quicker than the tube, and I was at the site, ready to start work, before eight o’clock. Dan just handed me over to one of the foremen, and I got stuck in straightaway with the other slaves. Mind you, though, throughout the day I was joshed by my fellows, as someone had brought them in a tabloid which had covered the Show, and there were big pictures of me in the obscene little loincloth, with a headline of “Handsome new slave sweeps the board”, and a the story about how it was the first time for me, and Dan. And, as I thought they would, they started to call me “Champ”.
I thought that would be it, really, and for the next couple of days I only saw Dan when he was setting out some work to be done and things like that. But on Thursday night, as the site was closing, Dan came up to me. “OK, Steve, come with me…. And get a move on!” We raced across the City again to Liverpool Street, and just got in the train as the doors were closing: Dan and I both had to stand until Chelmsford, and then he was able to sit down, but I had to remain standing a bit longer. Finally, as we neared “our” stop, I slid into the seat next to him.
“Another show, Dan?”, I asked.
“Well, yes…. Quite a lot, actually. I’ve bought you. You’re my slave really now.”
I was stunned, but there wasn’t time to talk about it as we arrived just then, and we couldn’t really talk as Dan walked very fast home. Julie was surprised, too, and she had to scrabble around to find enough food to feed me as Dan clearly hadn’t told her. I went and sat in front of the TV as she and Dan washed up, and I heard them arguing – well, not exactly arguing, but there were sounds of strain, and I could only catch bits of the conversation as they were keeping their voices down as they knew I could probably hear in that tiny space.
“Dan, are you mad…. We can’t afford it…. The mortgage and everything….”
“…a bank loan. That’s why it took until today. The boss agreed to sell him to me at the ‘book’ price in the asset register – but I’ve got to give him 25% of any winnings for the next year…”
“… A loan…? The payments! There’s no money….. I’m worried…..”
“….he’s a champion! We can easily win enough to really help out….. And he’s working every day on the site still…. That will cover the bank loan, so the winnings are pure profit….”
“….except for his fares, and the food, and his clothes….”
“….accompanying slave rates….. We could always feed him chow, or at least supplement regular meals with it…. And he can wear my old stuff….”
“…. Mad, Dan! …..totally mad!”
“….best for all of us, Jules. Shane’s a big expense, and the new baby…. And, anyway, I’ve got ideas for making more money from him…. Trust me…..”
They both came into the living room then, and Dan said “I guess it’s bedtime. We have to be up early in the morning, as you know. You’d better go up and shower now, as there won’t be time then as I need to make myself look smart for work. And I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to sleep on this sofa for a bit – if we do well at the shows and things, I’ll buy a sofabed for you, but until then, this is it.”
He didn’t apologise or anything, but I suppose you don’t, to a slave.
Friday was pretty tough on the site as I hadn’t slept well, and the commute really took it out of me – especially as Dan insisted I stood up as soon as the train got full, and on Friday night the train was even more crowded as there were a lot of people going into the country for the weekend. And as I sat down after supper in front of the TV, I began to miss my mates – we’d have been locked up in the slave hut, but we’d have had a laugh about the crap on the TV, or played cards, or something, whereas Dan and Julie sat there holding hands, and I felt really left out.
On Saturday morning I was deep, deep asleep when Dan shook me awake, and told me to get up stairs and have a proper soak in the bath, and to shave really well. Julie had put my work jeans into the washer over night, and we set out for the station shortly afterwards, again with only a piece of toast for “breakfast”. It was later than when we travelled before, but being Saturday there wasn’t the usual bunch of commuters, and so I got to sit down all the way in.
“What are you going to do all day, when I’m working?”, I asked Dan, to make conversation.
“We’re not going to the site, Steve. I only contracted for you to work five days a week instead of six, as we need the weekends for showing you, and stuff like that.”
I cheered up a bit then, as not having to work Saturdays sounded good. “So are we going to a show now, then?”
“Not exactly, Steve. The guy who did the ‘Slaves At Play’ photoshoot contacted me last Monday, and that’s why I talked to the Boss, and the bank, and bought you. He’s set up a photoshoot…”
“Jesus Christ, Dan! You’re going to make me fuck a bloke again….”
“No, actually. Well, not today, anyway. This is just a plain ordinary ‘handsome stud’ shoot for some website or other.”
“What do you mean ‘not today’? You mean you are lining up for me to have to fuck blokes?”
“Steve, be reasonable! There’s a lot of money to be made in hard porn. And there aren’t so many blokes like you around, you know – you’re not just handsome and well built, and well hung, but you’ve got that ‘thing’, that ‘thing’ that makes you photograph well. I reckon we’ll make real money from you, especially if one of the movie producers takes a fancy to you, as there’s even more money in movies than stills….”
“Dan, please…. I don’t want to be in sex films….”
“Listen, I know you like women, and I’ll try to fix it so that they’re ‘straight’ movies. But if you have to fuck a bloke every now and then, what’s the problem? You didn’t look all that hesitant after the Show last week. But in any case, Steve, and I keep having to remind you about this: you’re a slave, and what you like, and don’t like, doesn’t matter. Just focus on doing what I tell you, OK?”
I sat there, feeling a bit pissed off, I can tell you.
“Oh, and Steve… You’re slipping again! I thought I told you that I was to be ‘sir’ when you speak to me.”
I was really pissed off now, as I thought Dan and I were getting along well. So, almost without thinking (I’ve got a bit of a quick temper!), I snapped “Does that include when you’ve got my cock down your throat, or can I call you Dan then, as we’re just that bit more intimate…?”
“You bastard, Steve! I told you that was just a momentary lapse. It won’t happen again.”
The train was pulling in then, and we were too crowded on the underground to be able to talk, and then we walked through the streets in silence to the photographer’s studio which was somewhere down in Notting Hill, so quite convenient on the tube, really. And the photographer was a nice bloke – he seemed to care about what I felt, as the moment we went in he actually turned to me and said “I know it’s difficult for a lot of men the first time, but just try to forget the camera. You’ve taken your kit off in front of other men before, haven’t you? I think Dan told me you were in the army….”
“Yes.”
“Well then, pretend you’re in the barracks, or the showers, or somewhere, and Dan and me, and my assistant, are just your mates. Forget about the rest of it, and just be natural.”
It’s easy to say, or course, but difficult to do. But after I’d been naked for about twenty minutes, and after the assistant – a thin young man in his very early twenties – had “massaged” me all over with slave oil, I did begin to forget about it. It was all pretty harmless stuff, really I suppose – lying on a sun bed, standing there with a beach ball, flexing my muscles, leaning against a wall, all that kind of stuff. I had to do about half the shots without being hard, as the photographer explained that these were for the women’s magazines and women didn’t like to see erect slaves as it frightened them, and then go through all the same poses and positions with the best hard-on I could sustain, “for the gay trade”, I was told.
We’d finished by about two o’clock, and Dan got a stack of money – in cash – and we left. We stopped in a pub for a pint, Dan had a sandwich, and he bought me cottage pie and chips, and we might just have been two mates out for the day in London to see us sitting there. But as we were finishing our beer, Dan muttered “I may as well tell you now, as you’re not going to like it….”
“What?” I was instantly suspicious.
“Look, we’re travelling around and everything, and people don’t like it when they suddenly realise you’re a slave. It’s not that they’re prejudiced and against slaves generally, but they don’t want to think that they might have been dealing with you as if you are a free man, and then find out you’re not. So the easiest thing, to avoid arguments and stuff is to get you a collar. That way folk can instantly tell you’re a slave….”
“You mean like I had to wear at the Show? So you can lead me around by it…?” My voice was rising now.
“Steve, calm down! No, neither Julie or I want to lead you around on a leash. Of course not. And it won’t be in cheap green plastic, either. Now be reasonable….”
“It’s easy to be reasonable… Sir…. When it’s not you who’s going to have to go around marked out as a slave.”
“For fuck’s sake, Steve, stop being so dramatic. We’re only talking about a collar here! It’s not as if I was going to have you tattooed across your forehead with the word ‘slave’, as some owners do! But anyway ,as I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter what you want: I’ve decided.”
“They don’t collar us on the site!”
“…because you don’t leave it much! It’s different now we’re travelling, in and out of London, going to shows, that sort of thing. Now stop arguing, will you? Or else I’ll buy you a gag as well as a collar.”
To tell you the truth, I didn’t know whether he was joking or not. But I decided not to risk it, and it sounded as if his mind was made up anyway, so I just downed the last of my pint.
Dan took me to one of the big slave accessory shops in Tottenham Court Road, which on a Saturday afternoon was fairly full of owners and slaves, as well as a lot of “hangers on” – I reckon it had become one of the things to do for those sad blokes who used to collect train numbers at one time: hang out in the Tottenham Court Road looking at slaves they couldn’t afford to own themselves.
The place was run by “foreigners”, just like all the electronic goods stores that made up the rest of the businesses up there, and the moment we went through the door Dan was pounced on by one of the assistants who tried to immediately drag him off to the displays of expensive slave uniforms and accessories towards the rear, babbling on to Dan that a “big property like me needed arm bangles, a snout ring, earrings, ankle cuffs, a cinch ring….”. Dan insisted that he was only interested in a collar, though, and “something simple, at that”.
With persistence Dan eventually got the jabbering salespeople to shut up and only show us the slave collars, but even then there was a huge variety: you had to decide on the height of them (“four inches will keep his head up, sir, and stop him slumping….”), the material (“gold plated is becoming more and more popular, especially against a dark tan” and “metal is so much more practicable than leather, which very rapidly gets to look shabby after the slave’s showered in it a few times”), the type of fastening (“welding the collar on permanently signals quite clearly to the slave that his life has changed irrevocably”), and the weight (“A really heavy collar tends to remind the slave, every time he moves his neck, of his status”).
I felt really depressed as I felt certain that Dan would choose a big, stiff, heavy metal collar to keep my head up, but he seemed to know what he wanted. “Metal certainly, but in stainless steel – the ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ look too effeminate for a masculine slave like this one. It needs to be thick and heavy, as a thin one would look ridiculous in relation to his musculature – but I don’t want a rigid collar as all the magazines say that however carefully they’re fitted there’s always chafing, and I show this slave so that’s not acceptable as he needs to be in perfect condition. And although it has to be removable – show slaves are not generally shown collared – I don’t like to see fussy padlocks and things like that around a slave’s throat so the fastening has to be integral, but secure so he can’t take it off himself.”
Dan didn’t consult me at all. He stood there discussing it with the salesman, and looking at numerous examples in the display cabinets, until he’d made his choice. They led me off to the “workshops” at the back then, where there were several other slave waiting to be “fitted” – as I watched, some of them had rings punched through their septums, some had their nips pierced, and I even saw one poor bloke having his cock pierced so a big PA could go through the end of it. When I got to the head of the queue the fitter looked at his work sheet and muttered that I was “simple” as there was no flesh to be pierced, and ran a tape measure around my neck. “Is he fully grown?”, he asked Dan. “Or are you planning to put more muscle on him?”
“No, that’s about it. I think he looks well like that….”
“Indeed, yes, sir. But you never know – sometimes we fit a collar nice and snugly, then in a few weeks the owner decides to bulk up the slave and the poor man begins to choke. So I always ask…. But if that’s it, it’s easy – I’ll just take a couple of links out of the chain, so it nestles snugly at the base of the neck without hanging down over his chest….”
He worked away, and then came up to me and draped something around my neck. It was cold against my skin, but at least it hung there and didn’t feel uncomfortable – I suppose I’d get used to the weight after a few minutes. It was a chain, well, not so much as a a chain as a set of “links” like you see on bracelets, made of stainless steel. And he snapped at me to kneel down then so he could show Dan how to get it on and off me – there was a small key-like thing that fitted into one of the “links” that was slightly large than the others, which could lock and unlock the ends together.
It only took a moment, really, and when Dan told me I could get to my feet, he slapped me on the back. “There, Steve. That wasn’t so bad, was it? And I think it actually makes you look even better – quite a lot of blokes used to wear necklaces and stuff like this before the Indentured Service laws came in, as women thought they looked sexy, I suppose. Still, these days, as soon as anyone sees anything around your neck they’ll know you’re a slave, so we’ll avoid any nasty confrontations.”
“So I’ve got to wear this all the time….”
“Yes. It’s stainless steel, so it won’t matter when you’re in the showers and stuff, and it’s not affected by sweat. I’ll take it off when you’re in the show ring, but otherwise I think it would be a good idea to keep it on you all the time. It’s not as if it’s a huge imposition, after all.”
No, I suppose it’s not a “huge imposition” if you’re not the one being made to wear this badge of servitude in public. Now everyone could see that I wasn’t a free man any more, but some sort of owned animal.
To be continued …
