The Real Thing

(Any apparent similarity between the setting and events of this story and the author's real life is purely specious.)

Mowing the lawn is a form of creative meditation. Maybe it’s the monotony, or the noise, or the carbon monoxide from the engine that sends my mind off, but both my best and my goofiest ideas come to me as I cut the grass.

Usually the chore just needs doing, but that afternoon I was in search of inspiration. I’d been challenged to write a "sex with a god" story, so with a few pulls on the starting cord I set off looking for ideas.

I’d been reading a lot of H. P. Lovecraft as background for another story I was working on. I toyed with the idea of doing a horror piece with a character sodomized by a tentacled elder god, but remembered it had already been disgustingly well done. I wondered whether I should pull out my old copy of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons manual on Deities and Demigods, open to a random page, and figure a way to get whichever god it was into a sex scene. But no, the story was supposed to be fan fiction and I knew I should keep to better-known milieus.

And I feel now like one of Lovecraft’s characters, for I feel the need to tell you a bit about myself, just so any readers of this dubious tale don’t dismiss it as the madness of a media-crazed psycho. The problem is that any description of myself will only have the opposite effect. Instead, I offer this so you’ll understand why I wasn’t too surprised at what happened.

I’d been reading Neil Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon recently, and one of the protagonists refers to fantasy war gamers as his ethnic group. I read the phrase with a shot of recognition. I grew up rolling dice to do damage to various monsters, and arguing about things like how long it might really take to throw up a Wall of Ice if the material components of the spell were already in hand. It did indeed, as the preacher warned, lead me to a serious interest in the occult and initiation into several secret societies.

Maybe there’s just a likelihood that people who escape the material world one way will also escape it another. I prefer to think that the tendency gives me a flexible reality system, but in many ways it ill prepares me to deal with mundania. I’m most comfortable hanging out with people who have either lots of tattoos and facial piercings, or tape on their glasses.

I differ from my peers mostly in my ability to get dates if I want them. I’m told I’m good looking, and I know how to match my socks. I was never quite sure I wanted dates and though I’ve had a few girlfriends, they always ask me out first. College led me to playing on the other side of the fence. I discovered I was queer, but long hair, weird interests, and avid fantasy role-playing didn’t sit well with local gay culture. I ended up living with a woman named Michelle who called herself Mishi. She read Wicca books, made fun of my Aleister Crowley collection, and went to feminist meetings. She would have liked to have been a political lesbian, but she really did prefer men in bed. Choosing a bisexual man lent her the illusion of being outside the norm. She also put up with my geeky friends, and gave good head. It was not lost on me that she was boyishly slim.

Mishi was off working at the co-op bookstore that afternoon as I cut the grass. I’d quit loading trucks at UPS, a job kept only to prove my macho credentials, and gone on to become a freelance tech writer. My programming skills were out of date, but I was geek enough to be able to understand the tech and explain it. I could do as much in a few hours as most people do in a day, which meant I spent most of my time doing things other than work, like working out, writing fan fiction, and participating in occult forums on the internet. Mishi never read my stories, and was happy to let me do my thing just so long as I didn’t progress to sacrificing animals, or so she said.

She’d have been annoyed if she knew I was only doing yard work to get inspiration, but I didn’t get any. The most obvious fandom for writing about gods was the Herc and Xena universe, but I didn’t want to do the obvious. Yet I didn’t want to go off into obscure comic books, and I have this logic center which won’t allow me to just plop gods into Star Trek or the X-Files. My lawn mowing yielded nothing but cut grass and sweat.

It was after I had put up the mower, drunk two glasses of water, and peeled off my T-shirt that I saw him. He stood next to the wood stove, head nearly brushing the ceiling, and as he shifted his weight, all that leather creaked.

Ares, god of War. The long-haired version. The Herc and Xena version.

The chances of the actor who played Ares appearing in full costume in my living room were just slightly less than the chances of the presence of an actual god. The longer I looked at him, the more clear it became that this was not Kevin Smith slumming off the set.

He was well over seven feet tall, gauntleted, booted, nearly bare-chested. A sword as long as one of my legs, probably longer, was slung at his side. They’d picked a pretty good match on the actor, but the real thing was just so much more… god like.

Several thoughts traveled simultaneously through my head. I wasn’t startled ("Must have made my roll to save versus surprise."). I hadn’t called him ("Did I unconsciously mow some kind of Ares sigil?"). I wasn’t sure what to do if he meant to hurt me ("It’s a little late to draw a containment circle."). I stank of sweat ("Maybe he’ll be repelled enough that I’ll get plus two on my defense rolls."). I was still thirsty.

"Can I get you something to drink? Water? Iced tea?"

After a half-second’s pause he threw back his head and laughed. If there’s one thing Kevin Smith has down it’s the Ares laugh, only it’s deeper and boomier when it comes from a twenty five percent bigger chest.

Of course, I thought he was laughing at me. I’m not in bad shape, but I’m no Conan, and I’m short. Then I realized he was laughing at what I said. Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t to be offered a cold drink. So I stuck with the program. "Beer? Scotch on the rocks? You don’t look like the gin and tonic type."

His laughter died down to a chuckle, and he said, "No, I’m not."

Good, I thought. Amusing gods is good. Wonder what he wants?

"What do you think I want?"

He really was a god. They can do things like read minds. "I have no idea," I answered. I didn’t.

"I want to give you a story."

"You’re going to fuck me so I can write about it?" The question just popped out. It wasn’t any good sticking in the usual conversational filters anyway.

He laughed again, but not as heartily. "Maybe."

I looked at him. The size difference was about that of me to an eight year old; he was two feet taller than me. This was going to hurt, and there’d be no way I could hide it from Mishi. But he’d said maybe, not yes.

I wanted to offer him a place to sit but the only thing I was convinced could take his weight was the leather couch. With all the metal on his outfit he would probably gouge the finish in several places, and Mishi would kill me. Heck, she’d kill me if I sat on the couch as sweaty as I was.

I winced as these thoughts ran through my mind, knowing full well that he knew what a dork I was in my own head.

"Come here, John." I looked at a hand the size of a baseball glove, extended toward me. It was his right hand, callused just where you’d expect from wielding a sword. The forearm under the gauntlet was bigger than my biceps, which are not small. I knew, somehow, that putting my hand in his was going to do a lot more than give me a story which would likely end with me the hospital with a ruptured bowel.

"What do you want with me? I’m no warrior." Even my D&D characters were usually thieves.

"Chaotic neutral thieves," he added to my unspoken thought. "You are entirely unhindered by morals." His lips curled. "I like that."

"Morals, no. Ethics, yes."

"But your ethics are a matter of strategy, not just tactics." He withdrew the hand, and folded his arms across his chest, looking at me. "You think in long-term consequences. Even in your little fantasy parties, who planned most of the raids?"

"Me," I answered in a small voice.

Ares slipped a dagger from a sheath opposite the sword, and began to clean his nails with it. "Most people use fantasy role-playing to be what they’re not. A little guy like you usually comes up with the biggest, baddest fighter he can imagine, so he can vicariously kick the ass he’ll never kick in real life. Pathetic." Ares sneered the word, then looked down at me again. "But not you. You played to your strengths. And you’ve got quite an imagination. You’ve even managed to win at D-Day while playing the Germans."

Okay, so he liked my D&D style and the fact that I’d read Liddell Hart’s Strategy and could apply the principles well enough to win a combat game with an inferior force. This didn’t explain why he was in my living room. Ares didn’t need a tech writer.

He resheathed his dagger, and stepped nearer. I was acutely aware of the size and the scent of him, and of my own dirt and grass-flecked sweat. My eyes were level with his sternum, right where the bands of leather crossed. I moved my glance sideways, and it landed on a framed photograph of me and Mishi, the one we like because it’s hard to tell which gender either of us is. Her hair is boy short, and mine is loose in the picture and falls past my shoulders.

I tried to think about her so Ares wouldn’t know what I was really thinking. What I was really thinking is that he was wearing an actual codpiece, and that it was level with my stomach. It looked big, and I missed men, and I was struck by the absurd thought that all the cocks I haven’t had in the last few years because I was with Mishi might just add up to the size of one god-like rod.

And then his hand was under my chin, forcing me to look up at him, amusement clear on his face. "Come with me and find out."

I had dealt with gods before, although the difference between then and this was the difference between a bad phone call and living color. Still, I knew from both ritual magick and fantasy gaming that there are generally two options with gods, worship or bargain. Make that three options, since you can also get your ass fried if either one of those fails. I went for bargain. "What’s in it for me?"

Ares leaned down, his voice purposefully low and dangerous. "Sex and power." Then he bit my lip, and as he bore down I could see a crackle of energy around us and feel an odd sensation of deconstruction.

We rematerialized, and his teeth let me go. We were in a Xena set, a Temple of Ares like nothing the Greeks would have built. It was all dark stone and skulls and implements of destruction. There were modern touches, though. The hall was cavernous enough that I could see a Sherman tank in the near distance, and the tapestry behind the throne was a lurid rendition of the mushroom cloud of an atomic blast.

It was cool, and I shivered at the contrast on my damp skin. I felt incongruous in my ratty work shorts and battered sneakers, still clutching my T-shirt. This was a room made to the size and expectations of a god, and I felt very small and not at all sexy, not at all powerful.

"Sex first, then." Ares said, reading my thoughts.

No way. "Bath first," I answered, trying to get any measure of control. "I’m gross."

He looked at me impatiently. I thought for a moment he was going to snap his fingers to make me clean and naked, but I instead dissolved and reconstructed next to a bathing pool. Steam rose from the water and I stripped quickly, just giving in to the situation. I left my shoes and shorts in a pile, dropped my shirt on top of them, shook out my hair from its sticky pony tail, and slid into the pool.

The bath gave me time to think. The water rose over my head in the middle, and I found some sort of sand soap to scrub my hide. As I got clean I kicked in that old flexible reality system so I wouldn’t freak out when it finally hit that I’d just been transported who knew where, and then proceeded to get my head together. He wanted something, and it wasn’t just sex or I’d have been nailed by then. But what the hell did I have to offer him? What kind of power did he want to give me, and what would I have to do to get it?

He was right about one thing. I have no morals. Even my fidelity to Mishi was born out of practical, long-term considerations. But if the price of whatever Ares offered was too high I wouldn’t take it.

When I finished, I looked at the pile of dirty clothes and noted the colors on the T-shirt. It was the one with the Flaming Carrot, my favorite comic book character. "Fortune Favors the Bold!" it read. Bold I could do; and naked and dripping, I decided, was as bold as brass.

I squeezed the water out of my hair and walked out of the only door of the bathing room. It led directly into the cavernous temple from the wall behind where Ares sprawled on a chair made of obsidian bones. At first I could only see his bare leg over the arm, but I walked around to stand in front of him, taking in the god revealed. All the leather remaining was merely decorative, and my random thought about the size of his cock turned out to be about right.

It lay against his thigh, as big as my forearm and looking like the Platonic ideal of Cock. Maybe it had just been too long, but it made me hungry, and the sight of him in leather designed only to provoke woke up places in my body I’d put to sleep long ago. Oh, Mishi had learned to slide a finger into my ass as she sucked me, but that wasn’t like being stretched open, being pounded.

Damn. He was god of War all right. Even from several feet away I could smell the testosterone, and I knew that sex was only another form of battle for him, one he had to win. His choice of leather made that clear. He wore his gauntlets still, with a harness across his chest that sent straps down to encircle his thighs. But easy victories weren’t what he wanted; he needed a challenge.

How much of a challenge would I be? This wasn’t theoretical, wasn’t pieces on a game board, and wasn’t something that depended on a die roll. I waited for him to tell me what to do, but he just sat there with the patience of a god.

I gave up and voiced the only thought on my mind. "Why me?"

"Think about it," Ares drawled. "You were thinking about me when you were mowing the lawn."

"Sure, and rejected the idea of writing a story about you." I folded my arms.

"But you were thinking about me fucking someone, and you’re a magician." Ares pulled a small knife out of a sheath on one gauntlet. He started to clean his nails but they were already clean, and instead he bounced the blade off his fingers, looking at me intently. "A real magician’s thoughts have power, particularly in the state of mind you were in."

I threw my hands in the air. "I was mowing the lawn!"

Then it hit me. Real magician?

He seemed to be trying to smirk but didn’t, as he continued, "And what do you do when you mow the lawn? You create. I’ve noticed. A lot of us have noticed, but this was the first time you’d thought about me." Ares suddenly flung the knife past my head, and I didn’t flinch. It thunked heavily into something far behind me. "I came to check you out. I liked what I saw."

"So you just took it." I couldn’t keep annoyance out of my voice. I was still trying to process the words real and magician, trying to figure out what he meant.

He answered with a superior half-smile, this time a classic Ares leer.

Suddenly it occurred to me. Ares offered me a story. He also offered sex and power. Not sex, comma, and then power. He meant it all of a piece.

Why me? He knew I wouldn’t be afraid of him. He knew I wouldn’t be afraid to try and match him, but on my own terms.

I closed my eyes, stretched out my arms, and got into what I call mojo mode. I’m a trained ceremonial magician, after all, and I’ve learned how to visualize, invoke, and evoke. Light coursed through me in the shape of a cross, and filled me until it came out of my eyes and my open mouth. Colored light swirled with my breathing, and I felt energy rise as I willed myself into godhood. It was all in my head, but it didn’t matter. I let myself grow as big as the hall, held sensation for three long breaths, then suddenly collapsed it all into my center where it burned in a bright ball of energy.

When I looked at Ares again, he had one eyebrow cocked. If he’d followed my thoughts, I wonder what he made of that display of imagination. "The first thing you do," I said, my arms coming slowly down to my sides and my voice low, "is stop reading my mind." I envisioned armored doors closing over my cortex, like the blast doors from Star Wars.

His other eyebrow went up, but he nodded slightly. "What’s the second thing?"

"Give me power to conjure." I knew better than to ask for anything more.

"Done," he said, and I could feel it coursing through me, different from the power I’d raised. "The third thing?" he asked.

I smiled darkly, and stepped toward the throne. "The next thing you do will be to help me make you come."

He laughed again, not in ridicule or surprise, but in delight. I knew he didn’t want to be worshipped or dominated, but simply to be matched.

I climbed the three steps up to the bone chair where Ares lounged with one leg over the arm. I leaned toward the massive cock that lay on his thigh, knowing I’d be lucky to get more than the head of it in my mouth, but I would try. The head was pinkish maroon, and glistening under the foreskin, and I kissed it gently three times before venturing to taste it.

It was like spring water is supposed to taste, the flavor delicate and different from the rising scent of musk. The contrast between taste and smell made me shudder involuntarily, but I loved it. His cock filled and firmed under my lips but did not grow much bigger. His hand came to rest on my damp hair, and I took his wrist and brought his palm to my mouth. I licked it wetly, both to stimulate him and to leave behind some lubrication. Then I guided his hand to his cock and he lifted it and wrapped his fingers around it, offering the head to me again.

I took it again, and stretched as wide as I could to take as much as possible without bringing my teeth into play.

My hands wrapped above and around his own, and I encouraged him to stroke as he hardened under our fingers. My ploy worked, and I could watch our hands, see where his hands pressed more, discover what his thumb did. I began to move my mouth all over his cock, leaving it spit slick, and tonguing the sensitive places he showed me. I conjured a bit more lubricant than I could naturally provide, and the rush of even that small exercise of power started, finally, my own arousal.

Up to that point it had been all about figuring the game, but now that I was in it, I could give myself over at least slightly to my own desire. What I wanted to see most, what I had missed most, was making a man come.

I could tell he was holding back. I looked up at him while sliding the fingers of one hand around the head, under the foreskin. He was watching me — watching us — with heavy lidded eyes.

"What are you waiting for, Ares?" I matched my strokes and my words to his breathing. "You’re a god aren’t you? Can’t you keep going all night?" His hand followed my lead, and I gripped tighter, moving the skin as well as stroking over it. "Come on my face. Do it for me. Do it for me. Come for me, Ares."

His head finally curved forward, and I could feel it come up through his cock like a pounding storm. There was a moment of stillness, a shudder, and then release. The first pulse traveled up from the base in a visible wave, firing out the end and hitting me on the cheek. I tried to catch the next one in my mouth, partly succeeding, and indescribable flavor covered my tongue. Then it began to fountain out of the end and over our fingers.

I’ve heard of semen described as pearls before. This was opal. There were colors gleaming even in the dim light of his temple -- flecks of green and purple, red and orange. It stayed warm on my face, and he reached out with one hand to wipe the smears off me, then offered his fingers for me to lick.

I wondered whether this would be like Persephone, whether I would have to pay for every taste of his essence. It would be worth it, whatever the price, so I took his fingers in my mouth and licked off what tasted both sharp and sweet. It slid coolly down my tongue, yet warmed my throat. I licked what was on my hand, then ate what was on his softening penis, finally nosing into the nest of hair to catch the last of it. The sensations of the energy I had raised and of the power he had given me had overridden my lust, but as his semen reached my belly, the heat of it went straight to my own cock.

I knew what I wanted. "Sit up," I told him, and he moved from his lounging position to put both feet on the floor. I stepped up on to the throne, my feet on either side of his thighs, which brought my erection level with his face. It was nothing like his, but this was not the time for dick ego games.

I reached out to his face, stroking back his hair, then running my thumb over his generous mouth. He sucked it in, his eyes full of promise, and I leaned in to replace my hand with my cock. When he took me into his mouth, my knees almost gave way. Mishi, bless her, tried. She had even bought a book on blow jobs written by a gay man for straight women, and although she was good there is nothing like having your cock sucked by someone who has one. Sorry, Mishi.

He could take all of me with a bit to spare, and it gave him room to really use his tongue. I rode the sensation for several minutes, but he got the better of me. The next thing I knew I was holding on to the black thigh bones that formed the top part of the chair back, and fucking his mouth. I lost control as I hadn’t done since I started seeing Mishi, but his hands on my thighs only encouraged me. Then I made the mistake of looking, and the sight of those full lips wrapped around me took the last of my composure. I was gone. I ground myself repeatedly into his face, feeling his nose in my groin, the scratch of his short beard on my balls, and I came in great rising waves, feeling as if gallons of my come were going down his throat.

His large hands took most of my weight, keeping me from collapsing or even moving. I spent a few moments catching my breath, then started to pull back, but his grip kept me in place. I looked down. He held me firmly in his mouth, and his eyes met mine with the unspoken message of triumph and continued challenge.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was still hard, and that the energy from his seed was still at work in me. He held me up with one hand under my ass, and began to press my opening with the finger of the other. This was not the tender, slim pressure of a girl’s finger, but the blunt instrument of a warrior god, almost as big as the average cock. He worked his way in, holding me motionless. His tongue started working me again, teasing and stroking my over-sensitive flesh to distraction, but not distracting enough that I missed what he was doing.

He pushed the finger all the way inside with repeated, insisting pressures. He was not overly slick, and I sensed he didn’t want much assistance. I was to feel, simply feel, the combination of discomfort, outright pain, and incipient pleasure. His tongue slowed once he was inside, and it felt amazing, gentle and undemanding, like an edge of fullness and touch which I thought I could ride forever.

Such things can’t last. I needed more, and started to push back onto his finger. The hand holding me up tightened in warning, and I held myself still as I could, but I was starting to tremble. Finally, his finger began to move in my ass, circling and stroking, and his tongue answered the motion. Instead of the usual piston strokes, he was giving me sensations that felt, for want of a better word, sideways.

My brain refused to wrap around the feeling. My brain refused to work at all. If he hadn’t been holding me up I would have fallen twitching to the floor in complete overload as orgasm came like a cosmic bang. I felt again as if light was coming from my eyes and my open mouth. I came in an endless, unbroken stream of light.

By the time I could breath again I realized I was on my back in Ares’ lap, my head tilted slightly backwards on the round ends of his knees, my own knees somewhere around his elbows. His eyes glittered down at me, victorious.

"Round one to the war god," I said, or at least I meant to say it before I passed out.

I woke up at an odd angle on the couch, my head just over the side of the seat and my legs pulled up. I was covered with sweat — sex sweat, not lawn dirt. I peeled myself off of the leather, thinking that Mishi would kill me if it stained. I started toward the shower, nearly tripping over the pile of filthy clothing and old sneakers. The shirt and shorts went into the hamper, and the shoes to the bottom of the stairs to be returned to my closet before I got to the bathroom.

I stood still long enough to take inventory. Yes, it had happened. My ass felt it, my dick felt it, and the singing blood in my veins felt it. He had left me with the power — more power, in fact. When I looked in the mirror there was a smear of colored sheen on one cheek, slightly sticky to the touch. The smell of it was spice and frost, the same as the flavor lingering on the back of my tongue.

I wanted that taste again, and my guess was he’d be back. He would give me some time to figure out what I could do with this sample of the powers of godhood, and to figure a way to win the next round. The long-term strategy was obvious, but the short-term tactic involved giving Ares a mind-blowing orgasm or three when next we met. I turned on the shower, and started to plan.

It’s only been a week since he showed up in my living room. Mishi can tell there’s something different, though I haven’t told her anything. I did use that conjuring power to bring her a dozen blood-red roses the other night, but I’m careful. Any decent magician, or gamer for that matter, knows it’s best to be very careful when screwing around with reality.

And yet I have been practicing one particular transformation on the neighbor’s cat, perfecting it. I hope to convince Mishi to spend a night as a man, just to see her out of control with her first serious dose of testosterone. If nothing else, I expect it’ll change her perspective on those feminist meetings.

I leave this narrative now, as one of Lovecraft’s characters would say, so that if I ever disappear someone will know what happened. In truth, I hope someday to disappear. I have a theory that the semen of a god is something like Ambrosia, because it’s changed me. I can still feel that heat in the center, a heat of sex and power. If Mishi ever reads this, it will explain why I pestered her in bed so much this last week.

I doubt this story will be believed, even by my occultist friends, but that wasn’t the point of telling the story.

Was it?