How A Bottom Gets To The Top
by David Heulfryn

 

This story is written in the form of a magazine article. To accompany this article/story I have mocked up a magazine format. You can download it here.

 

Sitting opposite me is the young face of Curtis, he has a beautifully disarming smile that instantly puts you at your ease, and he smells of freshly disturbed heathland, of tender lavender shoots with the base notes of earthy musk. It could almost be a feminine smell without the musk, but there is nothing feminine about Curtis.

He has just sat down from having a shower to wash off the exertion and other fluids from his body caused by the scene he has just shot. His scene partner is nearby smelling just as pleasant but is naked and posing for some stills. Curtis is loosely wrapped in a white bathrobe, his chest partially exposed with its lightly dusting of hair slowly releasing the scent of the shower gel.

“I’ve never done this before.” He tells me, his leg jiggling with nerves. It takes me a moment to realise that he’s talking about the interview. I smile at him, hoping to show him that I’ll be gentle with him.

“Let’s start with an easy one. How old are you and is Curtis your real name?” I’ve already clicked on my recorder and am expectantly holding my pen, poised at the top of my note pad.

Curtis is twenty-three, and as you’d expect, it is not his real name. He does tell me his real name but gets me to promise not to disclose it, and while he is working, he only ever gets called by his stage name. “It’s not very sexy, is it?” He says of his real name, and I have to agree with him. “They only use it when they send me my cheques.” This brings us on to the awkward question about money, but he refuses to answer. He explains that the more you do, the more you get paid. “Solo work pays a pittance; you couldn’t possibly get by doing that alone.” As you would expect the language is pretty direct and I suppose working in the sex industry you get used to it, but I felt a little embarrassed, and I’m sure he sensed it and enjoyed watching me squirm in my seat.

I find out that Curtis was discovered through a social network site. He had just turned eighteen and was messaged by one of the model scouts who saw his shirtless profile photo. Naturally, he initially thought it was one of his mates having a laugh, but the scout soon convinced him and left him with a proposition of a one-off solo for a few hundred quid. Now he calls it a pittance but back then for an unemployed eighteen-year-old who couldn’t even find a job in a shop or sweeping the streets, it was a lifeline and a chance to make some money to treat himself and his then girlfriend.

It took him a week to decide, and he emailed back saying he would do it. He was surprised by the request for him to email some pictures, a face shot, a full length nude and a full length nude and hard. He laughs as he remembers and tells me it was the first time he ever read the instruction manual on his digital camera. He didn’t want any of his friends to know about this and certainly didn’t want his girlfriend knowing, so he had to learn how to use the self-timer on his camera. “It took all day to get them pics.” He laughs. “I was ok being alone and naked, but I was either off-centre, blurred or when I tried to do the hard shot, I spent so long fiddling with the camera I lost my erection.”

After finally happy with his audition pictures, he sent them off and received a very positive response. Arrangements were made, but it would be another two-week wait until he was told to arrive in London at a specified address and a specific time. The only instruction was to not wear any tight clothes.

He seemed interested in telling me about what happened that first day, how nice the house was, how clean everything was and how pleasant the two men where. He said he expected it to be dark and sleazy but found everything very professional. I asked him how he felt being naked in front of two men. He thinks for a moment and explains that he’d only ever been naked in the changing room before, other than shagging his girlfriend, he quickly adds. He felt awkward being the only naked person and says his nerves made it difficult for him to get it up. But one of the men just told him to lie on the bed and do what he does when he was alone at home.

“I closed my eyes and blocked everything out. The next thing I knew, my eyes were wide open and staring down at my cock as it spurted cum all over my chest.”

I could understand a straight guy wanking off in front of the camera, it’s just something he does in the privacy of his own home, but I was intrigued how things escalated for Curtis as he became one of the most famous bottoms in the gay porn industry.

“Well, a blow job is a blow job. It feels the same no matter who is giving it to you, guy or girl.” Again the logic was reasonable. “But then I was asked to wank off another guy.” By this time Curtis had done a couple of solo jobs, and a few more were another guy wanked him off and gave him a blow job. He became comfortable, he explained, and knew if he was to go any further in the industry and get more work, he would have to do more.

His face lit up when he told me that he loved oral sex. He liked nothing more than getting down between his girlfriend’s legs and eating her out; she too loved to devour his cock. I smiled as I thought how he kept mentioning a girlfriend; he seemed eager to make it obvious that he was straight. His description of giving his girlfriend oral sex was vivid and explicit leaving me in no doubt that he’d actually done it and wasn’t just the usual type of guy that did gay porn and claimed to be straight but was really gay. Those types are everywhere in the industry and pander to the viewers’ fantasies of watching a straight guy suck cock.  But I wasn’t interested in his sex life with his girlfriend and turned the conversation back to his job.

“My first cock tasted sweet. I think the guy made it that way as he knew it was my first time. He wasn’t too big, either.”

I ask him how it felt, his first time, and all he says is that he thought about the money. That thought got him through it. “But now,” he continues, “it’s just like touching any part of a guy’s body. What the difference between sucking a guy’s nipple and a guy’s cock?”

I waited for him to continue, thinking it was rhetorical, but he just looked directly into my eyes, waiting for an answer. He knows I’m gay, and I get the feeling that he expects me to say that there is no difference, but I know damn sure there is. I try and duck the question and just say they are both intimate acts but one is more intimate than the other and immediately ask him a question to get off the subject as I fear it could take over our interview. “Did you feel gay that first time or that you were turning gay?”

“No. Money is a great incentive to do anything. Remember I was eighteen and on the dole, living at home with my parents and wanted to get out. I tried to get jobs, but they never came off. I was just not wanted. No qualifications, and back then, I had no ambitions. I was lazy and just wanted to hang out with mates, fuck my girlfriend and get drunk on Friday nights with the dole money. I think people saw that in me and that made me unemployable.”

I’ve watched the video of his first blow job, and it does look very pedestrian. I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that. But it didn’t last long, just a few minutes and then they went back to jacking each other off.

“This was a make or break moment for me.” He explains. “I’d done so many jack-off sets that people were getting bored. Even the odd time I would get a blow job didn’t excite people, and I was told this.”

After giving his first ever blow job he showers, dresses and expects a cheque to be given to him. Instead, he is called into a room, and he is alone with the boss. He is told to sit on the sofa which is about the only piece of furniture in the room (no doubt used as a set where guys suck and fuck each other but I don’t think that thought even occurred to him).

“As he spoke to me, it dawned on me that this isn’t just a few people having fun filming guys doing stuff to each other and posting it on the internet for fun. This was a proper business. He went on about site statistics, the declining views of my videos, the lack of comments.” As if remembering the exact words, Curtis recites. “No comments are worse than bad comments.”

I ask why.

“It means that no one is interested in you. You might as well not be there. A bad comment means they are watching and even though this person doesn’t like what you’ve done or is criticising your body, they at least have noticed you.

“So he goes on about the site and how newer models, as he called us, were getting much better feedback. I just sit there stunned as I didn’t realise that this was actually a job I was doing and not just me having fun; getting paid to wank off.”

Curtis was going to have his new source of cash cut off. This was the end for him, and the cheque the man handed over was going to be his last. After giving such a poor performance, he was told that he would not be required again.

 

Curtis was stunned when the studio told him that they didn’t want to use him anymore. He was a cocky hot-blooded male that thought he was god’s gift; why wouldn’t they want him to continue to show off his body for them?

“It was that moment that something just clicked inside my head. And I told him that I was in. I would commit completely. But he thought it was just bullshit.”

I got the sense that Curtis was scared at that point in his life. In some strange way, this man had given Curtis a break in his life; a break from dossing and screwing around; a way out that Curtis, in the back of his mind, knew would eventually lead to petty crime. For those few months, Curtis took his clothes off on camera and wanked for an audience; he led a normal life and held down a steady job. That man was the first person to believe in Curtis, but Curtis couldn’t help but think he’d let him down and was now being rejected.

“It was good-ish money, and I wanted to keep it. Work for a couple of hours a week and then spend the rest of my time working out. Yes, I began to work out.” He remembered. “I felt a little self-conscious about my flabby belly.” I never thought he was flabby in those early shoots; he certainly wasn’t toned like he is now, but flabby, no. And I told him so. But he just brushed it aside with a smile. “I knew I could look better and be fitter. So I started looking after myself. I stopped drinking.” He quickly corrects himself. “Well, stopped drinking as much as I used to.”

I feel him start to digress again and we are moving away from his story. “So that man thought you were full of shit.” My matter of fact tone startles him away from his reminiscing. “So what changed his mind?”

“I thought that was it, in a few minutes he would call the cameraman in, and the two of them would throw me out. They were both middle-aged and outa shape, but I just thought it would be so humiliating for two old queers to throw me out.”

I press him to tell me what happened.

“I really have no idea where it came from, but I just dug the cheque out of my pockets and tore it up in front of his face.

“There, I told him, you haven’t paid me for that shit performance and I ain’t accepting your money until I do it again. He just said ‘no fucking way I’m being out of pocket’, and he told me if we did it again he’d have to pay another guy and me. Then he said the only way he’d re-shoot was if I did it for free, then he wouldn’t be out of pocket. It must have been some sort of reflex, but I immediately agreed.”

Curtis took a break to catch his breath; it was as if he was reliving the conversation, the quick exchange of words and his brain frantically working out what he could do to keep his job.

The re-shoot was scheduled for the following day, just after he’d finished shooting another scene with three other guys.

“I had one night to prepare.” He leans forward, his hands resting on his knees, eager to tell me. “I left that house and went straight into town to buy a dildo. I thought practice would help me get through it and I was damn sure not to ask any of my mates to practice on.”

He lifts his hands and measures out what looked like ten inches in front of my face. “I bought the smallest one I could find, and it was still this fucking big. It was pink and squidgy, and I spent the entire evening sucking on that damn thing, and I have to tell you it tasted vile.”

Curtis started to chuckle, his shoulders moving up and down and causing his robe to gape further. “I’m just thankful it wasn’t a real guy that night as I kept catching my teeth on it when I tried to go down further. If it was real, it would’ve hurt like hell.”

“Did you manage all nine or ten inches?”

He shakes his head. “Just about managed to get half of it in but it didn’t half hurt my jaw. That thing was thick. Thicker than that lad I had sucked on earlier.”

“So you felt you were well prepared?”

“As well prepared as I’d ever been without practising on the real thing. So,” he continues, “come the next day, I have another short practice on the dildo before it’s time to head over to the house.”

Curtis then curls the corners of his mouth upwards and almost imperceptibly shakes his head. “That bastard just about goes out of his way to make it difficult for me.”

I ask, how so?

“Well, for a start they have just finished filming, and I arrive to see three guys covered in cum and still naked, they all just look at me. One guy just says ‘great he’s here’ and then jumps on the bed. I look at his soft cock, and it’s still shiny with cum. The other two naked guys step behind the cameraman and lean against the wall, waiting for it to get started so they can watch. Now no-one has ever watched before, it’s just been me, the other guy, the cameraman and the boss. I now had two guys watching me, holding their cocks, waiting for me to start so they can get hard again.”

“Did that faze you?”

“Sure it did, at the start. But I just ignored everyone, not even waited for any instructed and just jumped on the bed and started kissing this guy, real proper kissing, like I was going to devour him. I heard the people frantically getting the camera into a better position and start filming.”

With great detail Curtis explains how he grabbed the guys soft cum smeared cock and rubbed it back to life, teasing the tip with his finger making the guy gasp into his mouth as he refused to allow their lips to separate or his tongue to leave the guys mouth.

“Eventually I let the guy go, and I rip my clothes off. I look down at my cock, and it is rock solid. I couldn’t believe it was fucking hard. I’ve always had to tease it hard when messing with guys before, but not this time. I squeezed my cock, and it felt good.”

I want to tell him to calm down and relax, but he’s getting really into telling me this. I look between his legs for some sign that he aroused, but it’s well covered by his robe, the fabric cinched loosely together. He notices me looking and is amused.

“So I go back to this guy. I kiss him again and then work on his nipples while I try to wank his cock to life. Remember this guy had only just come as the bastard wanted me to fail, but nibbling his nubs gets him from half hard to rock hard. And he’s a fucking grower. No little pencil cock like my first one, that bastard had set me up with one big monster. So I go down on him and play with that cock like I did that dildo, only this time I kept my teeth well and truly away from it, and it didn’t taste like I was sucking a rubber band.”

I’m sure you guys can guess the rest.

“I tug on his balls, and he whispers that he’s going to come. I only just hear and pull off his dick and watch it shoot over his body, just missing my face mind you.”

I think that is the only set I’ve seen him in that he doesn’t come, the film just ends with the guy lying back panting and Curtis rubbing the ropes of cum into his skin.

He made a few more films for that studio before being poached by one of the big players.

“That just made my year when I heard. But it came with one condition. They wanted me to bottom for the first time. It was going to be their big selling point, my first time receiving; it was something that everyone wanted to see.”

After the fantastic blow job that brought his star back from it wane, he progressed to fucking. But he was always the top. Now that they had found his special talent they took advantage, so every set from then on had Curtis sucking ever bigger cocks before he rubbered up and fucked their arses. Things were going great for Curtis, he wasn’t the studios top star, but he was always second. The studio was happy with him, and he was enjoying his job; and the big cheques that now accompanied every scene he filmed.

I asked him how he felt about fucking a guy.

“It just felt like a natural progression. I just looked at the guy’s hole and did what I had to do. Once I was in and bucking away, I could think of anything. Mostly I just concentrated on the great feeling from my cock.”

“So what happened when they asked you to bottom?”

“They gave me one month to decide. I carried on doing shoots while I thought about it and I think the next time I fucked a guy I really looked at what I was doing, watched as I went in and watched the guy’s face to see what he felt. I knew it hurt the first time, but these guys seemed to take it easy and loved it after that. Most of the guys I fucked were gay, but there was one straight guy. I never understood why he let himself get fucked until I was given that offer. The money was phenomenal, and those guys were often the stars of the show. I got to dreaming about being this great star, it really fuelled my ego.”

This was another major turning point for Curtis, his chance to move from the little league to the big league. We all know he finally made that leap but back then, Curtis wasn’t so sure.

“I went about it the same as before and thought ‘practice’. For the first time in nearly a year, I pulled out that dildo I bought. The first night I lubed it up and smeared a bit on my hole. I put a finger inside and started to finger fuck myself. It didn’t feel so bad; my finger went in very easily. So I pulled out and pushed the dildo to my hole. I don’t know what was wrong with me, I suppose I was scared, and I ended up just pushing the tip against me. At the time, I thought I pushed quite hard, but it didn’t go in. I didn’t open up. I was too tense and too afraid. I was really just tickling my hole with it. I felt terrible that night and barely got any sleep. The second night I got more daring. I lubed up and really went at it with my fingers, I managed to get two inside and attempted a third, but it was uncomfortable. Not the fingers, just twisting. So I tried the dildo again. I really wish I’d bought a smaller one.” He mused.

“I was pushing so fucking hard to try and get it in, and I was holding my breath at the same time. Eventually, my hole would give, and as I let out a long breath, my body just relaxed. I was still pushing through, and I swear I heard a pop as that thing went in. It hurt bad, so fucking bad; I was almost screaming. But I just left it inside and tried to get past the pain. It eased a little but never really went away. I pushed again, and more slid inside. I was determined to get all of that damn thing inside, no matter how much it hurt. Every few minutes, I worked more inside until the base was flat against my cheeks. I felt a great achievement and pulled it out, all the way. I found it strange that my arse didn’t close up properly, so I tried again, and the head just slipped in, it still hurt but not as much. That night I spent a few hours just pushing the tip in and out of my arse.”

Curtis gleamed with pride as he told me.

“Within a week, I found I could take that dildo easily and spent every night just fucking myself with it.”

I found it strange that once he could take the dildo up his arse that he carried on, night after night. If he’d made his decision to do it, then why not stop and just wait for the big day when he knew he could take it. So I asked him when he decided he would accept the offer.

“I don’t really know. I was just so busy getting my arse ready for it that my body made that decision for me and not my head.”

“So why keep playing with the dildo once you realised?”

Curtis laughed, and a huge smile radiated from his face. “I was fucking enjoying it.”

Surely, this would have made him feel gay or not that straight anymore, but he just brushed it aside when I put this to him. Curtis went back to the old excuse that this was a job and it was what he did at home, in private with his girlfriend that was the real him.

I don’t know. Something inside me just doesn’t buy it. I suppose it’s my own prejudice talking, but I struggled to understand how a guy can engage in gay sex and not even be slightly gay himself. I kept thinking about myself. How would I feel if I had to have penetrative sex with a woman? I could do it, but I wouldn’t enjoy it, and I wouldn’t choose to do it. But here was a guy who was gay for a living. I couldn’t be straight for a living. And here is where I just had to leave my prejudices. Just because I couldn’t do it doesn’t mean that somebody else could. I was not the spokesperson of what was right or how people should feel. I was left in no doubt in my mind that Curtis was straight, never having any sexual experience with a man outside of his job.

With that personal revelation behind me, I felt the interview get more relaxed. I was less uptight and far more comfortable; this supposed paradox in my mind being blown apart. It made Curtis more relaxed as I didn’t make him feel that every word he spoke was a lie or at least he was deluding himself.

The move to the new studio for Curtis meant one scene where he would bottom for a guy, every new scene he filmed was from then on to be his more familiar role as a top. So why did he continue?

“Well, bottoms get paid a shit load more money.” He laughed. “But also the viewers wanted more, and so they asked, and I did it. Again it was only to be another one-off. A special occasion. But these scenes brought in more subscribers which meant more revenue. I was still mostly a top in those days, but I did agree to bottom at least once a month.”

I asked about the last time he topped, and he had to think really hard. He concluded that it must have been at least over a year ago, probably nearly two. This change from occasional bottom to exclusive bottom took less than a year.

“So, apart from the obvious, what’s the difference between a top and a bottom?”

“Well, for a start, there are no passive and dominant roles, at least not in my scenes. A bottom can be as dominant as any top, while a top can be so passive that he virtually does nothing but lie there with a hard-on. I prefer to be active.” He said. “The more I do, the better.”

“So what goes through your mind?”

“Not what you’d think. I’m constantly making sure the camera gets the best shot. Knowing where the camera is is so important. And try doing that without looking at it. You use your peripheral vision so much. And the camera moves around so much these days, the guys have steady cams that are circling you, and sometimes they come really close.”

He draws breath; he is clearly excited about this and finds the techniques of filming porn to be fascinating.

“Once you know where the camera is, you need to think about what you’re doing. Is my leg in the way? Am I burying this guy’s cock too much? The camera needs to see it go in and out. In fact, I’ll let you into a little secret there.”

I lean forward, intrigued.

“If you don’t see it going in then chances are it isn’t.”

“What?” I look confused.

“We fake it. It’s not easy having a hard cock in your arse for hours on end. So the directors give us a rest. Film us from the front or get some great face shots. Or a nice long side shot with me sitting on the cock and fucking myself with it. You can’t see the guys cock so we just fake it. Sometimes we do it just to keep filming when the guy loses his hard-on. That Viagra does lose some of its potency after a while, or if the guy’s desire has gone then no amount of Viagra will get it up for you.”

This was the other reason Curtis liked to bottom. He grew weary of taking drugs every time so that he could keep an erection for hours on end. Most guys did it. It made filming so much easier as a guy very rarely lost his erection these days and meant that the viewers didn’t have to sit through some lame scene where the guy just couldn’t get it up no matter how much teasing, coaxing and sucking it got. Most of us have sat through those. I just wondered why they bothered releasing them, but I suppose it was money, they’d spent money filming them, and if they didn’t release them they couldn’t make their money back. This way, at least they earned some money, and all is not wasted.

“They like it when they don’t have to direct the scene.” Curtis continued. “They tell you at the start what they want the scene to be like, what they want us to do, how long it should last and how it should end. I figure that it’s my job to make that happen with as few cuts as possible. They much prefer to film long segments at a time as it means they spend less time editing. When I started, the cameraman would often stop and tell me to change position or move my leg or arm. But now they just tend to leave me to it. I will manhandle the other guy to get him in the right position, especially if he is relatively new to the game. The only time we stop is generally for technical reasons. It’s really very fascinating what goes on to make the action look so hot on screen.”

We’d been talking for over an hour, and it was getting time for him to go back to work. Some runner comes over and interrupts us saying that they need him in about ten minutes for some publicity shots. He needs to get himself ready.

As he pulls his robe apart and starts rubbing his soft cock, I realise what the man meant by he needs to be ready. I feel so awkward now, and my eyes don’t know where to look. They just dart from his face to my notes, the tape recorder and his cock.

With his cock now rock hard, it looks even bigger in the flesh than on screen. I feel intimidated by its size and embarrassed by my lowly six inches.

I wrap up the interview with a final question. “What are the benefits of being a bottom?”

“I don’t have to worry about getting it up. I can fuck for hours without a hard-on and still make a hot scene. As long as I can get it up when it counts, that’s all they worry about. And as you can see, I have no problem with that.”

We both look at his cock. Then, as he stands up, he lets his robe fall onto his seat, and my face is so close to that monster. After a chuckle to himself, he leaves and takes his place in front of the camera. I look on.

 

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