the very meticulous douching method to ensure successful anal sex; or Running Clear
by Edward Garvey-Long
26/03/2020 | fiction
Flatmate’s away this weekend so it’s just me, the bathroom, and the apparatus. 6am on Saturday morning and I am up. By now the entire routine is fixed. I have a sense of when I need to do what. I know I need to start now to be done in time to leave for the late morning shoot. I start with an espresso, to really get things moving. After the first time you go, you might feel empty but you’re not. Your gut is a squishy conveyor belt, it slowly brings everything to light through the day at it’s own pace. What you need to do is create enough of a blankness in your insides so that your gut will keep working as normal but will bring nothing forth into the anal cavity. The fun thing is that conversely, too much douching can stimulate your gut into producing more, so you need to find a balance, like a car’s biting point.
I start with the first douche, one of the small ones that you can get from amazon, or a sex shop, something an amateur gets for their first time out. It’s small and simple and looks like a black rubbery pear. Even after all I’ve done, I still do it this way first.
As I feel the water fill up inside of me, I think about Berlin. The snow as we came in to Tegel Airport, the empty lots by our rented apartment, blank snowfields on top of concrete. Gus laughing at me reading Christopher Isherwood such a cliché, like someone reading Arthur Conan Doyle when visiting London. I tell him that sometimes it’s nice to just let people enjoy themselves. He goes out to find the strong coffee from the shop at the end of the street. I take a hot shower in the bathroom made minuscule by all the house plants, peace lily, spider plants, fernlettes, everything shimmers as the steam fills the space. Am I scared to be here? No. But Gus is scared of the monogamy this trip is aping. Even when we booked the mini break, he felt like he needed to tell the airline we weren’t a normal couple, seat us rows apart, it doesn’t matter! They checked our tickets this morning and I could tell he wanted to clear his throat and tell the cabin crew we’re not like the other gays on this flight. This was something other than a holiday. But what, what was it then, darling, if not a fucking holiday?
I shower and adore the heat on my skin. Then I start my new meticulous douche routine ahead of tonight. Tonight, I will be adored by ten silent men in a Friedrichshain basement and they will touch me freely with their rough hands. I will take their cocks into my mouth with joy. But will it make me happy, though? And will I feel the trip was worth it, even afterwards? Wouldn’t I rather just sleep in and see some fucking museums instead?
There are things you do for love and things you do for money and sometimes it’s a little of both. Berlin was a beginning for me. When we got to the club we saw it was a video party and people were roving around with cameras capturing close ups of blow jobs and of bulges. The video was being live streamed on the screens around the place. The camera men had to be topless because they were often accidentally shot on the chest with spunk. While they all initially remained impartial, true journalists, it wasn’t long before the cameras were pointed down directly at their own cocks as men worked hard at sucking them off, often stopping to look into the camera (as cheers went up from those watching in other rooms). That night I found a stunning Californian top called Luis who was in porn. I was one of his chosen few for the night and our little scene gained quite a crowd. The club had an old East German pommel horse which I laid myself across and Luis fucked me with the variation, tenderness, and control you can imagine a professional would have, after we both came, someone shrewdly took my number. I had a call the next morning from someone I don’t recall meeting about remuneration (in hundreds of dollars), about consent for online distribution, and in amongst the legalese in a slack Californian it was so fucking hot man, I fucking loved it I fucking jerked it watching you but yeah... Luis is in London for shoots every few months, come along for a full scene with him. He’d fucking love to see you again man.
I sit on the toilet holding the water inside of me and I feel it testing my anus from the inside. One has to be sure you’re alone in the flat because when you start to let it all go, the sound is alarming, a gushing that lasts and lasts, but feels amazing. I know I won’t be clear for a while though. Not clear enough for what I’ll be doing later on. I repeat the process again, this time once the water is in and comfortable, I climb to the floor, put my face onto a towel and I hold myself still for a while with my arse facing upwards, legs splayed out, as best I can. I hold myself still. I am not painfully full, the water is inside of me but it’s not scary. I should run a yoga class called douching for bottoms with all these positions and movements I’ve worked out.
After Berlin the overriding feeling was that I didn’t care about what Gus did that night in the basement club, who he fucked in the dark room, who ate his spunk, whatever else happened. But he hated that I had been fucked so expertly. If it had just been some random German, he said, he wouldn’t have minded, but to have had a porn star, and to have essentially made porn in that basement, that was something different. That wasn’t what he had agreed we would be doing that weekend. It was all very boring to me really. For him to fall into the same roles of jealous aggressive masc boy like that. If he allowed himself to be a sissy and just enjoy life, how much happier he’d be! But the sex club was SERIOUS to him. It was like the museums we saw or the stupid expensive foody restaurant, it was a part of our perfect little non-monog (his phrase) couple’s trip. I’d thrown it all off by enjoying it too much. We fundamentally disagreed about why we wanted to be in Berlin. I wanted culture and also sex, he wanted to prove something to everyone, that we weren’t like the other gay couple three rows behind us on the plane, or the other couple we saw in the hotel lift, or the other couple we locked eyes with coming off the train at Alexanderplatz. He wanted to prove we weren’t a couple at all. But really, we were like them, all of them. They’d probably come here for culture and sex as well, what else is Berlin for?
Next I upgrade to the shower attachment. This screws on in place of a shower head and it regulates the water and really truly gets it up there. This is for professionals only! I got this when I decided that doing these shoots was a fun way to cover rent, a time consuming hobby that was financially and physically very rewarding. Once the nozzle is up inside it’s like you’re at a petrol station and something’s gone a bit wrong. The water comes in steadily and freely and it feels fantastic. A warm internality, a having-just-sipped-a-cuppa sort of feeling, but for your anus. In the bath now I do some more yogic moves, taking the nozzle out carefully, allowing my sphincter muscle to close up diligently. I am wonderfully full with this warm water. My anal cavity is being cleansed lovingly by this slow process. I feel amazing.
After a bit of a break Gus still calls in sometimes, but we don’t really fuck. He tells me about whose ex he’s now fucking and I don’t really care. He comes over to prove to himself that we were always casual like this, but I don’t think we were. I think we started to catch that chill-rush of feelings and it scared us both, suddenly we were googling gay sex clubs in Berlin, you were testing out cock rings, and I perfected my routine the very meticulous douching method to ensure successful anal sex.
Every time you let the water out into the toilet you have to examine it, to check how clear it is. This is how you know when you’re getting ready and whether you can do it or not. If the water isn’t getting clear at all, maybe it’s not a good day. That happens sometimes. You check it over and over and most of the time it thins and clears. Once it comes out clear for the first time, you need to do it all again anyway just to make sure. Then you shower and in the shower you pay close attention to your anus, lather it up soapily so that you can slide a finger in there easily as a final checker, like a dipstick.
I watch the video sometimes, that first time of me and Luis. It’s on Pornhub, it’s got fucking millions of views, because of him. Of course it was strange at the beginning but also I loved it. Seeing how someone else saw you, it was a thrill. And watching the men watching us and jerking off, what better review can one get? The comments underneath the video on the site say weird things like the bottom is surely enjoying himself, I CAME and does he know his being filmed?hotter if he doesnt. The video disappears and reappears, has different runtimes and sometimes poorer quality. It lives in various places now, that first one. The newer ones are behind a paywall.
Once dressed I leave the flat, I’ve got my backpack with a change of clothes, a few vegan snack bars, and a bunch of bananas. On the tube I’m mixing with the diligent tourists after nine am, they stand in all the wrong places and get in my way but I don’t care, I get to see Luis, to kiss his full lips and feel his body against mine. His warm Californian voice. I get to see the camera guys again and meet some of their performer friends, in town for shoots as a stop on their tours of Europe. I am clear and I am ready and everything this morning has been a success.
about Edward (he/him/his)
Ed Garvey-Long is a poet from Hertfordshire. His work deals with LGBTQ+ identity, queer voices, love, loss, and longing. His work is often inspired by London (where he now lives) and the landscapes and islands of Scandinavia (where he loves to visit). His poetry has appeared in Lighthouse, Perverse, and Under the Radar. His debut poetry pamphlet, The Living Museum, was published in 2019 by Selcouth Station Press and was nominated for Burning Eye Book's Not The Forward Prize. He is currently writing his first collection of short stories.
Outside of writing, Ed enjoys cross stitch, tea, and visiting museums with his husband Rupert. He can be found on twitter @eddus, on instagram @eddus_poet and on his website: edgarveylong.com