Standing behind his desk, Terry wondered if students noticed that his gait had changed, even his tone of voice. Earlier he had locked himself in the washroom cubicle, took the package and lubricant out of his briefcase, followed the instructions, inserted the well-greased plug in his ass, wincing when it pushed through the sphincter, pulled up his pants, waited as he adjusted to the sensations, flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and then walking slowly, he entered the classroom down the hall, three minutes late. Clenching his buttocks, he didn’t want it dislodged at inopportune moments.

A student sat in the front row, legs spread wide apart to give prominence to his crotch, the white statement in English on his black T-shirt loud and clear: MANWHORE. While Frida at the back of the class read out a passage in her halting English from the assigned story, Terry wondered what the term meant and how it applied to Reinhardt. Did the youth sell his body? With his Germanic good looks and muscularity, he’d probably have customers lined up. His huge muscles were the most noticeable feature about him, and he wore clothes like the skin-tight T-shirt to draw attention to them. Reinhardt also drove a muscle car to school, all noise and power; a fuck machine, really. The boys and girls couldn’t resist and Reinhardt knew it, and Terry privately admitted that he wasn’t immune to the student’s charisma.

But the T-shirt seemed blatant and rude, even in this age of sartorial provocations. Really, discretion and appropriateness were obsolete notions for his students. Not that he should talk about appropriate behaviour, given the buttplug slipping in his anal canal every time he took a step. Terry couldn’t quite describe the feeling aside from the fact that he liked the pressure, the up-and-down movement, and images of being tied down, maybe, or panting on his hands and knees like a manwhore himself and getting fucked by a big one. Oh, he was sure it would hurt…at first…he had to prepare for the inevitable. And he had to bring himself back from fantasyland to the blackboards and fluorescent lighting of a classroom smelling of student sweat and indifference.

With difficulty, Frida finished the passage. Terry knew that Reinhardt had slept with her and she wanted to be his regular girlfriend, but Reinhardt regarded love and romance as traps set by girls for their guys. He certainly knew the lad’s opinions. Fucking was great; guys needed to play, didn’t matter who their partner was; everything was permissible; it was all cool. Sex was nothing more than fun and games unless you wanted kids. Everyone should have fun; blowjobs were necessary, Reinhardt had written in his student journal, or words to that effect. The assigned topic was “Love and Sex” in a story of their choice, total freedom of expression allowed, and the entry by horny Reinhardt had startled Terry awake from the semi-narcoleptic state he fell into when reading student prose. Reinhardt had simply used the story has a jumping-off point to write about his own sex life: about how much he loved shooting his load every day anywhere with anyone, a blowjob a day, at least one, even in the college library, confessions which Terry suspected the boy had pumped up like his arm muscles. Why? To impress his teacher? To seduce somehow?

According to his journal, Reinhardt the MANWHORE (was that not also an insulting term?) had already fucked two or three other girls and boys in the class. Terry had even imagined himself seducing Frida of the lustrous black hair to which he was partial in a woman, but hadn’t thus far acted on the inclination, although there had been a few good encounters with the horny adolescents, all at least 18, in his younger years at the college. Everyone knew some professors slept with their students, but unless the students complained, no one else did, aside from the standard clucking of tongues and envious whispers behind their backs. Did Reinhardt ever use buttplugs? Could he safely ask that question?

His students skittering with hormonal energy, immersed in the entertainment and advertising world of sex, Terry wondered how they concentrated on physics labs and English essays when cocks crowed and cunts glistened. He struggled to attach himself to the moment, to keep from drifting away in reverie like a canoe broken loose from its mooring, to cut the ties here, to sever himself him from his inauthentic life. He sat down, if only to keep the plug in. His master Kurt had bought it and commanded Terry to conduct his last class with the device in his ass. Why should he plug himself? Terry had protested, answered by Kurt’s mocking, like you don’t know, bitch. Just do it. Yes, he had obeyed, for obedience thrilled him and it seemed natural to follow his master Kurt’s orders. And now, the plug secured all the way up, Terry’s groin stirred, his buttocks clenched and unclenched and clenched again. Kurt had borrowed the car for the day after dropping him off at school in the morning, and Terry would meet him in the parking lot after class. It excited him when he thought of Kurt driving his car, taking over the vehicle, and making Terry ride as a passenger. Where are we going? What will you do to me in the car? The questions tantalized.

Time constricted him like an iron ball chained to his legs. Some days he didn’t think he could go through the routine anymore. Before meeting Kurt, his sense of dying by increments had been tangible, and he would have died in the end, having lived an ordinary, unmemorable life. Liberation beckoned him like a new, transcendent life. He shifted on the seat, wishing the plug would poke at his prostate, but it didn’t reach that far. Kurt had promised it would happen. Patience.

Kurt broke into and took over his life. Electrons sizzled in the atmosphere. The leaden sky cracked and sunlight roared through. Wear the plug; it’s a start, bitch. You need a good fuck like any cunt. And so now he was practicing, getting ready. Yes, after showering this morning, directing the full force of the spray up his anal canal, although he didn’t think it could be as effective in cleaning it out as a complete enema, he had inserted the butt plug, involuntarily gasping as the bulbous part squeezed past the sphincter, and pushed gently until all five flexible inches snuggled in the canal. The flange at the end prevented it from going up any farther. It seemed so odd to have done it, now that he conducted a class. Terry knew there would be a larger plug after the one in his ass had served its purpose for a week or more, and after that conditioning, something larger still, and ultimately the real thing. Like a soldier, Kurt had said, preparation and readiness were everything. Terry imagined the size of Reinhardt’s cock; it grew impossibly large, like a horse dick, and his heart beat faster over the thought of it breaking into him like a stallion mounting a mare in heat. Not ideas he should be thinking about during class, he admonished himself.

Terry spoke faster, wanted time to speed up, so he could exit the classroom and meet Kurt in the teacher’s parking lot. They would drive back to the apartment and pass an hour or so together before Kurt left for his evening shift at the plant. Perhaps he would have to remove the plug and hoped the tip wouldn’t be covered in shit, knowing he’d be embarrassed in front of the soldier. He would stay at the apartment and prepare for tomorrow’s classes, change into Kurt’s clothes, watch videos, clean the tiny kitchen, and be awake when the soldier returned before midnight. His mouth went dry, and he had difficulty concentrating on what students said.

He lifted his ass off the seat imperceptibly and pushed down, as if he were fucking himself on the plug in front of his dazed students. The discomfort became mildly pleasurable. Some of his students, including Reinhardt, must have a secret life as well, special interests and games, besides ordinary fucking. Well, Reinhardt was not so secretive in his journal, but Terry suspected more bravado there than truth. Perhaps they still were too young, not yet sucked down into the bog of jobs, convenience, compromises, and pensions.

They had not experienced the randomness of death and violence like blood oozing out of smashed heads, bones splintered and crushed, or children’s limbs ripped out of their sockets, as Kurt had witnessed after the Taliban bombed a girl’s school outside Kandahar. The students’ digital gadgets connected them to nothing except mirror images of themselves. Hey, you brain-addled fuckers, he could almost hear himself speaking in Kurt’s voice, connect with this: and he’d bend over, pull down his pants, and moon them with the butt plug plopping out of his ass.

“That’s it for today,” he announced, “have your journal entry written for next class. Be honest. Write whatever you think would interest me, but be true.”

Slamming books and scraping chair legs, their voices released like chattering birds, they filed out of the room, and he noticed how a group of admirers gathered around Reinhardt, the manwhore. Terry was startled by the wink Reinhardt gave him, as if teacher and student shared intimate knowledge. In a sense, they had: allowed to write freely in their journals without fear of a teacher’s censorship and disgust, Reinhardt had been very free in his sexual confessions. Terry had commented favourably and encouraged him to write more along the same lines.

They had even enjoyed a private conversation or two in Terry’s office where Reinhardt, responding to Terry’s probing and questions about the entries, relaxed and spoke his mind and spread his legs wide to allow his teacher to admire his bulging crotch, although Terry tried not to direct his eyes there. Reinhardt seemed willing to cross boundaries, to demolish the limits, if granted permission. Intimations slipped out with his words and flickered in his eyes. You should write more about this in your journals; Terry had praised his frankness. What would Reinhardt think if he knew that his teacher, with his ass plugged, was on his way to a soldier’s apartment where, to quote Reinhardt, guys needed to play? Would Reinhardt like to play with them? Would he bring Frida and would he let his teacher or Kurt fuck her? Did she shave her pussy? Would Reinhardt wear leather boots? Deep-throat his professor, if Kurt gave his permission? The questions remained unasked, but Terry still hoped for answers. All boundaries seemed to be splintering and shattering ever since he met and submitted to Kurt, and the word enslavement seemed to be more and more accurate, and Terry whispered it like a confession of love.

He took unaccountable risks like driving well above the speed limit every day, something he had never done before meeting Kurt. For about five seconds last week, he had closed his eyes on a highway, just for five seconds. He had counted: one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three, one thousand and four, one thousand and five. Opening them, he saw that his car had not crossed the yellow lane into oncoming traffic. One could crash with eyes wide open. He fancied taking risks with Reinhardt the manwhore. Ask the youth openly: have you ever thought about fucking your teachers? Rumours abounded. He had heard about one or two colleagues sexually involved with Reinhardt. That Reinhardt was into anything. Did he dominate them? Did they submit willingly and joyously? Do you get boners in class? Maybe he should introduce Kurt to Reinhardt. Kurt could manage it from there, if he wanted to enlist the student. They were both bodybuilders, a point of mutual interest and common ground for a friendship, overcoming Kurt’s distaste for civilians. He didn’t have time to go to the washroom. After collecting his things from his office and stuffing his brief case with student papers, he met David, a colleague, in the corridor.

David blocked his exit and continued his neverending rant about students, the contempt for whom he covered with pedagogical jargon and a belief in standards they could never meet, befuddled, ill-educated yahoos that they were. David stood too close. Terry stepped back and the buttplug slipped; he could feel it pop out of the sphincter. David’s body seemed to lack a spine and he curved forward when talking, as if about to topple in a shiny brown polyester suit jacket two sizes too big for him and over his spongy, soft-soled shoes. For a moment, Terry saw himself in the aging, attenuated, and embittered man, who had lived too long teaching and disapproving, and his gorge rose.

He became entranced by David’s mouth opening and shutting as if operated by an automatic switch. It wouldn’t stop until the teacher had emptied the cesspit of his bile. Terry reached behind and touched the flange of the plug under his pants: yes, it was slipping out. He could push it back in, but David was having a negative effect on his mood. Was he ready to graduate to a larger piece in his ass after only an hour and a half? He didn’t think it likely. Two hours max, the instructions said, at the beginning. It was a flesh-toned acrylic plug, shaped like an arrowhead, smooth and round, but tapered so the narrow part slipped past the sphincter with least resistance, discomfort beginning as the thicker part squeezed in. He had to fight the urge to defecate after inserting it all the way, using the water-based lubricant which Kurt had selected. Despite voiding this morning and douching the canal, he didn’t think he could have thoroughly cleaned it.

Watching David’s mouth and hearing the tirade against students: about how they had trouble concocting convincing thesis sentences; how inept they were at composing the five-paragraph essay with proper introduction and conclusion; how lobotomized they were by mass media and popular music, the man’s pet peeve, he could see that David believed in the gibberish he was spewing. By reaching under his pants and pulling out the plug, Terry could quickly shove it into the pedant’s yammering mouth and cap the logorrhoea. There, he’d say, if you can’t smell the shit you’re speaking, here’s a taste of mine.

Kurt had his arm outside the driver’s window, flicking a cigarette. Kurt didn’t greet him, but once inside the car and buckled, the buttplug secured against slippage, Kurt took another drag before starting he engine. He wore an army-issue T-shirt and Terry admired his master’s biceps. And he saw himself standing at the edge of an abyss with a shaky rope leading to the opposite cliff where Kurt beckoned him to cross over. Risk it. He stood exposed and weakened, as if some kind of façade had cracked and collapsed in a thousand pieces, revealing an equally demolished interior. Reconstruction was in order. Everything now was permissible.

The soldier switched the gears and the car moved into the road. Terry stared at the boot pressing the accelerator. It needed to be polished. “Go with the fucking flow so I flow with fucking,” Terry recalled words from Reinhardt’s journal. Well, he had given the lad permission to write whatever he pleased without fear of repercussions. He suppressed a chuckle, wondering if Reinhardt would “flow” along with Kurt and have “fun” with his teacher. Kurt squeezed his knee, and looked directly at him.

“You wearing it like I told you?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Good. You can play with it in your ass-cheeks while I’m driving. You have my permission, bitch.”

Terry clasped his hands, the butt sliding up as he pushed down on the seat, and nodded yes; he was doing what the soldier allowed him to do. He could feel it as he worked his buttocks, slowly fucking himself. An image of Reinhardt’s heavily-muscled arms holding the wheel of his car, the famous fuck machine, blocked out any compunctions. He could think of nothing more to say except smile in submission, lifting and lowering his ass, up and down as if he was actually fucking himself on Reinhardt’s relentless horse cock as cars drove by, feeling it, feeling it, getting used to it, getting trained like a recruit. We’re not rushing this, Kurt had said. Terry didn’t know what was coming over him: he imagined Reinhardt the manwhore unbuckling his jeans and bending his professor over the hood of his muscle car and pushing his demanding cock deep into his professor’s ass with Kurt’s permission. What was overcoming him? Impatience burned in his bones. Kurt halted at an intersection, lit a cigarette, turned his head, gripped Terry’s thigh and squeezed. He blew smoke out with the words: you’ll always belong to me, bitch. Keep fucking yourself.