Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 10:44:47 +0100 (BST)
From: Robert Furlong <robert.furlong@rocketmail.com>
Subject: Online Briefing

ONLINE BRIEFING
Part of the 'Butt Monkey' series of stories by Robert Furlong
robert.furlong@rocketmail.com
Find my older stories at screeve.org

===

I scrolled down the pictures of men's underwear filling the screen, trying
to locate the Calvin Klein boxer briefs Jake prefers.  If I bought him the
wrong ones, he'd wear them once and then that would be it.  He'd say they
were uncomfortable or they chaffed at his thighs or they rode up into his
arse-crack or some such thing.  Then they'd be pushed to the back of his
underwear drawer never to resurface.

Why weren't you able to sort underwear by style on e-Bay?  Why is nothing
ever designed to be easy?  I glanced down the list on the left of the
screen.  Size... brand... UK items only...

Oh, here we are.  Style.  Okay, you can then.

The list refreshed itself and a new set of pictures worked their way down
the screen.  One of them caught my eye.  It seemed as if the guy selling
the underwear was modelling the briefs himself and from the thick rod
running diagonally up the front of them, it looked as if he'd been in
rather a state of excitement when he was doing so.

I clicked on the link and the item listing loaded.

Yes, he was definitely showing off a stiffie.  I scrolled along the other
photos of him – scallylad1993 – wearing the boxer briefs.  In three
of him he was sprouting the same very obvious erection.  He was clearly
flaunting himself for the camera.

Perhaps he was showing how accommodating the underwear was when a
well-built guy – and he certainly was a well-built guy – finds
himself aroused.

Clicking on the third of the photos, I noticed that he seemed to have
dribbled a little precum up near the waistband.  There was a small damp
patch.  Presumably he was planning to wash the underwear before sending
them off.

I scrolled further along his photos.  In one he was modelling the briefs
from behind.  I had admit, he had a very nice arse: two nice round buttocks
like a pair of juicy globes and a deep, provocative cleft between them.  I
could see why he was eager to share.

These weren't the sort of underwear which Jake would like, but I glanced at
the listing out of curiosity.

"Okay lads.  You know the score," it started.

Did I?

"Here we have a snug-fitting pair of briefs for sale.  I wear them for
work, for the gym and when I play rugby.  Also sleep in them.  Possible to
customise – feel free to ask :-)"

Underneath, it said: "Private listing.  Discretion assured."

Was this what I thought it was?

He'd given his e-mail address and I stared at it, wondering what I would
say to him.

Perhaps I had misconstrued the tone of the listing.

The price of the briefs had climbed to just over seventeen pounds and there
had been six bids so far with two days to go.  Postage was two pounds
fifty.  It was very steep for a pair of cheap-looking underwear – they
looked like they'd once formed part of a value-range five-pack from Primark
or Matalan – but the suggestion of possible extras seemed too good to
ignore.

I clicked his e-mail address to send him a message.  What on earth was I
going to say to him?

"Hi there, scallylad1993," I began.

1993?  If that was his year of birth, that would make him only slightly
older than Jake.  A twenty-year-old rugby player with an arse like a pair
of cantaloupes.  This really was far too good to ignore.

"I saw your listing on e-Bay and like the look of the briefs."

Hmm... how to continue?

"Are you selling the ones you're wearing in the photos?  I only ask because
if you are, and I win the auction, I wondered if you were going to wash
them before you send them."

I sounded like a pervert.  I almost certainly was a pervert.

"I'm not too bothered whether or not you do," I went on.  "But for the sake
of the environment, I don't mind if you don't."

Jesus, it sounded so obvious what I was after, but I couldn't think of how
to make it more subtle without running the risk of him missing the point
and bunging the things through the washer before he parcelled them up.

Anyway, his listing was worded very suggestively so he was as complicit in
this as I was.  If it turned out that I had misjudged things and he sent me
a new or clean pair of briefs, the details said they were the same size
that I normally wear so at least I'd have a new pair of – albeit
inordinately expensive – pants to put in my drawer.

I signed the e-mail and sent it; then I noticed that scallylad1993's
listing had 'gay interest' flagged in the title.  I added those two words
to my search to see what would show up.  To my surprise, several pages of
results appeared with a variety of underwear being modelled, in various
states of arousal, by their sellers.

There was quite a racket going on here and, until now, I'd been completely
oblivious.  Certain men – I assumed it would be men – must find the
smell of other guys' underwear to be as arousing as I had in the sports
centre changing rooms.  My experience of sniffing dirty undies and getting
a hard-on from other men's odours must not be as uncommon as I had thought
it was.

The sellers had assumed names such as armyboy21 and footieguy_18 and I
wondered how accurate such descriptions really were.  But even if they were
totally fallacious, the photos they had uploaded to accompany their
listings were overwhelmingly attractive – not that very much above the
waistline was visible in them – and they all had the sort of well-worked
backsides that would, I was sure, get guys like me clicking frantically on
the 'Bid now' buttons.

Glancing at the wording of the listings, most of them gave the distinct
impression that more was being offered than just pairs of underwear.  The
sellers were careful to couch their descriptions in ambiguous language, no
doubt to comply with e-Bay rules, but their meanings were fairly obvious.

"Good for guys like me who get sweaty around the balls," one of them was
keen to divulge.  "Can wear for three days if wanted," offered another.
Some men promoted their underwear as "very absorbent," and one guy
described his colourful shorts as "funky".

I messaged a few other sellers – those with the most appealing backsides
– along the lines of what I had sent to scallylad1993.

After just a few minutes, when I'd got back to looking for something for
Jake, the first response came in.  This one was from hung-leeds-lad.

"for the environment – LOL!  mate – you can have them however you
want them.  let me know what you like... ;)"

What did I like?  What was he offering?

Again, he wasn't being specific about what exactly my options were.

What should I say?

As I was pondering how to reply to him, another response came in.  This
time from dirty*shorts.

"never heard that before, m8.  nice one :D u want piss, spunk or bum
smells?  mebe all 3?  lol"

So I really was bidding for exactly what I'd suspected.

I added an extra fiver to my bid on dirty*shorts' dirty shorts.

===

I told Jake over tea that I'd ordered him a few new packs of his preferred
underwear.  He looked completely uninterested and then, when his phone
abruptly played part of some song I didn't recognise, he picked it up and
started fiddling with it.

"You shouldn't do that over a meal, Jake.  It's rude," I advised him.

He glared at me, put it back down on the table and got on with eating the
barely-edible chilli con carne I'd managed to drum up.

After a swig of from my mug of tea I said, "While I was on e-Bay, I ordered
a few packs of underwear for myself as well.  Just in case you wonder what
all the packages are in the next week or so."

He threw me a glance which showed his total apathy for this subject.

"I don't know what will turn up... some of the stuff on that site is so
cheap you never know what you're going to get."

I had visions of Jake coming in from college to find foul-smelling parcels
on the doormat with flies buzzing around them.  I felt I needed to casually
lay the groundwork that I had, in trying to get the cheapest deals, somehow
– completely unwittingly, of course – managed to bid on other guys'
unwashed underwear.  Just so when I eventually had to wonder aloud, 'How on
earth did that happen?' it might seem at least half-convincing.

This time, though, Jake didn't even glance up at me.

"So, er... if you see anything weird-looking arriving with the post, it's
probably something I've clicked on by mistake," I chuckled, lamely.

"Look," he said.  "I need to see if Dan's texted me.  I know it's rude and
all that, but I'm expecting him to tell me something about tonight."

"Oh."

Was he going somewhere?  Did I know about this?  I struggled to remember.

"I mean," he went on, "your conversation about pants is fascinating, and
don't think I'm not enthralled just because I'm looking at my phone, but I
really need to see this."

I smiled, steadfastly refusing to rise to his bait.

"Well, okay.  If you must.  But don't make a habit of it."

He picked up his phone and started fiddling with it again with one hand
while with his other he forked a dollop of chilli sauce into his mouth.

===

The first pair arrived nearly a week later.  Typical Royal Mail efficiency.

As it happened, by pure coincidence, Jake was due home late on the day they
arrived as he was going to the cinema with one of his mates.

I could hardly believe the excitement I felt when I got home and saw the
padded envelope on the doormat.  Every day since I'd ordered the underwear
I'd been arriving home from work with increasing disappointment that
nothing had been delivered.  I'd been starting to wonder if I'd actually
fallen for a scam in ordering non-existent goods about which embarrassment
would deter me from raising a complaint.

But here they were at last.  The first pair.

Without even pausing to put the kettle on, I threw my jacket over the
bannister rail and bounded upstairs to take the packet to my bedroom,
feeling like a child with a new toy at Christmas.

Kneeling on the floor next to my bed expectantly, I tore open the envelope
and pulled out the note inside.

It was from gymguysam.  I wondered if Sam really did go to the gym and work
out in the briefs as the name he had chosen suggested or whether, more
likely, he sat around all day in them eating crisps and watching Jeremy
Kyle, looking forward to making an easy buck from suckers like me on e-Bay.
I didn't really mind.  As long as they'd been next to his arse it didn't
really matter what he'd been doing in them.

"hiya Rob, hope these are ok, i wore them 2 days 4 u, sam"

On the note, there was a fuzzily printed photo of his crotch.  He was
wearing a pair of briefs – not the ones I had bought – and had his
cock and balls pulled out over the waistband.  He was semi-hard and,
although his length was pretty average, his shaft was impressively wide.
His bell-end made a large, fat mound underneath his foreskin, giving his
whole cock the appearance of an especially thick drumstick from which the
pink slit of his glans was peeping.

I pulled the briefs out from the envelope.  He'd very thoughtfully packaged
them in a resealable plastic pouch.  It was the sort of pouch you sometimes
get wet-wipes in to preserve their freshness, but in this case I rather
thought freshness was not the priority.

I undid the little plastic zipper and pulled the underwear out from the
bag.  They were a white pair of slip briefs – some cheap brand – and
from the whiff I got as soon as I unfolded them, it was obvious that Sam
had been true to his word.  These had been well-worn by an owner who had
shown only minimal regard for his own cleanliness.  The material inside the
gusset had a dark yellow patch with a heavy tidemark and a crusty smear
near the waistband revealed that Sam had tugged himself off at least once
while he'd been wearing them.

I took a tentative sniff and winced at the sharp tang of urine and
testosterone.  I can't deny that it was an interesting odour – sexually
it was very intriguing – but my interest wasn't really focussed on the
various liquids that had dribbled from Sam's thick cock.

I turned the briefs around and examined the back of them.  They looked
largely clean.

I couldn't remember what the deal had been with Sam.  When sellers had
specifically offered 'arse sweat' or 'butt crack smells' as part of the
arrangement, I had readily agreed, but when they had not been forthcoming
about such options I had never had the nerve to broach the subject myself.
It had seemed too crude to ask them to rub the underwear up and down
between their buttocks when they were wearing them and I worried that they
might misinterpret my request and do something hideous like wipe their
arses on them after going to the toilet.

I raised Sam's briefs to my nose took a sniff of the back of them.  He'd
definitely worn them – there was a distinct hint of that delicious,
raunchy aroma which had so impressed me on the underwear in the sports
centre – but the smell was too feeble to be more than faintly arousing.
Even cupping them over my nose and inhaling deeply from the very part of
them which would have been nestling into his most flavoursome spot produced
only a fraction of the excitement I'd experienced with Guy straddling my
face.

I threw the briefs back onto the bed and climbed to my feet, dispirited.
Thanks very much, Sam, but your underwear didn't hit the mark.

I contemplated having another sniff of the front of them to see if the
smell of what had oozed from his cock might elicit at least a little of the
reaction I'd been hoping for from his backside, and I must say that I was a
little tempted to investigate the bracing bite of his semen, but I was
feeling too disappointed and, if I'm honest, a bit peeved that I'd forked
out over thirty quid for a pair of cheap and fairly useless briefs.

I put them with the rest of the whites to be laundered later in the week
and took the envelope and note back downstairs to be hidden away at the
very bottom of the rubbish bin.

===

The next day, a second pair arrived.  I'd stopped off after work for a game
of squash with my mate Steve, so Jake was already home when I got in.  It
took me some time to be able to sneak the small package upstairs to see
what the postman had brought me.

The wait wasn't as agonizing as it would have been if Sam's pair hadn't
arrived the day before.  This time I was ready for dissatisfaction and the
amount of money I had squandered on the packages which were yet to come was
starting to seem decidedly foolhardy.

When I eventually tore open the package – this time sellotaped up in
thick black plastic – I found a pair of light blue boxer briefs.  The
strongly acrid waft I got as I pulled them out from their wrapping
suggested they were going to elicit a much more favourable reaction than
the previous pair.

I read the note: "hi m8. hope all ok. mail me if u want more. ez gavin"

I wondered which emotion 'ez' was supposed to represent.  I knew, mainly
from Jake's text messages, what symbols like :), ;D and =P meant but 'ez'
was a new one on me.  I tried looking at it sideways-on.  The 'e' must be
the eyes, I figured, with one wincing and the other wide open.  That would
make the 'z' an alarmingly twisted mouth.  Perhaps it meant he was having a
stroke.

It must be an abbreviation, I decided.  Epic something, probably.

I unfolded the briefs on my bed.  For some reason, in spite of the
undeniably anal reek they were giving off, this wasn't exciting me at all.
I couldn't understand why.

There was a slight staleness to the odour of the underwear; the sort of
fusty smell you get from a pile of dirty clothes after a few days of
waiting to be laundered.  It was noticeable but in no way offensive.

So what was I finding so off-putting?

When I'd been messaging these guys and reading their responses, I'd been
hugely aroused.  Perhaps the sheer seediness of what I'd been doing had
proved to be a turn-on.

"u want to sniff my college ass?" I'd been asked by a university student
who went by the name of lancaster-kyle.

I'd increased my bid on his boxer shorts and then had written back, my hand
squeezing my erection through my trousers: "Very much so, Kyle.  Hope it's
nice and sweaty!"

"it'll be more than sweaty.  i'll make sure of that... >;)"

"Not dirty – I don't like that," I'd added hastily.  "Just natural."

"i know what u mean. don't worry. my shorts ll be clean but nice and
smelly, just how you like them.  full of my manstink ;D"

I'd smiled at 'manstink', rubbing myself through my clothing in
anticipation of what he was going to send me.  Then I'd added another
tenner to my bid just to be on the safe side.

Now, with this guy's dirty boxer briefs in front of me, all the excitement
seemed to have evaporated.  They were just a pair of soiled underwear from
some guy I didn't even know.

It wasn't remotely as erotic as sniffing Steve's boxer shorts in the
changing rooms after squash, as I had a few weeks earlier, or the underwear
which had belonged to the younger guys while they'd been showering.  At
least in those cases I'd known the men whose arses I was lusting over –
even if I didn't know two them well enough to talk to, at least I knew who
they were and what they looked like.

I picked up the boxer briefs and looked at the front of them.  As I'd found
in Sam's briefs, the front of Gavin's were discoloured with piss and there
was a generous deposit of semen which had dried and was a bit flaky.  I
hadn't asked for those stains from either man, but I figured they must come
as a standard part of the package, if you forgive the pun.

I brought the back of the briefs up to my nose and, before I'd even got
close to them, found myself staggered at how strong the smell of the guy's
bum was on them.  It wasn't an unpleasant smell; just surprisingly intense.
These briefs had been worn by a guy with a rough, powerful arse which
would, I was sure, prove perfect for rimming.

I looked back at the note, trying to remember the messages we'd exchanged.
He went by the alias of farmergavin89.

I seemed to recall that Gavin had been the one who'd tried to titillate me
by telling me that the vibrations of his tractor made his underwear ride up
into his butt-crack.  I'd found it a little contrived; like he was playing
a part to make the sale.

"i hope u like whiffy underwear..." he'd said, once he'd established that I
was more interested in the back of his briefs than the front.  "my ass gets
hot in my tractor all day... come milking time, it's not too rosy back
there."

"If I wanted the smell of roses," I'd remarked, "a farmer's used underwear
would be an unlikely item to be bidding on!"

The young farmer – if indeed that's what he was – had liked that and
I'd had a 'lol' in return.

So here they were and it seemed he'd been right about how whiffy they were.
Perhaps he really had ridden around in his tractor all day with these very
boxer briefs chaffing in his arse-crack... perhaps...

I brought them back up to my nose and ventured a sniff at them.

Jesus, they were fierce!  They could almost bring tears to my eyes!

The smell was almost offensively sweaty but there was a crude, intensely
musky, odour permeating it which was quite fascinating.  It was strongest
along a line down the middle of the back of the briefs – right between
where his buttocks would have been.  Around the hem between the back of the
thighs, the smell was at its most intoxicating: a rich carnival of the most
powerful scents – deeply pungent and deliciously erotic.

Feeling my cock stirring in my trousers, I yanked down my fly and grappled
it out through my underwear.  It was only just on the aroused side of being
limp, but I'd paid good money for these briefs and I was sure as hell going
to use them as I'd planned to.

I had the smell of a guy's arse right in front of me – this is what I'd
been fantasising about for so long.  So why wasn't I sprouting a full-sized
stiffie; why weren't my balls gearing up to release my load?

I tried to visualise Gavin the farmer as a youngish bloke – the sort of
brawny, rugged guys I sometimes see in front of me on the country roads
going about five miles an hour in front of my car when I'm late for a
meeting.  This underwear certainly had been worn by a working man and one
who'd spent long hours with it hitching up into his arse crack.  The strong
smell of sweat could easily have come from lugging bales of hay onto a
truck or whatever else it was that farmers did all day.

I imagined such a bloke on the bed in front of me, facing away with his
dirty jeans hitched down and his strong, hairy arse level with my face.
His large, plump balls would be dangling down between his muscular thighs
and his cock... well... I wasn't too bothered about what his cock would be
doing.

I inhaled again from the coarse-smelling rear hem of the boxer briefs.
When he'd said he was 'whiffy' he was certainly true to his word.

I imagined I was rimming this bloke as he squatted on my bed, pushing my
face between the moist, skunky cheeks of his backside, homing in on the
dank, heady opening within.  His cleft would be teeming with his wiry hair,
feeling coarse and clammy on my nose and bristling against my tongue as I
reached out towards his hot, slimy ring.

I stroked my foreskin back and forth, trying to rouse my cock into life but
found it curiously unwilling to co-operate.

This just wasn't working for me.  It wasn't even fractionally as exciting
as I'd expected it to be.

It was titillating to have another man's underwear, his most secret scents,
in front of me, but for masturbatory stimulation it had turned out to be
deeply unfulfilling.  I just couldn't imagine this was an actual person on
the bed with me.

In spite of what I'd previously thought about it simply being the smell of
another guy which I found arousing, there clearly had to be, in my mind at
least, a real and authentic man who was producing the smells for me to be
able to fantasize about.  I simply didn't know enough about 'Gavin' or
whatever his name really was to feel genuinely stimulated by this.

I had at the back of my mind that I had in front of me the underwear of
some sweaty old fat bloke who was masquerading under a false identity to
give guys like me their cheap (or not so cheap) kicks.

Farmergavin89 could easily be some old weirdo selling off his dirty
laundry.  Which made me some slightly younger weirdo buying it up to sniff
at.

I wondered which of us was the weirder weirdo.

I heard Jake on the stairs and quickly stashed my disobliging member back
into my fly and shoved the underwear back into the packet.  These were too
grim to even make it to the laundry pile but would be hidden away at the
bottom of the outside wheelie-bin.

"What are you doing in there?" Jake called in.

"Just trying on these pants I bought from e-Bay," I replied, more
breathlessly than I would have liked.

I heard an 'ugh' sound from my son as he made his way to his bedroom.

===

The next day when I got home, Jake was dabbing at the carpet in the hallway
with some kitchen roll.

He greeted me with a scowl and a curt, "That cat needs putting down."

Sometimes it was like I was still married to his mother.

"Good afternoon to you too, Jake," I said, taking off my jacket and hanging
it up.  "What did the cat do?"

"He shat on the carpet," he said.  "It was disgusting.  Just what I want to
find when I get home."

Tipple – our ginger cat – was very old.  Linda and I had bought him
as a kitten before Jake was even born; that's how ancient he was.

"He nearly got it all over a couple of parcels you got in the post," Jake
went on.  "He did it right next to them."

I suddenly realised that the cat must have sniffed at the odoriferous
packets I'd received in the post and got confused about where he was.  He
must have thought the bawdy smells around the hallway mat meant it was his
litter tray.

"He needs putting down," Jake repeated.

"Steady on, Jake," I said.  I was rather fond of the old, grumpy cat and
was loathe to take him on his final journey to see the vet because of a
mistake that wasn't even his own fault.  "He just must have got a bit
confused."

Jake finished rubbing at the carpet and stood up.  "You said when he
started having accidents in the house, the most humane thing to do would be
to have him put to sleep."

I had said that.  I'd said senile cats get distressed about making a mess
where they shouldn't and that it would be cruel to go on making them live
like that.

"Maybe... er... he smelled something that made him think this was his
litter tray," I suggested.

"There was only the post," Jake argued.  "A couple of letters and those two
parcels for you.  Just that e-Bay stuff you were going on about last week.
What could have made him think it was his litter tray?"

I shrugged, feeling myself blush.  How many more of these wretched parcels
were on the way?  Was there any way to cancel your orders through e-Bay?

"Maybe it was something we brought in on our shoes, Jake... I don't know.
I just think we need to give him at least one more chance."

Poor old sod: his life hanging in the balance over a couple of dirty pairs
of skivvies bought on some misguided impulse by his owner.

"He's starting to look a bit scabby," Jake insisted.  "And he's got a whiff
to him.  I could smell it upstairs last night."

He walked into the kitchen and bunged the wodge of kitchen roll into the
bin.  I followed him through, undoing the top button of my shirt and
loosening my tie.

"I hope you're not going to have this attitude about me when I'm getting a
bit scabby and have a whiff to me."

Jake grinned over at me.  "If those are the warning signs, dad, I might as
well get you booked a flight to Switzerland now... one way!"

I smiled at him.

"Seriously, though, Jake," I went on, "I think Tipple needs at least one
more chance.  He might have just been having a bad day.  We all have them."

I certainly did.

Jake nodded.  "Well, I'm not cleaning his mess up next time."

"That's fair enough."

I glanced over at the packages which Jake had put on the table.  I thought
I could detect their odour from where I was standing, but I'm sure that
couldn't possibly have been true.

They needed to go in the bin.  Unopened, just binned.  Right to the bottom.

After that, I'd have to find a way to stop the other ones coming.  Perhaps
tell the Royal Mail we'd moved house.

"Aren't you going to open them?" Jake asked, grabbing a bottle of coke out
of the fridge.

"They're not... er... suitable," I said.

He swallowed a couple of mouthfuls from the bottle.  "How do you know?"

I shrugged.  "They were all much of a muchness when I ordered them.  Same
brand, different colours.  The ones I looked at last night just
weren't... er... up to the job."

"So why did you order so many?"

"They were cheap," I lied.  If only: I could have bought half a dozen
bottles of very nice Scotch with the money I'd frittered away.

How many more were due to come?  There was that bloke who'd claimed he was
an athlete, then the one who'd apparently been in the marines.  And I'd
ordered at least a couple of pairs from the guy who said he'd just come
back from –

"What are we having for tea?" Jake asked, his priorities shifting
momentarily to more pertinent matters.

I looked in the cupboard.  "I dunno... something with pasta, maybe?"

He nodded and walked over to the parcels on the table, eyeing them up.  "It
seems a waste to throw them away.  Do you think I would like them?"

"No," I snapped way too quickly.  "I mean... er... you're a lot fussier
than I am."

"What style are they?"

Jesus – he was going to be opening the bloody things next.  God knows
what he'd find smeared all over them.

"Old man style," I said.  "The waistband would be high enough to reach your
nipples."

He grinned.  "Oh right.  So why did you order them, then?"

"Er..." I floundered, struggling for an answer.  "They looked totally
different in the photos."

He chuckled.  "Well, that's e-Bay for you..."

After gulping down the last of his coke, he went on, "So why did they send
them all in separate packages?  Surely it would have been cheaper for them
to send them –"

"Look, Jake," I cut in.  "As fascinating as it is to talk about pants with
you, could we maybe move on to a different conversation?"

He looked over at me and grinned, appreciating the dig.

I grabbed the two packets and stuffed them, unopened, into the bin.  The
remaining deliveries would be joining them.

"I think we'll just forget all about those.  Write them off as an error of
judgement."

I'd have to phone the Royal Mail first thing in the morning.  Have all post
diverted to my work address.  On second thoughts, maybe that would bring
even more problems.

I'd see if I could hire a private mailbox to have things delivered to.  For
maybe a month or two.  At least until the supply of briefs had abated and
the poor old cat had been given a reprieve.

===

Next story: Pantomime Cow

===