It’s All About Perspective
I’d returned from a dinner meeting and turned on my computer. After taking care of assorted e-mails, I had some time to kill before calling it a night, so I went into a chatroom. Pathetic? Yes, because all of the usual suspects are there. That’s the reality of the internet: the hard-up older men who are looking for a thrill, the scared poster-boys who are looking for compliments, and the ones like me who find that dance morbidly fascinating. Several people messaged me, ones who knew me from my occasional visits and ones who wanted to find out where I fit in the hierarchy of chat. It was one of the hard-up older ones who went on about the way “smokestud01 was giving it away for free.” I messaged him with “what’s your story?” and he messaged back “you first.” I told him that I’d just returned from dinner at an Italian restaurant, Basso56, and was having a few chats. He told me about how he was kicking back, smoking a cigar and feeling good. In other words, he gave me an opening line that must’ve worked for him countless times before. I laughed to myself, rolled my eyes, and told him that was great. He kept on chatting with me, well, more to me, telling me about how thick the smoke was and how he enjoyed that. I agreed that cigars were like that. About fifteen minutes into our conversation, he sent me an invitation to view his webcam. I accepted it and there he was, your average, run-of-the-mill, cookie-cutter twink coughing up clouds of cigar smoke and believing himself to be everything that the hard-ups have told him he is.
There are many kinds of smokers, but when it comes to cigars, it all starts with a more basic distinction: bands on or bands off. I’m a band off man, because I smoke for myself and the enjoyment I take from it. I know which cigars I enjoy and which I don’t, which ones I’ll smoke if I have a short amount of time and which ones I’ll smoke when there’s time to let a cigar work its particular magic. Not surprisingly, smokestud01 was a band on boy. I commented on the Excalibur No. 1 he was smoking, but didn’t go on to say how predictable it was that he’d be smoking that cigar. He smiled at the recognition and, again, I laughed to myself at how he must be mentally patting himself on the back for smoking something that was known. How shallow, but it became sad when he put the cigar back to his lips, closed his eyes, and puffed before gulping down a cloud of smoke while he moved his hand over his bare chest. I closed the cam because such wanton displays by the needy depress me.
We chatted a bit more because it was clear he wanted to impress me with his small knowledge of cigars as much as he wanted to try and charm me with his banal, predictable wit. I recommended a few of the most well-known sticks out there and no surprise, the poseur knew them all. He asked me what I liked about smoking them and I told him. I threw him a bone when I said that sometimes I like to blow my smoke at my cock, but then I figured since it was what I thought of as a one-off chat, the kind where I have no intention of talking to the person again, I’d add that I’ve also hypnotized many men while smoking a cigar. He was silenced by that, and I assumed preoccupied with his cam show, so I told him that I should be going and thanked him for the chat. “Maybe we’ll chat again sometime.” He responded “we’ll see” and my stomach turned with disgust. I was logging out when he sent “I hope it’s soon.” I thought to myself that I didn’t see that happening and went to have a cigar. I smoked and wondered what happens to make people so perversely impoverished. Arrogance I understand, because I’m an arrogant man, but the artifice of arrogance eludes me. I could concede that in most cases it’s immaturity that causes one-dimensional people to overlook everything else but their own selfishness. What can I say? Cigar smoking makes me exceedingly reflective and thoughtful. I knew I pitied smokestud01 and that was unfortunate, because there was nothing worse for me to do. As I launched a series of smoke rings toward the ceiling, I let thoughts of that boy leave my mind and focused instead on the smoke.
A few weeks later when I returned to the chatroom, I’d barely logged in when a message from smokestud01 arrived. “Where’ve you been?” he typed. “Who wants to know?” I responded. It took me a moment or two to recall this person because his answers were standard and offered nothing to separate him from the others out there who are just like him. He proceeded to tell me that he had an interest in hypnosis and wondered what I used it for. I asked him what his interest was and waited to see in what way he’d tell me that he wanted to have someone else in control of him. He typed “the ability to lose control and be under someone else’s for a while.” That was no surprise, but what was missing was his disclaimer that he didn’t think he could be hypnotized. They always go hand in hand for the control freaks. I told him that I’d explored the loss of control with a number of men. He responded that it had always been his desire but he didn’t feel he was hypnotizable. I told him he’d be surprised at what he could do if he put his mind out of it and left it at that, but then he asked if he could add me to his buddy list. I acquiesced and finished our chat understanding that our dance had begun.
I’d danced this particular dance of power exchange before. It started years ago when New York was different, when gay clubs were subculture instead of pop culture. There were no sightseers like there are today, only needy and solitary people. My spot was The Lure but it’s gone now. I was never a leatherman but it was a place I could smoke a cigar and enjoy my solitude against a backdrop of power so palpable you could feel it. I guess it was something akin to guilt by association, because I radiated it and a few boys encroached on my solitude. Only one of them was permitted to hang around and he did, like a loyal and obedient pup. The thick mustache on his baby face looked as silly as it would on any young twenty something. He was short, maybe 5′6″ or so, and his voice was on the high side. Still, he wanted more than anything to suggest an aura of mystery and strength. I was thirty which meant I could either remake myself into a second-go-round punk or take my place in the curious middle ground of the homosexual world. I picked the second and embraced it.
His name was Randall but he thought of himself as prey. He never asked my name and only addressed me as “Sir.” A Jersey boy from across the river, prey was thoughtful and he wanted to be intense. We talked of power and of his love of bondage. He knew a lot about ropes and preferred hemp over cotton. I knew a lot about hypnosis and preferred mental bondage over physical. We both loved smoke and from the many cigars and pipes we smoked over our conversation at The Lure and at his place and at mine we explored everything together. It was, if such a thing existed, a relationship and someone given to such illusions would have called us lovers. Even now, twelve years later, I look back on it and see that we were explorers at our best, thinkers at our worst.
When I began to hypnotize him, he was reticent. I anticpated that because he wanted an experience that took him to the edge and he’d fantasized about it so long that were I unable to intuit the right choreography to his dreams, he’d resist. Hypnosis is nothing more than a relaxed state of heightened suggestibility, but anyone whose catered imaginations of it believes it to be something far more profound. They confuse mind games with mind work and prey had been playing mind games with himself for a long time. One night, while he rimmed me, I talked to him about his fantasy and could tell as his tongue worked my ass that what I was saying was registering deep inside of him. As he slowed, I continued my induction building in everything going on in our room into his sense perception. I directed him to become hyper aware of his breathing and of every smell in the room. I made sure to keep the room filled with a heavy hanging cloud from the pipe I was smoking. When I sensed he was primed, I got up, turned to face him, exhaled a cloud of pipe smoke into his face and commanded “Sleep!” His eyes closed, his jaw slacked and his mouth opened. His was the face of conquered conquest and I smiled knowing that he was mine. I proceeded to fuck him all the while I took him deeper and increased every sensation in his body. He writhed, moaned, and gave in to his mental restraints in a physical show of no restraint. Every night after that, prey accepted what he’d learned. He had no will of his own where I was concerned and he loved that as much as I did. He fulfilled every need I had while I took care of his in the most private and respectful of ways. When he moved four years later, we kept in touch online and it was online where I started encountering boys like smokestud01, shallow, insecure people too old to act as the children they no longer were but lacking the discipline to be men. For a while, I worked with them but I grew bored of them and disgusted with myself.
Now, over several weeks, smokestud01 worked his hardest to ingratiate himself to me. Flirting, joking, building to a coda for his crude idea of manipulation. I’d ignored his requests for pictures of me, because I held no interest in aesthetics. One night, I opened my own webcam to him and let him see my face. He revealed later that he, too, lived in New York and wanted to know if we could meet and talk about, as he called them, “our mutual interests.” He suggested a trendy Irish pub and I agreed, knowing that all along it would be someplace to attest to his contrived sense of popularity. When I got there that Saturday, I went to his table and he stood to greet me. Instead of shaking his hand, I squeezed his balls. Hard. I wanted to make sure he hadn’t fully lost the ability to feel. I’d picked up his cigar and puffed a cloud of smoke into his face while I asked him if he trusted me. I wanted him scared, but as I let go of his balls, it was clear I had him aroused instead. Predictable. And sad.
He pouted so I gave him something to pout about and told him “You’re going to tell me how you’re not looking for anything when really you want me to hypnotize you. You’ll tell me that you’re not looking for sex and that you have limits. You’ll tell me more about your interest in hypnosis when all you’ll really do is say the same thing you told me before, but you won’t tell me how hard you are right now. Will you? I know that you don’t want to hear this, but the fact is that you’re just like every other boy I’ve ever taken control of. I know you just like I know them. And I know you don’t trust me.” Predictably, that opened his floodgates and I let him talk for over an hour while I sized him up with occasional responses to his comments. I was curious only about his addiction. Every boy like him has one that he masks with affectations. Sometimes it’s a need for approval, at other times it’s more a need to belong. Given that smokestud01 had made cigars and hypnosis his accoutrements, I anticipated that his addiction was one he worked to keep hidden from himself.
We went back to my place so that I could hypnotize him. I played along with his nonsensical fantasy that he was not hypnotizable and told him that on this night, we’d have an exercise in relaxation. Then I told him to take off his clothes.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“Strip, boy.” I responded.
“Look, I’m not going to...”
I interrupted him. “Of course not, so just unbuckle that belt and unbutton those jeans. I’m not going to do anything that’s going to put my health at risk. I don’t know where you’ve been, but I know that it’s not going to leave either of us worse for wear when I make you cum.”
It was no surprise that he followed my instructions, so I continued, “Do you have another cigar? Because you’re going to want to smoke it, boy, but here’s how: you’re not to take it out of your mouth. You’ll just smoke. I’ll take care of the rest. Do you understand?”
He did, and readied the cigar and himself so I told him to lie down and began “Close your eyes now, and just smoke for me. All you have to do is smoke and focus on that smoke. Let yourself see the clouds of smoke rising from your mouth, filling the air, filling the room, filling your mind. Notice how the smoke issues forth from you and returns to you. You taste it and you smell it. You breathe it out and you breathe it in. You know that you do and the smoke relaxes you boy, don’t you?”
He said “yes” around the cigar, gripping it with his teeth in order that his lips might form the word. I continued to weave my words in such a way as to avoid any reference to trance or hypnosis while pushing him deeper into the feeling he was experiencing. He was no fighter and his needy nature proved that as I reached into his boxers for his cock. It came to me before he came and as I worked his cock in my hand, I took the cigar from his lips and talked to him as I smoked and exhaled into his face, concentrating the smoke in each of his very deep breaths. He was in a profoundly deep trance at this point so I had to make a choice of how I would handle him. Were I in the mood for anything, I could have done anything because all he would be capable of doing now was agreeing. However, it had been a long week and the last thing I needed was another greedy disciple not wanting to leave. Instead, I put in a few suggestions for the next time that we’d see one another, whenever that would be, and how though he wouldn’t notice that he was doing it, each time he fed me a line, he’d then tell me he’d done so and explain what he thought would be the result. As he did that, he’d become more and more relaxed and return effortlessly to the state he was in now. When I was content with the programming that I’d done, I brought him back to a semi-awareness, replaced the cigar to his lips, and increased his need to come. I suggested that he’d open his eyes and need to come but wouldn’t be able to on his own. It was funny, really, as it always is, to watch how sponge-like the tranced mind can be as his eyes popped open.
Please let me cum” he said, removing the cigar from his lips and almost trembling with his need.
“What’s that, boy?”
“Please, may I cum?” His tone was that of a beggar hungry for food.
“Smoke, boy.” I said, and he put the cigar back to his lips and smoked. I shook my head and recognized from the way he handled his cigar, he’d come to them by way of cigarettes. Though he’d worked to get away from the fixed inhalation pattern, it was still there and sadly here was a boy who didn’t smoke for pleasure but for need. I’d remember that. I took his cock back in my hands and it took no more than eight strokes to have it spit forth its load all over smokestud01’s sweater and onto his face. “Close your eyes, now,” I said, and he did, embracing the feeling of trance he’d not left the whole time. I talked him up and out of trance and then had him go and clean himself, though I knew his sweater was headed for the laundry. I asked him how he’d enjoyed himself and he just smiled. He asked if we could meet next week and we made arrangements to do just that.
He arrived a little early with a take-out pizza box in his arms. “Pizza?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s from Otto’s, I love their pizzas.” He paused. “I’ve never been but found it online and thought it would impress you.” Then he followed me into the dining room. I started to ask what he meant when I recalled the suggestions I’d implanted in our last visit. I thought to myself that this was going to be a very enjoyable evening and wondered how many questions I’d think of to ask.
“Did you give any thought to what happened last time and the relaxation exercise we worked through?”
“I did,” he said, and started to smile, “and I liked the way you touched me.” Again, he paused, oblivious to the fact that he was continuing to speak. “People like to hear things like that and if you make them feel good there’s a better chance they’ll keep making you feel good. But I’m sort of glad my eyes were closed because you’re not really my type.”
“Good.” I said. “Are you comfortable with us continuing?”
“Yeah, I am, if you think I’m hypnotizable. I’m just using you for hypnosis because that’s what I want. I’m not comfortable with you but I’m the one in control here and that makes me comfortable.”
Somehow he’d internalized the suggestion so that he’d say something and then tell me what he really meant. Either that or this poor guy really did live in a world where everything was a line. I went on with my questions, “I’m curious, for the hypnosis of course, to know a little more about you so that I can tailor an induction for your specific interests. How do you see yourself?”
“Let’s see. I’m shy, but people tell me I’m funny. I don’t know how to answer that because I’m used to knowing more about what a person is looking for because then I can be those things to get what I want out of them.” His eyes blinked this time, but with a slight effort to open them.
He was proving to be an excellent hypnotic subject, albeit a pathetic human being otherwise.
“You look like you workout. Is that one of your interests?”
“Yeah, I’m always in the gym. It’s a great place to feel hot when you have all these trolls looking at you and wanting you.” The questions continued and I got a very good picture of this young man who’d come to identify himself as a pushy bottom and took pride in that. He felt the strongest two words in his arsenal were “we’ll see,” because, as he explained, they tempted and teased without any investment or promise. He was, as I’d assumed, insecure and needed the constant affirmations of others to support his self-conceptions. Somewhere along the way he’d let society’s image of what he was supposed to be and to look like supplant his own sense of happiness. He was content as an object of desire and honed himself to be just that. Rather than feeling pride at the efficacy of my suggestions, I felt great sorrow for this boy and the others like him who had turned to marketing themselves online as some sort of commodity, word and image combined to sell just the right product. A barren sense of self left destitute without another to complete it. I surmised that our time together must be one of the rare spur of the moment things he’d allow himself to do.
We finished dinner and I asked if he’d like a cigar. “I brought my own, but yeah, I like to smoke. I really just want to watch you smoke, though. Every time I’ve smoked this week I’ve tried to practice smoking like you do. It’s the sexiest thing about you.” His words were slower now and slightly slurred. He been sinking deeper into trance throughout dinner and as we talked and smoked, I let him adjust to the feeling. At the right moment, I removed my cigar and launched a series of smoke rings in the air toward him. He sat watching them move closer, and as one came toward his face, I said “Sleep!” His eyes closed, and as his head slumped forward, I removed the cigar from his lips before it could fall. I took him deeper and suggested to him that it was now our third visit together and he had achieved a deep state of hypnosis. I told him that he’d be able to open his eyes and smoke for me, to show me how he’d practiced, but as he did, what he’d see was his deepest fantasy enacted before him and he’d tell me what he saw as he felt it and experienced it.
He proceeded to tell me it started off with him being hypnotized by a cigar smoking man who was capable of taking control of his mind and having him do whatever the man wanted him to with no choice and no objection. He would listen to the man and fall under his power all the while he breathed in the smoke. As he told of what would happen, he sat frozen, moving only his arm to bring the cigar in his hand to his mouth in the most mechanical sort of way. He’d suck the cigar to life, pull deeply, remove it, allow the smoke to waft gently from his mouth, perhaps launch a ring or two, then inhale the remaining smoke in his mouth and begin retelling what he saw before him, each word punctuated by the smoke leaving his mouth and nose. When he told of falling to his knees to suck off the hypnotist before him, he fell to his own knees and removed his cock from his pants. It was becoming less of a vision and more of an experience for him as he talked through and sucked the imaginary cock before him, moaning as he brought himself closer to cumming.
Occasionally, I’d talk as he spoke, all the while sending him deeper into the reality of his unreality. I took another cigar from his bag, clipped it and warmed the foot, before placing it in his mouth and bringing the lighter before him. “That’s right, boy, fill yourself with the smoke now.” I said, “Let it fill the void inside you and make its place deep and strong. Let it bring you that satisfaction now and each time you smoke because when you smoke you smoke for me now, boy.” He moaned as he drew on the cigar and his smoking manner became as one grown hungry to the point of starvation. His words ceased but his experience did not. As he came, he went from his knees to all fours and smoked strong, almost violently. A persistent haze weighted the room as he puffed forth cloud after cloud of thick cigar smoke. His ass was visibly clenched and his pelvis rhythmically took the force of some unseen penetration. His cock hard again, he proceeded, in his vacant look, to begin to stroke as he smoked and saw, felt, experienced the desire he’d crafted the first time he learned that smoking and hypnosis are a matched pair. This empty boy transformed into a smoke machine embraced one of his deepest desires as I watched. I saw his scrotum begin to tighten and I took a seat on the floor in front of him. I removed his cigar but continued to smoke my own, directing my exhales squarely at his face. “Tell me what’s happening, my boy.”
“Master is always right.” Was all he said.
“Who is your Master, boy?” I asked, though I knew the answer before I posed the question.
“You are my Master.”
“Good boy. My good cigar boy. Again.”
“You are my Master.” With that, he came a second time, his eyes still as vacant and far away as before.
I put my hand under his chin and as I drew his head upwards, I sent a ring of smoke toward his face. When it hit him, I said “Sleep!” He collapsed onto the floor. “Tell me who I am, boy,” I said.
Muffled and far away, his voice answered “Master.”
“Yes, boy, I am your Master and I have complete control over you now.” I said as I fashioned my altruistic gesture into something that would continue. “My words control you, my cigar boy, and you obey them automatically, completely, don’t you?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Tell me what you are.”
“Your cigar boy.”
“Tell me what you do.”
“I obey.”
“Good cigar boy. You obey and you do so without thought now. In fact, each time I am with you, you find you are unable to stop yourself from going into this wonderful feeling of obedience. You long for my smoke and my words. And that mix of those two things are what you desire when smoking itself isn’t enough. So you’ll find, my cigar boy, that when smoking isn’t enough, when you need something more, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Good, my cigar boy. And when you let me know, I’ll tell you ‘we’ll see’ and that will make you hungry, cigar boy. Hungrier than you’ve ever been. You’ll find yourself smoking more, needing that smoke, but even then it won’t satisfy you because you know deep inside that the only thing that can truly satisfy you are my words and my smoke, isn’t that right, my cigar boy.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Tell me what you know, my cigar boy.”
“Only Master’s words and Master’s smoke can satisfy me.”
“Good, my cigar boy. Now, I’m going to count to ten and as I do all of this will become such a part of you that you’ll know it to be absolutely true in a way that only the things you’ve always known are true and when you awaken, if you smell cigar smoke, it will confirm to you everything you know.” I began my count and after I reached nine, I paused to pull on my cigar and send a cloud of smoke to the boy’s face as I said “ten.” Instinctively, as the sleeping do when they wake, he took a deep, cleansing breath and found the smell of cigar smoke in the air. He smiled and a trace of that smoke was exhaled from him back into the air. He looked at me with a recognition of someone in possession of a deep and transformative knowledge. I looked back at him and said “it’s getting late, I think you should head home.”
“Can we meet again soon?” he asked, his tone one of pleading.
“We’ll see.” I said. “We’ll see.”
It was the least I could do for this boy so addicted to his own constructed need for the artifice of human engagement. When he left, I called prey and told him what I’d done. We talked of the boy; he knew him from videos he’d seen posted of smokestud01 smoking and a few chats that he’d had with him over the years. Apparently the boy had been around. We laughed a bit in finding out that we both thought his smoking lacked any sophistication or seductive quality. “It takes more than a good body and a cloud of smoke to do it for me,” he said.
I agreed. “Yes, I know. But then again, it’s all about perspective. If I recall, it takes something far more than that for you. It’s more about the feeling of being taken in that smoke. I wonder if you close your eyes if you can feel the ring of smoke hit your face as you sleep!” I heard prey’s familiar sigh as he slipped into a feeling that bound him to a past that was and forever would be ours.