Riding Bone
Chapter 4
Paul awoke to the sound of the phone ringing. He rolled over and looked at his bedside clock. It was six in the morning, for Christ’s sake. Why was the phone ringing at six on a Saturday?
He groaned a bit and stretched on his bed, throwing back the sheets and standing up. He was nude, and as he ran his fingers over his chest to scratch an itch, he was forcefully reminded of the trim he had not remembered getting yesterday. The phone was still ringing insistently, and he was annoyed that the answering service wasn’t picking it up.
He shuffled into the front room and walked over to the kitchen counter, picking up the phone.
“Hello?” he mumbled. The morning sunlight was just starting to brighten up the sky outside. There was no answer.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” he repeated. Still no answer.
He was on the verge of slamming the phone on the receiver when a very low tone began. It modulated between the low and the upper registers, slowly moving from one note to the next, and Paul stood at the counter, transfixed, as it continued in his ears. “Yes,” he answered to no question that could be heard, and soon he was nodding his head and saying “I understand,” and “I’ll do it immediately, Sir.” He hung up the phone and went back into the bedroom, and stepped into his closet.
He dragged out a set of underwear he had not been aware that he owned – a small thong of some metallic material that only just covered his cock and low-hanging balls. There was no string in the back; instead, it seemed to have some sort of wire skeleton that kept it in shape. The shape of the strange underwear kept his balls pushed out and contained a pouch for his cock that resembled a small sock; it left quite a bit of room to grow into it. In his current soft state, it looked slightly silly.
He then picked out a pair of white tennis shorts with a 2″ inseam. When he slid them on, the effect of the thong was dramatic. The shorts bulged out a good three inches from his body, obscenely tenting out the fabric and tightening it against his genitals. He chose a tight white tee-shirt with a very deep “V”. He could see his nipples poking up from them, dark circles under the thin fabric. He tweaked them a couple times to get them erect, and then surveyed himself in the full-length mirror in his bedroom.
The t-shirt showed off his musculature nicely, the deep collar highlighting the valley between his pecs. The swirls of his once-thick chest hair were still there, but the trim gave them a curving pattern that seemed to beckon to what was underneath the shirt. The shorts themselves might get him arrested. His cock twitched and started to grow, and he could actually see his piss-slit once it reached full mast.
He turned away from the mirror and walked into the front room again, feeling near nude from the waist down as his dick waved freely around within the underwear. He grabbed his bike tire and the gym bag with his wallet and keys in it, and walked out the door and down to the ground floor where he assembled and unlocked his bike, got out his iPod and placed it in the one pocket his shorts allowed, put on the earphones, situated the gym bag as a backpack on his back, and mounted the bike. The iPod was playing some sort of book on tape about gardening or something, but it was already boring him. He didn’t bother changing it, opting instead to head out.
He knew he had errands to run today in an abstract sort of way, but he couldn’t quite recall what they were. He biked automatically down to Clark street and continued into Andersonville, where he stopped at a hair stylist’s shop, just opened at eight in the morning. As he sauntered in, a little bell rang and a very primped Hispanic man walked into the front area from a back storeroom. He had long, deeply curled black hair that flowed down well past his upper back, very dark skin, and a long, straight, thin nose. He smiled at Paul, flashing bright white, large teeth at him, and said “You want a cut?” He seemed only slightly taller than Paul, maybe two inches or so, and gestured at a chair.
“I’m actually looking for a dye job,” Paul said, not knowing the words until they came from his mouth.”
“Ah, I see. Do you know what color you want?” the stylist said professionally, turning to a book on the counter with various hairstyles in various colors. Paul flipped through it until he found the color he wanted. He pointed at it and said, “That one.”
“Ah, very nice. It will definitely change your look,” the man said, and gave Paul a glance-over. Paul unconsciously bounced one of his pecs, and the man gestured to a sink in the back with a chair in front of it, touching the tip of his tongue to his lips. Paul walked over to it and sat down.
The chair dipped backward sharply, so Paul was in a half-reclining position as the stylist walked up behind him. The stylist had a short black beard, very carefully trimmed, that ran from one ear to the other along his jawline. He kept up a smattering of chatter, talking about local affairs, while he washed Paul’s short hair. The stylist was wearing a nondescript black t-shirt on his thin frame, with tight black blue-jeans. The proximity to the man’s crotch was unnerving Paul, and he felt the strangest urge to lick it. He quickly tamped it down. He was just in here to get his hair taken care of, he firmly told himself, but he felt himself start to stiffen anyway. The stylist didn’t say anything, but Paul could tell he noticed, because the chatter trailed off the larger he grew.
Still at the sink, the stylist pulled out a can of dying gel from the wall and applied it thoroughly to Paul’s head. “This has to set for ten minutes,” he explained, “And it won’t be permanent, so you will have to buy the rest of the dye.” Paul nodded, and the man tsked and hold his head firmly in his hands. “No moving!” he scolded.
“So, what’s your name, papi?” the stylist asked coyly, as he rubbed the dye into Paul’s hair. “Mine’s Xavier.”
“Paul, and nice to meet you,” Paul said, trying to keep his head still.
“I’ve never seen you here before, chulo,” he said, and smiled down at Paul. “I hope I can rely on future business from you!” He ran his hands one more time through Paul’s hair, then walked over to the sink and thoroughly washed his hands of the dye. He jumped into a barber’s chair next to Paul and started to gab again, but Paul wasn’t really listening. The iPod was still droning in his ear; he’d forgotten he even had the earplugs in while he was getting the dye job. Man, if the guy could do a dye job without his having to remove the earphones, he’d definitely use him again, he thought. He noticed for the first time that he was fully erect in his tight shorts, and tried unsuccessfully to shift in his chair so that the erection was less visible.
“You look like you got a little sprung there, eh, enorme?” he said slyly. The stylist jumped off the barber chair and stood in front of Paul. “We got ten minutes, is there any other service I can provide? Ooh, es descomunal,” he cooed, and laid a hand down on Paul’s rigid cock. Paul didn’t say anything, and without objection, Xavier began to rub him through the fabric of his shorts. “Let’s have a peek,” he said, and slid down the tennis shorts to reveal the shiny silver thong. “Oooh, that is so cool Paul,” he breathed, and was about to remove it too when the bell on the front door rang indicating another customer. Fortunately, Paul was turned toward the back, so he was able to pull up his shorts while the stylist walked quickly to the front to greet the new customer, an old Phillipino woman with her eight year old child. As they were setting up, Paul tried once again to will his cock into submission, and by concentrating on the old woman through the mirror, he was able to. The shorts looked merely obscene and not pornographic now.
Once the boy was in his chair, Xavier came back to Paul, all business, and rinsed off the gel. “Just wait here a minute, and I’ll ring you up,” he said with a wink. Paul stayed in the chair and looked at the dye job.
Where before he had had dark brown hair closely cropped on his head, he had brightly yellow, a clearly fake color, for the mop on top. It contrasted starkly with the dark brown beard and trimmed hair on his chest, and Paul had to admit, it looked fantastic on him. He couldn’t point out exactly why, but the shock of the yellow brought attention to his high forehead and the strong features of his face.
He loved it.
He let himself up off the chair, headed for the front of the counter, and Xavier left the little boy on the chair for a moment to accept Paul’s cash. Paul left a huge tip of twenty dollars for Xavier and shook the man’s hand, promising future business. Xavier leaned close and whispered into his ear, “I close at 6 tonight if you want to finish what we started,” and surreptitiously licked his lobe very quickly. Paul felt himself starting to stiffen again and hurried out of the store, hearing Xavier chuckle deeply behind him.
With that errand out of the way, Paul left the store and hopped back on his bike, heading south still on Clark until he reached a seedier part of the northern part of the town. He stopped his bike at a store with a garish sign, “Tattoos and piercings / Leather and Metal” in two-foot-high letters on the awning. Artists’ drawings of skulls and snakes, sometimes snakes coming out of skulls, hearts, crosses, and tribal designs adorned the storefront windows. He pulled open the door, which appeared to be covered in black cardboard, and stepped into a dimly lit shop. Nobody was at the front, so he called out.
“Hold your horses,” a deep voice called out irritatedly from the back, and Paul waited in the front room, standing since there was no place to sit.
A huge behemoth of a man trundled in from somewhere in the back, lugging a notepad with him. The man could not have been less than three hundred pounds of solid muscle. He was dressed from head to toe in black leather, with black leather boots, a black leather vest, and a black studded collar. He wore no shirt, and Paul could see the vast expanses of muscle unmoving under the man’s skin as he heaved himself behind the counter. The man, who looked to be in his mid-50’s, had shaggy white hair and a shaggier white beard, and smelled of formaldehyde and tanning solution. “What you need, boy?” he rumbled.
“I have a list,” Paul said, and then thought, I have a list?. He reached into his gym bag and pulled out a notepad and handed it to the man. The man gave Paul a skeptical look and took the notepad from Paul, and flipped it open. He grunted at whatever was in it, then read what seemed to be a short note underneath. He looked back at Paul and said, “It’ll be about 450 for all this stuff, you got that?”
“I’ll just use my card,” Paul said. The words seemed to echo in his head as he said them, and he pulled out his wallet to hand the man his card.
The man pulled out from behind the small counter a credit card machine and slid the card into it, keying in the number. A receipt spat out of it, and he had Paul sign the receipt. “I guess you can come on back, then,” he said, and headed back into the recesses of the store without another word.
Paul walked into the back into a dingy room with leather clothes covering the wall. The back of the store held a rack with nothing but boots of all sizes and colors, mostly black, but some garish reds and yellows as well. The giant man walked past all the leather and shoved some cut plastic aside at the very back of the room, beckoning Paul past him.
Paul entered a part of the room that looked like it had been sanitized; plastic lay over everything, including the chair. A large machine sat in one corner, and bright fluorescent light poured down from a hanging light above. The man sat down on a circular stool that barely seemed it could contain his weight, and pointed to a large chair that Paul sat in. The man leered at Paul and said “I’m going to need your shirt,” and without questioning it, Paul removed the earphones of his iPod as he peeled off his shirt and handed it to the man wordlessly, sticking the earphones of his iPod back in after he’d gotten the shirt over his head. The man grunted again and tossed the shirt in a corner of the room. Paul settled back in the chair.
“I’ll be a minute as I get the stuff,” he said, and lumbered back into the front room.
Paul sat back and listened to the voice droning in his head on the iPod. He wasn’t sure at all what he was listening to, but it was relaxing and comforting and he didn’t want to stop. Eventually, the man came back into the room and set down on a metal tray a long, thin golden chain, with delicate loops extending down, and three rings. Two were about a half an inch in diameter, and one was about two inches in diameter and much thicker than the other two. The man said, “Name’s Saul” and stuck out his ham of a hand. Paul took it and winced in pain at the strong handshake. “I shake your hand because in a minute I’m about to be down in places that I just don’t want to be with a total stranger.” He grinned at Paul and turned to his equipment.
He turned back to Paul and lifted the larger of the rings. “For this, I need you to shuck your shorts, little fella,” he said, and Paul willingly complied without a second thought. The man grunted and said “I’m used to a little more hesitation, but…” he shrugged and reached down and grabbed Paul’s cock and balls with one hand. He squeezed his fingers around it and measured the diameter while Paul squirmed. “This won’t hurt, but it’s going to be uncomfortable, and I need you to try to remain soft until it’s in place, or it will hurt,” Saul cautioned. He released Paul and carefully worked his testicles through the ring until both were hanging over it. Then he slowly inched Paul’s cock through until the ring was nestled among his trimmed pubes, glinting in the fluorescent light. The man grabbed Paul’s cock in his thick hand and roughly jerked it, not seeming particularly interested in it. “I have to get it hard to make sure you don’t have any trouble. Sorry,” he apologized.
“I don’t mind,” Paul said absently, and widened his legs to give Saul better access. Within moments, he was at full mast.
“Feel ok?” Saul asked, and Paul nodded. The man released Paul’s cock and said “Ok then, you can pull your shorts back up for now.” Paul did so and the man turned around and picked up what looked like a gun. “Now this,” he said, and grinned at Paul again. “This is definitely going to hurt.”
Paul looked at the gun nervously. “What is that?” he asked.
“It’s a needle gun. Don’t worry, it will hurt for just a moment, but the rings will have to go In immediately thereafter, and that is going to sting like a motherfucker. Especially once I apply the alcohol. Feel free to scream, I don’t mind.” The man grabbed one of Paul’s nipples and twisted it firmly, causing Paul to wince and gasp. “I have to get the nub hard to do this,” Saul explained clinically, “won’t be but a moment.”
Paul wasn’t worried about the pain, which was actually quite nice, but he was worried about his cock, which had remained rock-hard and was now starting to drip. The voice droning in his head calmed him, though, and he relaxed into the chair. The man raised the gun and said, “hold very, very still,” and held it right up to Paul’s nipple.
One moment of extremely sharp pain and a loud yelp later, and Saul said, “Now get ready.” He quickly placed the ring against Paul’s nipple and squeezed, and Paul screamed. He felt a trickle of blood at the bottom of his nipple start to drip down. “That’s one down!” the man said cheerfully as he soaked a cotton swab in alcohol and dabbed at Paul’s nipple. Paul choked back a sob and stared down at his chest. His nipple was distended around the ring, throbbing painfully, and when the alcohol hit it, the sharp pain became insistent. His eyes watered and Paul breathed heavily to control himself. “That’s a good boy,” Saul cooed, and rubbed Paul’s chest until he calmed down. “Just one more to go,” he chortled.
The same procedure was applied to Paul’s other nipple with much the same results, and Paul finally had three rings attached to his body. He listened carefully as Saul explained how to care for the rings and how they could not be removed or the hole would close up almost immediately. “They’ll be very swollen and sensitive for the first couple days. If they stay swollen or become sharply painful, see a doctor immediately,” Saul admonished.
“Ok,” Saul continued, “now for the last step.” He picked up the chain, which Paul could now see was split near one end. Paul undid clasps at each end and attached the single end to Paul’s brand new cock ring, yanking down Paul’s shorts to do so (and chuckling at Paul’s novel underwear), and attaching the other two ends to each of Paul’s nipples. “I don’t recommend leaning too far back the first couple days, or you might make the holes in your nipples bigger than you want. And we don’t want any blood soaking through to your shirt, or that can be quite an experience taking it off.” Saul shook his head. “I hope your daddy’s worth all this, little feller.”
Paul didn’t know what he meant by that, but didn’t pursue it. He was somewhat lost in the feelings in his nipples, which seemed like they’d grown to encompass his entire chest at this point, or at least that’s how they felt. The giant of a man stood up and said, “You can put your shirt back on, but be careful now,” and shuffled out of the plastic-covered room.
Paul grabbed his shirt and very carefully slid it over his head and over his chest, only allowing it to touch his pecs once the whole thing was on. The chain was completely visible under the tight t-shirt, as were the two nipple rings. Held against him as they were, they throbbed in unison and Paul had to stand still until the pain was down to a dull roar. The voice coming from the ipod soothed him, or he probably would have been screaming in pain.
Paul walked out of the room in small steps, as the chain tugged ever so lightly at his nipples with every step, sending slight jabs of pain radiating from his chest. He felt like he had a permanent grimace on his face.
When he left the room, he saw Saul at the other end, holding two leather items up. One looked like a small leather vest without buttons or sleeves, and the other looked like just a square of fabric. “Come over here, son,” he said, and Paul hobbled over.
“Now this vest, you wear without nothing on underneath, see,” he said, and slid it on around Paul’s shoulders. It didn’t come close to meeting at the ends. “It’s not designed to be closed, so your nice muscles will be visible.” He rubbed Paul’s stomach and grunted. “Yeah, your daddy will like that. Now, this other, these are lace-up shorts.” The fabric on the shorts was shiny, like patent leather. Paul could see now that it was actually two squares of cloth, cut vaguely leg-shaped, with three holes running down each side. “You use leather straps to tie these to your crotch. Tie them loose, ‘cause skin is supposed to show. Here, take off your shorts and your little panty thing and I’ll show yer.” Paul shrugged out of his shorts and stood naked from the waist down in front of Saul.
Saul set the jacket on a rack and pulled two leather straps out of his pocket. He wrapped the two pieces of cloth around each leg; they left huge swaths of skin on each thigh, barely covering his front or back. He then ran the thin leather straps across each end, letting them cross as they ran down the side. “Now you do the other one,” he said, and watched as Paul tied off the other side. “Walk around and let’s see if it’s tight enough,” he said, and Paul hobbled around the room. The shorts felt tight and loose at the same time, and bulged out even more obscenely in the front than his tennis shorts did.
“Ok, that’ll do it,” Saul said as Paul came back around to him. “You gonna leave those on or want me to wrap ‘em up?” He grinned at Paul.
“Umm.. I think we should wrap ‘em up,” Paul said nervously, trying to imagine himself riding down the street in this gear. He’d be arrested for indecent exposure, most like. He let Saul help him get the shorts off, with Saul taking advantage of the situation to feel up Paul’s ass, and Paul got dressed again in the “panties” and tennis shorts. He stood around self-consciously as Saul wrapped up the goods carefully and handed them to Paul. Paul stuffed them in his gym bag as carefully as Saul had.
“The rest, I’ll have to have delivered, as it’s special order,” Saul said, and ushered him into the front room. Another giant of a man, this one black and dressed in a simple shirt and jeans, was standing there, and looked Paul up and down intimately. “Germaine,” Saul said, and slid past him. Paul tried to slide past him, but Germaine grabbed his arm and turned him to face him. “Looks like you got a pretty little bitch here,” Germaine chuckled to Saul. “How much for a ride?”
“He ain’t mine to give away, Germaine, and if you know Mac, you’ll leave him be.” Germaine dropped Paul’s arm and backed away, saying “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, you tell Mac that, you hear? I didn’t mean nothing!” He looked genuinely worried, Paul noted with surprise. Germaine practically ran out of the shop. Saul tsked. “He better be back, he owes me for a dog collar I got for his latest last week.” He looked at Paul. “You still here? We’re done, boy, you run along now.” Bewildered, Paul shuffled out of the shop, trying not to move too much, and grabbed his bike from the front. He tried to mount it and winced, then much more carefully got on it.
The ring was keeping him semi-erect, and he found that he didn’t even notice the chain as long as he stayed bent over the bike. Something in the back of his head said dispassionately that this was all very irregular, but the voice in the podcast kept him calm and moving.
One last errand today, he thought, and he headed into Lincoln Park, where he stopped at a red brick building with glass shop doors but without a sign on it at all. He tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He noticed a numerical keypad on one side of the door, and suddenly numbers came into his head. He keyed them in, and the door buzzed. He tried it, and it opened this time. He walked inside.
The glass was heavily tinted on the outside, but he walked into a sunny chamber with one man in the room in a very expensive suit. The man bustled over to him and said in an Italian accent, “Ah, yes, Mr. Fisher? We’ve been expecting you. I’ll just be taking your measurements today.” Paul nodded and stepped into the room. “I’ll need you fully nude for this, you understand,” the man said, and stood expectantly. Paul again merely shucked his clothes, being very careful with the shirt. The man waiting on Paul drew in a breath when he saw Paul’s magnificent body and swollen nipples, along with the golden chain that ran down to a prominent cock ring. “There are definitely pleasures about my job,” he breathed.
Despite his prurient interest, the man kept himself professional, only allowing himself a little caress now and again of Paul’s magnificent flesh. Paul stood as still as a statue while he did so, holding the iPod in his hand and listening to the voice drone on in his head. Once the man had written everything down, he thanked Paul and said he could get dressed again. As Paul was dressing, a man came out of the back. Paul stopped what he was doing immediately and stood up straighter, involuntarily wincing as the chain pulled on his nipples.
The man who walked up to him was dressed in a white suit from top to bottom, and the man nodded at the tailor. The tailor didn’t say a thing – he just bustled into the back and closed the door behind him, leaving the floor to the man in the suit and a nude Paul with the silver thong in his hand. He walked around Paul appraisingly.
“I like it, I really do,” he said, and smirked at Paul. “Your transformation is almost complete, do you know that?” Paul stood still and didn’t say a thing. “All these weeks of preparation, without you noticing me, and the mornings… well, you’ll find out all about that soon enough.” He ran a finger around each of Paul’s nipples and gave the slightest of tugs on each ring, causing Paul to gasp in pain. “Among other things,” the man said. He leaned in and whispered one word into Paul’s ear, and Paul’s world went black. The last thing he remembered was crumpling into his arms.