Hot Daddies, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
IN HIS TIME
DADDY DRADEN
FATHER AND SON TAG TEAM (THAT SUMMER! THAT CAMP! THAT COUSIN!)
THE LESSON
POP TINGLE
MARKEY
DADDIES IN DAMIAN
SETTLING IN: LETTER TO JACK
NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN
IMAGINATION MORPHS INTO REALITY
MEN OF THE OPEN ROAD
PROFESSOR PAPI
IT’S MY JOB
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Copyright Page
For Asa:
twenty years on,
gray becomes him
INTRODUCTION
Sometimes an older man is a father figure, a replacement Dad, mentoring a younger man’s self-acceptance, proffering wisdom, serving as a role model for the queer world.
Sometimes an older man is a Daddy, demanding a mix of sexual indoctrination and physical domination, training a younger man—a boy, a son, a boi—in the ways of the S/M community, and serving, again, as a role model for a subset of the queer world.
Both gay archetypes, of older seducing/indoctrinating/ succoring younger, figure in this collection. But there are agereversal variations on the standard theme, too, as there are in real life. In Landon Dixon’s arch “Men of the Open Road,” a young hitchhiker knows where he wants to go with older men—and it’s not farther down the road. The younger man has the power to seduce—and to instruct—in Randy Turk’s powerful “Professor Papi”; and, again, older is set free by younger in Jamie Freeman’s elegant “In His Time.”
And, in a variation on a variation, there is Dale Chase’s introspective “Never Say Never Again,” in which a middle-aged man, nurtured by a dead Daddy, seeks renewal in relationships with younger men.
In other stories, “fathers” figure more centrally than—but certainly as erotically as—Daddies: Dominic Santi’s epistolary “Settling In: Letter to Jack” offers an older man’s exasperation with his younger partner’s antics; Mark Wildyr’s haunting “Markey” is about a boy’s hero-worship for the older brother he never had; Gavin Atlas’s on-the-lam “Daddies in Damian” is all about rescuing the lad; David Holly’s liberating “Pop Tingle” is another rescue fable—about saving a boy from the streets to let him realize his potential; and Jack Fritscher’s muscular “Father and Son Tag Team (That Summer! That Camp! That Cousin!),” is a no-hole-barred sexual romp with a summer camp counselor reveling in an older man’s mature power and a younger man’s fresh appeal.
Then there are the hardcore (but always erotically playful) Daddy stories by Xan West, Doug Harrison, Kyle Lukoff, and Jeff Mann, two of them younger authors, two of them veterans of the topic, all of them capturing with been-there verisimilitude the Daddy-son dynamics of dominance and submission, toughness and tenderness, teaching and learning—a genre in gay erotic fiction, a truth in real life.
All of the stories in Hot Daddies are about men in relationships. That wasn’t the intention. But anthologies, within the boundaries of good storytelling, good writing and an editor’s acumen and taste take on a life of their own. No one-night encounters here, then—the Daddies and the sons are in it for the long haul.
Richard Labonté Bowen Island, British Columbia
IN HIS TIME
Jamie Freeman
The chandelier in the foyer was still swinging in the wake of Penny’s furious departure when Steve decided to go to the bookstore. He looked down at his hands, still shaking from the fight-induced adrenaline, and mentally counted back in time. How long had it been? Four years? No, longer than that. Had it been five?
He sat on the sofa, letting the urgency build until it propelled him in the direction of his shoes. He slipped his feet into his Nikes and walked over to the hall mirror. He was lean from running, but his severe eyes and close-cropped, conservative beard played tricks on his eyes. Most of the time he liked the beard, thought it made him look roguish and rebellious, but tonight when he looked into the scratched antique glass, his father’s stern visage stared back at him.
He considered going upstairs to shave; he considered kicking his Nikes back into the closet, maybe sinking into a whiskey sour and watching the Rays with his feet up on the coffee table.
Indecision made him shift from his right foot to his left.
Five goddamn years. It had been five, not four.
He pushed his left toe against the back of his right shoe, testing his resolve.
He glanced back into the mirror; a blond forelock dropped in front of his steely blue eyes and his father was gone. His face was handsome and still, timeless as the frozen photograph of an aging movie star.
He blinked.
Go, go, go. Just go.
He hurried out to his car.
As he backed his old Mercedes out of the driveway, he waved to Mrs. Alexander, who was pruning the azalea bushes that separated their yards. She waved back, flashing an inquisitive smile that made Steve snarl with annoyance. Her pursed lips and tightly knitted brow told him she was making note of his rapid departure. She glanced at her watch and her smile grew broader. He grimaced, knew she would hold this little nugget of information close, clutching it to her venomous breast until she could release it into the credulous hands of his wife, perhaps over iced tea or lemonade or homemade lemon squares, served on her verandah under ceiling fans that stirred hot air redolent with smiles and floral perfume and pettiness.
And Penny would accept the proffered clue like she had accepted all the others, goaded by the old woman’s cool, papery whisper, to construct an angry, fractious narrative that cast Steve as the adulterous villain. “Maybe he’s involved with that pretty colored girl who works for him,” she’d whisper. “You know a man doesn’t keep himself looking that fine for the woman he marries.” And Penny would sit on Mrs. Alexander’s porch for hours, rocking in the straight-backed rocker, with a hard, empty look in her eyes.
But Steve had stopped everything when they’d married, stopped the cruising and the meet-ups, stopped the men on the side, and it had been five years since he’d done more than look. So he was condemned for keeping himself in shape; for plodding through year after year in an unhappy marriage; for keeping his marriage vow despite the desire that threatened to engulf him.
Tonight when she got back from her tantrum, Penny would turn to the old woman for hand-patting pity, offered with barely concealed relish, and they would scowl at him from their rockers. Penny would stop talking to him and lock him out of his own bedroom. And he would fall asleep in the study in front of the television watching old reruns of “Will & Grace” and feeling sorry for himself.
Five goddamn years.
Just go, Steve.
His eyes were hot and wet as he turned the corner, leaving Mrs. Alexander behind, opening the sunroof and flooring the accelerator.
Dusk was settling over the town and the streets were waking sporadically, neon signs flickering to life here and there while others remained dark in the overheated half-light. Steve turned up the air-conditioning and rubbed his hands across his bare thighs, his stomach tightening as he turned onto Vanderbilt. He pulled in behind the store and parked close to the building, pulling his car in tightly between an old Volvo and a Jeep.
He took a deep breath, ran his fingers through his hair and looked in the flip-down visor mirror, trying to remember what it had been like to be beautiful and young. Time had passed so quickly. He barely recognized the image in the mirror. The sharpness had diffused from his once-angular features. His face had filled out, becoming rounder and less precise, like a stone worn smooth by a waterfall. The vision of his father peering out from beneath his close-cropped beard in the hall mirror had ruined the look for him forever; he would shave when he got home. And his eyes: when had they started to sag around the edges, their color fading from glowing sapphire to steely bluegray?
Fuck it. He knew he was still attractive, even if the comments were qualified now, as if his attractiveness, once a broad and ungovernable thing, had been corralled by time, confined to the back pasture with the goats and the geldings. He’d heard people say it behind his back. “Great for his age,” they said, and “hardly looks like he’s in his forties.” He’d turned forty in May, for Christ’s sake. True, he’d heard “hot for his age” once, from Wendy, the grad student who was sleeping with his department chair, and he’d tried to take the comments as compliments, but they dug at him like a dozen rose thorns embedded in his palms. He cringed when they said it, especially the interns and the newest crop of MBAs with their expensive cars, family money, and wind-blown, male-model faces.
And then yesterday, as he’d rounded the corner and walked into the conference room, he’d heard Kevin’s lush tenor voice saying, “I’d be all up in that daddy’s business if he—” Steve looked up into the startled, blushing faces of Kevin, Aya and the Indian kid whose name he didn’t know. The four of them stood in a silent standoff for an awkward moment before Aya and the Indian kid made some excuse to slink from the room. Kevin laid a hand on Steve’s arm and started to say something, but other people arrived for the meeting and the moment was washed away in a sea of agendas and budgets and spreadsheets.
Steve brooded through the meeting, his eyebrows knitted over dark, stormy eyes.
He’d heard the compliment in the word; seen the lascivious fire dancing in Kevin’s eyes; felt the heat of his fingertips. But the narrative shift bothered him. He had been a be
Daddy? Really? Five goddamn years out of the game and suddenly the rules shift? What the fuck?
He shook his head and slid the cover across the visor mirror. He would not think about this now. It was pointless to dwell on the shift while the clock was ticking. Penny would be home by nine, so he had less than two hours to make something happen.
He broke a sweat in the ten yards to the door of the bookstore.
He tugged on the door, the bells mounted on the inside jangling to announce his arrival. A dozen pairs of eyes flicked in his direction, some dropping away, others watching with interest as he hopped down the four steps to the main floor.
He knew his calves looked good coming down the steps; he allowed himself a little grin and felt better about his prospects.
Steve did a quick survey of the room: two young ones laughing and vamping beside the movie magazines; an old guy over by the adult magazines; five—no, six muscled, cotton-clad jocks; a pair of gawky med students drinking coffee and leaning close over a small café table in the front window; three or four boys barely out of high school; a pretty, waifish emo in an Edward Gorey T-shirt; a peppering of older guys reading Martha Stewart Living or Cat Fancy or John Sandford. He circled for a moment, glanced at his watch, and then noticed a dark-haired young man intently reading a paperback mystery. He stood with his right foot resting on his left, balanced in an absent, improbable stance, absorbed in the words on the page in front of him. He seemed oblivious to the attention that eddied around him, oblivious to his own disheveled beauty. Steve stopped and stared appraisingly at the boy’s long, muscular body, pale skin, and lustrous hair. The boy looked up as he turned a page, dark eyes focusing for a moment on Steve. He looked startled and then he smiled. Steve was suddenly uncharacteristically bashful, looking down pathetically at the shelves in front of him, picking up a biography of Idi Amin and feigning interest in the grainy cover photo. He flipped the book over, catching a glimpse of the boy, who was still watching Steve with a look that was both sly and serene. Steve pantomimed an interest in the back cover of the book in his hands, running his eyes pointlessly across the rows of letters and spaces. His mouth dried up like a summer lakebed.
Normally Steve liked this moment: the moment of discovery, the moment he stepped into a secluded clearing to confront a dappled deer. In that moment he was neither predator nor prey. He was one of two beasts sniffing the wind to confirm the possibility of desire. Sometimes the richness of the moment led to something heart-racingly crazy. And sometimes the moment passed unnoticed by the deer, and Steve moved on.
Tonight Steve was edgy, clumsy from lack of practice. Damp leaves brushed against his cheeks as he raised his head from the book in his hands and stepped into the clearing, locking eyes with the boy. Steve’s desire rested at the still point of the pursuit, waiting patiently for the next thing to happen, waiting for the moment of recognition or dismissal.
But the boy gave neither.
They stood frozen in place.
The room stirred around them; men shifting, pacing and watching.
And the boy dropped his eyes back to his book, dark eyebrows furrowed in concentration, turning the page with long, pale fingers.
Steve felt weightless and disoriented.
One of the others stepped into their clearing. A middle-aged man in baggy running shorts and a T-shirt walked down the aisle toward the dark-haired beauty, and then stopped next to him, kneeling to tie and retie his shoe, glancing pointedly, questioningly at the boy’s crotch. The boy remained frozen, his eyes roving from side to side down the page of the novel in his hands. The predator rose to his feet, brushed past the boy, closer than he needed to, and ambled back toward the café. Steve watched him go and then turned back to the boy, who smiled, just the barest twitch of muscle beneath pale skin, but Steve saw it and his pulse beat faster in response.
Steve heard a nervous cough behind him. He turned slowly, swiveling to find himself confronted by the coolly expectant eyes of a balding man in brown slacks. The old man waggled his wooly eyebrows and flicked his eyes downward. Steve looked at the man’s hands: shoved deep in the pockets of his pants, they stretched the fabric tight over a long, thin erection. Steve looked up into the man’s pale, muddy eyes and raised his right eyebrow.
The aging predator misread the signal and took a step closer to Steve. He reached out and brushed his bare knuckles along Steve’s muscular thigh, his breathing growing heavier.
Steve shifted his weight away and whispered, “Beat it, man.”
How close am I to this? Steve fingers trembled.
He turned back to look at the boy, who still held the book in his hands, but who had been watching Steve’s interaction with curious attention.
Steve winked. The boy grinned, shrugged—What’re ya gonna do?—and looked back down at his book.
Steve watched him without pretense now. He let his eyes move slowly across the even, bluish stubble that played across the boy’s jawline and upped his initial age estimate to twenty, maybe twenty-one. A permanent blush splashed across the boy’s cheeks, rising like the crest of a wave over the fine line of his jaw. His hair curled uncontrollably in broad waves that lapped gently against the back of his neck.
Steve watched the soft cotton of the boy’s shirt rising and falling with the steady rhythm of his breathing. There were thick muscled planes beneath the cotton, nipples that strained ever so slightly against cool restraint and a few silky chestnut hairs that crested the collar. The boy’s arms were smooth marble beneath a carpet of lightly curling hair that tapered as it approached his finely crafted hands. He had perfectly proportioned fingers, firm but delicate with closely clipped nails, and he wore a thick silver band with a pattern of interlocking circles.
Steve’s cock stirred inside his running shorts. He wished now he had worn underwear. His shirt hid his excitement for the moment, but he knew that by folding his hands across his chest, he could lift his shirt just enough to reveal his considerable assets. Although he had counted on a carefully orchestrated curtain call to finalize the delicate negotiations, now he felt self-conscious, fearing everyone in the store was aware of his growing erection. The image of the old predator’s brown slacks stretched across his long, thin erection flashed through Steve’s mind.
How close am I to becoming that? That guy is what? Ten years older than me? And I’m what? Twenty years older than this boy?
His hands started to tremble again. He reached out to pick up a book, hoping the solidity of the volume in his hand would somehow ground him.
Fuck that. I’m nothing like that guy.
“Excuse me, sir,” a voice said from behind him.
Steve turned aside to make room as a tall, handsome boy slipped past him and approached his quarry.
“Jason,”
“Oh, hey, Dave. S’up?” Soft lilting tones that rumbled with baritone fire.
Steve moved a few steps closer, picking up a biography of Disraeli and intently reading the first paragraph of the introduction. Over and over he read the lines, the words mingling with the conversation beside him, and the entire soaring jumble presided over by the single sound—Jason. Steve’s lips moved inadvertently and he looked up just as the two boys turned to look at him. He had spoken the word aloud. “Jason.” He blushed and muttered something about Disraeli, turning his gaze back between the pages and wondering if he should just flee into the night. Perhaps he should just go home and beat off in the shower. He set the book down and turned to go.
He walked the length of the aisle but, instead of turning left toward the door, he turned right and walked over to the adult magazines, pushing rather more roughly than he had intended past the man in brown, reaching up to pluck a copy of Stroke off the shelf. He felt the blush receding from his cheeks as he blocked the rest of the store out and buried himself in the warm folds of the magazine.
