Best Gay Erotica 2001, page 14
Bodies turning this way and that (turn around let’s 69, you’re so fucking hot, they’ll love that), trying out position after position.
From the front, the subtle ZZZ of a couple of zippers being opened, one and then another.
A rhythmic sound: somebody up there jacking off at what was happening on the altar?
It became clear to Scott all of a sudden, and he was as turned on as he had ever been. This was the floor show, but they weren’t going to be allowed to see what the men (he presumed) seated in the front were looking at. They could only hear it. Getting more turned on with every passing moment.
Every exhibitionist fantasy he’d ever had, brought to life, and then made bigger. He’d never have dreamed this up on his own. Esteban?
Oh Christ, he thought… I have to have died and gone to hell. Heaven couldn’t be this much fun.
Hands on his shoulders, a whisper in his ear: “Scott, take my hand, I’m going to lead you up front. You’ve been selected to join them on the altar.”
Something dripping down his chest, smell of sweetness—honey?
His legs felt unsteady when he first stood up, but the sensation passed; he strode toward the stage, dick jutting straight out. Scott gloated, feeling eyes on him, his chest, his navel ring glinting by the candlelight he couldn’t see but knew was there, his cock, the muscles flexing in his ass and his legs with every step he took. He couldn’t see through the blindfold, not even light filtering through the cloth, but he could sense his surroundings well enough. The smells, the stirrings of the men in the audience, the groans and sliding-skin noises of the boys on the dais…
That’s right, look at me.
“Take three steps up, then drop to your hands and knees,” whispered the voice. Soft lips touched his ear. Sandpaper rasp of razor stubble. Was this the black guy or the white one? Scott couldn’t tell and didn’t care. He’d have given anything to make a sandwich with the two—and given more than that to be the filling between them, spread like jelly.
Scott did as he was told.
“I’m going to take off your blindfold now, but I want you to keep your eyes shut. Crawl slowly across the floor until you come to Marco and Colin. When you find them, you can open your eyes and join in.”
Scott did as he was told.
He’d never realized it was possible to strut while on one’s hands and knees. When his buttocks parted as he crawled, he could tell men were looking between them. Want to know what my asshole looks like? Take a good look. Scott crawled slowly, taking his time, spreading his legs wider. Like how my balls move? Wish I were crawling across the bed toward you? Jack off more slowly—stretch it out. Fantasize with your eyes wide open.
This was like being lost at sea. This was immolation. Scott felt layers of himself eroding, disappearing, leaving something more raw and atavistic: anti-Scott. Non-Scott.
When he touched flesh, he opened his eyes.
Marco and Colin lay entwined, sixty-nining, eyes shut, sheened with sweat. Small groans escaped their mouths when they paused or adjusted position to take a breath or swallow salty saliva.
The one closest to Scott had fair skin and strawberry-blond hair that would have reached his shoulders had he been standing upright. Scott placed a hand on a granite shoulder (ornately tattooed in a tribal pattern). Colin, most likely. The other guy had olive skin and buzzed black hair—safe to assume he was Marco. Muscles everywhere, not bulky, just built.
They paused, parted, opened their eyes (Colin first, then Marco, when Colin stopped moving) to see who had joined them.
“Nice,” Colin said, eyeing Scott, approval obvious from the way he shifted, making it clear the fun had only just started.
A Brit? Even better. There was nothing nice about this boy’s dick, once Marco’s mouth was no longer around it. Colin had to be packing eight inches, uncut; Marco idly slid his foreskin up and down the shaft as he appraised Scott, seductive, smutty, smoldering…
Marco nodded. “Yeah, man. Real nice. You want to put on a show for these guys?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“What’s your name?” Marco’s face could have sent Ricky Martin crying to the nearest plastic surgeon, demanding improvements. His body had not been adorned: no tattoos, no piercings, nothing shaved. Washboard abs. Light dusting of hair across his firelit golden chest. His pecs…these were the standard by which all others were meant to be measured.
“Scott.”
“Come here, Scott,” Marco said, wrapping an enormous hand around Scott’s dick. “You want to taste what I’ve got?”
Scott nodded.
“Come here, then.”
Other hands on Scott, his ass this time, stroking his buttocks, fingertips grazing his anus, returning, their intent obvious… Colin’s hands parting his legs as Marco’s gigantic hands guided his face south.
Then a tongue tracing its way up Scott’s thigh toward his balls, trail of saliva cooling in the air currents their bodies created.
Scott leaned forward to inhale the musk rising off Marco’s abdomen, out of his pubic hair. He smelled like man. He also smelled as if he had worked some kind of scented oil into his skin: amber, cinnamon, something Scott couldn’t name.
Exquisite cock, the same size as Colin’s, more or less, possibly thicker, but circumcised; veins bulged, and Scott licked them, going up and down the length of him.
Marco gasped, lying back to let Scott taste him. Scott pulled back for a second, then darted forward again to catch a thread of pre-cum as it trickled down the shaft of Marco’s cock.
Colin’s tongue circled Scott’s balls.
Scott opened his mouth to gasp, the electric sensation a dizzy shock… Scott swore, his back arching, mouth open wide to keep from biting down on Marco’s dick.
Marco took the opportunity to twist just so and plunge his cock deeper into Scott’s mouth.
Scott could taste Colin’s spit on it, something subtly different from the other flavors there, brighter, almost metallic, silvery.
He took his time, slowly licking his way up and down the cock, relaxing into it to keep from choking as Marco began to move his hips. Wiry hair ground against Scott’s lips. He pushed his face into the thatch of hair and inhaled deeply.
Colin’s tongue, still circling, licking up and down Scott’s own cock, wetting it…
Scott thought fleetingly, This is the end of me—no, this is the end of the world, and I love it.
He glanced up quickly to check whether he could see the audience, but some trick of the light prevented him from detecting more than an apricot blur where their faces ought to be. Were they pixeled out, or was it just the placement of the candles? Scott surfaced long enough to imagine them all in sunglasses, wearing black suits with the trousers unzipped, cocks out, towels at the ready.
Maybe they were taking notes on which boys they liked best.
Maybe they were walking around with no shoes on, picking out the ones they wanted to see.
Colin pushed Scott’s legs apart a bit farther and commenced to lick his way across Scott’s balls, along the hairless ridge beneath them. Scott squirmed and writhed as Colin’s tongue continued its journey. He stopped where Scott thought he was going to stop, and he spread his legs to let Colin do what he wanted…
!!, he thought.
The pleasure shot through him like a series of camera flashes. It felt like hot-white light penetrating the spaces between the molecules of his skin.
Colin’s tongue probed, tasted, tested.
Scott felt his body tense for a second, then relax as Colin’s tongue and lips did their work, opening him up with deft insistence.
Marco shifted, light gleaming dull orange off his abdomen, his dick reddish-mauve, slick with Scott’s spit….
Scott turned and began to suck Colin off, making a triangle on the spongy floor: Colin’s mouth in Scott’s ass, Marco’s cock in Scott’s mouth, Colin’s cock in Marco’s mouth.
Scott dove into this, immersed himself in the rhythm they found, Marco’s cock plunging in and out of his mouth as Colin devoured his ass, tongue driving deep, accompanied by a finger now, searing jolts of pleasure ripping through him, as intense in their way as being fucked with gentle precision.
The sparks of an impending orgasm began to gather—at the base of his cock, inside his scrotum, his ass, his prostate.
An interruption: hands on his back and shoulders alerting him that others had joined them on the dais.
Scott opened his eyes, paused, still mindless and writhing as Colin’s tongue and fingers did obscene, divine things to his ass.
The black guy with the henna scrollwork up and down his body was kneeling by him, smiling like he had been shown a glimpse of heaven, white teeth in sharp contrast with his dark skin, and next to him was (oh my God) Cameron, from down the hall, blissfully nude and tattooed, dick jutting, hard and shameless, a black jaguar tattooed on his thigh (I didn’t know he had that), a smutty smile on his face.
“Been looking forward to this,” he said.
Colin stopped what he was doing—Scott caught his breath. Colin wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Marco looked up.
And then they were five:
Cameron, on his belly, parting his legs as Scott plunged into him;
Scott, parting his legs as Marco resumed the rim job Colin had started, but more roughly than Colin, who had come at him with something that approached reverence;
The black guy, whose name Scott never got, kneeling ahead of him—Scott took the handsome, gleaming cock in his mouth as he fucked Cameron, who lay moaning under him, more limber than Scott had imagined;
Colin, lying on his side, sucking Marco off, then moving to share the black guy’s dick with Scott.
Scott pulled out of Cameron.
Marco took his place, sliding effortlessly in.
Another guy joined them, the Asian with the dragon tattoo: Scott put his face between a pair of rock-hard, hairless buttocks and licked, the anus opening to him like a rose blooming, groans and muttered words in a language Scott couldn’t quite make out as he went deeper, savoring the strange sour charcoal skin taste of him.
Where is Esteban, Scott briefly wondered, as he ate.
Someone entered Scott—he had no idea who it was, but he raised his hips to allow him access, exhaling as a large cock impaled him inch by torturous, exquisite inch. Scott felt himself succumbing to the uniquely familiar and alien mixture of peace and terror as he opened up, helpless and filled up at the same time.
He turned around: It was the henna-scrolled black guy, sweat rolling down his face, who was driving into him. He leaned forward and bit Scott’s shoulder, licking the back of his neck, arms around Scott’s waist as he powered in, forcing incoherent groans out of Scott’s mouth, sounds he couldn’t control.
Marco crawled behind them and entered the man inside Scott, who drew ragged breaths, eyes shut, teeth sinking into Scott’s skin as Marco’s cock hit home.
Cameron knelt in front of Scott, offering his dick to suck, and Scott took it greedily in his mouth as deep as it would go, trying to find a rhythm as the man fucking him moved inside him and was moved inside, himself.
He licked salt, more salt… Cameron shot into his mouth, and Scott swallowed as much as he could…
Colin, suddenly underneath him: “Fuck me now, I want to come with you inside me… .”
Scott did, his cock slipping scratchily past the ring of muscle, meeting some resistance before sliding home.
The beautiful henna-scrolled man shouted and came just then, gallons of scalding cum emptying into Scott; in a chain reaction, he came explosively into Colin…
Someone else came in a hot spray across Scott’s back…
“Oh fuck, that’s right, give it to me…”
Gasps all around, profanity, moaning…
“Jesus,” Scott grunted as the orgasm continued to rocket through him.
He shuddered as the guy behind him withdrew his cock.
He pulled carefully out of Colin, lay down, head on (he had to check) Marco’s chest, and shut his eyes.
“Have a towel?” said a voice.
Esteban, smiling over him.
“A towel would be good.”
“Home, then?”
Scott nodded.
And sideslipped back to his own sofa.
“Jesus Christ, Esteban, you guys are good.” Scott could barely talk. He lay back on his sofa, nude.
His apartment was never this warm in real-time.
Esteban, now clothed and as dapper as before, stood up and bowed slightly. “We do our best,” he said, grinning. “And you’re a joy to work with. I cannot compliment you highly enough.”
“Thanks,” Scott said, resisting the urge to blush and add, “aw shucks.” Instead, he asked whether the guys he had just cyberfucked were real. And what about the audience? The location?
Esteban chuckled. He crossed his legs and sipped from a glass of wine that hadn’t been there an instant before.
“Define real,” he said. “It’s the same thing I said when you asked before. Define real, and define safe. They are not absolute terms—not inside the Internet, at least.”
“Not outside of it, either,” Scott remarked. He felt adrift—in over his head.
“Are you really asking whether those men are also plugged in, just like you, and all experiencing the same thing?”
Scott nodded. “I guess I am.”
“Some of them are. Some are not.”
“Cameron?”
Esteban maintained his Mona Lisa smile. “Classified information,” he said. “If I were to tell you he was also plugged in, that would compromise his right to privacy. But if I were to tell you he was something we dreamt up for you, that wouldn’t be strictly fair to you.”
“I don’t follow you one hundred percent, but I suspect this is an argument I won’t win. What about the audience? Real people, tuned in because they like to watch?”
“Could be. You have to admit, we have the perfect construct for those fantasies. You knew they were there, but you couldn’t see who they were, or how many. Look, Scott, it’s been a pleasure, but I’d encourage you to sign off now, eat some dinner, and get some other things done.” Esteban looked as if he were weighing whether to say something else. Something in his face softened. “Look,” he added. “I like you. Because of what I do, I am able to see very clearly who you are as a person, and you’re a good guy. Log off, take care of yourself, and enjoy this—but be careful not to let it overwhelm you. This is powerful technology.”
He crossed the room, walking through the coffee table as if it were a hologram, and took a precarious seat on the edge of the sofa next to Scott.
Scott missed a beat. For a second he was too shocked to speak.
When he had recovered enough to get the words out: “Last question, then. You weren’t on the stage or altar or floor or whatever it was with me. You must have known I wanted you there. Didn’t you feel left out, that you weren’t chosen?”
Esteban smiled, then surprised Scott again by leaning down to kiss him. Soft lips, no scritch-scratch of razor stubble. The kiss lasted longer than Scott expected, and he grew hard again by degrees.
After, Esteban asked, “Are you sure that was where you wanted me? And who do you think did the choosing?”
That said, he reached down and pushed the red button tattooed on the back of Scott’s hand.
“Come back tomorrow,” he whispered, just before fading out like the Cheshire Cat.
Some things never change.
CONNECTION REFUSED, said Scott’s monitor when he attempted a return after a long day filled with hours that crept like traffic on the Bay Bridge.
Fifteen minutes later, the same lack of results confounded Scott.
THIS PAGE NOT AVAILABLE, the pop-up thing sometimes said.
At other times, CONNECTION TIMED OUT.
Scott poured himself a glass of Merlot, and stared out the window as fog blew in off the ocean.
The next day, the same thing, the same nothing…
Scott turned down a date with a man he had hooked up with a few times prior to breaking his ankle. He got nothing written. When the phone rang, he looked at the Caller ID box to see who wanted to speak to him, but he never answered.
That altar. The Bentley.
The candles.
Esteban.
Maybe he was real. Maybe Esteban lived with a cute grin-gito boyfriend down in Long Beach and worked part-time at Tower Records or Barnes & Noble. Maybe he was in a house in Barcelona or Fukuoka or Cape Town, with no furniture beyond the basics, and lots of billowing white curtains. Maybe he jogged around the Eiffel Tower in the evenings before logging onto the Net to guide people through naked adventures that existed entirely in the realm of the mind.
Maybe he did not exist at all.
Six weeks later, Dr. Lashyonyh pronounced Scott’s ankle healed.
“But you have to get off your computer,” snapped the doctor. “These problems you are having with your wrists, this pain—it is plain old-fashioned repetitive strain injury. You should know about that by now. It is from typing on the computer too much, and clicking the mouse. There is nothing on the Net you cannot find in real life. Trust me.”
“Sure,” Scott said, nodding. “I guess I will have to start looking harder.”
He put on his sunglasses in the lobby of Dr. L’s office and walked out into an overcast San Francisco afternoon. Nothing on the Net he could not find in real life? His wrists did ache constantly these days. And he kept seeing CONNECTION REFUSED behind his eyelids when he tried to sleep at night. Fine. He would look. The question, then, was where. He hailed a cab and rode back to his apartment, thinking.
When We Are Very Old
Andrew Ramer
You sleep in my arms, your back pressed to my belly. I can feel the tremor in your body, the dance of your dreaming. Then you are still, your breath coming soft and even. I bend my lips to the side of your neck, in the stillness of our bed, as the first light of morning whispers its song. You wake, and press your body close to me. The heat of your body warms me as no layering of blankets ever can. Like the sun, the fire of my body wakens. I turn your face to meet me. Wet, my tongue seeks out the tongue of you, speaking the language of two bodies that fifty years of talking have turned into one.
