Best Gay Erotica 2007, page 16
DISASTER RELIEF
Greg Herren
“Most of the damage is upstairs,” I said as I unlocked the front door to my apartment and pushed it open. I stood in the doorway and allowed him to pass. “Although we did get some mold down here on the walls.” I shrugged. I’d shown the wreckage that had been my home for just two months to so many people by this time that it didn’t affect me anymore. The first time I’d walked in after Katrina had gone through I had been in shock. You never expect to see your home in that condition; mold running down the walls, plaster wreckage covering the stairs, your bed a mildew factory. It had made me sick to my stomach.
Well, that and the smell coming from the refrigerator.
It was my home, it was the same apartment I’d been so excited to move into a million years ago in June, but I didn’t feel the same way about it as I did before.
Christian Evans, my FEMA inspector, whistled as he walked in and took a look around. “Nice place.”
“It was.” I used to love the high ceilings, the two ceiling fans, the curved staircase leading up to the second floor, and the hardwood floor I polished until it was like a mirror. Now the floor was covered with dust from the collapsed ceiling upstairs. The plaster on the walls in the living room was cracked, and the true enemy was evident on the ceiling—those horrible black spreading spots of mold that looked like inkblots. But at least the ever-present stench of mold and mildew was hardly noticeable anymore.
And I’d won my epic battle with the refrigerator.
“But I imagine you’ve seen a lot worse,” I went on, hugging myself. It was a cool morning with a strong breeze blowing that made it seem colder, and of course I didn’t have the heat turned on. Not much point in trying to warm the place when there was no ceiling upstairs. Of course he’s seen worse, I scolded myself. That had been my litany ever since I’d come back.
You’re one of the lucky ones, remember that.
Christian shrugged. He was a small man, maybe about five eight, in his early thirties. He was cute in that nondescript me-trosexual “is he gay or straight?” way. He had a light brown goatee, and had gelled his brown hair into that just-got-out-of-bed look that seemed to be all the rage. Before the storm, I’d always referred to that style as the freshly fucked look. I’d never really cared for it much, but it worked on him. He had a way of grinning that somehow worked with the gelled hair. “I’ve been out to the Ninth Ward and Lakeview,” he said as he pulled his laser pointer out of his pocket and started measuring the dimensions of the room. “So you lost your couch?”
“Mold. And the reclining chair, the coffee table.” I sighed. I’d gone over the inventory of the losses so many times already I could say it all by rote. Our new couch, gone. The comfy old reclining chair I’d inherited from my workout partner who’d inherited it from a good friend who’d died. I loved that chair, used to sit in it all the time, thinking and writing in my head. “I was lucky, though, I know.” Even knowing it to be true didn’t make saying it feel any less hollow. I hadn’t lost everything, like so many people I knew. Houses destroyed, mementoes and everything inside gone forever. So many of my friends were now homeless, sleeping on couches belonging to friends or relatives, living in campers, waiting for FEMA trailers while they tried to figure out what they were going to do about what used to be their homes. No, I had a place to live, and my source of income was still intact. I was able to come back to the city I loved, struggle to reestablish my life to some semblance of what it had been before. So many couldn’t come back. So many others wouldn’t. “But the kitchen is okay; I didn’t lose anything in there except food.”
He made some entries on his laptop. “I’ll put you down for everything in the living room. What about television, VCR, that kind of thing?”
“Those are all okay.” I shook my head. “It was weird how some things survived and some things didn’t. I mean, the towel I hung up after my shower that morning, which was wet, didn’t get moldy at all. It was stiff, but all I had to do was wash it and it was fine.” I cut myself off, recognizing the post-Katrina babble coming on. If I didn’t stop myself, I was going to list every single item I owned and what happened to it. And he was only interested in what I lost.
But how do you explain to someone that you’ve lost your soul? The inner core of your being?
You can’t.
He shrugged out of his brown sport coat. He was wearing a white dress shirt underneath, tucked into a tight pair of boot cut jeans—and snakeskin cowboy boots. He placed the jacket on a wicker chair and I got a glimpse of his ass, which was round and hard. Definitely a nice ass. Before I would have stared at it, trying not to let drool dribble out of my mouth. I might have even tried to be flirtatious. He might be gay, after all. He turned back to me. “So let’s see the upstairs.”
I took a deep breath and started up the stairs. The upstairs still kind of bothered me, even though I’d seen it plenty of times. The ceiling was gone in the bedroom, hallway and bathroom. After the turn in the stairs, the walls were gone, ripped out by the handyman hired to repair the place. It was still a shock to see the bare beams, the debris I hadn’t cleaned off the stairs, and the moldy carpet in the hallway. “It looks a lot better,” I said as I went around the turn. “I cleaned out a lot of the debris already.” I had. The stairs had been buried in dust and plaster at least two inches deep—as had the hallway and the bedroom. But I hadn’t gotten everything up, and I could feel bits of plaster crunching underneath my shoes. The bathroom ceiling was still there, if covered in mold. But the patio door off the bathroom had been blown off its hinges by the wind, and the linoleum on the floor was peeling up.
Yet somehow my towels—and my wet one, at that—hadn’t gotten moldy.
Christian whistled as we walked into the bedroom and looked up at the bare beams. You could see clear up to the outer roof, which had just been finished a few days earlier. He pulled out his laser pointer, and started measuring again, typing things into the laptop at a furious pace. “Bedroom set?”
“Gone.”
“Any electronics?”
“Computer, scanner, printer, TV, DVD player.”
He walked across to the bathroom and stuck his head in, then started typing again. “I’m putting you down for all toiletries, towels; all the bathroom stuff.”
“Thanks.” I started to correct him—the towels were okay— but stopped myself. Did it matter? I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.
I could hear him typing away. Then he stopped. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
I opened my eyes. I laughed. “I think smoke is the least of my concerns at this point. Besides, I smoke—smoked—in the house. Before.”
“Oh, thanks man.” He shook a cigarette out of a crumpled pack of Pall Malls. “You laugh, but you’d be surprised. I was walking some woman through her house in Lakeview—total loss, it’s going to have to be completely gutted and rebuilt— and she acted like I’d asked her to take poison or something when I asked if I could smoke, you know? I mean, what the hell difference did it make? The house was ruined. But she said no.” He shrugged.
“That’s crazy.” I laughed. “Besides, I would think people would be nice to you.” I went on, adding to myself, since you control how much money they get to rebuild their lives.
I was planning on being very nice.
“Tell that to them.” He took a deep drag and looked around for an ashtray.
“Just use the floor.”
He grimaced, then slid one of the windows open and flicked the ash outside. He gave me a little grin. “I just can’t bring myself to do that.”
“Habit, I guess—like the woman in Lakeview.”
“Yeah.” He leaned against the wall. “No, people aren’t nice to us. They haven’t forgotten the days after, you know, when we dropped the ball and the whole world was watching.” He shook his head. “Of course, all of us didn’t work for FEMA then, you know. We were hired as temps to help out with this mess…but they need someone to blame, I guess, and we’re handy.” He gave me a look. “I mean, you filed your claim two months ago and haven’t seen a dime yet, right?” He shrugged. “That pisses people off—especially when other people have already gotten money. But the higher-ups keep changing everything from week to week.”
“Yeah, well, being an asshole to you’s not gonna make anything different, you know?” I’d raged myself against FEMA any number of times in the days since the storm, as I watched New Orleans die on television. “I appreciate you being so cool.”
“Yeah.” He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it. “I’ll just be glad when this is all over,” I said, covering my face in my hands, “but I know it’s never going to be, is it?”
“Hey.” He stepped closer to me, and took my hands away from my face. “It’s going to be okay.”
I looked at his face. Damn, he’s cute, I thought to myself, and the look on his face, the mix of concern and sympathy, despite everything he’d already seen, touched me deep into my soul. Without stopping to think, I bent my head down and brushed my lips against his.
He stepped back. “Um—”
“Sorry.” I shrugged, holding up both hands.
A small smile crept over his face. “I was just wondering if you had a condom?”
I paused for a minute, and a slow smile spread over my face. In here, I thought, not in the carriage house. Oh no, here in the apartment, that would be perfect, just perfect, besides all I have at the carriage house is an air mattress on the floor anyway. I gave a little laugh. “Wait here.”
I ran down the stairs without waiting for a response, out the front door and over to the carriage house. I grabbed my backpack, shoving a handful of condoms, lube and poppers into the front pouch, then slung it over my shoulder and went back out the door. As I walked back along the flagstones, I couldn’t believe this was happening. My FEMA inspector? Who would believe this?
I wasn’t sure I did myself.
When I got back up to my bedroom, he was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. He had unbuttoned his shirt, and it fell open to reveal a hairy but lean torso. Black hair curled around his hard pecs, down a trail to his navel, and then down into the just barely visible waistband of what appeared to be black Calvin Kleins. He gave me a hesitant little smile, then ground the cigarette out under his boot. He stepped forward and shrugged the shirt down off his shoulders, revealing a smooth expanse of freckled muscle. He tilted his head down to the left, then looked up at me with round brown eyes. He bit his lower lip.
I put down the backpack and pulled my sweatshirt over my head. I reached into the bag and pulled out the poppers and inhaled. I stepped toward him, handing him the bottle. He held it to his right nostril, then the left, then put the top back on and set it down.
The rush hit me, and all I wanted right then, more than anything, more than my life back, more than my apartment the way it was, was to feel his bare skin against mine, to grind my swelling crotch against his. I stepped forward and put my arms around him, his skin soft yet firm to the touch, smooth and satiny, and I pressed my lips to the base of his throat, and I felt him start to growl as he thrust his pelvis forward against mine, and I began licking his throat.
“Oh my god,” he whispered, his hands cupping my ass and squeezing, pulling me forward against him. “That feels so good, please don’t stop, my god…”
As if I could.
He tasted slightly of sweat and maybe of soap. My tongue darted out, licking the top of his breastbone and then the hollow just above the bone. He moaned, shifting his weight from side to side, our crotches pressed against each other. I could feel his erection against mine, and I moved my hips just a bit to create some friction. I brought my hands up to his nipples and started flicking them slightly, enough to make them harden beneath my fingertips.
He pushed my head away from his neck and took a deep breath. “My god, dude.”
I gave him a lazy smile and undid his belt with one hand while pinching his left nipple. Then I pulled the zipper down, slid my hand underneath his balls, and squeezed gently. “You like that, boy?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” he breathed.
I slid the pants down to his ankles. He was wearing black Calvin Klein boxer-briefs that clung to his body. The head of his cock was poking out the top of the waistband. I licked my fingers and ran them over the tip. He shivered and twisted his head from side to side. I brought my lips to his throat again, and he gasped, a sound that I took to be pleasure. I ran my tongue down his torso, from the neck to the pecs—stopping there to suck on each nipple for a moment—and then to just below his navel. I pulled the underwear down, freeing his thick dick before enveloping it with my lips, my tongue twirling around the underside of it.
I slid one hand between his legs and began stroking the lower crack of his ass. He shook and trembled again, giving me the incentive to slip a probing finger in between the hard glutes. I felt hair, and was glad he wasn’t one of those boys who shaved their asses. There was just something nasty about a boy who didn’t make himself antiseptic and hairless that made my dick’s urgency to enter him even more frantic and necessary.
I leaned away from him and smiled. He gave me a weak, almost limp smile between gasps for breath. I grabbed hold of his hips and spun him around and looked at the muscular white ass. Sure enough, there were black hairs inside its crack, and I spread his asscheeks with my hands and stuck my face in between, smelling him, darting my tongue out and licking at his hole. He arched his back, shoving his ass back into my face, and leaned forward, all of his weight resting on his forearms against the wall.
As I licked and probed his ass with my tongue, I felt my own need. It had been sublimated since the day I left with the cat and everything I could think to grab in my car. I hadn’t thought about sex, about getting laid, hell, even about masturbating in the weeks that followed, as I watched the city die on national television, as I worried about my home and if I would ever be able to come back.
It felt somehow so right to eat his ass, as though I was becoming myself again in a way I had forgotten.
I slid the condom over my cock and lubed it up, then massaged lube into his hole and slipped a finger inside. He let out another moan, and I smiled. He was ready, and so was I.
I slid the head of my cock into him, and his entire body stiffened. He rose up on his toes as a loud gasp was forced out of his throat, and a hand reflexively grabbed my left hip. “Easy,” he whispered hoarsely. “It’s big, oh god, it’s big and I want it, but please go slow.”
And even though I wanted to plunge it in, hard and brutal, ripping him apart and shoving him into the wall, I did as he asked, and went slowly, bit by bit, waiting with each further insertion until he relaxed. I leaned forward as I slid inside, kissing the back of his neck as my hands gripped his hips. Finally, he let go with a sigh and I slid the rest of the way in.
I didn’t move. I just stood there, my cock deep inside of his body, and closed my eyes, tilting my head back.
This was life, breathing again. This was connecting with another human being for the first time in weeks, and the warmth of his body felt so right….
And I started moving, sliding back and forth slowly, listening to him moan, feeling him shivering and trembling with the pleasure my cock was giving him, and then his own need took control, and he began sliding himself back as I entered, until we were moving in a faster, more brutal rhythm.
His arms slapped against the wall.
“Yes,” he repeated over and over again, breathing it out each time I pounded into him, louder and louder, his muscles flexing involuntarily, and I rode him, feeling my orgasm coming closer and closer. I started pounding harder, pulling him back toward me and slamming forward so hard that he was rising up on his toes as I tried to shove my entire body inside of him; I wanted to go deeper into him than any man ever had before, deeper than I’d ever gone before, wanted to reach the very core of his being, to touch his soul.
And then my mind exploded with the animalistic ecstasy of my orgasm, my entire body stiffening and my own breath exploding out of me, black spots dancing before my eyes because I couldn’t catch my breath, and I had lifted him off the ground, impaling him, and he was shaking with me.
And then my breathing slowed.
I set him back down.
I slid out of him.
“Jesus,” he whispered, turning around, a string of cum hanging from the head of his cock. He reached over and touched my face. “That was so intense…my god.”
I smiled, unable to speak.
“Can I clean up at your place?” He gave me a weak smile. “I can’t make my next appointment like this.” He gestured at his sweat-soaked torso, and I noticed the cum spots on the wall. He followed my gaze, and grinned sheepishly. “Um, I had already put down replacing the walls in here.”
I touched his lips with the forefinger of my right hand. “Thank you, Christian.”
He lowered his head. “Thank you.”
We walked back to the carriage house. I gave him a towel and went downstairs, lighting a cigarette and sitting on the front stoop. I heard the shower water running.
I smiled.
You’re going to make it, I said to myself. You’re going to be just fine.
I felt normal again.
THERE’S MORE TO KINK THAN
LEATHER
Cat Tailor
Once again, it was a Saturday night, and Jason was in full leathers on his way to the Hole. Its patrons called it various things, depending on their moods: the Suck Hole, the Fuck Hole, the Hell Hole, the Sphincter, or just “the bar,” as in, “Will you be at the bar tonight?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Yeah.”
Whatever you called it, it was a playground for kinky faggots, and Jason was there a lot. There was a generic replacement for “Jason,” too. Mostly they called him Sir.
Jason wondered who he’d beat tonight, and was slightly bored at the thought. Well, perhaps he’d shake things up and bottom to someone, then. He snickered. It wasn’t that the idea of him bottoming was funny—he was more than willing to go there on occasion. It was funny to try and picture any of the Hole’s regular denizens working up the nerve to approach him as a dom.
