Best Gay Erotica 2010, page 17
But at three A.M., a response did come: Bring the money to my house tomorrow at four. We’ll be alone.
THE STUFFED TURKEY
Jan Vander Laenen
Avisodomy is the ancient practice of having sex with a bird. As the man is about to orgasm he breaks the neck of the bird causing the bird’s cloaca sphincter to constrict and spasm, thus creating pleasurable sensations for the man. […]Parisian brothels provided turkeys for their clients.
—B. Love, The Encyclopaedia of Unusual Sex Practices
Frédéric, aged around thirty-five, is probably the richest gay man in the small Brussels homosexual ghetto, or at any rate, the gay man with the richest father—a genuine ennobled industrialist—but apparently that does not make him happier; quite the contrary. It would seem that all the sadness on Earth can be read in his beautiful hazel eyes. And yes, those beautiful hazel eyes are not the only winning asset of his appearance. No, no…Frédéric, although somewhat soft, is a distinguished handsome man, slim, with a regular face and neatly trimmed hair, eyebrows, and goatee, and apparently enough hair on his chest to warrant opening the top buttons of his shirt. Furthermore, he is always smartly dressed, jeans of the most fashionable cut, colorful checkered shirts and probably a wardrobe full of jackets in leather, suede, and denim.
And what makes him sad in spite of all this? To put it simply, perhaps because he is the first born and bred son, with three younger brothers and sisters, in what could be considered one of the most poisonous types of nests of our free Western Europe: that of a Flemish family of the high bourgeoisie.
And what does that actually entail? Well, let us say that Frédéric’s parents are a spitting image of the bourgeois couple in La Cage aux Folles, bearing in mind, however, that that they are still Flemish, not the people with the keenest sense of humor, and that they would not be able to grasp the comic notes of the aforementioned film.
Frédéric does not in the least fit the expectations that his distinguished parents have—or have had—of him. That is to say, he was expected to undertake serious studies at university, such as economics or law, but as he is not exactly the studious type, he wound up earning a diploma in secretaryship and languages, usually reserved for girls. He was actually expected to pursue a solid career among politicians, industrialists and bankers, but because he is more of a dreamer, he is satisfied with a position in one ministry or another that his father found for him. He should have done up a barn of a villa in one of the more elegant suburbs of Brussels, with swimming pool and tennis court, but because he is a rather seedy character, he opted for the center of Brussels, and is all too pleased to live in his father’s charming apartment, one of the latter’s many properties, on the trendy Rue Dansaert. And above all, he should have long ago entered holy matrimony with the money-mad daughter of another bourgeois, a surgeon or pharmacist or notary, and should have impregnated her at least twice, but he has postponed the exploration of a female body for the time being…just like his coming out, for that matter…
Which has naturally not prevented him from living it up in the gay circuit of Brussels for some eight years, going to most gay bars and cafés in our capital, which are ever so discreet, especially the facades. Furthermore, the aforementioned circuit is so closed in on itself that the chance of rumors about escapades there reaching the ears of his father or someone in his circle is really very small.
Frédéric! On 29 December of last year, it had certainly been some three years since I had a real conversation with him, because for three years I have had a satisfying liaison with another man, and thus had tended to neglect the gay circles of Brussels; but when I think back to Frédéric, it is not without a touch of nostalgia.
And which venues did he grace with his presence in my time? Oh, in addition to the late-hour leather bar Le Duquesnoy and the gay bar Homo Erectus, he was reported often, after working hours, in the Café La Réserve, where he sipped his democratic beer with other gay employees who had left their office in the city center. Incidentally, he was rather out of place there among all these representatives of the “ordinary people.” Yes, he could laugh with their “vulgar chatter,” but I have never heard him utter ordinary words. Yes, he could participate in a discussion on how, for instance, everything had become more expensive since the introduction of the euro, but his thoughts must have then gone to the series of credit cards in his designer wallet. And yes, he was often courted, especially by bums and what are known as sloshers—but deep down he must have wondered why he was attracting all that attention.
And did he dare take the initiative himself now and then? Well, like everyone else, he flirted now and then, but I am not curious about the erotic lives of others, so I never heard rumors about his tastes or performances, for instance. The fact is that he had made advances to me on several occasions until three years ago, perhaps because he had heard that, as a notary’s son, I came somewhat from the same milieu as himself, perhaps a few rungs lower, those rungs between the nobility and the nouveaux riches, and was thus supposed to understand his little existential problem.
And indeed, one of the first questions that he asked was whether my family knew of me being otherwise inclined.
“Frédéric!” I cried out, “in our higher Flemish circles, it is not a matter of whether the family knows, but of whether they want to know and how prepared you are yourself to keep it hidden in their circles. No, I lost my virginity—very willingly, for that matter—when I was eighteen, and since then I have made no secret for anyone. When I was twenty-three, I presented my thirteen-year-older Italian friend to my parents, and even told them that we slept in the same bed. In all these years I have run the gamut from queer to transvestite to leather-jacket boy, to fister and fisted, to find myself again as just an ordinary man, but it is only when I started to talk openly about my homosexuality in my stories and to express my doubts about the respectability of the Flemish bourgeois mentality, that the real problems arose. So…”
“You obviously do not like to talk about it,” he replied, for he must have noted my relative stiffness, “but what would you advise me in concrete terms?”
“Well, I have broken all family ties. I could perhaps give you the address of my psychiatrist, but I would give you this piece of advice: live your life!”
“What do you mean?”
I got up from our little table in La Réserve and repeated to him the words that an American female friend had sputtered as we were leaving Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome one day: “Let’s do something dirty!”
Well, Frédéric and I had never ended up in bed together, and thus I had never done anything dirty with him, nor with that American female friend, for that matter, and as already mentioned, our paths had seldom crossed for some three years. But when I ran into him by chance, I have to admit that he looked radiant somehow…
Ah, that 29 December of last year…I had spent Christmas alone, and it was one of those indefinable days between Christmas and the approaching New Year, a day on which you inertly wait for something that does not come. Fortunately, the weather was mild and sunny, and around three in the afternoon, I went to have a look at the Christmas market on the Place Sainte-Cathérine, where I had a sandwich with German sausage and mustard. And as I was standing at a stall, a wooden shed with wooden counters where Glühwein was served, I bumped into Frédéric.
“Ah, Jan, is everything okay?”
“This Christmas period gets to me in a way,” I complained.
“Haven’t done anything dirty?”
I looked at him puzzled, whereupon he bid me to take a seat at a small table to drink a glass of warm wine.
“Do you still remember how three years ago, you saw me coming out, together with my parents, of the snobbish restaurant Belga Queen, and you subsequently told me that my mother and father reminded you of that bourgeois couple in La Cage aux Folles?
“Yes.”
“Well, on Christmas Eve, I found myself in a situation so hilarious as to rival some of the scenes from that film.”
“Do tell!”
“A couple of days before Christmas, my mother phoned me at the office, essentially to order me to go and collect the turkey for the Christmas dinner at our estate in La Roche-en-Ardenne, and gave me the mobile phone number of the game warden. So, I got in my car, and after driving for an hour, I arrived at our property, proceeded through the park to the eighteenth-century pavilions, and parked by the hut next to the lower court.
“I knocked but there was no answer, so I went in the hut, saw that the turkey was hanging nicely on a hook among pheasants and rabbits, and just as I was about to dial the number on my mobile, my eye fell on a number of books on a shelf. No, no copy of the Bible or manuals on how to raise rabbits or geese, for instance, but a real list of rather, ahem, erotic works: Justine and Les 120 Jours de Sodom, by Marquis de Sade, Adieu à Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, Contes Immoraux by the Prince de Ligne…”
“…and, perhaps, not L’amant de Lady Chatterley by Lawrence?” I interrupted.
“Yes, yes…and just when I somewhat curiously started leafing through the books, I heard a reverberating voice behind me: ‘And what do you think you are doing?’ ”
“Mellors?”
“Our game warden, in any event, not Lawrence’s, and yes he did look a bit like the actor Nicholas Clay in the filmed version, filthy rubber boots, overalls open at the top showing the hair on his chest, and a frank, unshaven gob. ‘I am the baron’s son,’ I told him apologetically. ‘I have come to collect our turkey for Christmas.’ And the scoundrel stepped right up and took me by the chin with his filthy paw of a hand.
“ ‘What a nice, neat son that rich miser of a baron has, and what nice teeth you have. You see, I’m used to doing this for my job. I always look a horse in the mouth first,’ he said to me.
“I smelled on his breath that he had probably already hit the eau de vie.
“ ‘And you were sniffing about in my book collection, were you?’ he asked of me. I was somewhat cornered.
“ ‘Ah, there is so little to do here in the country, but since I have good taste, I prefer a good wank with an erotic story rather than with porno. You also have a nice snout, a little bit like a greenhouse plant, but…’And he plunged his tongue in my mouth. ‘A man or a woman, it makes little difference to me, provided I get my pleasure!’”
“And did you give him his pleasure?” I asked Frédéric.
Frédéric turned red.
“Making love in nature, or in this case, in a hut, has always been one of my favorite fantasies,” he said.
“You are preaching to the converted…how I have frisked about in the pineta of Viareggio.”
“Our Mellors was apparently not averse to French-kissing another man, and he even stuck the tip of his tongue in one of my nostrils, but then I got down to serious business, sucking merrily on his thick nipples, and then gave his member a well-deserved oral treatment.”
“You are circumcised?” I asked lecherously, picturing his parts as well.
“My penis was already so thick when I was twelve that they had to operate on me because of foreskin stenosis.”
“And…?” I asked.
“Well,” he replied, “Later he unbuttoned my trousers and turned me over, but before getting that mushroom and its entire stem to disappear in that spot which is forbidden territory in nearly all religions, he crouched behind me and…well, relaxed my sphincter with his tongue. He moistened it so well with spittle, and gave it such a good rim job, that the skin round my arsehole is still somewhat irritated from the stubbles on his chin.”
“And then…”
“And then, in fact, apart from a vigorous thrust, he was as vigorous verbally. Because, ‘Yeah, my little daddy’s boy,’ he began to growl, ‘you are giving me as much pleasure as that turkey yesterday. See it hanging there, that poor beast…Oh, what a dignified end did I give it. I first put its dumb head in the drawer of that cupboard, and then stuffed it nice, in and out, in and out, in and out, and when I felt I was about to shoot my load, I slammed the drawer, breaking its neck, and wow…how its poor sphincter constricted round my exploding stick…It was grand, just as described in the handbooks…I scored five erotic capers in one yesterday: sodomy, zoophilia, homosexuality—yes, yes, our turkey is a he, necrophilia and sadism…You needn’t worry…I am not going to harm a single hair of our daddy’s boy, but I am going to stuff you nicely like your Christmas dinner there. …’”
I took a gulp of my Glühwein and looked at Frédéric, somewhat dumbfounded. “And then, he shot his load in your rectum?”
“No, no, he pulled out, ordered me to turn around, kneel down and open my mouth, because it was a sin to spill his valuable seed in a man’s hole that has no taste buds.”
“You are careful…?” I carefully interrupted my question.
“He reassured me that he was in perfect health and handed me his bottle of eau de vie to rinse out my sticky mouth.”
“Wild.” I shrugged somewhat indifferently, as I sat with a swollen member in my trousers against the wooden table.
“And dirty, indeed,” said Frédéric, concluding his story about his fling with his “Mellors.”
“And Christmas Eve?”
“Endless boredom, wouldn’t you know, a family dinner in our Art Nouveau manorial house here in Brussels, valets, crystal, porcelain, caviar, foie gras…”
“And stuffed turkey.”
“Yes, and when my father said that the turkey was really delicious, and my mother, with her snobbish whistling voice, added that the filling in particular was really juicy, I burst out laughing.”
“And did you own up?”
“I was just about to, yes!”
I looked at Frédéric with amusement. “I can truly imagine how such a scene would unfold,” I said. “First shocked looks, looks of disbelief, but when you persist that you are not lying, then all mayhem breaks loose in your family. Everyone has to be taken to the hospital there and then to have their stomach pumped, then despair when a doctor tells you that infection with the AIDS virus is detectable in the blood only after three months. ‘Mellors,’ who would be subjected to a medical test immediately, would naturally be given the sack, and very certainly dragged before a court for gruesome crimes and downright mistreatment of animals, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Yes,” Frédéric interrupted me. “It is because of that I kept my mouth shut. And when my mother insisted on why I had burst out laughing, I could only reply that I found juicy such a juicy word.”
“And the evening continued its ordinary course?”
“Yes,” Frédéric said with a wink.
And did this story really happen? Oh, yes, just like that poor turkey, may someone break my neck if I have lied. Frédéric and I said good-bye to each other later, and I suppose that he, like a Lady Chatterley in heat, often jaunts down to the family estate in La Roche-en-Ardenne, for extra stuffing.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
SHANE ALLISON is the author of seven chapbooks, most recently I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass. He is the editor of Backdraft and Hot Cops, and his writing has appeared in Spork, Cause and Effect, monkey bicycle, Mississippi Review, Best Black Gay Erotica, Best Gay Erotica and Ultimate Gay Erotica. His first poetry collection, Slut Machine, is forthcoming from Rebel Satori Press.
TOMMY LEE “DOC” BOGGS, after a spell as an inmate of San Quentin, is now a medium-custody prisoner at California’s Sierra Corrections Center, serving out a seven-and-a-half year sentence for auto theft and burglary.
RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL (rachelkramerbussel.com) has edited more than twenty-five anthologies, including Spanked, Tasting Him, The Mile High Club, and Best Sex Writing 2008, 2009 and 2010. Her stories appear in Where the Boys Are, Quickies 3, and Dorm Porn, among others. She hosts the In the Flesh Reading Series in New York.
HANK FENWICK grew up in the Midwest, but not a lot, and was educated, quite thoroughly, in Chicago. Since then he has lived by pen and wits in New York, Los Angeles, and cities in between. “Holiday from Love” is from a work in progress, not too tentatively titled Moments of Passion.
JAMIE FREEMAN always dreamed of being in the Ziegfeld Follies, but was born too late and with too little talent. He went to college in Washington, D.C., and eventually became a writer. The rest is history. He can be reached at jamiefreeman2@gmail. com.
JIMMY HAMADA lives, loves and learns in New York City. He experiments with blending reality and fiction, as if there’s a difference. The story “fifteen minutes nude” is based on an actual session with a famous New York photographer.
TREBOR HEALEY (treborhealey.com) is the author of Through It Came Bright Colors, Sweet Son of Pan and A Perfect Scar & Other Stories. He coedited Queer & Catholic and contributed to Best Gay Erotica 2003, 2004, 2006, and Best of Best Gay Erotica 2 and Best American Erotica 2007.
RICHARD HENNEBERT was born in France but now lives in England, with his husband of fourteen years, Alan B. He teaches French and writes short stories.
DAVID HOLLY, writing balls out, has produced more cock-gripping stories and bubbly romances than you can shake your booty at. For a genuine tingle in your asshole, check out his complete bibliography at www.gaywriter.org.
JONATHAN KEMP is a British writer and academic who teaches gender studies, creative writing (drama and fiction), and literature, as well as being a DJ. His first novel, London Triptych, will be published in 2010.
