Best Gay Erotica 2003, page 19
I don’t like him looking up from his knees with those eyes. Back up against the wall, he says he wants to shoot, but we’re still prolonging this night together for more and more minutes. Neither of us objects. There were cars, but they couldn’t see us, not down here. There were people coming home in the dark across the street, but they don’t look back over their shoulders at the church, see us there that level below the ground of it, off to the side.
from The Limits of Pleasure
Daniel M. Jaffe
Looking for someone.
Looking looking. Naked but for white towels. No suits, no ties, uniforms or caps, no torn jeans or hard hats, no polo shirts, no designer slacks. Legs and arms and torsos and shadowed faces. Sweaty parts, cooled in the Boston summer by air conditioning. Sweaty. Men.
Thump thump thump—the music’s bass through his feet, up his shins to his crotch his sternum his heart.
In the dark corner, Dave leans back against a thin Italian, who grabs Dave’s ass through the towel. Reaching behind, Dave feels Italian’s taut belly, feels his soft inner thigh, his hard outer thigh, a submerged tumor (emerging tumor?) half a hard golf ball growing on the side of Italian’s thigh. “Poor bastard.” Dave’s not looking for him, but turns to embrace him, kisses him, runs his tongue along Italian’s thin mustache, runs his hand gently along the tumor. Another’s hand reaches from nowhere and tweaks Dave’s nipples and Italian’s, big hands, a fat body, a belly topped by a fuzzy white beard and straight pony tail, visibly blond even in the shadows of the baths, of the farthest, deepest corner of the baths, the suck corner with glory holes where a swarthy body with dark beard and square pecs is sucking an anonymous cock protruding through a perfectly round hole in the plywood. (A moment before, Dave had tried to touch Sucker’s tits, to enhance Sucker’s pleasure, but Sucker shoved Dave’s hands aside. The limits of pleasure, Dave thought.) Pony Tail reaches down between Dave and Italian, reaches down with two hands, takes their cocks, Italian’s uncut goyishe cock and Dave’s cut Jewish one. What limits pleasure? Dave thinks as Pony Tail squeezes his cock. Pleasure limits itself—too much pleasure; pain limits pleasure, fear limits pleasure, guilt limits pleasure, memory limits pleasure. Fucking memory limits pleasure.
Italian removes himself and walks away, but a short, chubby blond with a large, cylindrical head somewhat reminiscent, thinks Dave, of tyrannosaurus rex, moves in for a kiss. Whatever, Dave thinks and sucks in Dinosaur’s long, lizard-like tongue, feels Pony Tail’s fingers around his cock. The three go back to Pony Tail’s room, his cubicle, his closet where Pony Tail orders Dave to bite his fleshy tits, which Dave does, gently at first, then with fervor as Dinosaur drops to his knees to slurp on Dave’s cock, to make Dave’s soft cock hard, to suck and suck while Dave bites Pony Tail’s tits. Poppers pass around the cubicle, but Dave declines; “give me a headache,” he mumbles between chews. Pony Tail sticks a condom on his dick and Dinosaur sucks him off. Dave keeps biting Pony Tail’s tits, hugs him after he’s cum. Dave thinks to maybe put on a condom too, for the sake of principle, but thinks that Dinosaur should be smart enough to take care of himself and besides, Dave won’t shoot in his mouth. Even if he does, Dave’s test showed him clean. But tests can lie, so Dave won’t shoot. It’s a rule. Dave’s rule. A pre-test rule, a post-test rule, a Dave rule, Thou Shalt Not Kill, at least one commandment Dave obeys. The limits of pleasure despite the allure of risk. To spite the allure of risk. Risk can reach beyond the bounds of fucking memory, can circumvent it, block it, erase it. Enhance it, legitimize it, validate it. Risk redeems—there’s its allure and danger. The forbidden apple. Risk. Disobey God, Moses, strike that rock, get the water you seek, lose the Promised Land, become a hero forever. Dave pulls Dinosaur’s young healthy mouth off his cock. They leave the cubicle.
Dave breathes heavily for a while, then softly, then puts hand to cock and insists he’s ready for more. It’s a lie that men need lots of down time between fucks, a lie if the men are truly hot like Dave, if surrounding scents of musk and sweat are strong. “It’s a lie,” he laughs—a phallusy.
Dave wanders. In the shadows, an old man hobbles on arthritic feet; Dave feels an urge to approach, an urge he recognizes, the twin of his urge to run and avoid, his urge to escape the loving care of Grandma and her survivor friends who raised him—old Mr. Katz with his wrinkled bulbous nose, old Mr. Bialik with his wispy long beard and unfocused eyes, old Mr. Greenblatt with his arthritic wrists, all the old ladies with their checkerboard-cheek wrinkles, their wigs. These men who would shockle back and forth in the ecstasy of prayer, these women who would pinch Dave’s cheek at every encounter, who would deem him one of them because “he, too, this baby, knows the curse of loss.” Old Mr. Feinstein—a survivor; old Mr. Silverberg—a survivor; old Mrs. Kessman— a survivor: surviving their brothers who suffered bullet wounds and died, their daughters who hemorrhaged and died, their babies who starved and died, their mothers who grieved and died, their fathers who died from acid sizzling in their impotent guts, their sisters who died, their cousins who died, their aunts—their butchers, their bakers, their candlestick makers. The lucky survivors. Remember, Davey. Don’t ever forget. You’re one of us. Don’t ever forget, not for a minute, not for a second, an instant. A survivor. Remember remember remember. Make babies for the dead souls to inhabit. You’re one of us. A survivor. Give meaning to the loss. A survivor. Redeem their souls, redeem your own. You’re one of us. One of them one of them one of them. Dave’s childhood sense of belonging and comfort. Dave’s adolescent terror of ostracism and abandonment. Dave’s teenage longing to flee these people who recited God’s words declaring Dave’s pleasure wicked, words that would seek to limit Dave’s pleasure, to obliterate it, to provide a final biblical solution to the abomination that was Dave, all these surviving people, these surviving men, the many powerful old men, the incarnations of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in flowing Mideastern robes who crowded around the edges of Dave’s teenage fantasies and watched and jeered and hissed and hurled stones every time Dave jerked off at night to thoughts of young men.
To avoid the hobbling old man approaching down the corridor, Dave ducks into a dark, empty orgy room, leans against a wall, and waits. A giant enters, a giant so tall Dave can’t lick his neck even though Dave stands on tiptoe and tries. Dave sucks Giant’s nubby nipples, and Giant sighs. Dave reaches beneath Giant’s white towel and feels his thick, bulbous cock semihardened by a metal ring encircling the base of dick and balls. Dave licks his own hand, slickens Giant’s cock, pumps and pumps until another hand reaches over. Dave does not want to let go, Giant’s cock feels so thick and solid and strong in Dave’s slick hand, feels everything a cock should be, and Giant is moaning in Dave’s hand, but “the limits of pleasure,” Dave tells himself, so he lets the other hand take the cock from his. Community. Where Dave belongs. No risk of “outcast,” no risk of “abomination,” no risk of “shame,” of shandah, “scandal”. No reading of Leviticus on Yom Kippur to atone for sin. No reading of the Bible at all. No Yom Kippur at all. No sin at all. No sin. Community. A community of men. Survivors of a different terror. A terror, still. A mindless terror that does not seek and hunt and select its victims. A random terror. Survivors. Victims. Community. Dave is one of them because he, too, knows the curse of loss.
An athletic twenty-or-so-year-old with red hair and red mustache sits down in a plastic chair and buries his face beneath Dave’s towel, sucks Dave and rubs Dave’s cock with his hand, so good oh so good and Dave wants no limits and feels the risk swelling inside him, and wants to explode the risk, but this would be another’s risk, another’s risk in principle if not in reality or maybe in reality, maybe maybe, and Dave is allowed to risk only for himself, although he shouldn’t, he’s done that, he’s felt that terror, yet that’s the whole point. The limits of pleasure? He tells Red Mustache to stop and Red Mustache pulls away; but at the very last second, the very last instant, just as Dave snaps back his head, Red Mustache gorges himself on Dave’s spurting cock. Dave grimaces, then smirks at another who understands the redemption of risk. Dave feels good; Dave feels bad. Collaborator. Exterminator. Dirty or clean, the principle’s the same—Dave has allowed another to take risk. Accomplice. Conspirator. Commandment violator. Enraged at himself, not wanting to bear the rage alone, Dave plays with the leathery balls of a stocky black body barebacking a skinny white ass. Standing up and fucking without a condom. Thwack thwack thwack. Skinny White Ass leans over a plastic chair, that same plastic chair, while Stocky Black Body fucks him hard; Red Mustache on his knees sucking Skinny White Ass off while Dave plays with Stocky Black Body’s leathery balls. No better than the fucking SS. Dave yanks away his colluding hand, slaps himself across the face—now feels the sting. Others glance up but don’t pay attention. Remember the limits, Dave scolds himself. Remember.
Dave stands alone, watches, inhales the scent of sweat and dried cum, struggles to resist, can’t resist, struggles to resist, can’t resist, is drawn by the hook of scent snaking into his nostrils enticing him to a group grope in the room’s darkest corner, and while feeling hands on his chest Dave reaches out to touch the shoulder of a new one who’s walked over, muscled and dry skinned and standing off to the side, white or black Dave can’t even tell in the dark, Dave wanting to be sure that none will leave the room untouched by him so that no potential redeemer is left unexplored, unconnected, even though Dave knows that no one muscled or handsome or big-dicked or young can be Dave’s redeemer, the redeemer Dave has been avoiding for years, denying himself because he does not deserve it.
A chubby man pulls off Dave’s towel and drapes it over Dave’s head, over Dave’s face, covers Dave’s eyes in the dark—a goddamn kaffiyeh, Dave thinks, allowing the cloth to remain over his face while Chubby moves down, takes Dave into his mouth. Dave feels the warm tongue and silky cheeks and occasional scrape of upper teeth. Dave thinks to remove the towel from his head, then thinks to keep it so no one will see the joy on his face, the grimace of pain that is the expression of ecstatic joy, to keep it on and hide the fact that Dave is taking pleasure, so that no one, not even Dave, who is hovering above and watching himself the way others detach and watch when struggling to tolerate pain, will know and feel compelled to admit that he’s experiencing pleasure, moving beyond the limits of pleasure, beyond the—“No!” he shouts and pulls out and rushes from the room.
He cinches the white towel around his waist, stomps down the corridor, passes men lying face down, bare-ass naked men in private cubicles with doors wide-open, and more: bare-ass naked men lying on red foam barrels in the middle of a big room, men with faces turned to the wall so that no one would have to see whom they’re fucking, these bodies just lying there, empty, not being fucked because fuckers want to seduce, to feel power, and what power is there in entering a body so available? Most men, Dave thinks, don’t understand the limits of pleasure.
Dave walks, flips through a pile of safe sex brochures, wanders into an empty dark room—dark, but not completely. Dave stands against a wall, waits for the man he’s looking for, one who will finally offerDave feels that he can no longer wait, needs the redemption that is risk. Needs it now. A muscular man walks in, muscular and hairy, who stands next to Dave on the other side of a small waste basket between them. Dave, knowing this not to be his redeemer, reaches over anyway, rubs the muscular hairy chest, feels the muscles he sees outlined only in the dark. Muscular Hairy turns to Dave; they tug at each other’s tits, the waste basket between them. Another hand on Dave, on Dave’s back. A hand massaging Dave’s neck, a tongue licking Dave’s ear, a hand inclining Dave’s head, gently inclining Dave’s head down, toward mint-smelling lips beneath a snow-white goatee with a soft tongue that fills Dave’s mouth, and Dave moans, Muscular Hairy leaves, Dave embraces the short body with the minty, soft tongue, leans into the short body with the white goatee and minty soft tongue, the short body with the thin, loose skin of old age. Dave feels someone lift his towel, a mouth on his cock; he pulls back, looks down at a narrow face on a thin, kneeling body, a body so thin it is like paper, onion skin paper, a sheet of onion skin paper with a hooked Jewish nose and a mouth fervently sucking Dave’s cock. Dave thrusts his hips forward, gives his cock to this last sheet of onion skin paper from an antiquated, obsolete, discarded ream. Dave kisses Old Minty- Mouthed White Goatee; other bodies with white hair or little hair drift over to touch Dave’s firm pecs, squeeze his big balls until they hurt, but Dave says nothing because these old men rarely get to squeeze young balls. Dave envisions himself an angel draped in flowing white, with wings; he pictures even a goyishe halo over his head and knows that he’s breached the boundary, has exceeded the limits of pleasure, has begun his approach to the redemption of risk.
Yet another old man, one Dave knows is old by the stiffness of his neck, the hobble of his approaching, arthritic gait, that same old man from the corridor, the oldest old man in the room, in the baths, in the city, in the world, a man who, Dave is sure, would have the most biblical face Dave had ever seen if only the light in the room were brighter than that of graveyard dusk, a Rembrandt face, an Old Testament face, that old man grabs Dave’s head in both hands, shakily pulls with amazing strength, and presses Dave’s lips to his. Old lips, thin lips, parched lips, forty-years-in-the-desert lips, a darting tongue; he moans old-man moans, ancient moans, moans made by old men lost in the ecstasy of prayer on Yom Kippur at the end of summer when atoning for sin, old men, sweaty, stinky old men with stinky Yom Kippur breaths, unbrushed teeth on the fast day, no water no food no toothpaste to wipe away the prior night’s film of muck, old men, the seventy sages of the Sanhedrin allowing Davey to sit among them, to pray with them, to belong with them. The ancient’s tongue writhes in Dave’s mouth, against Dave’s young-man tongue, Dave’s young-man palate, Dave’s young-man cheeks, and Dave pictures yellow teeth he feels but cannot see, imagines the familiar loose clacking of skeleton-like dentures he does not hear, tastes the stench of the camps in his mouth, the acrid fire and smoke and putrid shower stall gas on Ancient Yom Kippur Breath’s tongue, the taste of singed hair and burning flesh in Dave’s mouth, snaking down Dave’s throat into Dave’s lungs, throughout all of Dave, luring Dave, enticing Dave, Delilah in Dave’s lungs. Balm the suffering, redeem the dead, take the risk, redeem yourself. Dave cums in Jewish Onion Skin’s mouth, shoots his risk, his life, shares his risk, his life, his risk of death, returns his life from whence it came. Ancient Yom Kippur Breath kisses Dave deeply, gently shoves Dave to his knees, and Dave obediently laps at Ancient Yom Kippur Breath’s small circumcised cock, feels Ancient Yom Kippur Breath’s soft circumcised cock gradually harden between Dave’s lips, in Dave’s mouth, Jewish risk, Jewish pleasure, harder and harder, and Dave sucks until fire ignites a bush on Sinai, sucks until the Golden Calf explodes in flame, sucks until Sodom and Gomorrah burn to cinders.
Triton Rising
David Garnes
After barely more than a day in Athens, John knew he needed to get out of the city. The August heat, the awful snarls of traffic, the exhaust that hung heavy in the noxious air and—not least of all—his own shaky state of affairs: It was all too much. Even the small hotel he remembered from before (Martin had insisted back then that they stay in the old Plaka district, within walking distance of the Acropolis) seemed changed, diminished in charm. His room was clean and pleasant enough, with whitewashed walls and a French door that opened to a wrap-around balcony connecting the outside rooms. If he leaned carefully over the edge of the wrought-iron railing, John could see a corner column of the Parthenon rising high above the jumble of open-fronted shops and taverna signs and rooftop umbrella tables.
But had it been this noisy, even in the early afternoon? Maybe he and Martin hadn’t spent much time in their room, at least not during the day, he reflected wryly. At night, tired and eager for the tiny bed they shared, they wouldn’t have noticed or minded the din of passersby in the narrow street below or the incessant sound of bouzouki music that lasted into the early hours.
John had headed straight for the Acropolis when he arrived from London the day before. To his surprise, he was feeling relatively relaxed, hopeful, even, for a good afternoon. He climbed the steep, winding street that led from his hotel to the entrance to the citadel, where he waited in line with a swarm of Japanese tourists taking photographs of everything in sight. A handsome Scandinavian or possibly German couple, healthy and blond and dressed in identical khaki shirts and skimpy shorts, asked if he’d take their picture.
He obliged, but replied, “No, I’ve no camera,” when they asked if he’d like his taken too. Not this time, he thought, remembering the expensive Canon, complete with light meter and tripod, that Martin had insisted on lugging absolutely everywhere on their trips.
As John returned the camera, he noticed the large bulge at the young man’s button fly. As if aware of John’s glance, the man adjusted himself even further to one side with a quick hitch of his fingers. He smiled and walked away, his calves rounded and muscular, his buttocks two perfect mounds moving beneath the stretched cotton of his shorts.
Once past the ticket booth, John was disappointed to find that the Parthenon, rising before him and dominating the rocky terrain, was now chained off to visitors. On their earlier visit he and Martin had spent the whole morning on the Acropolis, wandering around the rocky expanse but repeatedly drawn back to the magnificent temple. They had roamed its vast open interior and later sat on the sun-baked steps under the east pediment, eating oranges and basking in the heat.
“You’re right beneath where the horse would be, my dear,” John had said, referring to that majestic head now sitting, incongruously, in the climate-controlled confines of the British Museum.
