Best Gay Erotica 2002, page 2
I’ve realized through judging this collection that eroticism is about a lot of things: love, humor, fantasy, fear, domination, fatalism, danger, and even sadness and death. I suppose the French don’t call orgasm le petit mort for nothing, but in the end perhaps the real challenge is eroticizing those things we fear the most. For all the most ambitious safe-sex marketing campaigns that have been undertaken around the world, I’ve yet to see anyone adequately eroticize the donning of a condom. As Australian writer Tony Ayres has said, “Rubber is the ubiquitous interceptor between fantasy and reality.”
One triumph in this collection, however, is Andy Quan’s “Positive,” which proves absolutely the ability love has to conquer fear. It shows a spirit that, if we’d had the courage to harness it as a community fifteen years ago, may have altered the course of the AIDS epidemic much earlier. We are a ways off yet from having the freedom to collate a collection like this without mentioning the A word (or acronym), and even when we don’t, it lurks in the minds and actions of the characters like a wolf in the woods. When you’ve lived through twenty years of the epidemic like me and survived, more through good luck than good judgment, you can’t help but search out the subtexts that relate to AIDS. We’ve all been affected by it whether we are twenty or sixty, but the condom rears its blousy head rarely in these tales. Some writers interrupt the narrative to do the “right thing” and put one on. Some don’t mention it at all, and that silence speaks volumes in terms of certain new fashions in behavioral subversion.
But, hell, listen to me—how dreary and academic I’ve become when just a few pages away you’ll be experiencing all sorts of crazy, pants-packing filth.
Hey, kids—for starters! Howdja like the sound of an LSD-fueled three-way involving Scott Brassart, John Waters, and Divine? It’s especially twisted when the author has to eat a Snickers bar from Divine’s fluro-pink “tuna tunnel” while the film-maker takes him from behind and Mink Stole lies in waiting with a huge rubber strap-on...not your cup of LSD? Well, ponyboys are all the rage in San Francisco, I hear, so perhaps riding around on a gorgeous boy with a harness and horsetail attached to a butt plug might do it for you. Ah yes, the rich are different, and with a stable full of ponyboys there’s always plenty of jousting, and James Williams seems a real emissary of this perky new fashion!
On a different erotic track, Karl Von Uhl takes “the first-time story” to an entirely new level as a seasoned homosexual recalls explicitly (and rapturously) his first fucking at eleven by a much, much older boy; Marshall Moore takes a fetish such as voyeurism into a startling new realm; and “Harder” by Ian Phillips will take you way, way beyond the pain threshold with his extraordinary meditation on S/M.
Perhaps the funniest story of all for me is “I’m a Top” by Otta Coca. This story of an airhead Chelsea gym queen shows that the most outlandish fantasy life can still survive the impossible rents of Manhattan, and that pretty is as pretty does.
As a community that usually has at least a passing acquaintance with pornography, we suffer from a slightly jaded palate. As writers we no longer expect to cut it with “throbbing hard cocks, tight ass-holes, and wild outpourings of jis’.” Pornographers always talk about the “money shot,” but I’m not sure that it continues to have quite the same fiscal value as our desires and practices become increasingly diverse (and some might say perverse).
And several of these stories are about young guys whose lives are really fucked up from abusive childhoods. Abusive childhoods seem to be the perfect backdrop for low self-esteem and freaky sexual behavior in later years. Truth or Fiction? Who can say? But it surely sets the stage for some weird, fucked-up sexual shenanigans. God knows Dennis Cooper’s career survives on a seemingly bottomless pit of such sex-freaks, and it seems his kind of dark sexuality is becoming acceptable in the broader sweep of both American and Australian erotica. And Mel Smith’s “Cocky,” Michael Stamp’s “Chip Off the Old Block,” and J. T. LeRoy’s “Natoma Street” are certainly continuing that tradition.
In a country like the USA where capitalism dictates that everything and everyone is a commodity, eroticism ends up being very much about what fantasies people can afford or whose fantasy you might qualify for. With a feast of cultures to choose from and a dominant Anglo-white male culture controlling the purse strings, the sexual act develops all sorts of levels of symbolism. Will you eat Spanish, Chinese, Italian, African, or Cajun tonight? Will you fuck Spanish, Chinese, Italian, African, or Cajun tonight? For the promiscuous Romeo these choices may occupy similar degrees of space in the mind of an eager consumer. Even a sixteen-year-old street kid is at the economic mercy of affluent men in cars with complicated sexual appetites, and when sex is being bought in some of these stories, it is about very different things than love. It is sometimes about very dark things indeed. Those who’ve never known love, however, seem tend not to miss it and certainly never expect it as they plumb the shadowy depths of the American dream.
The “master and slave” dynamics of many stories is a testament to the ability of some men (and women) to turn their most “politically incorrect” imaginings into fiction, if nothing else.
And, hell, if you can’t be a bit fucked up in your own imagination, where can you be? So enter now this 2002 volume of gay erotica. This book is becoming an important annual chronicle of our own self-discovery. There’ll be places you’d love to be and places you wouldn’t want to visit, though erotica is the great subtext to our lives, and as Wilde himself said, “One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.’” Or would you prefer Federico Garcia Lorca’s “the day we stop resisting our instincts, we’ll have learned how to live.”
Either way, the 2002 collection is all yours. Tuck into it, you dirty sods.
Losing It
John Orcutt
I’m lying on my stomach on the bed with a pillow tucked under my chin. He’s slowly parting my asscheeks and very slowly, very gently lapping at my tight hole. I moan just a little bit. “You like that?” he asks. I nod vigorously and he licks one of his fingers and presses it against the opening until I give way. He slowly fucks me with the one finger and then he spits on a second and pushes them both against my ass. “A good lover will take his time to make you feel comfortable, work up to it,” he instructs. “How does this make you feel?” Just like a therapist. OK, yeah, I’m in bed with my therapist. It’s a long story.
Considering how amazingly rounded my heels are from circling the block for the better part of two decades, I am still what is commonly referred to as vanilla. I try not to couple with anyone who requires paraphernalia or special outfits in order to have sex. I have never understood the lure of leather and am still waiting for the gay community to eroticize cotton. Like most people I have very specific things I like to do, and don’t like to do, sexually. I don’t like to go home with people. Quick and uncomplicated has been a formula that’s worked for me for years. “Do ’em where you find ’em” is my motto. I also hate talkers. Chatter during sex should only consist of directions, updates, and forecasts. I am not your boy and, at a boyish 35, I am certainly not your daddy. Say “daddy” in any context and images of my father mowing the lawn appear instantly, dooming any mood approaching horny. Preferences? I had a tonsillectomy as an adult, which I like to think of as the only gay cosmetic surgery I’ll ever need.
Despite these limitations, I do get plenty of action. I’m a standard 5 foot 11 inches, I have jet black hair and the kind of ice blue eyes one generally finds on Alaskan huskies pulling sleds. I don’t have a gym body but swim and practice yoga on a regular basis. I guess I’m just not that good at fantasy play and role-playing and verbalizing. How many times have I been perfectly happy down on my knees sucking off some hottie when he insists, “You want that dick, doncha,” pulling it out of my mouth and slapping me across the face with it and actually expecting an answer to his ill-timed and highly rhetorical query? “Yes, I want it. That’s why I just sat in a smoky, dark bar through four beers, half a pack of cigarettes, and your boring life story, so that I could wrap my lips around your big fatty despite the fact that I’m going to have to walk home at sunrise while it’s raining out. However, now that you’re caning me with it I’m a little less enthusiastic.”
Despite years of frequenting video booths, parks, sex clubs, bathhouses, warehouse districts, backrooms, and the apartments of numerous strangers, I’m still a virgin. No, it’s true. In the strictest sense of the term I am a virgin. Please keep it under your hat as it could obviously ruin my standing in many social circles. It really is amazing that an attractive, sexually active gay man in his thirties can say this. Even the butchest top men have been fucked at least once.
Why? I’m not sure. Maybe I’m saving it. Maybe it has never truly appealed to me. Maybe I’ve got some sort of hang-up. But it seems like something I should know how to do in a pinch. It’s like working for the AAA and not knowing how to change a tire. I think I figured that when Mr. Right came along, I’d bite the bullet (and pillow) and learn to love being sodomized. However, after hundreds of Mr. Right Nows, Mr. Wrongs, and Mr. What-the-Fucks, I started sizing up my friends like women assessing potential sperm donors. I had chosen a handful of potential candidates on whom to bestow the honor of busting my cherry if I still had it by the age of thirty.
That was half a decade ago. It’s cute and somewhat flirty when you’re a teen or in your twenties to let your curious date know you’ve never been fucked. When you’re thirty-five and you’ve been sexually active for nineteen years, it’s downright creepy. It’s not that I haven’t gotten any offers. I got a lot. And a lot more once they discovered it was untrodden territory, which is why I started to act like a stone-cold top, when I’m not. In fact, I’m the most passive top in the universe. It takes an extremely bossy bottom to launch me into action. Generally, I only fuck tricks when they are screamers. It is the equivalent of stuffing a sock in their mouth. Also, I’m uncut, and I think safe sex is important, and, well...perhaps other uncut guys will understand, but it’s kinda of like trying to put on pantyhose over a pantsuit—just not that comfortable.
So, until this year when asked, “Do you get fucked?” I always said, “No” in such a way that my trick du jour knew it was nonnegotiable. They never pursued the subject.
Rich didn’t do that. On our very first date, six months ago, when he asked if I ever had been, I had to answer honestly. He didn’t seem to care why, and I think he saw a challenge—and I saw salvation from my ass becoming the Miss Havisham of the gay world. Because he used to be a whore (opposites do attract—I’ve always given it away free), I figured he was a trained professional and would be the perfect candidate.
My first task was, of course, to get ready. I’m a regular Girl Scout when it comes to a project. I am also the kind of person who has to clean the entire house before anyone visits. Here’s a question Dear Abby doesn’t get that often: Is it less shaming to buy one personal hygiene item but make several such trips than to buy a whole lot of personal hygiene items at once? I was asking myself this as I sized up the aloof staff at my local drugstore. I was trying to determine the fastest, most unobservant clerk and whether I wanted to save ten cents on a generic brand versus the tried and true. Sidling up to the checkout carrying a half dozen enemas with a line of people behind you including two of New York’s finest is embarrassing. Finding yourself on your elbows with your face pressed against your (very clean) cold tile bathroom floor staring at the underside of your toilet while squeezing a small plastic bottle filled with god-knows-what into your ass like the little man on the box is mortifying.
Assuming everything needed to be clean and trouble free inside and out, I tried to sandwich my butt waxing somewhere among a manicure, a pedicure, and a haircut. If you’re wondering what butt waxing feels like, don’t ask your straight female friends. However, when they tell you to go to a Russian lady, listen to them. Svetlana was a dear. I assumed this would occur on all fours, but she kept me lying face down and the pain was minimal—I mean, I’m not Sasquatch. There was a tricky moment when she asked, “You vant zee eenside, too?” “Ah, um, yeah,” I mumbled, as if the idea had never occurred to me. “Vell, I veell need you to help me,” she instructed. The image of me prone pulling my ass cheeks apart with both hands while a large (yet gentle) Russian women holding a pot of hot wax pulls strips of hair off my ass is not one I’ll soon forget.
These weren’t the only problems. Rich’s was not what one would consider a “starter dick.” If it were a mobile home it would easily be a double-wide. I decided to have several dates with what the package referred to as “The Love Club,” chosen for its tapered effect, allowing one to, well, loosen up, a bit at a time. After all this preparation, both mental and physical, you can imagine how I felt when Rich spit on the head of his dick and rammed it against my lubeless ass. “How’d everything go?” asked my informed and expectant roommates later, much like a group of Third World women waiting for me to produce the bloodied sheet. “Fine,” I answered. “He said, ‘Am I hurting you?’ and I said, ‘duh’ and smacked him.”
After several such failed attempts, Rich dumped me. I can only assume it was because my asshole didn’t slam open after one glass of wine and a Johnny Mathis album. Though my virginity was still intact, my interest in keeping so no longer was. I decided my problem was in my head, and, like any college graduate, I decided to seek therapy. My first therapist, an elderly, myopic Jewish man in a badly frayed cardigan, insisted this was due to my father grabbing me by the scruff of the neck and kicking me in the ass when I was a child. It turns out that my ass will open like “a flower in the springtime” once my father passes away. After using my eighty-eight-year-old living grandfather as a standard, and some quick math, I decided I didn’t want my asshole blooming when I was in my sixties. My second therapist, an environmentally ill lesbian who insisted that I not wear deodorant, concluded I was not just a control queen but the ultimate control queen. Who else could maintain such a “hypervigilance over the barbarians crashing my gates for so long”? My third therapist, a straight woman who had never been told that home perms are never an answer and needed the term “rimming” defined, determined that I was an overprotective mother and my ass was my child, and that I didn’t want to expose it to the harsh realities of life.
Shortly after my final session, my roommate and I were meandering through the meat-packing district on our way to a party. We overheard a shlumpy businessman on his cell phone explaining, “She’s a therapist...a sex surrogate,” to some befuddled friend or family member. Trust me when I tell you that finding a hot gay sex therapist who will actually fuck you isn’t that easy. It took a lot of talking to people and much trial and error. This is like my eighth session with him—the first five were all talk and no play. The sixth was all show and no touch, and the last session was pretty much foreplay and chat about the fact that this one would be the big fuck.
Roger, the therapist, is thin and tight with ropy muscles. His hair is brown and a little too long with a sprinkle of gray here and there. He seemed like a good therapist, but I wasn’t sure he’d be a good lover. After the fifth session where I finally saw him naked, I didn’t really care. He has one of those cocks that inspire porn directors. It’s proportionally too thick for his thin frame, with two veins on either side that run up and down from base to head like the Yangtze and the Volta. When he gets really excited the head turns a dark purple as if it’s going to explode. His balls are chunky and hang low as if he had his ball sac professionally stretched to just the right length. Hair-wise, he has a light sprinkling around his nipples and on his ass and balls, and that perfect V from his navel to his pubic hair.
That’s why I’m lying face down getting ready to give it the old college try while Roger lubes up his third finger. I realize that there really isn’t any reason for me to remain a virgin. I’m not saving myself for anyone in particular, as if there were anyone in particular. I actually am not here anymore to lose my cherry. I’m here because I want Roger to fuck me. I want his fat, veiny cock inside me. He’s fucking me with three fingers and I’m rocking like a crazed three-year-old on a hobby-horse. Jesus, I’m so glad that I’m here and I’m going to get fucked. I want him to ram it in me. I feel him start to place the head against my ass.
“Yeah, stick it in me,” I say.
I can’t believe I’m not only saying it, but meaning it. I want Roger to split me right in two with his donger. I want him to tear me open. I want to sit and spin on that thing Thai style. They could lower me in a basket from the ceiling so that my asshole could swallow his cock whole, and then I’ll pound against his pubic bone until he’s black and blue.
“Yeah, fuck me. Fuck me hard!” I scream.
“I’m afraid our time is up for this week.”
Positive
Andy Quan
Your skin is translucent, a thin layer of warm glass like the pane of a picture frame, the painting below of soft whites and pinks with constellations of beauty marks and freckles. The heat from my hands resting on your back passing into me. Perfect conduction of energy.
I never meet men in bars or at dance parties, though I’ve met hundreds of men who do. Finally, I break my never. A dance party in Sydney, a yearly fund-raiser for the state AIDS organization. There, chemically flying on ecstasy bumped up with hits of acid, I wandered through the crowd aimlessly, wearing a halo of lights and haze and spare vibrations from the dance track.
