Boy Crazy, page 22
You find your footing. You climb. The seamed concrete is sharp against your skin.
You kneel in the lip. You don’t have time to read the transitions you imagined on the earth because, with a feeling close to dread, you with velvet ears and periscope eyes and millipede skin, you sense Boyd making his ascent. He has helped you rise before him. He has given you a boost at the bottom. He has told you where to place your hands. Now he is coming up. He is climbing to you, rising past fives, sixes, and one seven.
You peer over the rim. You see his dark curls crowning. You are conscious, you are very conscious of a new vista, the man you know by heart arriving headfirst. His short breaths chuff. You close your eyes.
Boyd is right. The lip has room enough for two. The pulpit divides your hips. Its shape resembles, now that you are both inside it, now that it contains you both, a stigma in a calyx on a forty-foot stem.
You lie feet to feet, head to head. Beyond your left elbow and his right elbow, all space drops away. The rope is coiled inside the boat. You are curled in the sky. You are towed instead by the rope of time. You turn your head. He turns his head. You look. You see.
You press down all your fingers.
Flowers won’t grow in stone.
You are the flower.
All else is stone.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DALE CHASE has been writing male erotica for a decade, with more than a hundred stories published, including translations into Italian and German. Her single literary story appeared in Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly
MARTIN DELACROIX writes novels, novellas and short fiction. His stories have appeared in two gay anthologies, Bend Over, Big Boy (Torquere Press 2008) and Best Gay Love Stories 2009 (Alyson Books) and his story Passion Play was published as a stand-alone piece by Torquere Press (2009).
THOMAS FUCHS (fuchsfoxxx@cs.com) has spent much of his career writing television documentaries and some print nonfiction. He has a story included in another Cleis anthology, Boys in Heat.
WILLIAM T. HATHAWAY (www.peacewriter.org) began his writing career in the 1960s as a newspaper reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area, after which he joined the U.S. Special Forces to write a book about the Vietnam War. A World of Hurt won a Rinehart Foundation Award.
DAVID HOLLY’s (www.gaywriter.org) stories have appeared in Best Gay Romance 2009, Tales of Travelrotica for Gay Men, My First Time, Ultimate Gay Erotica, Dorm Porn, Surfer Boys, and First Hand magazine.
JAMES MAGRUDER has had stories published in Bloom, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, and Subtropics. The University of Wisconsin Press is publishing his debut novel, Sugarless, in the fall of 2009. He also wrote the book for the Broadway musical Triumph of Love.
ANTHONY MCDONALD is the author of three novels, Adam and Orange Bitter, Orange Sweet, both originally published by Gay Men’s Press, and Blue Sky Adam—a sequel to Adam—from BigFib Books.
F. A. POLLARD’s stories have appeared in The Ultimate Zombie, Chilled to the Bone and The Year’s Best Horror Stories: XXII. Current projects include a speculative-fiction novel entitled Shattered Mirrors.
TONY PIKE’s erotic fiction has previously appeared in Zipper and Vulcan magazines in the UK, and in the anthology Dorm Porn II. He is looking forward to the publication of his first full-length erotic novel, Summer Term Boys.
JEFFREY ROUND’s (www.jeffreyround.com) most recent novel is Death in Key West, second in the Bradford Fairfax series, after The P-Town Murders. His other novels are A Cage of Bones, and, coming in fall 2009, The Honey Locust.
MICHAEL ROWE’s (www.michaelrowe.com) most recent book, Other Men’s Sons, won the 2008 Randy Shilts Award for Nonfiction. A past winner of the Lambda Literary Award, he is also a contributing writer to The Advocate.
SIMON SHEPPARD (www.simonsheppard.com) is the editor of the Lambda Award-winning Homosex: Sixty Years of Gay Erotica and Leathermen, and the author of In Deep: Erotic Stories; Kinkorama: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Perversion ; Sex Parties 101; and Hotter Than Hell and Other Stories.
NATTY SOLTESZ (www.bacteriaburger.com) has had stories published in Best Gay Erotica 2009, Second Person Queer, and Best Gay Romance 2009; he regularly publishes fiction in the magazines Freshmen, Mandate, and Handjobs.
DAVEM VERNE’s stories have appeared in numerous anthologies including Best Gay Erotica 2005, Frat Sex, Latin Boys, Dorm Porn, Travelrotica, and Inside Him.
ALANA NOËL VOTH’s writing has appeared in Best Gay Erotica 2004, 2007, and 2008; Best Gay Bondage Erotica; Where the Boys Are; Backdraft; Leathermen and Best American Erotica 2005. Newer stories appear in Best Women’s Erotica 2009; The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Volume 8 and Oysters & Chocolate: Erotica of Every Flavor.
ROB WOLFSHAM (www.wolfshammy.com) is a twenty-two-year-old west Texas native. He lives in Lubbock and is working on How I Fell in Love with a Terrorist Mastermind.
CARI ZABLE is a Colorado girl who loves snow and sunshine. She has a husband, a cat and a library that happily consume much of her time.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
RICHARD LABONTÉ lives on small, friendly Bowen Island, off the coast of British Columbia, with his husband Asa and their dogs Zak and Tiger-Lily. He reads many books and writes about them; reads many, many short stories and edits them into such anthologies as Bears, Boys in Heat, Hot Gay Erotica, Where the Boys Are, Best Gay Bondage Erotica, Best Gay Romance 2008 and 2009, Country Boys, Boy Crazy, and the fifteen-year-old Best Gay Erotica series. He has coedited (with Lawrence Schimel) The Future Is Queer, First Person Queer (winner of the 2007 Lambda Literary Anthology Award), and Second Person Queer, all from Arsenal Pulp Press. Contact: tattyhill@gmail.com.
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Labonté.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by Cleis Press Inc., P.O. Box 14697, San Francisco, California 94114.
eISBN : 978-1-573-44457-6
“Army Brat” © 2009 by Dale Chase. “A Beautiful Motorcycle” © 2009 by Martin Delacroix. “Larry and His Father” © 2009 by Thomas Fuchs. “Coming of Age” © 2009 by William T. Hathaway. “The Dolphin Temple” © 2009 by David Holly. “Treasure Map” © 2009 by James Magruder. “Mercutio’s Romeo” © 2009 by Anthony McDonald. “Game Boyz” © 2009 by F. A. Pollard. “After Stoolball” © 2009 by Tony Pike. “This Is Not Your Country” © 2009 by Jeffrey Round. “August” © 2009 by Michael Rowe. “War and Peace” © 2009 by Simon Sheppard, first appeared in an earlier version as “My Sex Education” (Freshman Club, 2000), reprinted with the author’s permission. “Paperboys” © 2009 by Natty Soltesz. “The Pasta Closet” © 2009 by Davem Verne. “Sundelin” © 2009 by Alana Noël Voth. “The Viking” © 2009 by Rob Wolfsham. “To Thine Own Self” © 2009 by Cari Zable.
Richard Labonte, Boy Crazy
