Bears, page 3
I awoke when the creature began to undress me. He was sitting up, pulling off my boots and socks, my jeans. I let him strip me, finding myself now eager to join him in his nakedness. There came a fleeting thought of my friends because I was surely enjoying the ultimate wilderness experience.
When I lay naked he began to explore me, pulling on my soft cock, fondling my balls, rubbing my smooth skin. His palms were pinkish brown, the backs of his hands quite furry, his touch surprisingly gentle even though his hands were coarse. And they were hands, pure human, even as I found I preferred the idea of paws.
He seemed enamored of my relatively hairless body. Being fair, I had just a silky patch of pubes and a smattering under the arms, but he petted me as if I had a luxurious coat. He kept this up for some time and I finally put a hand on his arm, then his chest. He shifted so he lay beside me and while he enjoyed my smooth body I waded into his fur.
I found a tit and could not resist rolling over to get my mouth on it. There was no way around the fur so I licked his coat as I got the nipple to my lips, my other hand at his other tit, kneading like some kitten. His nipple was big and prominent and I sucked and played until I was fully aroused again. His hand moved between my legs, worked around to my hole, and I felt a hairy finger go in. He prodded me as I tit-sucked and to complete the perfection I slid a hand down to his crotch and found the big dick hard.
The second fuck was unlike the first. Urgency gone, he was almost sensual and quite human. He gently disengaged me from his tit and guided me to his cock, pushing my head until I did what he wanted. He rolled onto his back and I crawled over to get him into my mouth.
As I sucked the fat knob, I knew it to be a man’s penis, never mind how big. It was way too familiar. When he raised his hips slightly I knew to take more so I descended as far as possible, which was maybe halfway, my mouth stretched to capacity around the biggest prick I’d ever encountered.
I thought he’d come as I sucked him but he surprised me. Never mind that I jerked off as I fed and enjoyed a surprisingly strong second climax. He just lay there murmuring, then finally eased me off and rolled me over. With me on my knees, he got in behind but rather than ramming it in as before, I felt him poking around with his cock, his hands parting my cheeks, till finally the fat prick popped in.
He issued a low rumble, just short of a growl, and I wanted to tell him I agreed, it was pure pleasure, but then he began an easy thrust and coherent thought dissolved into pure fuckery.
He was exceptionally wet so we were well lubed and I wondered if this natural lubrication was some animal manifestation that had come upon him from years in the wild. Absent man’s artifice, he created his own juice so his big dick was smooth as it blazed a path inside me. I’d read about cocks up into bowels in porn stories and now I was living it because when he had it all the way in, I truly felt him in my gut.
His stamina was impressive. Time passed because the air began to cool but still he fucked on; finally, without disengaging, he rolled us onto our sides and continued, hairy arms now around my middle.
And I did remember that I was from another world and must at some point go back to it even though a certain possibility had gotten started in me. I could discard clothes, society, life as I knew it, for the larger, freer world; run naked in the woods with a creature companion, fuck at will.
There was no roar with this climax. He did utter a cry but it was human, breathy at first, building as he began to thrust in earnest, followed by a long, low grunting I knew all too well.
Then he went quiet and I knew he slept. The big dick had softened somewhat yet remained inside me simply by its natural girth. I gently eased forward and it slipped out.
Rolling onto my back, feeling wonderfully used, I noted the canopy darkening. Night was about to fall, which seemed to require action on my part. I should get dressed and try to find my way back to the trail, to the inevitable search party, and I sat up with every intention of doing so, yet looking down at the slumbering creature, all else fell away and I lay back down, curling against his furry body. In his slumber, he wrapped an arm around me, and pulled me close.
LEATHER-BEAR APPETITES
Jeff Mann
Stand naked before this morning’s bathroom mirror, one week before your forty-eighth birthday. Buddy, you’re holding up tolerably well. All bear, that’s for sure: salt-and-pepper beard, chest and belly hair, tribal tattoos, pecs and arms pumped up from weight lifting. Then there’s the moderate belly, something you love on other men but never have been too enthused about on yourself. If it weren’t for the bear movement, you well know that you’d be considered too hefty and old for anyone to want. As it is, you embrace the titles of Leather Bear and Daddy Bear with great gratitude; they’re identities that have netted you many admirers.
From whence this belly, you growl, rubbing its curve. You’re two-hundred twenty pounds, heaviest you’ve been in all your life. You look best about one-ninety, dammit. This thick physique, this run-to-fat metabolism you inherited from your father. You’ve spent the last thirty years falling in and out of diets; you love good food and drink too much ever to be thin. Ten years with your partner, John, ten years of his fine talents in the kitchen on top of yours (you, descendant of so many excellent country cooks), plus regular imbibing of wine, Manhattans, martinis, mint juleps, plus too much sedentary reading and writing…from thence this belly, this belly the furry solid symbol of memory, your body’s stubborn, not-to-be-simply-shed memory of multitudinous good meals. Just this week, you and your husbear have whipped up hummus, tsatsiki, Southern eggplant salad, chicken and pork kabobs with mango chutney and pita bread, turkey-sausage-and-mushroom sauce atop radiatori. Next week, at your birthday celebration in Key West, Lord, there’ll be shrimp, Cuban pork, black beans and flan, piña coladas and Key lime pie sampled from as many restaurants as your limited vacation time permits.
Food and sex, what else is there? you are wont to joke with bear bravado. (Well, booze, of course. Booze, books, music, mountains, movies, forests, friends, and family. Does that cover it? Just about.) This morning perhaps—since John has just bought you both new mountain bikes and you’re thus likely to exercise more often—perhaps you can get away with a big, fattening, unhealthy Southern breakfast, the kind of meal you grew up on and so forever crave, the kind midlife health concerns rarely allow. Buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy, that’s your specialty, one of John’s favorites. It’s what he deserves today, bless him, after the roped-up fucking he gave you last night. Bears are all about appetite.
Quietly you pull on camo shorts, letting him sleep late. In the kitchen, barefoot, bare-chested, sipping coffee, you gather the ingredients. Cut Crisco into self-rising flour, the way your grandmother taught you, then add buttermilk. Knead the dough firmly, gently, the way you do a lover’s beefy torso or crotch. Waiting for the biscuits to bake, fondle your nipples, still sore from last night’s lovemaking. Rub your hairy, growly bear-belly, through the camo cloth, tug your cock. Remember what flesh remembers, blessed history of men and meals, when hungers so sweetly converged.
The great passion of your life, you must start with him, the few feasts you shared. Thomas is middle-aged now too, plump and even grayer than you. But today, with the scent of biscuits filling this house where you spend your life with John, not him, you want to see him now as he was then, when you wanted him more than you’ll want anyone again, a short, well-muscled, thickly hairy cub with a sharp tongue, sharp mind, and impish grin.
It’s 1991, and how you want to please him. Perhaps, if you give him enough, if you make love to him more passionately and perversely than anyone else ever can, perhaps he will leave his lover, he will stay with you, he will not leave town at summer’s end. Here are the surprise gifts you bring to your assignations: carved wooden boxes, spheres of amethyst, books on the Kabbalah. Here are bottles of German wine, cream-cheese Danishes, almond croissants, lemon squares. You present these tidbits to him like offerings, like the fruits of the harvest that your heathen ancestors used to lay inside stone circles, by sacred wells and on woodland altars, prayers of the supplicant for favor.
Today you sit on the deck with him, sipping Moselle. You are both shirtless in the balm of late May. Sun and the breeze-stirred shadows of maple leaves ripple over his bare chest, the rich brown hair over his heart. Soon you will buckle a black-leather, metal-studded dog collar around his neck and lead him inside. You will knot one bandana between his teeth, knot another over his eyes, rope him spread-eagle to the bed, and suck his nipples and cock. What you feel for him is what many feel for Christ, and, when you have him naked, bound, and gagged, a willing sacrifice, he is more beautiful in his submission than anything on earth. But right now you listen to him—how he loves to talk, how he loves how you listen—you listen to the wind in the leaves, you sip the wine and savor cream-cheese Danish, the buttery flakes scattering on your belly hair. You feel the time together so rapidly running out. Young as you are, you somehow sense nothing will ever taste so sweet again.
Another day, deep into July, you are driving up the Shenandoah Valley, taking Thomas to his professional conference. Consummate liar, he’s told his spouse that he’s traveling with fellow students, but he’s secretly here with you instead. The windows are down, summer air pours over your bare chest, Carly Simon’s singing “These are the good old days.” He’s so desirable; it’s such bliss to be with him. Despite the homophobic hooting of those driving by, he feeds you bits of blueberry scone, as if the two of you were truly intimate, truly spouses, not just fuck-buddies. You wonder if he loves you, and, if not, why not. It never occurs to you that the dangerous, needy, obsessive depth of your love is the very thing that makes it impossible for him to love you in return. And he is, for all intents and purposes, married. He’s just having a little erotic adventure; he doesn’t want some crazy poet to wreck his life. Nearly two decades later, when you are in his shoes, then, then, fool, you will understand.
So many meals you cook for him, hoping that your domestic talents might convince him what a perfect husband you could be. There’s hummus rich with olive oil and tahini, there’s kung pao chicken spicy with peppers and crunchy with peanuts, there’s tabouleh he criticizes for lacking sufficient parsley. There’s a feast to celebrate Beltane: chicken curry with rice, homemade puri and mango chutney, apple strudel with ice cream. You cook all day, because nothing is too much trouble in your quest to impress him. There could be orange-glazed pork loin, spanakopita, or sauerbraten with potato dumplings, but these are meals that the presence of his spouse, the limitations of your adulterous time together, never allow.
Thomas is a meal in and of himself, your communion wafer, your hirsute god-loaf. Again and again you bring the little bear full of honey to your trysts. Again and again you dribble clover honey over his hairy nipples, his balls, the head of his cock. As if he were a big bearish biscuit, as if he were something entirely edible, your own private banquet. God knows you want to devour him, but licking honey off his nakedness has to be enough. There are, inconveniently, laws against cannibalism, against abduction. You want to keep him bound and gagged in your basement till his beard goes gray. You want your cock up his ass and his chest hair beneath your tongue till the stars tarnish.
He leaves, of course, at summer’s end. You cry in his lap, you shake his hand on your office steps, he walks away, he and his husband move to New England. Your heart is an ash pit; no one wants to fuck a man so full of grief. What is left but food and drink? Pleasures of the present, they help you momentarily to forget the past. They are simply and easily arranged; unlike the ravishing of a beautiful man, they do not require reciprocity or consent.
You are too shy and damaged to pursue romance or sex, so victuals must substitute. This is called sublimation; this is called gaining weight. Culinary tourism becomes the key to your emotional survival. Track down roasted octopus, retsina, ouzo, melitzanosalata, and moussaka in Greece. In England, savor hard cider, steak-and-kidney pie, fish and chips, spotted dick. In Scotland, there’s single malt Scotch, haggis, and gooseberry fool; in Ireland, there’s potato boxty, soda bread, and stout. Vienna is Wiener Schnitzel, Käsespätzle and Linzertorte; Zermatt is kirsch and Raclette; Zurich is huge Riesenwurst, Rösti, and émincé de veau. On a restaurant balcony in Lucerne, look out over the river and mountains, sip beer and cut into the local specialty, pastete, a pastry case full of veal, mushrooms, and cream sauce. You have come all this way to prove to yourself that wonders and delights apart from him are still attainable. For a few minutes, savoring the Swiss landscape, the wine, the food, you are truly happy; for a few minutes you succeed.
These biscuits, these here, now, in 2008, they are done. You slide them off the baking sheet, wrap them in a tea towel, snuggle them in a basket to cool. Start the gravy. Chop onion, heat milk, fry sausage. Reach out for what remains of 1995.
In winter, a letter from Thomas after three years’ silence. News of his move to the DC suburbs, his desire to see you. The affair recommencing during his husband’s business trips in February and May. Touching, tasting, tying, sliding inside him again. Pilsner Urquell, homemade pizza, popcorn, Canadian whiskey. His tongue, nipples, cock in your mouth.
Now it is July. After two months overseas, you are flying into Dulles, eagerly meeting Thomas for lunch. The crepe myrtles blossom pink and white, Georgetown is humid and hot, his beard-shadow and the scent of his sweat madden you. He knows how much you love it when he doesn’t shave or use deodorant. Lure him back to your friend’s apartment. Give him the pewter quaich you bought him at Edinburgh Castle, the tiny bottles of Lindisfarne mead and Atholl Brose. Soon enough he is stripped, the hardness of muscle and softness of chest hair once more within your grasp. Soon enough he is blindfolded and bound, trembling and sighing on the unfolded futon. Sip mead from the quaich, drip honey-fire on his lips and brow, pour creamy Atholl Brose over his nipples and navel. Lick and lick, nuzzle and lick, as if you might burrow down into some sweet place inside he’s never let you see. Soon enough you’ve both shot, he’s untied, you are lying together sticky and spent, your beard musky with the aroma of his armpits and crotch. Your time is over, he must get home.
Making love, you’ve been spared the knowledge that you and he will never make love again. Now his necessity showers off your honey-wine and your scent. Embrace him one last time, walk him to the Cleveland Park Metro stop. In a few months, there will be someone new in his life, there will be acrimonious emails back and forth, angry emailed good-byes. You will mourn, you will want to die, you will fuck around, you will meet John, you will happily settle down, you will never forget.
Twelve years pass. Then one winter night there he is, sitting with his latest husband in a San Francisco bookstore where you are reading your work, poems and fiction he inspired. It has been so long, he has become so gray it takes you a few minutes to recognize him. One of the greatest shocks of your life, but, even so stunned, you are sufficient Southerner to be polite, you are professional enough to read with some composure, even though what you really want to do is hide in the men’s room and sob. He is smiling as if you are simply old friends; he’s hoping to grab a drink and catch up. You are far too numb to manage that. Instead, you introduce him to your husbear, and then you flee. In the bar across the street, you order several doubles, Tullamore Dew straight up, you chat with friends as if nothing were wrong.
You will never be drunk enough. You will not sleep tonight. You will not want to touch or be touched for months.
What kind of freak are you? It’s been over a decade.
Is this protection, learning not to worship but to play? Is this wisdom, now that men have become mere friends and fuck-buddies, not gods? See, romanticism expires, realism burgeons, but the feasts continue! They do not mean as much as they used to—nothing means as much as it used to—but they are perverse and they are delicious. What you have achieved is breadth. You are no longer capable of depth.
Ron’s a short, stocky, auburn-goateed Top you’ve met online; his scene is tying up men in their leathers. This January weekend, he’s driven down from Lynchburg despite impending snow for several days of play. You’re dressed as he’s ordered, in jeans, cowboy boots, wife-beater, and biker jacket. He’s had you leave the jacket unzipped so he can play with your horny-hard tits. He tapes your mouth, ties your hands in front of you, ropes up your feet, wraps yards of tight white rope around your knees and torso. You are one happy fucking pig; it is so fucking hot to be this powerless. You grunt and struggle; he holds you down, laughing, kneads your pecs, rubs his cock across your face.
You spend the night bound like this. Toward dawn, a heavy snow begins. Toward dawn, as you’d hoped, Ron pushes your jeans down to your boots and kindly fucks you up the ass. In the morning, he unties you, strips you to your briefs, cuffs your hands in front of you, buckles a ball-gag in your mouth. “You promised me bacon and buckwheat cakes for breakfast, boy. Get to it!” he says, slapping your butt.
It is hard to break eggs, sift flour, and flip bacon while restrained, but you are in no position to complain. Soon, to your shame, you are drooling around the ball and into the batter. Ron grins—“Man, you’re making a mess!”—wipes your moist, bristly chin and ties a bandana over the ball-gag to soak up the slobber.
It should be an Olympic event, flipping pancakes with cuffed hands. You grow deft at it. Now all is ready, the table set, the food steaming on two plates. Ron uncuffs you only long enough to recuff your hands behind your back. He cuts your heap of cakes into bite-size pieces, pours on the syrup, puts the plate on the floor, and pushes you to your knees. Removing your gags, he pushes your face into the food. “Go for it, boy. Chow down.”
