Instead, I push my hands against Seth’s chest. Somehow, in pushing him away, I pull him closer. My fingers open the buttons one by one. I’m shaking, and I have to hold on to each button tightly. Seth kisses my neck while I work. His hands slide down the back of me, from my shoulders to my waist. I hear my belt buckle open, feel the warmth as he slides it from my jeans.

  Everything’s too slow for me.

  “Please undress. I want to see you,” I say.

  Seth lets go of my jeans. He undresses quickly, dropping his clothes in piles. His body is lean but muscled. His cock swings up, long and thin, the smooth head a beautiful pinky-purple. His body is so alive, so much muscle and blood pumping, that I’m afraid to touch him.

  It doesn’t matter. He comes to me, undresses me as fast as he did himself. Even so, I marvel at his hands everywhere: buttons, sleeves, sliding my underwear down my thighs so my cock springs up.

  “Oh,” he says. And he never comes up from taking my underwear off. He stays on his knees, and I can see the lean muscle of his back, and just below that, the perfect curves of his ass. He licks his lips and presses them to the head of my cock.

  It’s been so long since I’ve felt anything other than my own hand that just the press of his lips there makes me want to grab the back of his head and fuck his mouth. I try to keep still. When he opens his lips, lets me slide inside him, against the press of tongue and teeth, it’s almost too much. I grit my teeth to stem the rising pleasure. His tongue finds the sweet spot just beneath my head, laps at it.

  “Ah, Jesus,” I say. Through my gritted teeth, it comes out as something less awed, more primal. I pull Seth up from his knees. His lips are cherry red and wet. He licks a drop of precum from his big bottom lip.

  “What are you doing to me?” I ask, even as I’m laying him down on his back on the bed. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. The way his cock jumps as I position myself over him, the way he puts his legs up to give me access, says it all.

  I lick my finger and use it to find the swirl of his asshole. I press against it, and Seth opens for me, already pushing down on my finger.

  “More,” he pants. I enter with a second finger, let his body settle over it. He wraps his fingers tight around the base of his cock. The color darkens even more. My cock is jumping every time Seth’s ass tightens around my fingers. It wants in. I want in.

  “Seth, I want…”

  “Yes,” he sighs. “Yes.”

  I fumble in the nightstand drawer for lube and condoms, hoping there’s something left over. Hoping I won’t break down when my hand hits a cellophane wrapper.

  Thankfully, Seth puts his other hand around my cock. He’s wet his palm and his fingers slide over my skin, slick enough to take my mind off everything that came before this moment. I find a half-empty bottle of lube and one lonely condom in the bottom of the drawer.

  Seth wraps his fingers around the base of my cock while I roll on the condom. He tightens his grip, a human cock ring that makes me pump my hips against his hand as I spread lube over the surface.

  “It’s cold,” I say.

  Seth’s already raising his hips to me, the perfect circle of his asshole waiting.

  “Don’t care,” he says.

  I push my way inside him. Just the head at first. How much I’ve missed this entering is something that I feel in my whole body. This is how I try to be: Slow. Careful. But Seth is sucking me in with his low moans, with his fingers tight on my ass.

  The slide inside is: Oh, fuck. And then I’m buried in him, his ass contracting and releasing around me. I stop.

  “I don’t know how long I’m going to last,” I say. “I can’t promise—”

  Seth pulls my face down to his, offers me that big bottom lip to suck on. It shushes me.

  “Just fuck me,” he says against my mouth.

  I do, oh, god, I do. Rising and falling inside him. Seth pushes his hips upward to meet my thrusts. We are greedy together, wanting it all.

  And then I close my eyes, just for a second, and see Thom’s face. For some reason, it’s okay, though; he looks happy. Or at least he doesn’t look unhappy.

  When I open my eyes, Seth is pumping his cock at the same rhythm as I’m fucking him. His head is thrown back, and he moans low. It’s visceral: the sound, the feeling of his hot skin around me. I come.

  Coming is like this: Everything emptying. Everything filling. The long, slow release of something I’ve been holding on to for too long. It is liquid leaving and me becoming liquid and the way Seth says “Aw, god,” and Annie’s low whine from the other room.

  When I wake up, I’ve got a big white paw in my face, and I realize that while we were sleeping, Annie must have crawled in bed.

  Seth’s already awake. His fingers are back in the fur at Annie’s ear.

  “I need to tell you something,” he says.

  My soul says: Oh, shit. My mind says: Wait and listen.

  “I got assigned to you on purpose,” he says.

  “What?”

  Seth drops his eyes, pretends to pick something out of Annie’s fur. And then his words come out in a tumble.

  “Thom came into the shelter in person when he signed up. He was so sweet, told us the whole story. He wanted you to have something after. It was supposed to be sooner, that’s what he wanted, but there wasn’t a good match. I asked to be assigned to you.”

  I shift Annie’s paw off my shoulder, lean up a little. “Is that kind of creepy?” I ask.

  The tips of Seth’s ears are growing a dark red. I can’t help it. I think of his cock.

  “Maybe,” he says. “But Thom was so nice, and I thought, ‘A man who’s in love with this man must be amazing, too.’ I just wanted to see if it was true.”

  “And?”

  He swallows audibly. The sure man who was in my bed minutes ago has disappeared.

  “And…you were not only nice, but you were so sexy. I got sucked in.”

  His lip is pouting out so far I’m tempted to bite it.

  Instead, I ask, “Would you like to get sucked in again?”

  The tips of his ears still showing red, he nods.

  I run my finger along the edges of his lips.

  “Let me feed the small horse, then,” I say. “And when I come back, I’ll see what I can do.”

  It’s been three months and two days, and Seth has moved in. He’s brought his life with him: paperwork and photos from Pawspice, a shed full of gardening tools, his ability to grow herbs and tomatoes like he’s made of fertilizer.

  Annie’s days are switching from mostly good to mostly bad. Something has speeded up inside her, is pushing her quickly toward the end. Five times a day, we coax her to eat by cupping Alfredo sauce in our palms and letting her lick it out.

  This morning, while Seth cooks breakfast, I mix up the solution to wash Annie’s coat—mostly water, a little lemon juice, and hydrogen peroxide. She lies on the rug in the kitchen, the ball between her teeth. She has it almost all the time now, and still she needs the meds.

  I wring out the sponge—my skin is permeated with the scent of lemons—and I run it carefully over Annie’s face. She closes her eyes when I get near her nose, and I talk low to her, tell her I’m sorry if I hurt her.

  Seth chop-chops the onions on the board. The room smells of acid and tears.

  “I think it’s almost time,” I say. I’m talking to Annie and to Seth. Somehow, they both nod.

  Not today, not tomorrow, but soon, we will lose Annie and all she has brought to us. Well, not everything she has brought to us. We’ll still have: Memories. Tennis balls filled with holes in every room in the house. A bed that sags on one side. Each other.

  THE CALAMUS EMOTION: LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

  Jack Fritscher

  San Francisco, April 25, 1906

  Dear Benny,

  It’s yer old (ha ha) pal Jimmy writin you from General Delivery in Frisco where you might of heard back in Saint Louie we had a little earthquake on my birthday Wednesday last, April 18. What a way to turn nineteen (ha ha). No cake for me like two years ago at our fine spree at the Saint Louie World’s Fair before I lit out for Frisco on the train from Union Station. I ain’t forgot that cake or the icin on it. How we had our cake & ate it too. Sorry I ain’t writ you much but I bin thinkin about you, &, pal o mine, I wish you were here, but I’m glad you ain’t been through what I been through. What I seen in the last seven days could break a man’s heart. This whole city it ain’t gone, but sorely wounded. Ma Sloat’s boardin house where I live is all charcoal ashes down South of the Slot, along with all the South of Market buildins around it. So forget that address.

  It were all us workin men livin in cheap rooms down there, & pore families, cuz nice San Franciscans never cross South of the Slot in Market Street. Remember I toll you last letter how the iron cable-car slot worked, runnin down the center of Market Street, pullin the streetcars from the Ferry Buildin west toward Twin Peaks like a hummin metal line fencin off us & the rich folk we work for. It were terrible after the shakin woke us all up at 5:12 in the A.M., yellin in our longjohns, steppin out as I did from my third-floor window that crumpled down like a house of cards to the curb, crushin fellas livin under me, all us who could dashin out into the cold streets, everyone screamin. The Chronicle says 60,000 of us souls live down South of Market, & we was all runnin for it, tryin to get away from the fire that started in a Chinee laundry near Ma Sloat’s at Third & Brannan. It just spread & spread through all the broken wood & gas mains shootin flames into the air. At 8:14 A.M. come another quake rollin through, knockin more buildins down like tinder, & puttin folks chokin on all the smoke in a worse panic.

  I don’t want to make you sick, dear Benny, but there was women and children, whole families killed, and lots of men, more than you can guess. Lots of fellas, some of em I knew, trapped in the collapse of all the bachelor workmen’s boardin houses. They saw the path of the fire and they was beggin, shoutin, you could hear, in all kinds of languages, at first for somebody to pull em out, till those that didn’t have guns to kill themselves, becuz they was about to be burned to death, was beggin somebody, anybody to shoot em, & they was shot. Some of em as a mercy was shot by each other, you could see em, some dyin naked as they was born, & even if you turned away, you could hear the shots that stopped the shouts. I didn’t need the priest from Saint Pat’s, which toppled down, kneelin in the holy bricks prayin in the middle of Mission Street, to tell me it was a vision of hell, & I was glad he got up like a man & started pullin trapped souls out from the rubble. Nothin none of us could do to keep somethin like 3000 souls alive in our disaster. Somethin like 500 looters, & still countin, was shot on site includin 2 fellas I knew who was just tryin to get their trousers & shoes & pocket watches & tintypes out of the wreckage. Gunfire & flames & smoke & explosions & the ground quiverin every few minutes like the earth was a bag of gravel. I left Ma Sloat’s hightailin it with nothin.

  Don’t know where I’m gonna live. Am now sleepin rough, in a view with no room, you might say, as I’m campin on leaves of grass in a make-shift lean-to against one a the thousands of tents in Golden Gate Park which you may recall I once toll you you’d like since I could see us walkin there, hand in hand through Paradise.

  You mayhaps have already read in the Saint Louie Post-Dispatch how when our Opera House fell down around his eyetalian ears, the Great Caruso sat on the ground in Union Square & cried, with less courage than Pagliacci’s “Vesti la Giubba,” that he was never comin back to Frisco. The tent my lean-to’s presently up against in the Park sports a “hoochie-koochie” sign from downtown readin “Maiden Lane” (ha ha), & the friendly “tootsie-wootsies” inside it, who I do-for (cuz among their services to other fellas) they cook for me, have been laughin at Caruso as not bein all that great! They hear tell that the grand soprano Luisa Tetrazzini herself, who don’t scare easy like her warblin tenor chum Caruso, is sometime soon headin back into Frisco to sing free at Lotta Crabtree’s fountain which is about the only thing still standin downtown at Market & Geary. The ladies, who know a town pump when they see one, been cookin what they been jokin is “Chicken Tetrazzini” in her honor. I toll em it should be “Chicken Caruso,” & they all laughed, & give me pie. So life ain’t all bad, or bad at all, & it’s startin over, life is, which is the secret of Frisco.

  I was wondrin if you wanted to come out here to the ruins (ha ha, but I mean it) cuz you said you were needin work & there’s lots of it here now, even more than before, for thousands of us strong young fellas.

  Which vision reminds me I been takin my salt-water sea-bathing, 7 A.M to 6 P.M., once-a-week out near the ocean, at cold North Pacific temperatures & up to eighty degrees, for twenty-five cents at the Sutro Baths that’s all glass and iron as fine as any building at the Saint Louie Exposition. Reason enough for you to travel west, there’s bathing music performed by the Sutro Baths Band, & I bet we could work for room & board for that ol blonde Ma Sloat nobody calls “Ma Slut” to her face. She’s rebuildin over on Folsom Street upstairs over where her brother Hallam has a piece of property for a new saloon cuz he believes in the future of Frisco even South of the Slot. She says he believes in the future of thirst, & he be namin the little street next his after their father the older Hallam who ain’t unlike yer pa & mine when it comes to bellyin up to a bar to bend an elbow.

  If you have work there in Saint Louie then maybe you could send yer old secret chum a couple bucks to help out, but, dear Benny, if I have to start over, & I do have prospects, I’d a damn sight rather start over with you by my side here in Frisco cuz you never know what’s gonna happen next, but this monkey’s uncle, yours so truly, can tell it’s gonna happen here, & it could be good for us. Remember when you was seein me off at the train station, steamin away, you cracked wise that confirmed bachelors gotta know how to take care of ourselves.

  I can’t meet you in Saint Louie, Louie, where we fell down laughin tryin to dance the hoochie-coochie, but I can meet you at the Golden Gate. Don’t be late! You might want to hear the Great Tetrazzini as much as me (ha ha) except this boy ain’t no more singin soprano. That married bachelor Horace Greeley was right when he said, Go West, young man, Go West! There’s gold in them thar hills! I found, down near the Embarcadero, blowin around on Folsom Street, some French postcards like you never seen. It’s an ill wind that blows no good instructions.

  I love this place, but not as much as you know who. There. I finally said what you said when last we parted. Put that in yer pipe, dear Benny, & smoke it. Two bucks would be fine. Yer hand in mine, pal o mine, would be better. If I had a ceilin, I’d be lyin awake at nights starin at it & thinkin of you, takin it all in hand, your hand in mine, hand in glove with you.

  Yer devoted pal,

  Jimmy

  ADULT

  Natty Soltesz

  Sess Roberts wiped a glob of bluish-white cum off of the wall and tried to recall the allure a porno-clerk job once held for him. There was more cum on the floor of the stall (or “buddy booth,” as they called the enclosures) but he let that go. He had nine more to clean and he was tired.

  He could hear obscene wet sloshing coming from dedicated regular Lloyd Donahue’s stall as he zipped past. Lloyd had given up approaching Sess after the fourth or fifth week, for which Sess was thankful, but it was better to avoid contact if at all possible, especially since they were the only ones in the store. At least he wouldn’t have to clean up Lloyd’s load until tomorrow morning; all the better to let his germs dissipate a little.

  It wasn’t like he’d ever held illusions about the job—he’d known what he was getting into. For nearly a year before he applied for work he’d been adding his own DNA to the wealth of genetic material on the arcade walls, when it wasn’t being guzzled down by the minivan-and-wedding-band set, that is.

  He dumped the pail of scummy water in the back room sink and stepped outside for a smoke. The dark highway lay before him, stretching out in both directions. Maybe it was silly, but the highway was part of what drew him to the job. It was four A.M., that netherworld between night and morning. Every other minute or so a car would fly by in a red and white streak, leaving a lonely sound in its wake. Who were they? Where were they going? He was just a blip, a speck on a point on a map. But even in the smallest of places there were huge things happening, whole worlds nobody would ever know about.

  He snubbed out his cigarette in a coffee can nailed to the shelter that hid the front entrance from the highway. He heard a motorcycle—a Harley—approaching. It slowed as it neared the building and turned into the parking lot.

  Sess ducked inside, behind the counter. The bell rang as the biker walked inside, then turned toward him and smiled. That was unusual. Most patrons slithered behind the shelves and never made eye contact. The biker’s grin was big and handsome. If Sess hadn’t been so taken off guard he would’ve smiled back.

  “Howdy,” the biker said. He was in his forties. He was hot.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so,” he said in a gravelly voice, resting his golden brown arms on the counter. “Do you know how far it is to Cleveland?”

  “Cleveland? Jesus—no. I think at least three hours, maybe four?”

  “You ever been there?”

  “No.”

  The biker stretched, raising his arms over his head. His leather jacket and black T-shirt rode up, exposing a thick, tan stomach.

  “Oh, well,” he said. He reached into his pocket. “Ten tokens please.” Sess poured the tokens into his hand. “Long night for ya?”

  “Long enough,” Sess answered.

  “Tired, huh?”

  “A little.”

  “I’m gonna get some relief myself,” the biker said. He winked, then vanished into the dark arcade.

 

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