Best Gay Erotica 2002, page 5
Jeans, no shirt.
No jeans, no shirt, just boxers.
Boxers?
That was about as sexy as a goddamn gunny sack. I took them off and looked down at myself. Jacob, you are fucking nuts. But at least you’re fucking nuts with a pretty good-sized dick.
I shot pictures of myself anyway.
Put boxer briefs on. That’s better. There’s something sexy about having Calvin Klein’s name circling your waist on a band of elastic, especially when your abs are visible, your package bulges, and you haven’t got so much body hair you look like someone stapled a carpet to your chest. I’ll admit I can see why people get into this look.
Stretched out on the bed looking as smutty as possible, my hand in my underwear gripping myself.
Standing on my head against the living room wall, nude, dick hanging down toward my navel. Don’t ask where I got that idea, and why I didn’t break my neck trying it out.
Finally I narrowed the field down to four, and that Sunday night I beamed the first one into T. Xu’s bedroom: me in jeans with no T-shirt.
Somehow this was the scariest part. Kind of like I was asking him out on a date and scared shitless he’d say no.
The light went on again this time, but he never came to the window to look outside.
He couldn’t know it was me he was looking at, and not some nameless stud I’d downloaded out of cyberspace.
Monday night: me in the suit, but with a twist. I’d opened the fly and pulled my dick out. Little bit of a non-sequitur, there—the business attire and the penis. Very Mapplethorpe.
The room stayed dark.
Fuck.
Tuesday night: me, nude, standing in the doorway separating my bedroom and my living room. I liked this shot, because it looked less contrived than the other ones.
Wednesday night, the same shot, but written in magic marker across my chest on the slide: MEET?
The lights flipped on and stayed on this time.
I could see his outline against the window.
Then he closed the curtains.
Thursday was rough. Colin looked at me funny all day, and offered to call 911 when he caught me staring out into space.
“Go home,” he told me. “Beat the traffic. And tell this bloke you’re losing sleep over I’ll beat the shit out of him if he doesn’t...I don’t know, stop whatever he’s doing so you don’t look like you gave too much blood at the Red Cross.”
Thursday night: a different nude shot, me again, sitting Indian-style on the floor of my apartment. I’LL STOP IF YOU WANT, I wrote on the transparency. I sat on the edge of my bed after I switched off the overhead, smoking one cigarette after another.
The phone rang, and I jumped off the bed and shouted in surprise and shock.
“Hello?”
Static and a dull background roar told me somebody was calling from downstairs.
“Is this the guy with the overhead projector?” asked a man’s voice.
A wave of panic broke over me, and I said nothing.
“You are, aren’t you? You don’t have to answer, because I’ve known since the second night who you were.”
Oh Jesus. I heard an Asian accent. It was him.
“I’m downstairs. You want me to come up, don’t you?”
Without saying a word, I pressed the 9 on my number pad to buzz him up.
When the knock came, I opened the door without looking through the peephole first, and when I saw the man standing there—a white man with red hair and green eyes, the ostensible boyfriend of T. Xu—I staggered back as if I’d been gut-punched.
“Can I help you?” I finally asked.
He stepped inside without invitation and closed the door behind himself.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Thomas’s roommate,” he said, extending his hand. “My name’s Anthony, and it’s really nice to meet you. At last.”
Anthony looked like the stereotypical boy next door, more or less, but with that buffed look and the updated duck’s-ass haircut half of the gay guys in the Castro seem to have. Not bad looking at all. He wasn’t Thomas, but I wouldn’t have pushed him out of bed. Was I wrong about this, though? My panic escalated. I’d been thinking he was like Thomas’s boyfriend or something, and he was here to kick my ass, or at least try....
Thomas?
I had never known what the T stood for.
“OK, here’s the deal,” he said. “I’m going to cut to the chase because I know you want to know what the hell I’m doing here after he called from downstairs. Thomas is just starting to come out, OK? This is a little too intense for him. We switched bedrooms a few days into your video projection project because he dug the shit you were projecting onto his walls but dug being able to get to sleep on time even more. So I’m the one you’ve been serenading for the last week or so, if you want to call it that.”
My legs wanted to drop out from underneath me. I started to stammer an apology but Anthony held up a hand to stop me before I could utter a word.
“You probably don’t need me to tell you that what you’ve done isn’t legal,” he went on.
I shook my head No. Like a masturbating Catholic teenager, I made a thousand guilt-crazed promises to God in my head just then.
“That had crossed my mind,” I managed to say.
“So you can probably appreciate the precarious position you’ve put yourself in,” Anthony said.
I nodded.
“And you probably would appreciate a chance to convince me not to press charges, or file suit, or whatever,” he continued. “Because I will, if you give me reason. It’s what I do for a living, and I’m really good at it.”
I didn’t nod this time, but I felt my eyes widen.
“I guess the question becomes, just how much do you want to avoid having to tell a few of San Francisco’s finest what you’ve been up to for the last few weeks?”
“I have money,” I said.
Anthony shook his head No. “Wasn’t quite what I had in mind,” he told me, grinning like the devil. “Why don’t we have a seat on the sofa. You can pour us something to drink, and we’ll see what we can agree on. I know you’re an intelligent guy, Jacob. You know a good deal when you’re being offered one.”
I poured Glenlivet over ice for us both, drained my own glass, refilled it, returned to the living room, sat at the opposite end of the sofa as if I expected him to lunge at me.
“This is extortion,” I told him.
“I’m an attorney,” he replied, unzipping his jeans. “I’m familiar with the concept. But you probably don’t have anything to worry about. If you have any sense, you’ll get to know me pretty well. I can keep my word if you’re willing to live up to your end of the deal.”
Anthony took out his cock and looked at me without saying a word.
I set down my drink and moved carefully across the sofa. I had no choice, really. I took him in my mouth and told myself I liked it. After a second or two, I got lost in the taste of him and didn’t need further convincing. He had a big one, and had just taken a shower, from the smell. Soap is not the best aphrodisiac, as it turns out. Blackmail is better.
As I sucked him off, Anthony explained his terms, and gave me until ten o’clock the following night to consider, although I had made up my mind before he left my apartment. Hell, I had made up my mind before he blew a load across my face. He forced me to kneel before him to receive it.
I think he knew I’d accepted his terms, too. I accepted his come willingly enough. Licked some off my fingers, just because.
What the hell, I thought when the door closed behind him, even if I change my mind and decide I’m not into it, and it’s just for two weeks, the same length of time I was projecting those pictures across the street. I suppose at some point I must have wondered what it would be like to be some other guy’s fuck toy—Yes, Sir, whatever you want, Sir, absolutely, I’d love to lick your ass again — and it can’t be much worse than getting arrested. Who knows? Maybe I’ll like it.
I licked his salt off my lips and went to the kitchen to refill my glass of Glenlivet.
Harder
Ian Philips
A whip-crack. Then you. Scuttling, crabwise, for the further-most corner.
Tonight, we play at love’s games. One tailored to our taut, well-oiled, black hides. I call it “Harder.” It could be said that it is childlike in its simplicity. It could be, if one were an amnesiac, forgetful of just who needs cunning most to survive. Still, it is true that it is a simple game. There is only one rule, stolen unrepentantly from a textbook of Newtonian physics: For every action, there is an opposite, equal reaction.
Already, I have lied. My reaction is never equal. It is—as long as I love you—exponential. You will call out, and I will reply—harder.
I lay down the whip’s tip at your knees. Twice. You do not flinch. Your chest swells and your jaw tightens. You no longer crouch; you kneel. If you sweat, it flows unseen down your spine into the warm, dark crevice of your ass. I sidewind the long leather braid before you. It roils rattle-less on the floor. Then, the black serpent arcs and strikes at your right nipple. You shriek—staccato, soprano notes—like a boy twenty years younger. Your legs splay and you flop onto the backs of your calves, your bare ass kissing the floor.
I fight the curling of my lips. I swallow a hiccup of laughter. I have caught my prize-winning leather boy unawares. The whip bites again, just above the silver glint of your left tit. Now, on cue, in character, you bellow like a bull pounding the haunches of its staggering mate.
I watch silently, amused and mildly aroused. By not prefacing the pain with our standard scales of blows and curses, I have made it new again for us both. This enchants me. My prick thickens alone in the chrome cocoon of my codpiece. This enkindles me. I have decided it will swagger well outside the reach of all your wet lips tonight. Instead, I will surprise you and surprise you and surprise you until you break. This enraptures me.
The reddening welts on your chest fashion an arrow that directs my gaze downward through the latticework of your abs to your crotch. Your cock strains against the threadbare jock, dyed a light shade of saffron from soaking so many nights in our beer-bitter piss and flecked brown and black with old stains of come and blood. I drop the single tail. I must make tender what is so stiff.
I approach, my boots crunching softly on the grit of the basement’s concrete floor as if it were new-fallen snow. The cables of muscle that anchor your shoulders to your neck quiver. The delicacy of this motion belies their bulk.
Your eyes meet mine. In this room’s dim light, they are the color of wet stone. They ask to speak on your behalf. They accuse. They cajole. They beg. It is a sight no less dramatic than the processional of old mothers whose skins are like weathered tarps, crawling the mile on their brittle, arthritic knees to the Shrine of Our Lady. It would be a moving sight if I were compassionate like Mother Mary. But I am not. I have become like Our Father. You remember Him, Brother. You remember how we prayed to Him for hours together in my cell. How we suffered in agony, abandoned into His Almighty Silence. How His cold quiet drove first me, and then you, out into this new wilderness. Naked and afraid.
There is something about the pleading in your eyes that keeps my gaze. I have never seen such fervency except in the clenched faces of the old women who lined the marriage bed or the deathbed when I’d assist Father Bernard with the blessing of it, the blessing of them. And, at that moment, I realize that you still pray. Despite all He has done to us. Despite all I have done to you. You still have faith in us both.
Again, you have surprised me tonight. So, again, I must surprise you. I will intercede and answer your prayer. I will be your Father. I will take you up into my shadow.
The palm of my hand slams into the raspy stubble of your cheek and the unyielding bone of your jaw. You have forced me to speak. So I remind you that our love will never be equal, for the simple reason that you are not my equal. And yet, I go on to tell you, I have, in my mysterious way, chosen to love you. You lower your head and ask my forgiveness.
I reach into my right boot and withdraw my buck knife. I push down onto the back of your neck with my other hand. You bow before me. I lean across you and, with one stroke, slice the waistband of the jock in two.
I put the knife away and grab for the crop. I look down on your broad bent back. Your clear skin, stretched across the blocks of muscle, is so beautiful I want to open it up. Instead, I place the tip of my spit-shellacked boot beneath your chin and lift it and then you onto your ass. I bend my knees until we are almost eye-level. I yank the remnants of fabric away from your groin. Your dick and balls leap out, either to defend or invite attack. I stuff the wad of reeking cotton into your mouth. I have never gagged you before. Unasked, you look up at me.
Some would attribute this act of defiance to the folly of youth—a boy’s mistaken belief that he is a man when he is not. They might laugh it off. Or shrug their shoulders and roll their eyes. I am not one of these people.
I kick the steel toe of my boot between your legs, beneath your balls. You cough out the jock. You are choked by lamentations. With infinite grace, I press the sole of my other boot into your crotch until I meet the resistance of the metal cock-ring and your pubic bone. I twist my foot hard to the right. You yelp. I grind it back to the left—harder. You moan. I tap with the crop at the edges of your reddening cock and balls, whatever is not crushed in my impromptu vise grip; for a brief moment, I am reminded of our other life together and I see this morning’s burning overflow of batter around the mouth of the waffle iron.
The head of your dick juts out at an odd angle. It is the hue of a newly baked brick. I swat it lightly several times. Then I take a single whistling stroke at the underside of your most exposed egg. Your head lurches backward and I watch calmly as you gnash your teeth. Before our game concludes, I hope to have made you grind all that professionally bleached enamel down to a fine powder until it cakes in your mouth and stains your lips a deathly shade of white.
I lift up my left foot in an act of mercy. You are unworthy. But how else can I hit the swollen shaft of your dick? It stiffens under the blows until it points heavenward like two hands pressed together in a solemn show of piety. You, however, no longer pray piously to me, your new Father who art on earth before you. Your lips contort and spit out curse after curse, each more outlandish and impotent.
I think to strike your lips with this short fiberglass stick entwined in leather. But I want them unblemished. They are thick enough. Swollen, they are obscene and useless. For when we have played our game out to its lovely end, I will make you—because I love you—suck out whatever rancor remains in my thudding heart.
So, I slash instead at the lines the whip has burned into your skin. Across them. Up and down them. Each strike produces a note. At first, I am hell-bent on hearing your complete octave range. After the first arpeggio of groans, however, I am bored. I will have to work harder for that unmanly wailing.
I punch one of your pecs and you flail backward. I hit the other and you topple forward. I tug what I can of your close-cropped hair. It is futile. My fingers slip through the wet stubble. I content myself by digging my fingernails into the edge of your left ear. I haul you across the uneven floor. You scream as you hobble on your knees behind me, for I am scuffing and tearing your custom-made chaps. You had to take on that second, thankless job of editing yet another anthology to buy them. This is your first night to wear them.
We have come now to my own custom-made extravagance—a low-standing, wide-beamed sawhorse, swaddled in leather and studs. I lift you up by the tip of your ear. You are almost as tall as me. I press my chest into yours and back you into the end of the sawhorse. I pull away and your sweat turns cold on my skin. I plant my hand above the arroyo that runs between the two mesas of your breasts. I push you backward. Your butt lands on the beam and your back arches as it descends. Your head hangs off the opposite edge. You will have to strain and lift your neck to see what I will do next.
I cuff your wrists and ankles to the horse’s legs. I leave your body to adjust its new wounds and old aches to the awkwardness of this position, to the rigidity of the wood and leather. I return with an antique medical kit. I lean down toward your face. You expect a kiss or a curse. I blow the first gray layer of dust off the old bag. I watch to see if it powders your flushed face. There is too little of it. Instead, you cough.
I open the case and there sleep the pride and private joys of my long-dead mentor. Sounds. Sticks and twigs made of metal. Yet another forgotten medical practice, like cupping, like bloodletting, that can still bring more pain than it cures. I dislodge the smallest and thinnest one. I hold it up in the hopes its dull reflected light catches your eyes. You pull your head up and out of gravity’s mouth. The veins in your neck and brow look like ropes threaded under the skin of a man-sized marionette. You asked me once what these rods were for and I told you. You shook imperceptibly at my descriptions. In seconds, I knew you were drowning in the undertow of those tidal forces attraction and repulsion. Later that night, you questioned if we would ever play with them. Tonight, you will have your answer.
As I swab the sound, I see you recall that evening. I grab your rigid prick. It is redder than your face. It too is a patchwork of distended blood vessels the color of bruises. I tap the head of your cock with the hard metal. Only a two-year old can spit out more “No!”s in one breath. I grip you all the tighter and slip the spike-let calmly into your piss slit. I must go slowly. I have no desire to bend or break your video-worthy dick. I must wait until each new convulsion subsides before I can slide it deeper. I counsel you to offer up the pain. You respond in Latin. I know this is no small feat for a boy born after Vatican II. I am impressed...almost. But then I have always known that we share a love of ancient things. And nothing is more ancient than pain. When your cock resembles a freshly skinned animal, skewered and ready for the fire, I stop.
I reach for my softest flogger. It looks like hair on a rag doll and feels like felt. I slap your chest in a series of lazy-eights. Each strike is less hard. You look dazed. The welts sting but all you feel is your cock throbbing around the indifferent metal rod. I swat your fat shaft with no more force than a horse in a treeless pasture at noon brushing flies off its backside. You howl. The restraints nearly snap. The sawhorse almost bucks you off. I swat your dick again. And again. Like that song says, I am killing you softly.
