Best Gay Erotica 2007, page 6
Michael continues: “Rock bottom? Once, during lesbian party week in P-town, I was so hard up for cock that I broke into a minivan and stole one poor dyke’s entire stock of dildos. It took two or three of them in my mouth at a time just to tame the urge.” He sighs. “It’s a downward spiral. You swear off the cock. You bottom yourself silly, as if you could so easily switch your addiction to another orifice. But it always comes back to the swinging dick. The cock at three hundred yards. The hot lawn boy with the big package beneath his Daisy Duke cutoff jeans. The—”
All of a sudden, there’s a commotion in the part of the circle farthest from the podium. Michael peers through the haze and smoke. Despite the three solid dickless years under his belt, there’s Gerry, going at it on his neighbor’s manmeat like a kid bobbing for apples at a Halloween party. Michael leaps from behind the lectern. Intent on saving Gerry from his own weakness, he bodily throws himself between Gerry and the object of his affection. Then he sees it: the rigid pole between muscular thighs, the dark pubes against the pale skin, the hip tattoo, and the cock’s twitching dance as it searches for Gerry’s electric tongue. Who could blame Gerry for falling from the wagon?
Michael kneels. Together, he and Gerry crush their faces into that crotch, licking balls, nibbling the base, one on either side. They share it; first Gerry, then Michael, tasting Gerry’s saliva slicked all over the cock from head to tip. Gerry rubs the head of it on Michael’s parted lips. The precum leaks and tastes of tears.
Another man sees Michael’s cock through the open fly of his pants. He bends down and sucks and pulls at the flesh. In turn, another man finds the previous man’s unused member. And on it goes, around the circle, each man helplessly drawn to the next cock over, until the whole meeting dissolves into a massive suckfest, man sucking off man sucking off man, like a chain of fleshy daisies. The proverbial wagon doesn’t merely lose a few passengers; it overturns and crashes into a tree. A forest, really. A forest of flesh.
They slink away afterward, shamefaced, satiated, not a little proud, sneaking quick sniffs of the ass-stink under their fingertips and drying their hands on their pant legs, backhanding a sleeve across their mouths. Getting ready, no doubt, for the rest of the dick in the street.
Michael and Gerry look at one another and sigh dejectedly.
“Accept what you cannot change,” Michael intones. He glances around at the folding chairs thrown aside, the floor littered with underwear, spent condoms, and gobs of lube.
“Have the courage to change what you can,” Gerry answers firmly. The two men pull up their pants and zip their flies and inspect each other’s chins for signs of drool.
FROM PUSH : WILLIAMSBURG
SWIMMING POOL
Blair Mastbaum
I walk back down Metropolitan Avenue, a usually busy two-lane road that connects Williams-burg with the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, toward the ice-clogged East River. The snow is coming down pretty hard, big flakes covering the street, the sidewalk, and the stoops of the tenements, making the whole world white. The road is dead now because of the blizzard, but it’s usually jammed with trucks. One side of the street, the south side, on my left, is dark. The right side still has power. It’s like viewing an art exhibit as I walk down the street, lights on one side, black on the other.
My ex-boyfriend Billy, who I’m still obsessed with, would appreciate it so much, but he’s making out in front of some idiot’s camera in some stupid sweaty hot bar.
I actually start to cry. I didn’t feel it coming on, but the tears are running down my freezing cold cheeks. I feel more miserable than I ever have. I’m so cold and depressed that I think I’m actually turning numb, turning blank like a cutout of a human being. I wish I was made of plastic and cardboard. I’m too fucking sad to feel any longer. It’s too hard to be real.
I stumble down to the corner of Metropolitan and Bedford avenues and find myself standing in front of an old indoor pool known as the Metropolitan Public Baths. It’s basically an old natatorium, a square post office looking building with ornate columns and the name carved proudly overhead in the marble. The letter U in public looks like a V because it’s supposed to look Greek or Roman I think. Everyone calls it the Williamsburg pool.
I walk up the front steps and look inside. It’s dark except for some dim emergency exit lights and a yellowish floodlight shining on the entrance desk. As I lean on the door to look inside, it just falls open. It feels light as a feather even though it would be really heavy to a normal person, a person who’s not numb and intensely sad at the same time.
It’s really warm, like balmy tropical-island warm inside and the scent of the chlorine makes me feel safe, I guess because of the familiarity of it.
I was a high school swimmer and my swim team brothers, as we called ourselves, were my best friends, or as close to best friends as I had anyway.
Without them, I would have been even more alone and lonely through high school.
They thought I was weird and I refused to shave my legs for meets and give high fives to winners, but in the lanes of the swimming pool, we were just guppies swimming as fast as we could. You couldn’t even tell us apart. That was comforting to me. And the swim team was super low profile, like most girls didn’t even know the team existed, so I never had to act interested in some girl because there was never one around, period.
One of my swim brothers, the best swimmer on the team, a super-pale, blond Russian immigrant kid named Boris, was a homo.
Me and Boris would smoke pot after swim practice in his enormous room (he said his dad imported caviar to the U.S. market) and then we’d make out and possibly jerk off together, sometimes to a magazine he had of Eastern European boys in the mountains outside some amazing looking city that Boris said he’d been to but he couldn’t remember the name.
It was thrilling and totally normal at the same time. We got used to seeing each other’s dicks so much that seeing his— uncut, straight, medium sized, and really pale—was just like seeing his face in a way. It defined him. It was perfect really.
These stoned afternoons saved my childhood from eternal tedium.
It wasn’t about the sex for me. Usually, my body was exhausted from swimming so hard and I’d have rather just listened to music and lain back on the carpet with a joint and talked about getting the fuck out of there, meaning small-town Oregon logging country mixed with hippie drum-circle types where we grew up, Corvallis to be precise. I liked how close we were those afternoons, surrounded by a hazy bubble of pot and hormones, the sweet-smelling warm air between us, or the occasional stench of the smoked trout that he liked to eat in the afternoons. I still like smoked trout a lot.
Anyway, Boris sort of demanded the kissing, and I didn’t object. He could make out forever and I got tired of it quickly but I could handle it.
I liked it, too, but really the reason I was there was because I didn’t want to lose him to some other dude, to some other situation. I didn’t love him and I never could have.
It’s not like Boris wasn’t cute. He looked like a wild animal in the way that only Eastern Europeans can. He had pasty white skin and yellow-white hair and he was six foot two with slender muscles and small nipples spaced a bit farther apart than most boys’.
He hardly spoke English, too, which was good. He said my name like cut.
I projected my idea of the perfect person onto him and he filled the part well—this spaced-out, always stoned, always horny Euro-type, with bloodshot eyes, field-mouse brown pubic hair, and always, some strange take on high fashion mixed with sports clothes that only Russians can get away with wearing. He had a T-shirt that read, Super Muscles Runner and he thought it looked cool, and on him, it did. I imagined him liking my favorite books, like the Joan Didion essays I was obsessed with at the time, and my favorite bands and artists.
A slow, horrible dropping feeling takes over in my stomach. I have to shove sixteen-year-old Boris and the lonely days of high school out of my brain.
Boris is probably married to a nice Estonian girl now. He probably remembers me as some weird homo.
I walk inside the pool building. It’s still warm in here, which feels excellent. I walk past the wood-grain Formica entrance desk, where the sign-in sheet is still lying open in a blue binder, and into the actual pool room. It’s pretty dark with just a thin sheen of grayish moonlight coming in the high, small windows that are shaped like half moons.
I take off my coat and set it on a chair, a plastic version of those chaise lounges they had on the Titanic. My arm is midnight blue in the almost darkness.
I sit down on the tile and feel the water with my feet. It’s still womb warm. The electricity hasn’t been off nearly long enough for the water to turn cold, or maybe it’s heated with gas or oil.
I feel really loose and comfortable for the first time in weeks, maybe months. The only sound is a gentle trickle of tiny waves hitting the sides of the swimming pool. That, and the sound of my breathing. I might be able to hear my heartbeat, but I can’t decide for sure. Oh, and there’s this static in my ears, a whirring, like after you beat off and you’re just sitting there in the silence with come on your stomach—that high-pitched white noise.
I slide off my shoes and socks and then unbutton my pants and slide them off. I stand up just wearing my boxer shorts. They’re Jaws II-patterned, a great white depicted like it’s coming out of the fly.
I slide down my boxer shorts and stand naked in the enormous room. It’s a powerful feeling for some reason, maybe it’s just the I’m a boy and my dick is powerful thing, but it feels more important somehow, like me standing here right now is part of something bigger.
I try to remember when I was last naked, with the exception of quickly getting in and out of the bath, barely catching a glimpse of my dick as I slide on my old robe. I haven’t really been naked in months if not a year, and certainly not with another person.
I start to get a boner from thinking about nakedness, which feels good, but makes me aware I’m alone. My dick is calling out for someone, but the rest of me can’t provide it.
I think of being a person I’ve never been before, someone who calls some dude up with the intention of hanging out and having sex and then saying good-bye, maybe I’ll call you again if I’m bored.
It would be the biggest exception in my personality in the last five years at least. Maybe I should do it, but who would I call? I do what a lonely emo boy does best. I cup my balls with one hand and start to jerk off with the other one, as slow as I possibly can. At least I’ll make this last awhile if I can’t actually have a boy to smell and touch while I’m doing it. I lean back and close my eyes for a few strokes, and then I hear something—a scuff on the tile floor, just a filter of the heater switching on? I’m not sure. I stop, stand still, and listen.
I look toward the entry doors on the far side of the pool. It’s too dark to really see anything, but as my eyes adjust, I see a still figure standing in the doorway facing me.
I flinch, grab and pull up my pants with fast, jerky motions. I realize I’ve forgotten my underwear, which is lying by my feet. I reach for my T-shirt, but before I can get it on, a male voice asks, “Who are you?”
“The door was open,” I say, my voice quivering, as I kick my underwear under the chaise lounge. “I just came in here trying to get warm.”
The figure moves across the room on the other side of the pool.
I can tell he’s a dude, maybe in his twenties, skinny, but I can’t tell anything else about him because it’s too dark.
I hear the rustling sound of clothes coming off, then the metal clink of a belt buckle hitting the tile floor, and the soft sound of underwear falling down legs, and then a gentle dive into the water.
The boy comes up, takes a deep breath, and almost grunts, or moans—like the water feels good, refreshing, or warm or comfortable in some way.
I start to sort of buzz inside, my heart rate rising. I just stand here still, shirtless, shocked. The concept that this could turn out to be somewhat interesting or sexy begins to barely enter my brain. My boner comes back, this time restrained by my pants.
“Get in the water,” the guy says.
I don’t think. I just react. I jump in wearing my pants, only half buttoned up, with my T-shirt balled up in my clenched hand.
The water is so warm all my shivers from the entire winter melt away. I’ve never been so warm, so thrilled. My blood starts flowing faster. I piss without even noticing for the first couple of seconds. I float on my back, secure and cradled by the warm chlorinated water.
The boy swims over near me, treading water. I can see now that he has floppy, dark, almost black hair; he’s skinny and cute, goofy looking in an unpredictable way, sort of ghoulish. He smells like musk, a little like a horse and a bushel of barley, a good round boyish smell, mixed with the chlorine.
I finally gather enough courage in my tight little inexperienced body to swim right up to him. What I see first is a pierced lip—sort of sexy, sort of tragic, a bit trashy.
“What are you doing here?” the boy asks.
“I just wandered in,” I say. “It was so cold outside. I was alone. I just tried the door and it was open.” I wrap my arms around him, bony shoulders, warm back.
He looks at me like he’s analyzing my face, so I close my eyes. “At first, I thought you were this guy Theo. He had a Mohawk, a real one, not a sort-of one. But when he took his boxers off, he didn’t have pubic hair. It was gross.”
“I have pubic hair,” I say without thinking. Plus, I’m pretty drunk really.
He smiles and pushes me underwater. My face goes under and I accidentally suck in some water and come up coughing, my throat a scratchy mess. He’s a fucking killer, the Brooklyn Drowner. “Fuck, I almost drowned,” I say, coughing.
He swims across the pool and treads water in the deep end. I swim over to him, fast, direct and without considering every possible scenario, a cycle I get caught up in too much and something I have pledged to stop doing.
He reaches down into my wet pants and holds on to my boner. He slides down my pants and starts to jack me off. It feels better than good, like falling from a plane with no parachute, on opium—just perfect.
I reach down to his dick, too, which is hard, really hard. I jerk him off a little and kiss him hard on the mouth, causing my teeth to cut his lip slightly and I taste the iron of his water-diluted blood.
Blood mixes with our spit and it tastes so much like boy that I get even more turned on, more than in months. We make out and come in two minutes flat. I scream as I’m coming. I scream and grunt and shoot into the warm water and it’s the best feeling I’ve had since me and my ex-boyfriend Billy met and found a forest grove in Central Park and sucked each other off and came in each other’s mouths. It was close to that.
I hear a snowplow truck drive past outside. The snow is still coming down.
Our sperm floats across the surface of the still swimming pool.
“What’s your name?”
He hangs from the diving board with his arms, pulling himself up with backward pull-ups. When he raises himself up, I see that his dick is still half-hard, getting softer.
“Scooby.”
“Cool,” I say, not thinking and still a little out of breath.
“I want to die of a heroin overdose,” he says.
“I don’t have any, but I do have some whiskey.” I get out of the pool, freezing cold, and run to get my bottle of whiskey. I pick it up and realize that I’ve already drunk three-fourths of it as I almost fall running back to the warmth of the swimming pool water.
A loud metal clang echoes through the echoey pool room.
“Who’s in there?” a loud, masculine, New York accented voice calls out.
We both try to be as still as we can, but my heart is beating like crazy and my hands are shaking, causing a tiny tsunami across the surface of the water.
Not only am I trespassing, I’m naked in a swimming pool with a boy I don’t know during a blizzard and a blackout. This is not going to look good.
Keys jangling, flashlights searching like invasive alien eyes, two cops walk like robo-cops into the pool room, like they know exactly what they’re going to find—some stupid, horny, depressed, art homos—and they don’t care for the type. I don’t care for the type and I’m sitting here being it. It’s a truly pathetic moment in my life. I scan the dark room for my underwear and remember that my pants are lying in a wet, heavy pile on the tile.
I’m going to jail without pants on.
I jump out of the pool and grab my boxer shorts and step into them as fast as I can. I slip with only one leg in and fall on my side, trying to catch myself with my hand. It hurts like hell. I think I sprained my wrist.
“Just remain still!” one the cops yells.
I sit down and let the pain cycle through my arm and then I slide my other leg into my underwear.
The cop shines the flashlight on me just soon enough to catch a view of my dick as I slide my underwear up. “Get dressed!” He turns his back and waits for me to get dressed.
The other cop, a woman I think, judging by the silhouette, walks back out into the lobby and through another door, talking on her CB the whole time.
Scooby gets out of the water and walks to the opposite side of the pool to get his clothes, which are all black: skinny jeans and a T-shirt with an old photo of Dennis Cooper on it.
Just as he’s about to pull his T-shirt back on, the lights flip on, brighter than I ever would have thought they’d be, bright as a stadium at night.
The humiliating thing that the light brings about is that I don’t mind looking at the cop. The gaze I want to avoid is that of Scooby, the stranger whose dick I was just touching. I’ve never done this before and I feel shallower than a mud puddle. I feel like a slimy, bourgeois loser; a stupid asshole led by his balls, controlled not by his intellect, but by his sperm, which is desperately trying to escape this depressed, underfed body. It’s truly pathetic.
