Best Gay Romance 2009, page 6
In the summer of 1998, I was working in Vermont as an unpaid and mostly underfed puppeteer. Everyone was hanging out around the fire, rolling cigarettes, rolling joints; the moon stretched the shadows into long thin lines. I watched the oddly matched couples slink away from the light, their tangled silhouettes growing dimmer and dimmer. It suddenly occurred to me that the people who I would find myself hanging out with for the rest of my life would be people who voted for the Democratic candidate because he was the lesser evil. Some of them would write in Angela Davis. Some of them would not vote at all. They would dress in unfashionable clothing, drink whisky from plastic cups in their living rooms, and go contra dancing. They would drink expensive coffee carried across borders by Fulbright scholars and drive cheap cars.
It occurred to me, when I found myself alone, staring at the cooling embers, that I had made a mistake. At some point in my life, years earlier perhaps, I had decided what kind of people I would meet, what kind of theater I was going to create, and how much or how little I was going to get emotionally involved.
There at the fire, I asked myself: What happens if you give in to it?
If you laugh at all the jokes, slather your arms in papier mâché and printing ink, devour the over-toasted granola, skip laundry, skip the shower, skip the telephone calls, go to the too-late parties, go skinny-dipping, go to town and be stared at by the locals.
And what happened after all that, after diving in, was this:
He was one of about ten students who had come to Vermont from a theater school in Mexico City. They were dancers, singers, actors, and sometime musicians who spoke varying degrees of English, who I met in a line, one after another, repeating my name then theirs back to them, not remembering a single one. He was barely taller than me, with a thinner build. His English was terrible; I spoke no Spanish. We carried a dictionary with us, and learned a truncated way of flipping through the pages to get the nouns and crudely miming the actions. My flashlight broke, it was too dark to fix it, and we kissed for the first time. We fooled around in his tent under blankets, army issue, heavy and brown. We woke up, covered in wool fuzz that was indelibly stuck to our bodies where they had been moist with lube—hands, nipples, crotches. The next evening, after the first full day of performances (from about ten in the morning to eight at night) we actually fell asleep during sex. We’d had little to eat all day, carrying giant puppets across the fields all that afternoon, and after rolling around in the tent for about fifteen minutes at nearly one in the morning, we paused to breathe (or paused to hear what our bodies were feeling, like you can do during sex) and fell right asleep. Neither of us could remember who did so first.
Some other puppeteers, a Parisian woman and her Canadian boyfriend, drove us to Boston, where my charming Mexican’s second cousin lived with his American wife, a nurse who cooked amazing dinners. We bought a plant for their apartment. We slept on the pullout bed in the living room, and he was afraid that she’d walk in on us sleeping, cuddling together on one side of the bed. We took a shower together in their bathroom and, though I’d seen him naked a dozen times, he asked me to look away when he undressed. We cooked elaborate dinners with our puppeteer friends, with spicy corn salad, leeks in crème fraiche, plum-glazed pork loin, and perfect French bread from the Jewish bakery.
We came to my New York apartment, shared my twin-sized bed, and that was when he prayed—on his knees, right there on the floor of my bedroom, both of us naked, my erection suddenly deflating—before giving me a blow job. He had to go back to Mexico on September third. He would take a bus to the Newark Airport.
We knew what it was. I wouldn’t write him. I wouldn’t call him. It was simply going to be over. He left at nearly four o’clock in the morning. I was still asleep.
I won’t tell you his name, though I remember it completely—it’s like a secret that I keep to myself, or a place I keep sentimental things hidden. I remember carrying cardboard and papier mâché puppets across the freshly mowed dairy fields littered with garlic peel and paint flecks. I remember lying in the cold grass at midnight, pointing out constellations. I remember his breath on my neck as I lay awake all night, worrying what it would be like after he was gone, my beautiful Mexican theater student with whom I briefly, and perhaps forever, fell in love.
THE POOLS OF PARADISE
David Holly
The rain had been falling for five days. Chill gusts buffeted me as I pedaled from my final college class of the day toward my house on Alder Street. Bicycling across the bridge, I had fantasized about a yummy guy in my American Literature class, but the cold driving rain rapidly turned my prospects toward a warm bath and hot sugared cocoa. Road muck splattered my pants legs, and my vision blurred from the rainwater running into my eyes.
A city bus approached from behind, crowding the bike lane as usual. I was muttering imprecations at the belligerent bus driver when I heard the crack of a water-laden limb above giving way. I gripped my brakes until they screeched, but I didn’t have a chance. The limb stuck my right shoulder, knocking me from my bicycle. I tried to free my leg as I toppled sideways, but my bike frame forced me under the bus. The last thing I saw was a gigantic rear wheel rolling inexorably toward me.
Fewer than a dozen fellows reclined on roomy seats, which were covered with luxurious material. We were zipping along in an aerial craft unlike any airplane I’d encountered before. There was no air turbulence, no signs demanding we fasten our safety belts, and no flight attendants. Large round windows gave upon a blissful blue sky punctuated with charming puffs of pinkish cloud. The clouds dropped past our windows as if we were traveling straight up.
Not only was the scene appealing, my fellow passengers were gorgeous. As I looked around, I noticed that every guy was perhaps eighteen to twenty, fresh faced, hunky but not yuckymacho, and sweet smelling. We were dressed alike in shimmering white shorts and tops.
The guy across the aisle was smiling at me, so I smiled back. As my eyes traveled downward, I could see that he was sporting quite a significant boner. I promptly switched seats so that I was next to him.
“Hi, I’m Brandon,” I said.
“I’m James.”
Suddenly our introductions sounded like a bad cliché. The experience had such an air of unreality about it that I was hardly surprised at what happened next. James touched the tip of his swollen dick through the fabric of his shorts.
“It got hard when I saw you.”
“No kidding?” I ventured, feeling like the idiot character in a poorly written porno flick. I had to be home, asleep, dreaming, and humping my pillow.
James started rubbing his dick through his sexy shorts. Nervously, I looked around to see if our fellow passengers were watching. I wanted to stroke James’s dick too, but our position seemed frightfully public.
“Nobody will mind,” James said, observing my hesitation. “In fact, you could slip off your shorts and sit on it, were you so minded.”
Okay, that was just too fucking weird. “Are we joining the Mile High Club or something?” I asked as a flush of excitement shot through me. A natural bottom, I really wanted to sit on his cock. I felt my own cock hardening, and James grinned to see how much his suggestion excited me.
“Like, won’t we get thrown off this…this thing?” I didn’t know what to call our extraordinary shuttle.
“Nobody will mind,” James repeated. “Come on. It’ll be fun.” He pushed down his shorts and I saw his thick, slightly brownish, circumcised penis directly. It looked like a bit of heaven.
All my life, I had gone for safer sex. I’d studiously demanded double condoms, yet I somehow knew that taking James’s cock into my ass and receiving his come posed no danger to me. I had never felt so safe before, and I knew that I was going to do it. I was going to ride him bareback.
Hesitating no longer, I jumped up, pulled off my shorts, and grasped the head of James’s dick. It was already slick with some lubricant, and at my touch, he leaked a pearly stream of spunk out his peehole. The juice ran across my hand. James caught my semen-wet hand, brought it to his mouth, and licked it clean. The action was so loving and so intimate that I nearly came on the spot.
For a moment, I wobbled, but I recovered whatever senses I still possessed, pulled my muscled asscheeks apart, positioned my asshole directly over James’s cock, and slowly lowered myself upon him. My asshole opened readily as his cock slid into me. It was the most comfortable and natural penetration I had ever experienced. As I slid down toward his lap, he filled me deeply. There was not a hint of pain; indeed, the impaling was incredibly satisfying.
I found it easy to bounce upon James’s cock. My muscles naturally carried me upward until his cockhead widened my anal sphincter, but before it pulled out all the way, I would slide downward, filling my ass repeatedly. As I rode, my own cock grew harder and pulsed with a fury for release. When I touched my cockhead, an electric tingle shot through me. Slowly I rubbed my cock as I rode James’s dick.
James saw that I was masturbating my dry dick. “Let me, Brandon,” he urged. “Let me jerk you off.”
He reached around my waist with his strong right hand and touched the tip of my cock. From somewhere he had found a slick, warm lubricant that let his hand glide over my dick. The touch of his fingers and palm was like a soft kiss on my skin, yet his grip bit deep into my shaft and worked my cockhead like a tight squeeze.
“Oh, James,” I murmured, hardly able to hold out for a moment. I had not realized how close I was to shooting my load until his hand began to massage my dick.
“Let it come, Brandon,” James urged, his voice almost breathless in my ear as his hand plunged wildly upon my cock and I bounced just as wildly upon his. “I’m just about to come in your ass.”
Rapturous tingles tortured my dickhead. “Oh, here I go,” I moaned.
“I’m coming too,” James declared loud enough for all the guys to hear. A guy in the seat in front of me turned around, watched me bouncing on James’s cock, and smiled broadly.
“Isn’t that one heavenly ride?” he quipped even as the first blast of come shot out of my cock. I knew that James was shooting his own spunk into me, which made me work all the harder at his cock with my asshole. I was milking him off with my anal sphincter even as his hand was milking my come.
I walked down a whispering rush-floored corridor hung with French tapestries, toward a door embellished with ornamental jade. Fearlessly, I turned the knob that felt so true in my hand. The office was roomy, yet a single sixteenth-century Persian carpet depicting flowering trees and animals covered the floor. One wall was a library of rare books done in fine bindings. The carpet was occupied by furnishings in a variety of styles. I recognized a pagoda cabinet with chinoiserie decoration, a French provincial sofa, and a Bernard van Riesenburgh table.
The stained glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany depicted an idyllic lake with trees and birds; the window, which stood open in the perfect weather, gave upon an English garden. Elaborate fountain displays in the sixteenth-century style shot sprays that made music and their mist caught the sunlight to form rainbows above the lawn of Kentucky blue-grass. In the distance stood a pristine forest, and beyond the Alpine conifers, lofty snow-capped mountains rose toward the transcendent sky.
At the far end of the room stood a Chippendale library table, and behind it sat a beautiful young man, who arose upon my entrance. He smiled broadly and held out his arms to embrace me.
“Brandon,” he said in dulcet tones. “You’re here at last.”
I knew that I had never seen him before, though he was acting as if I was a long-lost lover. Still, he was gorgeous, and I would have dropped to my knees without too much begging on his part. However, one compartment of my mind questioned what was happening. Events seemed to be following a dreamlike pattern, yet the details were too consistent to be dream wraiths. Outside the window, the landscape remained the same. The office did not suddenly shift into a roller coaster or a group fuckfest in the local bathhouse as usually happened in my dreams.
I was still dressed in the glistening white shorts and shirt, though the last time I’d thought about those shorts, they’d been draped around my ankles while my ass had been impaled by James’s cock. For a second, I wondered whether I had imagined bouncing bareback on James’s spurting cockhead. Yet the evidence was there. As my attention focused upon my crotch, I knew that I’d been fucked recently. My dick felt like it had been jacked, and my asshole was sticky. I still carried James’s semen in my ass.
“Welcome, again, Brandon,” my host greeted me. “I am Perdikoim.”
Perdikoim wasn’t the name of anybody I’d ever known, nor any guy I’d ever blown. The thought crossed my mind that I should have a bad feeling about the whole adventure, but I did not. I felt wonderful. I’d just had the best sex ever, and I was feeling healthy and happy. In fact, I’d never felt quite so good before. I had the strongest feeling that, whatever the situation, nothing bad was going to happen.
Perdikoim waved his hand toward a Hepplewhite armchair. Beside the chair was a Dolphin center-table with some papers and a Lithyalin glass beaker sitting upon its inlaid marble top. I took the seat he had offered and looked at the beaker. I had once seen a photograph of it in a book about antiques; in fact, every item in the room was a rare prize that I had seen in books and lusted after. The marbled glass held purplish liquor. Beside the glass, a Paul de Lamerie silver plate held little white cakes with pink rose frosting.
“Please, refresh yourself,” Perdikoim urged.
I sipped the liquor and found it pure nectar. It was flavored with cherry and plum and mildly narcotic, yet it quenched the thirst marvelously. I sampled one of the cakes. It was pleasantly fruitful and sweet and slaked my hunger.
“A lost friend has been awaiting you, Brandon,” Perdikoim said when I had eaten and drunk. “Shall we invite him in?”
“Sure.” I was ready for a few answers, and I hoped this friend could provide them.
Perdikoim opened a side door and in rushed a young tuxedo cat, black and white, distinctively marked, and overjoyed to see me. He ran across the office, rubbed against my legs while meowing with a familiar tone, and leaped into my lap.
“Munchie,” I exclaimed. I scratched Munchie behind his ears the way he always loved so much.
I must have had a heart, for it was beating loudly and quite fast. Munchie curled up in my lap, snuggled against my stomach, purred at full volume for a minute, and fell asleep. He was just the way I remembered him when he was young, except I also clearly recalled the day Munchie died from old age.
The truth that I had been suspecting for some time was borne upon me. I looked Perdikoim frankly in the eye and asked, “What are you, Perdikoim?”
“I’m an angel.”
“I suspected as much,” I huffed. “I got run over by a bus, didn’t I? Did it kill me?”
Perdikoim made a face and perched upon the French provincial sofa. “Brandon, we don’t use words like kill, dead, death, and their like. They’re taboo words—the obscenities of this place.”
“Well, how do you talk about ‘you know what’?” I asked. Munchie awoke with another loud purr.
“No one needs to talk about it. You’re past all that nonsense now. You suffered the ‘grisly terror’ and discovered that you are awake afterward.”
For some reason, I did not feel the least grief over the occasion of my death. Munchie continued to purr, shifted his position so that his hind legs were digging into my stomach, and went back to sleep. “So this is Heaven?” I asked, glancing around the office.
Perdikoim laughed merrily at the question. “Not quite yet. You’re on your way to your destination and this is a rest stop. By the way, I observed that you enjoyed your trip up.”
Ah, yes, the trip up. If anything was going to determine my final destination, having gay anal intercourse on the way to Heaven was certain to have an effect. Yet, I felt a calm serenity, and Munchie continued to purr happily in his sleep.
“Perhaps there’s something I should tell you…” I began, but Perdikoim interrupted me.
“No need. I know everything about you. I even know which Heaven you will choose, but the choice is still yours to make.”
“I get to choose my own Heaven?” I started a bit at the novel idea. Munchie awoke again at my sudden jerk, gave me an offended look, and leaped to the carpet. I absently picked up a sheet of paper, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it across the room. Munchie raced after it, kicked it with his hind legs, and shredded it. In life, he and I had often played that old game.
“You get to choose,” Perdikoim assured me.
“Where are my parents?” I asked. My family had been wiped out several years earlier when an airliner filled with evangelical Christians crashed on the way to a national political convention.
Perdikoim pulled another face. “They went to Evangelical Heaven,” he said. “Behold.”
Abruptly the far wall swirled into action until it became like a gigantic three-dimensional movie screen. I saw multitudes clad in white gowns praising a Deity who sat upon a white throne, and the fundamentalists never ceased to shout their hallelujahs and sing His praise. As I watched, a woman paused to catch her breath. Immediately, a cruel golden lash struck her across the back. The six-winged angel continued to lash her pitilessly until she had raised her voice in accord with the hosanna chorus. I could not imagine a situation that better suited my parents’ theology.
“Holy crap!” I yelped.
“My sentiments exactly,” Perdikoim assured me. “I know that you are destined for a better place.”
“What do you have to offer?”
Perdikoim pointed toward the wall again, but this time it did not show one of the Heavens. It showed me on the trip up. In glorious three-dimensional color, I pulled off my shorts and positioned my ass over James’s cock. I watched as I rode James’s dick. Every motion was visible from every possible angle, and every sound was magnified. I could hear my own soft whimpers as I came close to orgasm.
