Best Gay Erotica 2006, page 8
He pulls his legs back, all the way, as if he was in stirrups. He glistens, every muscle tight and gleaming. He breathes slowly. I begin with a few fingers of my left hand, opening him up and feeling my way around comfortably. Inside, he is a new space, welcoming my hand. He enjoys it; asks for more. I get the other fingers in next, pushing until all five are in, leaving the knuckles out.
The first ring is hard. I have to reposition my hand until I have just the right angle. At some point, I don’t think it’ll go in at all. And then it does. He has me push my leg and right arm to help hold his legs back. He breathes carefully, deliberately. I move my fingertips inside him, and manage to get my whole hand in. I can feel his heartbeat surround my fist and I hold it there until my breath and his, my pulse and his, match.
We kiss. “Pull back slowly and push up slower.” I obey, wiggle my fingers to help get further up. His body shakes, like he’s cumming inside. His dick leaks pre-cum, trickling against his leg, sliding down his crack. It tastes like gym sweat and orange rinds.
The second ring is harder. My left hand seems to hold up his two hundred pounds all on its own. I pull back and push in. I wiggle my fingers. It is slow moving. My phone rings; so does his. The sun comes up, and the woman selling fresh tortillas announces her presence on my block. We barely notice. I stare at my hand lost in his hole, and I don’t think any more will fit. His throbbing asscheeks feel like they’re smashing my hand together. I don’t know what to do. He smiles. “Wiggle around some more, then pull almost all the way out, then push in. Slow.” And it works. More and more of me slithers up his anus. The second ring opens suddenly and I am stunned by the heat of him, the pounding of his heart gripping my fist. He is all around me.
We lie there in each other for a second. We kiss. I almost start crying at the gift of this man, heavy on my hand. I realize how precious this is. He shakes, asks for more. And I push on.
The third ring is like a wall. Every millimeter is a struggle where we breathe in complete synchronicity, fully aware of the other, wrapped up so completely in this shared trip. It’s like picking lychees all day in the Florida sun with your mom. At first, it starts okay, then shame grows, frustration at the tedious labor and the stickiness coating your hands, the smell of it, wondering if anyone sees you, uncertain of your own skill and pissed to even worry about it: You crack bad jokes to hide the other feelings. Finally, you get to return home, where your mom will have a bowl of fresh lychees chilled on the table the next day and you will happily devour them until the taste of them sickens you. He is that twenty-four hour stretch with my mom picking lychees, that maddening, that refreshing, that alien from everyone else’s day. I want to open him up.
At one point I prod in the wrong direction, by the littlest bit. His whole mass shifts and he nearly yells. “Careful! Whoa! Slow, baby.” He grits his teeth and tries to smile. I want to apologize but I know it’s the wrong thing to do. I am an inch past my wrist in him and just noticing the danger permeating us.
The third ring takes a few tries. I wiggle the tips of my fingers, I pull back almost all the way and push in, relishing each moment when the weight and heat of him surround me. Finally he takes a deep breath and somehow my hand slides further in, and we stay there. His whole pulse shakes me, holds me halfway to my elbow. Never have I been more inside somebody. Never been deeper.
It’s like love—our version of giving birth. My fist deep in him, his legs up and back, heavy controlled breaths, life connecting us. And we stay there, on each other’s breathing, both of us working together to keep him open. He trembles and moans.
I pull out. And we hold each other until unfamiliar juices and oozing push us to the shower. My left hand is numb from his throbbing, pinpricks of pain jabbing through every tiny bone with any movement. In the shower, he shoves me to my knees and baptizes my back with a hot stream of urine. He smiles at me, and I look down, grateful for him. He scrubs me, and I wash him. We’re like new.
It’s Christmas morning.
GENDER QUEER
Patrick Califia
Carleton was still trying to get his strawberry-blond cowlick to lie down when the doorbell rang. He gave his too-thin, five-foot-eight body a critical glance in the full-length mirror, threw the tube of styling gel back on top of his dresser, sighed, and went to get the door. At least he had a suntan and his calves were showing some muscle from all that bike riding. He had eaten both breakfast and lunch, and planned to eat dinner as well. He was no longer the anorexic teenage girl who’d had to be hospitalized twice. Testosterone and the free weights in his bedroom were sculpting his arms and torso into a body he could accept, maybe even love.
The local FTM group had almost a hundred people on its mailing list, but the typical meeting was less than a dozen guys. Tonight, by the time he’d admitted the last arrival, there were only six others than himself, so everyone fit comfortably in Carleton’s living room. The red recliner he usually claimed for his own had been occupied by a new person, someone he thought he recognized from the audience at one of his more horrendous speaking engagements. She looked ready to bolt, so he didn’t ask her to move. The regular guys already had places on the three-seater sofa and the room’s other two chairs. A tower of large paisley pillows resided in one corner of the room, so he dragged two of them into the circle, wedged one of them up against the bookshelf for whatever it was worth as back support, and sat down, legs crossed, to see who would start the meeting.
“I guess I’ll go first,” Bear said, in a voice that had only recently stopped cracking like a teenage boy’s. Bear was the biggest guy there, a wide and tall Latino who had his own gardening business. He had good news: a letter from his psychiatrist and an appointment with a doctor who would do the chest surgery he had been saving to afford. Everyone was excited for him except Greg, who had spent a summer in San Francisco, avoided any gendered pronouns, and called himself “no-ho, no-op.” Carleton had engaged in some behind-the-scenes diplomacy to keep the other guys from asking Greg to leave the group. “He doesn’t even call himself an FTM!” Lou (who still tended bar at the local lesbian dive) had objected. “What is all this ‘gender queer’ shit? Either he wants to transition or he doesn’t.”
“Come on,” Carleton had retorted, “how long did it take you to make up your mind? Let him take his own path. We get enough judgment from the outside. If he can be happy in his own skin without taking testosterone or getting any surgery, who are we to make that decision for him? Our web-site says we are for anybody who: (a) wasn’t born male, and (b) has questions about their gender.”
After everybody had high-fived Bear, Lou wanted to bitch about his lesbian girlfriend and fantasize about the perfect straight girl he would never be able to date until he got his phalloplasty. Carleton wondered, not for the last time, what he was doing providing a haven for a bunch of straight men. He was the only self-proclaimed bisexual in the group, and there wasn’t much empathy for the problems he had getting up the nerve to go to a gay men’s sex club downtown.
The others kept glancing over to the short-haired woman in Carleton’s recliner, waiting for her to introduce herself or add some comment that would help them to understand why she was there. When they weren’t giving her pointed looks, they were glaring at Carleton. As the unacknowledged leader of the group, he was supposed to facilitate such awkward things for them. Tonight he refused to do so, because the only time he had looked directly at the rosy-cheeked butch, he had seen the silver sheen of silent tears coursing down her face. Partly because he was in no mood to entertain, the guys left fairly early, planning to continue their conversations at a diner owned by two retired gay men. “I’ll catch up with you later,” Carleton said to their suggestion that he join them.
When he shut the door, the new group attendee was right behind him. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said firmly, and led her into the kitchen. Her. What a fucked-up language English was. What the hell did he know about this visitor in his home? Nothing. Well—she had been pretty nasty to him when he gave his talk at the community college’s Psychology 101 class. “Aren’t FTMs just butch dykes who gave up because it got too hard to be queer?” she had demanded. “Why do you think there’s anything radical about claiming male privilege?”
“Tea?” he asked, pulling out a chair and moving a plate of cookies closer to her. The kitchen had big windows, and he’d painted it a soft yellow, then painted his kitchen furniture white and made delft blue cushions and place mats. “You’ve got a choice between Earl Grey and peppermint.”
“I think I could use some caffeine,” she said shakily, and picked up a peanut butter cookie.
“Baked those myself, I did,” Carleton said in his best Eliza Doolittle Cockney accent. “I’ll make someone a luverly wife someday.”
She smiled. “I didn’t know we were going camping,” she quipped.
Carleton laughed a little more than the shy joke deserved. The electric kettle had the water boiling quickly, and he was soon able to bring a tray to the table with mugs of black tea, a creamer shaped like a black-and-white cow, and a beehive sugar bowl. The spoons were not alike. He collected antique silver at garage sales. It was a poor substitute for sucking dick, he reflected, but one claimed one’s fag identity however one could in the Midwest.
Before picking up the tea, she faced him bravely. “I owe you an apology.”
“No,” he interrupted, wanting to put his guest at ease. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not, and I can’t accept your hospitality until I tell you I’m sorry for heckling you when you came to our class. I appreciated the fact that you didn’t blow up at me. You spoke with a lot of dignity and courage, and after you left, I went and got every single book on that reading list you handed out. I’ve been so messed up, it’s like I can’t think my way out of all of the memories and fears that keep coming up for me. I’m really scared. I think that’s why I wanted to tear into you. Looking at you, I felt—I wanted…”
Her voice trailed off into a whisper. The tears were back, and her shoulders were shaking. “What?” Carleton asked gently. He put his hand on top of her own, stroked it lightly. “You looked so fucking happy and I wondered what it would be like to be you, to stand there without these sandbags strapped to my chest, and feel my body straight and strong and free. I wanted to know how it felt to shave my face and walk out my front door whistling. To have the guy at the gas station call me sir and not have anybody give me a second look. But how can I do that, how can I even think that?”
Carleton had a sip of his own tea to calm the pounding of his heart. How well he remembered his own version of this woman’s angst. His ex-lover had not spoken to him for eight long years. Nor had he seen the twins that he’d helped her to conceive. A mutual friend sent him photos of the children and news about them. If Deborah ever found out that the woman who had broken her heart by becoming a man had even that much contact with the kids, Carleton didn’t like to think about what she would do.
“There’s nothing wrong with how you feel,” he said. “You can’t help it. You’ve probably always felt this way.” His guest nodded, and he handed her a tissue. “What’s your name, buddy?” he asked.
She hesitated. Carleton thought he knew why. “No, don’t tell me your girl name,” he said, just a shade impatiently.
“It’s the only name I’ve got,” she confessed in a wobbly voice. “But I hate it. I hate it so much I don’t even want to say it out loud.”
Carleton fortified himself with a large bite of cookie washed down with tea that was still too hot to gulp. “Well, we can fix that,” he mused. “I was an only child, and I always wished I had a little brother I could climb trees with and take camping. I even had a name all picked out for him. Moss. Isn’t that a funny name?”
“I like it,” she whispered.
“It goes with your green eyes,” he commented, then blushed. What was he doing looking so closely at her olive-skinned face and the soft shine of her black hair? “So, Moss,” he said, suddenly all business. “You don’t exactly like being a woman, but you’re not sure you want to be a man. And there’s no safe place to talk about these things. You have trouble even thinking about them in the privacy of your own mind.” She nodded. “I wish I could give you a desert island where you could change into a boy and see if you liked it, and then change back if it didn’t make you happier.” He smiled. “But we just don’t get any holidays from gender, do we?”
Moss shook his head. Carleton appraised his guest. “Your chest isn’t that big,” he said. “I can show you how to tape yourself down. I think I’ve got my old binder around here somewhere. Want me to dress you up, little brother?”
“Sure,” Moss said, throat dry. She decided to let this slight, bossy-but-kind stranger proceed. If she went home now, she might lose herself looking for the bottom of a bottle. There had been too many nights of drinking and not enough honesty. She had promised herself to stay clear-headed long enough to think this frightening conundrum through.
Carleton led him to the bedroom, stopping in the bathroom to get some tape and bandage scissors. “Off with your shirt,” he said, turning his back to rummage through a plastic storage bin in the bottom of his closet. The binder was, of course, the last thing in there, all the way at the bottom. He resisted the impulse to tidy everything up and shut the closet door. He would show Moss how to do the things that he had only been able to read about in Lou Sullivan’s book about how to pass as a man. Making things easier for new guys was one of the ways Carleton exorcised the pain of his own coming out process.
Moss was standing straight, arms at his side. What a cute boy he would make. “Is it okay if I call you ‘he’?” Carleton asked, pulling off a strip of tape, then tearing it with his teeth. Moss’s only response was a tight nod. Then Carleton set to work taping down his little brother’s chest, hoping that his touch didn’t intensify his new friend’s shame about his body. As if he could read Carleton’s mind, Moss said, “I like the way you touch me.”
“And normally you don’t like being touched?” Carleton asked softly.
“That’s right,” Moss affirmed. The tape was unpleasantly sticky, but it was good to have those breasts removed from view. “I love breasts,” he said thoughtfully, “but only on other people.”
“I’m right there with you, buddy,” Carleton said, and smoothed down the last strip of tape. “Is that too tight?”
“I wouldn’t care if it was,” Moss replied. Carleton held up a length of putty-colored elastic cloth that looked kind of like a girdle, except for the two shoulder straps. “Put this on,” he instructed, sliding it up Moss’s arms, “then I’ll fasten the hooks and eyes up the front. You can do this yourself if you’ve got a mirror. But wait, I don’t want you to look yet.” Over the binder went a black T-shirt. Then Carleton turned Moss around to see his new silhouette.
The difference was shocking. “But nobody would think I was a boy,” Moss said. “I couldn’t pass. Could I?”
“Please, Mary, I can make anybody look like anything,” Carleton lisped, and ran back to the bathroom. He returned with makeup sponges and a few pots of color. By carefully dabbing at Moss’s cheeks and upper lip, then dotting his skin here and there, he created the impression of a five o’clock shadow. “My man, you been working out!” Carleton exclaimed, circling Moss’s upper arms with his hands. “But that haircut has gotta go. No self-respecting gay boy has a mullet.” Moss did not protest, so Carleton got out his electric clippers and proceeded to give his little brother a proper fag buzz cut. “Now look at you!” Carleton exclaimed, proud of his handiwork.
“Do I really look like a gay guy?”
“Yes. We could go barhopping right now.”
“But what if somebody gropes me?”
“Hmmm. Do I have a spare packer?” Carleton opened the drawer of his nightstand. “It’s chocolate brown,” he said. “The only color they had the first time I went to the sex toy shop. I’m not a racist, but I kind of thought a white boy should have a peach-colored packer.”
“I don’t care,” Moss said, laughing. Carleton dropped the spongy little cock with its two small balls into a women’s nylon kneesock and tied a knot in it, then clipped off the excess stocking. He approached Moss, undid his jeans, and noted with approval the Y-fronts he found underneath them. “Been cross-dressing long?” he asked, tucking the small cock into the fly.
“Ever since I could buy my own underwear,” Moss said seriously. He had expected to be repulsed by the dick. But it felt right having a bulge to fill out his pants. There was something else that felt even better. Carleton was close enough for Moss to smell his aftershave. A muscular, tanned arm was thrust down his shorts, and Carleton’s flat chest pressed against Moss’s artificially tamed torso. Moss said, “Can you move that a little to the right?” then took Carleton’s face in his hands and kissed him.
Carleton almost swooned. How long had it been since a man had explored his mouth with his tongue? Moss was a good kisser, thorough without being sloppy or pushy. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hand and almost withdrew it, but Moss clamped his legs together, trapping it there.
They moved toward the bed, but Moss’s courage gave out when they reached the edge of the mattress, so Carleton helped his brother up and onto its surface. “Relax,” he said, laying at his side, one arm across his chest. “We don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do.”
“Can I see your chest?” Moss asked.
Carleton hesitated, then unbuttoned his Oxford shirt and pulled it out of his pants. He doffed the T-shirt underneath it. Moss explored his scars with gentle fingers, then sucked his nipples sweetly, kissing them alive. Before Carleton could become uncomfortable with that much attention, Moss began rubbing his back, encouraging him to come close for another kiss.
