Best Gay Romance 2012, page 9
SPLATTERDAYS
Steve Isaak
Jeremy sat at a small round table at the back of the midsized club, watching the mostly male metalheads mosh, thirty feet away. On the stage, the performing band, Dismembered By Cheetahs, aka DBC, raged out their trademark blend of chugging garage metal and raw-throated horror-flick lyrics.
The show was sold out; such was the popularity of the band, who’d arrived on the music scene in 1980, eleven years earlier. Sweat-soaked men and women, ages ranging from eighteen to fifty, brushed past Jeremy, hip-pushing at his hard wooden chair and occasionally bumping his table. He gripped his Guinness pint firmly.
The band ended their song, the staccato-edged “Choking on the Bile of Your Vile Unctiousness, Mom.” The thrashers and those border-crushing around them stopped their smashing, dashing and headbanging, and were now standing still, dazed and happily exhausted.
Rigor Mortis, the dreadlocked lead vocalist, spoke into his microphone. “Devilbong’s original guitarist and one of our heroes, Brandon Page, died in a tragic accident eighteen years ago today. To mark the passing of this musical adept, Nub is going to play one of Page’s solo tunes, ‘An End to Friends.’ We hope you like it.”
Mortis nodded at Nub. The heavyset woman stepped up to her mic, smiled, and began to play a bluesy rock ’n’ roll song on her guitar, sans vocals, as the spotlight singled her out.
Some of the audience members headed toward the bathroom, or toward the bar to get another drink or sit at one of the club’s ten tables. As they pushed to the back of the club, the mingled odors of sweat, pot and cigarette smoke assaulted Jeremy’s nose anew.
Jeremy smiled. Though he didn’t smoke pot or cigarettes, these were his people. Leather, band shirts and denim, all the way, baby, he thought, mentally adding, and the occasional handsome man who’s great in the sack.
There hadn’t been much of the latter in his life, lately. He’d broken up with his last boyfriend, Paul, almost two months earlier. The reason: Paul, manager of a porn store, was working sixty-plus-hour weeks, with no reduction in sight. Paul had been irritable and emotionally abusive for the last few months of their relationship.
Jeremy, an easygoing person, didn’t want the tension. So he split from the prick.
Paul hadn’t taken Jeremy’s move well. “We’ve been going out for almost a year, and because of a few arguments, you want to fuck other guys?” he’d yelled in their apartment.
“I don’t want to ‘fuck other guys,’ and you know it,” Jeremy had snapped back. “It’s because you’ve been acting like a jerk for the last three months. I’m sorry that you’re stressed out, and that your job sucks, but don’t take it out on me, especially not in public. What you did at that party last night went too far!”
“You’re overreacting,” Paul had sneered. “Nobody said anything to me about it, besides you.”
Jeremy took a deep breath. “Calling my opinions on writing ‘fucking elitist and borderline retarded’ in front of all our friends is scurrilous. Just because I prefer other horror writers over your beloved Dean Koontz doesn’t mean I’m elitist. It means I have other preferences, that’s all.”
“‘Scurrilous’?” Paul had mocked. “That’s an elitist word. Who uses that word anymore?”
“People like me, who write every day, that’s who. I’m not going to dumb myself down for your sorry ass, nor am I going to put up with your bullshit. We’re through, Paul. I’m moving out tomorrow.”
With that, Jeremy had gone to their bedroom, where he and Paul had spent many orgasmic and passionate hours, to pack a night bag for his motel stay.
The sound of a scraping chair drew Jeremy back to the present.
“Is it okay if I share this table with you?” asked a friendly male voice.
The body that packaged the voice was equally friendly—fuckably friendly, Jeremy thought, his senses electrified. His prick, which hadn’t had much stimulation lately, aside from solo stroking, took notice too.
The hazel-eyed, twentysomething man looked amused, his right hand resting atop the back of the small wooden chair, his other holding a Guinness pint that mirrored Jeremy’s. He wore a faded, edge-frayed Iron Maiden T-shirt, which clung, soaked, to his solid, buff body.
“Judging by your expression, the answer is yes?”
“Most definitely,” Jeremy replied, softer than he meant to.
“Thank you,” the stranger replied. He sat on the chair and set his pint on the table.
“I’m Adrian,” he said, offering his hand.
Jeremy returned Adrian’s smile and shook his hand. Though he’d thought he’d recovered from an initial shock of lust, Jeremy was rocked by further sexual energy when their hands touched.
He became aware that he was blushing while staring into Adrian’s eyes. Adrian laughed politely, and said, “You never told me your name.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m Jeremy.”
“Glad to meet you, Jeremy.” Adrian took in Jeremy’s blond curls and blue eyes. Jeremy flushed again.
Adrian smiled. “You’re a DBC fan?” He nodded at the stage, where Nub was finishing her cover song. The other band members had returned to the stage, and were taking their places; picking up their instruments: guitar, bass and drumsticks.
Jeremy nodded. “They broke my metal show cherry, back in’83, just before their first album came out.”
“Splatterday. Fun album—not their best, but their punkiest.”
“‘Punkiest,’” Jeremy laughed. “I like that. May I use it?”
Adrian questioned him with a glance.
“I’m a writer,” Jeremy explained.
“What do you write?”
“I scribble for a local rag, The San Marin Weekly.”
Adrian smiled. “I’ve read that. What do you scribble about?”
“I mostly review local shows, new albums, and occasionally I interview visiting musicians. What do you do?”
“I’m a club employee. Got hired a few weeks ago. I’m a jack-of-all-trades assistant manager. And, yes, it’s my night off.”
Jeremy laughed. “Sounds like a cool job. Have you met anybody exciting?”
His question was interrupted by an eruptive, club-vibrating drumbeat from the stage.
Pukowski, bearded and sweaty on the drums, was kicking down a heavy bass beat, a familiar lead-in to one of DBC’s live perennials, “Gethsemanic Maniacs,” a song that hadn’t appeared on any of their albums.
“Join me in the pit?” Adrian yelled, as he stood up and leaned down, inches from Jeremy’s face.
Jeremy, wanting to kiss his beautiful mouth, blushed again. He ignored a knowing smile on Adrian’s face.
Jeremy rose to join him, half hard, heart pounding.
By the time DBC ended its two-hour show with the corpse- and sex-nasty “Eat the Stiff Twitch,” Jeremy and Adrian had “run the pit,” as Jeremy called it, for five bruising, aching, blender-brutal songs.
Jeremy had managed to keep his erection manageable, or, as he called it, “non-raging,” by not thinking about what Adrian might be like in bed. Not easy.
Besides, he wasn’t a fast-fuck-and-run guy, even though Adrian was scathingly bangable. Jeremy, he learned, was twenty-six, liked relationships and had been in a few, all of them mostly good. There was something appealing about being with somebody you knew well, with whom you shared a wide array of experiences, some tender, some sad or angry, some funny, some sexual.
Adrian’s tee was soaked again; Jeremy’s was now, too. The thin cloth clung to their slender frames.
“You look flushed,” Adrian said, slapping Jeremy lightly on the shoulder. “We should get something to drink—water, I mean.”
Jeremy nodded, as they headed toward the club exit. “My throat’s dry. And I’m drenched.”
Adrian grinned at the play on words, and Jeremy, silently cursing, blushed again.
“Nice blush. I find you attractive, too,” Adrian said. “I’d like to go out on a date with you. A real date, not this.” With a wave of his right hand, Adrian indicated the club around them.
“That would be good.” Jeremy smiled.
On their third date in less than two weeks—dinner at a vegetarian restaurant—Adrian told Jeremy about his last boyfriend, Gary, who’d quite literally pulled a disappearing act on him.
“All he left was a stupid note,” Adrian snorted. “It read: I have to go. Please don’t look for me. Know, however, that I will always love you. That was almost a year ago. What kind of shit is that?”
“Are you over him?”
Adrian thought a moment, smiled. “Yeah. I’m not pining for him, but the mystery of his disappearance—and, yes, I looked for him—is still weird.”
Adrian paused again and looked Jeremy in the eye. “I didn’t really answer your question, did I? The answer is yes, I’m ready for another relationship, a monogamous one. Possibly with you, if things work out.”
“And if they didn’t work out?” Jeremy smiled.
“We’ll get some sweet lovemaking out of it,” Adrian said flirtatiously.
“My, my. So forward for someone who hasn’t bedded me yet,” Jeremy laughed. He continued to blush around Adrian, but not as much, thank god.
“You said ‘yet.’”
“Okay, how about right now,” Jeremy said, leaning forward and French-kissing Adrian in the middle of the busy restaurant.
Ignoring an elderly woman’s gasp, Adrian surrendered to Jeremy’s oral heat. This wasn’t their first kiss, but it was their most passionate.
They broke away from each other.
“My place?” Jeremy asked, quietly, his gaze intense.
“Of course. It’s closer.” Adrian laughed.
Fifteen minutes later, they were at Jeremy’s apartment.
Jeremy barely had time to unlock his front door before Adrian, his kisses flavored by Guinness Stout, gently pushed him inside, kicking the door shut with his foot.
They slammed against a hallway wall, quaking—almost knocking down—a framed photo of an adolescent Jeremy with his parents, all of them smiling.
Their hands fumbled with, unbuttoned, tugged off their clothes, their kisses rough: Jeremy reveled in the soft facial chafing of Adrian’s three-day beard and his sandalwood-scented skin, as Adrian, who’d divested Jeremy of his pants and boxers, insistently kissed his way down to Jeremy’s aching-to-burst erection.
He had barely put his prick into Adrian’s hot, wet mouth when he came, gasping.
Adrian, lusty gentleman that he was, worked Jeremy’s member, his hands gently squeezing Jeremy’s sac. Dizzy with desire, Jeremy spasmed even more as he leaned back against the wall.
A minute later, Adrian rose from his knees. His Guinness kisses were now flavored with Jeremy’s salty nut.
Jeremy sighed. “Sorry for coming so quickly.”
“Don’t apologize,” Adrian said, his eyes bright, between further kisses. “Take me to your bed.”
Inside Jeremy’s bedroom, Jeremy did as Adrian bid. They continued making out, their hands stroking, squeezing each other’s taint, prick and sac till both had fresh erections.
Jeremy broke away for a few seconds to riffle for his lube and condoms in his nightstand. Even as he did this, he traced circular patterns on Adrian’s solid, lightly haired stomach with the fingers of his other hand, occasionally brushing them against the tip of Adrian’s raging red prick.
“Hurry,” Adrian said, that he was on the brink of coming apparent in his voice. “I’m going to explode, if you don’t.”
“Then explode,” Jeremy sighed, loudly dropping his lube jar and strung-together condoms on the nightstand. He scooted down the bed and slowly tongued the head of Adrian’s prick.
“You tasted me, now I want to taste you,” he said, sweaty and breathing hard, almost as hard as Adrian. “It’s only fair.”
Adrian, clutching the sheets, arched slightly when he came, the taste bitter-tinged, in his lover’s mouth.
A moment later, Adrian sighed, “Thank you. I needed that.”
“I should be thanking you,” Jeremy said, wiping Adrian’s come from the corner of his mouth while he scooted up to rest his head on the other pillow and face Adrian.
Adrian smiled. “We’re both lucky. Good night, lover.”
“What about the lube, the condoms?” Jeremy asked, mock-distressed.
“There’ll be plenty of other opportunities to rock that sweetness. Say…all day tomorrow?”
Jeremy nodded, any words thick, stuck in his throat.
“Good,” Adrian said, then promptly fell asleep, leaving Jeremy to gaze lovingly at him for much of the remaining night.
The next morning, they made beautiful music together—and it wasn’t all heavy metal—again. And for a long time to come.
PRECIOUS JADE
Fyn Alexander
I was beautiful in 1885 when Queen Victoria was on the throne, and I still am, according to someone who loves me. I was paid far more attention than I deserved by both men and women, and was, frankly, rather vain. At eighteen years old I was slender with sun-colored hair that was much too long and skin like an unblemished peach.
I had grown up in the theatre as an angelic boy soprano. But, much to my chagrin, my voice changed at fourteen, and along with it, my ability to earn a living. Consequently, that warm day in May the very thought of having to attend an interview for a job I did not want at a house in Belgravia made me as sullen as a spoiled prince.
Money I wanted, a place to live I needed, but work! I wanted to cry out to God to save me. Why could I not be rich and free and live in some foreign clime where it was always warm and no one cared that I, a boy, preferred men to ladies? I favored girls when it came to chitchat, gossip and whispering about men’s bodies. But I had always wanted a man to overpower me, to master me, to fall madly in love with me and make me his own. Since I was to be a servant of sorts, a secretary, you would think I’d be happy, but no! Any master I would end up with would be either some doddering old man I did not want near me, or some nasty married gentleman who would treat me with utter disdain, if he noticed me at all.
It wasn’t fair.
I suppose I must have looked disgruntled when I was shown into the study and made to stand in front of a broad oak desk whilst being looked up and down by an elderly woman dressed in black silk. She never invited me to sit. She fired questions at me while acting as if I had brought a smell of refuse into the house with me. All in all, I felt like reaching across the desk to slap her cadaverous cheek. I found my left eyebrow lifting as it often did when I was affronted. Remembering my mother’s admonition before I left that morning—“Keep that haughty look off your face, darling boy. An employer will not take kindly to it”—I lowered my eyebrow and attempted to look meek.
“Your mother is on the stage? She calls herself Amethyst Swift?” Mrs. Wynterbourne asked. From her tone she might as well have said, Your mother is a prostitute, she has sex for money with perfect strangers.
“My mother is a singer, a coloratura, and that’s her real name.” My eyebrow shot up again of its own volition.
“And she extended the family tradition of naming infants after stones by calling you Jade?” She actually sniggered, a very unattractive sound.
I was outraged. I clasped my hands behind my back to control them. “Jade is very expensive. It is the same color as my eyes.” The first man who had ever taken me on his knee and petted me had told me my green eyes were fit to die in.
“Is it indeed?” Mrs. Wynterbourne’s eyebrows both rose perilously close to her receding hairline. “Watch your tone, my lad! Why are you not on the stage yourself? You might be better suited to that life.” She was obviously referring to my long hair and velvet jacket.
“My mother wants something better for me,” I said quietly, ashamed to admit it.
“Does she indeed? Well, I suppose the job is yours.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, taken by surprise. The sun shone through the window behind her directly into my eyes, making me hot and crotchety. I wanted desperately to get away from her. “May I see my room please? Then I can go and fetch my belongings.”
“You will not be staying here,” she said as if the very thought was repugnant to her. “You are going to the country to work for my son, Mr. Marcus Wynterbourne, who fancies he is writing a book. He wants me to send him a young lady, but I don’t trust him with one.”
Not to be trusted with young ladies? Just my luck!
The journey to East Sussex on the public coach was hellish, to say the least. Squashed in for the first half of the journey between a fat, dirty woman and her farting husband, then for the second leg, alone in the carriage with a man with roving hands and halitosis, my senses were outraged along with my very person. The first I ignored as best I could: the second I slapped, then bit when he refused to accept my firm refusal.
I arrived eventually in the pitch dark at a vast country estate, tired, hungry, dejected and wanting my mother. None of my needs were met except for a bed, and I retired hungry and miserable, bursting into tears under the covers. Sometime later I paused in my pathetic weeping, swearing I heard a step outside my door. I drew the eiderdown up under my chin like a maiden defending her virtue, though my virtue was long since trampled upon, and I was more disappointed than anything when no one entered my lonely chamber.
Over breakfast with the servants, who never spoke directly to me, and looked at me as though I were a recent escapee from a traveling freak show, I fantasized about my new Master as I had done since first hearing his name: Marcus Wynterbourne. Since childhood I had dreamed of a man, cold and haughty, whose icy heart could only be melted by me. But Mr. Wynterbourne liked the ladies, it seemed, and he was probably ugly anyway.
At length I was shown into a sunny morning room, where a man stood at the window with his back to the room, ignoring me. I remained standing by the door until he deigned to turn around. When at last he did, the sight of him captured my breath as I had dreamed it would.
