Best Gay Erotica 2009

by Richard Labonté

  Benjamin says: I don’t identify with that culture, everyone wants me to perform that role, and it’s disgusting. I think she’s just in denial; she’s the queeniest person I know. She says: I’m not invested in that identity in the way you are. I think about it. I realize she’s right; I want her to be a queen too, because she’s been around East Coast girls doing 4:00 A.M. runway; she knows that culture. I miss it.

  I call my voicemail and it says I’m sorry—all three access lines are busy. Oh, shit—that’s not my voicemail, it’s the phone sex line. Before, she was an institution—now she’s in an institution. At 4:30 P.M., I rush outside to get some sun. There isn’t any. My trick says: ever since I moved into this new apartment, the cat has been throwing itself at the window. What do you mean? All of the sudden, the cat leaps off the bed and throws itself at the window.

  Benjamin says: I haven’t been able to sleep, whatever you have is contagious—I’m not used to this; I’m emotionally melting down. Benjamin was on the bus and this guy met her gaze, so she followed him to the Marina. When she got off the bus, she followed him further, and when he came out of a store he seemed surprised. Oh, hey, you’re from the bus—see you later; I’m going to Sacramento.

  Benjamin walked all the way to the beach—that’s a long walk, were you wearing your platforms? She says it was okay because I came twice, but then on my way home I went to Mission News to cruise more—my whole life is tragic—drugs are ruining my life, even though I don’t do them; everyone in my life is strung out on drugs.

  I get in bed at 1:00 A.M. because I just can’t function, everything hurts. As soon as I lie down, I’m wired—alarm clock! I get up to take pills. At 9:00 A.M., there’s a pigeon dying in my wall. I make toast, and take another pill. I talk to the pigeon: I wish your friends could help you; I hope you won’t be devoured by the rats.

  It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre, and one of the cult survivors says it’s hard to tell what’s insanity and what’s keeping people together. Ralowe wants to know if she could live on nori seaweed, just nori seaweed. She’s vegan now, and trying to figure it all out. This is an actual Marines chant: blood makes the grass grow—who makes the blood flow? A trick calls, he wants to cross-dress at my place—well, that shouldn’t be a problem, not like I usually do that kind of thing around here, but…

  Rue says in Northern Europe, a standard treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder is a homeopathic dose of gold, three times a year. I’ll take a suitcase full of gold, skip the homeopathy, thanks. Blake is moving to SF and we’re going to start a free door-to-door sleep deprivation clinic—Sleep Deprivation: You Want It, We Got It! Today, I feel like there’s a piece of particle board between my eyes and my brain. My head is filled with distance. When I exit the bus at the same stop as this snooty British woman, she says from ahead of me: some days, it’s just not worth it—getting out of bed, or getting on the bus. I say especially the first one, and I go into the Relax the Back store, just to see what they have. Everything’s so expensive. When I get in bed, I can’t sleep because everything itches again—is it the dust mites or am I allergic to sleep? I take a pill.

  In the morning, I lie in bed staring at a piece of string rising off my sheet like a hook; it’s shaking slightly due to the air purifier. I look at it closely from all different angles, but I can’t figure out what it’s trying to tell me. What are the barriers between a chainsaw and a child? Benjamin sees the London anti-Bush protests on TV; she says there was this huge effigy of Bush—like fifty feet tall—with a bomb in his hand and they toppled it; it was beautiful. You don’t have a TV, she says, but maybe it’ll be in tomorrow’s newspaper.

  I go over to Eric, Matt, and Jason’s, and we watch Circuit, about, well—you know. This guy’s a cop from Illinois and he moves to L.A.; within minutes he’s smoking crystal and trying to kill a cat in a tree. There’s someone in the movie making a documentary about circuit parties, there’s the cop’s childhood friend—a woman!—who’s a comedian, there’s the porn star, and there’s a high-priced escort. The cop can’t handle his drugs, the moviemaker hides his, the comedian cleans the house, the porn star injects Caverject into his dick to get hard, the escort can’t feel. The climax is when the escort gets paid to kill the porn star with poison disguised as drugs, or pure drugs which are poison, but instead the escort takes the poison drugs himself ’cause it’s his thirtieth birthday and his cheek implants are slipping. The former cop, who was in love with the escort, rushes in after the overdose, and then the guy who set it all up is confused; the cop chokes him for a while to teach him a lesson.

  Afterwards, Eric talks about panic attacks—he thought someone was going to kill him—and I talk about incest flashbacks: I thought someone was going to kill me. Eric eats more vegan pie, and I taste it—it tastes delicious, but makes me shit. I think about everything that I want to do if the new herbalist helps—I want to exercise and feel better about my body, I want to go dancing and feel amazing afterwards and even the next day, I want to sleep.

  At home, I wonder about queers who’ve never experienced tacky gay culture, and I wonder what they’ve missed out on. Outside, someone’s honking their horn at me, and I figure it’s the usual homophobia drama so I ignore it. But it’s some woman screaming at me: do you know where the RR Bar is, Polk and Sutter? I say Polk and Sutter’s two blocks; she says you wanna come? I get in the car; she’s this super-posh tiny white woman, coked out of her mind on the best coke; I can tell it’s the best coke because she’s not biting her lips or anything, but her eyes are open wide to possibility. You’re so cute, she says, can I buy you a drink? I’m okay. She says I don’t care if you’re okay, I want to buy you a drink. I walk her to the bar and we kiss goodbye; I really want a drink.

  I think my apartment manager’s a tweaker, because he’s painting psychedelic clouds on the ceiling in the lobby, and he has the same hours as me. Lately, I can’t seem to get to sleep before 5:00 A.M; then I’m struggling to get out of the house before dusk. Like today, focusing on the blue of the darkening sky while waiting for the bus and everything hurts. I do mean everything.

  I hook up with someone on craigslist—have I broken my promise to myself to avoid it? But it’s actually fun. He shakes when I lick his balls. Ralowe describes his first overnight: I still feel like I slept next to a trick, his breath smelled like a toilet, and all night long, he kept belching—in the morning, I had to pretend I liked him, I kept jerking him off and jerking him off, and he kept getting close to coming, but not going all the way there, and then I knew I had to suck him off. Andee says she wishes she could visit me, but I live in a fascist country. What about Germany? She says if there’s any country that’s done its share of soul-searching, it’s Germany.

  Zero and I listen to Carl Cox to find out what he does with the breakdown; Zero says there’s one in every track. It’s all about the pounding bass, heartbeat—oh, that fucking bass; do we have that here in San Francisco? When Carl Cox fades out, there’s still some beautiful beat in the distance, waiting to take us home, sweet home to all that bang bang clang clang glory! It’s Thanksgiving; on NPR there’s a special about a turkey farmer who’s researching what kinds of music turkeys like best. He says they like the wind whistling on the moors, and the Tibetan monks, but they don’t like whale sounds. He doesn’t tell us what they like when their heads are snapped off.

  The building manager is vacuuming again—he just vacuumed two days ago. I use the neti pot, but my sinuses feel more clogged than ever, like my nose just stops at my head and nothing goes through. Well, pain, of course—that gets through. On Polk Street, this tall stumbling boy with glitter on his face stops me with a hug—you’re so cute! He’s smashed, and his friend with blond hair and the same glitter is embarrassed.

  They’re probably in high school, drinking cocktails out of Pepsi bottles with the spout cut off. I say you’re cute too—I’m already getting hard with all the rubbing. He wants to go home with me, but he’s supposed to go t
o a rave at the self-defense studio on Bush, which is a block away, even though they’re pretending to be lost. I walk them in that direction, and the boy pushes me against the wall and we make out. He grabs my dick and says to his friend: look at this! She says you two can have anal sex all night long, but we have to go to the rave first—come on! I don’t want to be another tired fag who grabs the boy and ditches his best girl friend—which is this boy’s plan, I can tell—so I make him go with her. In the morning, there’s glitter all over my face. I get the fancy full-spectrum seasonal affective disorder light in the mail, and at first I think what is this horrible heavy metal box? The light’s fluorescent and not even that bright, how can it possibly mimic the sunshine at Noon? I sit with it anyway, and within a few minutes I get that clear, fun feeling in my head—oh, I have a new friend, he’s awfully square, but he makes me feel special.

  These days, I usually ask someone to carry my bag for me, so I don’t hurt my hands, but on the way to see the herbalist in Berkeley, I’m all on my own. It doesn’t feel too bad until later on, back home, after stopping at Socket’s house where they’re having a sing-a-long and I can’t deal. At my house, everything burns, until I go on the Internet to look for sex—why?—and after that my wrists feel like they’re going to split. I soak my hands in ice water, but then I’m hungry again so I have to cook. I run out to some boy’s house two blocks away, he sucks me off, I run back to make pasta. My hands feel better, but my sinuses are ruined because the guy who sucked me off was smoking and all the windows were closed. I use the neti pot, and then everything feels clogged, the pasta is overcooked, it’s 5:30 A.M. I go to bed.

  Zero and I go to Millennium, since she’s moving back to Provincetown. Of course I think about Jeremy—I think about Jeremy every time I go into just about any restaurant, it hits me all the sudden like, oh, I guess I still miss him. But I’m feeling the Love Potion #9, which is pomegranate and lemon juices with mystery herbs in a martini glass. The chestnut ravioli is one of the best parts, though the crunchy vegetables in the stuffed squash and the maple smoked tempeh are pretty amazing, not to mention the pickled onions that taste like oranges, and the persimmon—I’ve never had a persimmon before. Zero gets the chocolate dessert, and I’m already crashing from Love Potion #9.

  Late night gas drama: unfortunately it happens in bed with a trick, he says did you just pass wind? Yes, darling. It’s the guy who likes me to call him Daddy while he talks about raping my ass—what an exciting new idea! I have an ad out that says Ty instead of Tyler, and the photo’s different—the trick says what happened to that nice little boy, now he’s mean. Then he says: I think I’m falling in love with you. I say: open me a bank account.

  Ralowe presents the new Sunday tea dance for men: Casual-Tea. Didn’t I see you there? Speaking of casualties, there’s Patrick, the trick who’s called me ten times and asked me if I’d shit in his mouth. Last time I said don’t call me anymore, you’re too much of a tweaker mess. He said I have a great job. This time he’s rented a hotel room at an SRO on Market; I get upstairs and he’s yelling at someone inside the room: can’t get the door open!

  I end up with a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. Don’t ask. Luckily, I don’t have to spend it on a cab, since the 19 Polk appears out of nowhere to rescue me. I’m home just as the clock moves from 2:00 A.M. to 2:01 A.M. Then it’s 4:00 A.M. and just when I’ve convinced myself that I was imagining the rats in my walls—it was really just the pigeons in the ceiling—I hear something gnawing. There’s no way that’s a pigeon. It sounds huge, like one of those cat-sized rats, just on the other side of my flimsy kitchen cabinets. The bottom cabinets are rotting away, and they don’t even shut—I’m afraid the rat is going to swallow my kitchen whole, that means me too—help!

  The next day, it’s sunny and I actually get outside for a little bit of it, since I have to get to the chiropractor by four. Later, it’s the first night in months when I have two tricks. First it’s the Palomar, leopard pattern carpet and clouds painted on the ceiling. These clouds look better than the ones in my lobby. The trick tells me I won’t smell the poppers while I fuck him, because he’ll hold them close to his nose. Right. The next trick is the story; he’s got the mirror and the razor blade out on the table.

  His bed is so comfortable, I don’t know how he ever gets out of it—and I tell him that, which he thinks is funny. He wants to cuddle, at first it feels forced but I relax into it once I’m giving him a soft massage and he’s grabbing my thighs. When he sucks my dick, I make him do it slowly. Every time he moves his hands, I put them back where they belong: one hand under my balls, the other above my dick. Softly on the balls, really softly. I’m holding off, letting the tension build inside me until it almost isn’t there anymore, and then building it back up again. When I come, it’s so intense that I can’t possibly open my eyes.

  Well, okay—it’s possible. I look out the window and into the next room; I close my eyes. He says how are you doing? I open my eyes, stare at the chandelier on the red ceiling while I lie there next to the trick, and he lets me. The chandelier is in three layers, but it’s kind of simple too, and the music is a cheesy circuit mix but then the vocals fade out, and the music is just those minimal beats that I live for. I’m staring at the chandelier and breathing, wondering if somehow I got some coke through the trick’s mouth. If the coke is this good, I’ll never be able to stop.

  I just keep staring at the chandelier and the ceiling, squinting my eyes so that light pinpoints me and I’m wondering, really wondering how I got so high. Everything is here, in this bed—in that chandelier hanging from that ceiling. Everything. Then there’s a horn in the ceiling, in the music, just a tiny imitation car horn, honking over and over with the bells ringing and the beat, of course the beat, and then everything drops out. I’m waiting for what’s next.

  THE OPERA HOUSE

  Natty Soltesz

  Britt and Cody had rules, but you couldn’t talk about them and they were always changing. This made things confusing.

  Take cum, for example. They were trading hands not long after they first started beating off together. And though it was understood that they would try to cum at the same time, Britt had inwardly decided that getting Cody’s cum on his hand was gross. So when orgasms approached, it was hands to one’s self.

  Then one night it wasn’t. They were lying on the living room carpet jacking each other off, their heads up against the industrial cable spool they used for a coffee table and their feet dipping under the fabric flap at the bottom of the busted easy chair. Their slim naked sides collided in little electric volts of contact, but all in all it was a typical scene at 3:00 A.M. in their shared apartment in the rural town of Groom, Pennsylvania.

  There was a newly purchased and half-killed case of Keystone beer in the fridge and a girl was being double-penetrated on the TV.

  Then their heads turned and their lips touched, and the next thing Britt knew Cody was making out with him. Making out was questionable behavior, though they’d done it before—but only because their TV was broken and they couldn’t watch porn, and making out helped Britt get hard. By some miracle of the male animal mind, kissing had become purely functional.

  But Britt’s mom had bought them a new TV a week ago, so that excuse was gone. Fortunately they’d been doing tequila shots earlier that day and Cody had eaten the worm, so maybe that forgave it, and Britt kissed right back as they writhed around, fists working overtime. Cody’s tongue slid softly between Britt’s lips, drawing their orgasms closer.

  Thus in the space of a minute, two rules had been tested—Britt was cumming and Cody was cumming, and it was streaming all over their respective hands. As they broke apart and wiped up Britt figured it wasn’t the end of the world—they were using the same crusty, bleach-spotted towel they’d been sharing for weeks now anyway, so what was the difference?

  One lazy Sunday morning not long after, Britt (who’d woken up rock hard, having had an intense and wholly-forgotten dream about Cody) s
hot a streaming rope of cum right across the golden dusting of hair on Cody’s chest. Cody (a towhead with a big cock that more than made up for his lack of self-confidence) started cumming too, and feeling turnabout was fair play he arched his hips upward and blew jizz onto Britt’s bony pelvis. They’d chided each other about it afterward, then that night did it deliberately, both of them directing their spewing cocks onto each other’s bodies in a mock display of satiric maliciousness.

  They progressed to eating their own loads, Britt one night throwing his legs up over his head with a bold smile and a devious look in his heavy-lidded eyes. He sent several creamy shots of cum sailing into his open mouth, some of it oozing down his sparsely stubbled face, then made a show of licking his lips. Cody was appropriately shocked and fake-appalled, but next time Britt “talked him into doing it” too. Soon they were regularly blasting in their own mouths, having drummed up some nonsense about how it was criminal to “waste it” and that chicks who spit were dumb cunts who didn’t deserve their cocks anyway.

  Not that any girls were banging down their door. Or that they necessarily wanted them to.

  So. How had they progressed to eating each other’s cum? Oral sex was a huge no-no, and admitting an interest in it would have been tantamount to gaily gadding about with a frilly pink parasol in hand.

  The lame and tortured excuse for a catalyst had been Britt’s drunken shit-talking about how “My load tastes better than yours.” What a con, they both knew it, but Cody took the bait like a good little guppy.

  “Like you’d know,” he said. They were standing in the kitchen, using one hand to suck down cigarettes and the other to tweak their half-hard dicks through their boxers.