Best Gay Erotica 2009

by Richard Labonté

  At last Quilty, concerned the rest of the evening might be a waste, coughed gently. The Witch was brought back. “You know,” he continued, “I’d bet that many of us who write dirty stories do it, at least in part, in an attempt to master lust. Not to overcome it, but to make it, through thought and word, our servant. To capture desire, quintessential desire. And in this we are damn well bound to lose.

  “Ah, but what’s a poor old fag with a penchant for words to do? Become a writer like all the rest, it seems. I knew them all, of course. Tennessee, Truman, Bill Burroughs. They were not happy people. Understatement.”

  Quilty had been imagining the Witch staring quizzically at some young hustler with his finger up his butt. Now he was afraid that the interview had slid to an end. He had more than enough material, most likely, to use for the thesis, but…

  “It all just makes me sad,” the Witch concluded. “Melancholy. Sad.”

  Long, silent moments passed. At last, Quilty spoke up. “Thank you, sir. Thank you for your hospitality, and your time, and your…mind.”

  “Ah, but surely you’re not leaving now?” the Witch said. “It’s likely too late to take a train to the airport.”

  And Quilty had, in fact, planned to spend a second night in the Witch’s guest room. “No, I just thought that our interviews were at an end.”

  “Well, I suppose they are. I’ve already nattered on far too long. Who knew, when I was churning out pulp paperbacks to be read by closeted, masturbating fags, that I would someday be the subject of something called Queer Studies?”

  “Well, you’re a great writer.”

  “No.”

  “Well, a good writer. An important writer.”

  “That’s closer to the mark, I suppose.” A wry smile. “You’re rather an attractive young man. But you already know that.”

  Quilty was blindsided by the shift in conversation. But the Witch was right: he did know that.

  “So you have, no doubt, been expecting I’d come on to you. More port?”

  Quilty shook his head.

  The Witch turned to the serving boy, who had been hovering in a corner of the whitewashed room. “You can go now,” he said, “and shut the door behind you.”

  Quilty thought of an old, crass bumper sticker: GAS, GRASS, OR ASS—NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE. This was apparently a more literate version of the sentiment.

  “Well, you know, I’m certainly more interested in my immortal reputation, however risible that notion may be, than in yet one more penis. I’ll bid you goodnight.”

  Quilty didn’t surprise himself too often, but at that moment, he did. “It doesn’t have to be goodnight,” he said. He tried to sound as insinuating as possible.

  “I appreciate that. I can even get over my qualms over being a mercy fuck; after all, it’s rather late in the game for me to stand upon my pride. But…”

  “Narrative coherence, right? This is what I’m expected to do?” Quilty reached down for his crotch. “What some theoretical reader expects.” He sounded, to his own surprise, a bit angry. He did not dare bring up, though, the story an assistant professor had told him of fucking Allen Ginsberg. “He was,” the assistant prof had said, “getting old, was surely not very attractive, at least not to me. But that didn’t matter, not really. Hell, I was having sex with Allen Ginsberg.”

  The Witch of Capri was staring intently at him. “I have no idea,” he said, “what you think you’re up to. If you suppose that this is what I expected, a quid pro quo for the interview, then you might think again. I’m an egomaniac, yes, but I would so like to think I’m not that sleazy.” He paused, as if for dramatic effect. “On the other hand, you are, as I previously made clear, a remarkably handsome young man. Worthy of a story, really, if I were still writing stories.”

  Quilty hadn’t planned on standing up, but he rose. He hadn’t planned on getting hard, either, but something about being the object of laserlike desire went straight to his cock. “I want to do this,” he said.

  “Well, I’ve come to the conclusion, I’m afraid to say, that sex is the one wild, true thing. Pray don’t let me stop you.”

  Quilty grabbed at his hard cock through his khaki pants. The shape of the engorged shaft was clearly visible. The Witch of Capri shifted in his chair. “Perhaps I should move to a chaise longue for this?”

  “Perhaps you should.”

  “To the terrace, then?”

  “It’s private out enough out there?”

  “Relatively.”

  “And if someone should see us?”

  “Fuck them,” said the Witch of Capri.

  The evening was warm, and, conveniently, the moon was full. From far below came a gentle sound of waves.

  “Ah, time,” said the Witch of Capri, his caftan hiked up high on one naked thigh. “You don’t mind if I reminisce?”

  That’s nearly all you’ve been doing, Quilty thought. That and complaining. Which brought up, perhaps, the question of just why his hand was shoved down the front of his pants, stirring his cock back into full erection.

  “The things people do with their dicks for no particular reason,” said the Witch, quite as though he could read Quilty’s mind. “Or for some reason that they’d rather not face. So are you going to entertain me or not?”

  Quilty unbuttoned his trousers, letting them gap open, revealing well-filled, snowy white briefs.

  “I remember when I was in school,” the Witch said. “There was this Jewish boy, Chaim. He came from a family of refugees. Nice kid, smart. Beautiful boy, with dark, deep eyes and a Semitic nose. And I was so in love with him.”

  This line of chat wasn’t helping Quilty’s erection. He tried to focus in on his dick.

  “I didn’t do anything about it, of course. Different times. And I was too shy, if you can believe that. But after we’d gone off to college, we met up again one summer afternoon. He was wearing shorts—funny, but I can still remember that, even though much of last week escapes me—that showed off his thin, hairy legs.”

  Quilty had known someone like that, a Jewish boy he’d fucked. He thought of what that had been like, and his dick got harder. His host didn’t stop talking, but it was obvious that he’d noticed—something in his eyes, a change in his tone of voice.

  “We went for a walk in the countryside, down by a lake. He wordlessly stripped down, never taking his eyes from mine. His naked body was absolutely amazing. Hairy from the waist down, ass too, but otherwise totally smooth except for bushy armpits. Slim, defined torso, generous nipples. His dick was just average, really, but at the time I didn’t know that, and as it got hard, it seemed just huge. I wanted to touch it so much, but I was so very afraid. Chaim turned and ran into the water, leaving me there on the shore with a hard-on in my pants. Several minutes later, after splashing around in the water—which, if I were writing a story, I’d probably describe as ‘sundappled’—he came out, his dick soft now, and walked right over to me. Without hesitation, I got down on my knees. His was the first cock I ever sucked.”

  Quilty had stepped out of his sandals and let his pants fall to his ankles. He was rubbing himself through the thin cotton of his briefs. The Witch hiked up his caftan, raising it to his waist. He was naked underneath. Quilty gasped. The man’s hard dick was absolutely huge, almost freakishly so.

  “Take off your shirt for me,” the Witch of Capri asked. Ordered?

  Quilty unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off.

  “Very nice. Oh, and lose the pants, too. But keep your briefs on for a while. I like that. I should write about you and your briefs. Who knows, maybe I will.”

  Quilty knew that the Witch wasn’t writing erotica anymore, but he found it an appealing notion nonetheless. Immortality, he thought. Of a kind. He turned around and played with his underwear-clad ass, then bent all the way over, hoping that the Witch could see the outline of his balls between his legs.

  “Ah,” said the Witch, “and such are the consolations of age.”

  Quilty couldn’t decid
e whether he found that pretentiously self-pitying or not. He stood up straight and said, over his shoulder, “And of fame.”

  “And fame,” the Witch agreed. Was that melancholy in his voice?

  Quilty turned to face him. The older man was rubbing his fingertips gently over the underside of his gigantic cock.

  “And did you see him again? Chaim?”

  “That was a long time ago. Who knows, perhaps the whole story didn’t even happen. I am a writer, you know. Many things that should be true, aren’t.” He looked directly at Quilty’s crotch. “Would you like help with that?”

  Quilty didn’t know what to say. It would compromise his scholarly objectivity—not that that wasn’t long since blown away. And being sucked off by a famous pornographer would be something of an experience. At last, he nodded.

  “Paolo!” the Witch of Capri called out, and, prompt as a literary device, the serving boy appeared. For Quilty, that was both a disappointment and a relief.

  The dark boy, wearing only flimsy white drawstring pants, stood expectantly, waiting to be given his instructions. The Witch snapped his fingers and gestured toward Quilty.

  Paolo walked over, stood directly in front of Quilty, and started stroking Quilty’s chest, gradually working his way down to his crotch. When Quilty didn’t object, Paolo knelt and began to peel down the front of Quilty’s briefs.

  “I think that you’ll find Paolo to be a rather excellent cocksucker,” the Witch said, his fingers still trailing over his dick. “Perhaps the two of you can turn so I can see you better? A profile? Ah, that’s it.”

  “Can I ask Paolo to strip?”

  “Of course, my boy. Perhaps you’d like to suck him, as well? I’d enjoy that, I assure you.”

  At Quilty’s terse instruction, the serving boy stood. His white pants were tented out at the crotch. He removed them to reveal a smaller-than-average uncut dick, fully hard. Quilty had him move till the two of them were just a couple of feet away from the Witch of Capri. A sudden, chilling breeze blew up. Quilty dropped to his knees and took Paolo’s cock in his mouth.

  “You see, Quilty,” the Witch said, “there are a number of reasons I decided to conclude my erotica-writing career. But—to make a damaging confession—the major reason, really, was that I concluded that nothing I could write, no matter how accomplished, could possibly capture the beauty, yes beauty, of moments like this.”

  Quilty felt unaccountably proud. He took all of the small, hard dick deep into his mouth, grabbing Paolo’s firm, hairy ass, pushing the cock even farther down his throat. He moved his fingers down the boy’s hairy cleft, finding the heat of the slightly moist, responsive hole. The boy began to moan.

  “We’re trapped in our bodies, you see,” the Witch continued, “and sex represents both resigned confirmation of that fact, and an attempt at liberation.”

  Quilty’s pride turned to irritation. Would you please shut up, you pretentious wanker, he thought, so I can concentrate on sucking cock? He released Paolo’s dick, reared back a bit, and looked over to the Witch of Capri. The elderly author, not now touching himself, was sitting there with, astonishingly, tears running down his cheeks. This was all, pretty clearly, more than Quilty had planned on letting himself in for.

  He took his hand from Paolo’s hole, got some spit on his forefinger. Going back to sucking Paolo’s hard dick, he slid his finger inside the boy’s ass. Paolo’s muscles responded instantly, relaxing so he could get all the way inside the soft, hot hole.

  “I’ve had sex with at least a thousand men,” said the Witch of Capri, apropos of nothing. “There’s nothing wrong with being greedy, is there?”

  Sex is, Quilty thought later, on the plane back home, most always a de facto narrative. Beginning, middle, end. Hard to get around that.

  If he had been a porn writer, as the Witch had been, he might have scripted the remainder of the incident with Paolo in one of several ways.

  Paolo might, fairly obviously, have turned out to be a hungry bottom, one who got fucked in the evening breeze while his employer watched, jacking off. Quilty would have come inside the boy—sans condom, if he were being daring—and then all three would have buttoned up, perhaps with a bitchy/wise closing remark from the Witch of Capri.

  In a slightly more wry vein, boyish Paolo would, lacking self-control, have had a premature orgasm, shooting gob after unexpected gob of sperm down Quilty’s gullet. In that case, chances are that both Quilty and the Witch would have been unsatisfied, leaving them with blue-balls-level horny frustration and all its attendant charms.

  If things had taken a melodramatic turn, the Witch might have maundered into a full-fledged crying jag. Paolo, the ever-faithful servant, would have fed the elderly author the pacifier that was his penis, and perhaps both he and Quilty would have shot their loads messily onto the Witch’s ghastly caftan.

  There was a wealth of other possibilities, other turnings. Paolo might, for instance, have turned out to be murderous rough trade, leaving both Quilty and the Witch of Capri sprawled lifelessly in darker-than-night pools of their own blood…though that rather obviously had not been the case.

  Who knows? If metafiction were the game, then Quilty might have had no corporeal existence at all, being, rather, an invention of the Witch’s still-fertile imagination.

  The way things happen, Quilty saw, becomes clear only in retrospect.

  Be all that as it may, the morning after l’affaire Paolo, Quilty had packed his notebooks into his overnight bag and made his exit. At the door, he hadn’t been sure whether to shake the Witch’s hand or to give him a hug. But the decision had been made for him. At the very last, the Witch of Capri had embraced him and kissed him on the lips, with an unexpected flourish of tongue. The moment lingered long enough for Quilty to perceive the swelling of the older man’s cock, but no longer.

  “Just remember to say, Quilty, to quote me to the effect that the current state of erotic writing is lamentable. Lamentable.” And the Witch of Capri closed the door.

  KNIVES

  Xan West

  For JD, who asked

  Knives are about cold steel meeting warm flesh. Silky twisting penetration of the mind. Fear. Sharpness. Edge. Stillness. Knives are my threat. My cock. My will. They are careful control. Tease. Fuck. Balance. Knives reduce things to the basic and the simple. It is from there we build. From that space of fear. Or sensuality. Or coldness. Or sex.

  My knife wants to go to those hidden vulnerable spaces where you think it will not dare to go. Your eye. Your lip. Your jugular. The tip of your nipple. The head of your cock. It’s about more than fear. It’s about showing you that you can’t hide from me. Demanding all of you as my terrain. Opening you to my tools and my gaze. Making you vulnerable.

  There comes a point, usually near the beginning of a scene, where I choose…between my teeth and my knife. My teeth release my beast. My teeth swiftly sink you into penetrating pain. My teeth put me up close reaching inside you, my cock throbbing against you. If I start with my teeth, my beast will meet your eyes and show you that you are his food. And the sadism moves fast along your flesh until he is fed, ending with welts on your skin that are licked and nipped, and feral eyes showing satisfaction.

  I can start with a knife and if it’s about fear, then you know that is the ride we are on, an appetizer to get us hard and bring us close, or the full long meal of it, with you continually invaded and mindfucked, startled and breathless. You feel the sharp edge slicing quickly through your skin, so quick that you know I can’t possibly control it. You feel the sting of blood, and my tongue devouring every drop. I orchestrate every nuance, making you certain that I have ripped you open to eat you. My cock hardens as I feel the fear and horror course through you, and I reach my head down for another taste of them.

  I can start with a knife and it’s about sensuality. Revealing. Pleasure. Slowly slicing through the clothes you offer to my blade, teasing you with its sharpness, your bareness.

  I can start with a kn
ife and it’s about coldness. Distance. Threat. You can see the sadism in me, and know that I could cut open a vein to watch your blood drip to the floor, simply because I would enjoy the sight of that. You meet my gaze and know that you are nothing but canvas for me to lay my blade onto. That I might excise one small chunk of you at a time for my dinner. That I will take you to the edge I want to be at, and you will be at the mercy of a creature that might decide to ride you over that edge for his own amusement.

  I can start with a knife and it’s about sex. Tracing lines across your skin. Opening you. Exposing you. Aching to slide the sharp edge into you. You feel it tease you, the cold hardness of it thrust into you. Desire coursing through you, certain I am slicing steel deep inside you, ripping you open for my pleasure.

  I can spend hours with a knife, sliding it along skin. Slowly shredding small holes in a ribbed white cotton undershirt. Removing wax in deliciously deliberate strokes, taking my time to play with the sensitive flesh revealed. Or I can spend minutes, binding you to the wall with my knife and my words, until you admit your desires and own how much you want what I will do to you. I can bring out a knife early in a scene, and then have you convinced that knife is opening the welts I have driven into your skin. Or I can take an edge just dull enough, and use that edge to lay welts across your flesh, in the pattern of my choosing.

  Starting with a knife ups the ante. Starting with a knife means I will want to be inside you by the end. I will want to thrust into your willingness. I will want you helpless as I pound into you. I will want you writhing under me as I pierce you with pain. I will want to sink my teeth into you and taste your submission.