Instead of entering the other stall, I peeked through the crack of his door. His head was down. He seemed embarrassed. I stood back and displayed my rigid pulsing cock, swinging it until he looked up. His face was pudgy and cute. He appeared to be half Asian, half white. His lips were small and angular. His eyes were wide, looking first at my cock then into my eyes, then back. I pulled my shirt up and tweaked my nipples. He opened his legs and sat back on the toilet, stroking his cock anew. He stood and moved his backpack from the hook on the stall door and set it on the floor. He pulled his shirt over his head and opened the stall door. I stepped closer, squeezing my pre-cumming cock. Something about the earnest artlessness of his red mohawk suggested to me that he wasn’t a gay boy just yet, but had been reading a couple of books on gay theory while listening to downloads of Tracy and the Plastics. His cock was medium sized, pointy, and uncut, with a shiny bright-pink hammerhead. I leaned over and sucked the salty, sticky dripping pre-cum collected under his foreskin. He panted, frantically bucking his hips into my face. His cock throttled in my cheeks and I grabbed his ass to force it deeper, to choke me. I exhaled and I stood up and we kissed, stroking our cocks together in saliva and pre-cum.
I liked how his body was pudgy and not gym-toned to death, in contrast to an actual gay boy’s. I did frown at the spiked belt, which to me seemed to hint at the misfortune to come. We shot at the same time, spraying both the glory hole and Doseone’s tag.
But back to the bathroom at LoBot Gallery in West Oak-land.
Doseone is wearing camouflage again, which I deplore above all things in the world; this time it’s a camouflage trucker cap. How can Dose have any antifascist critique in his work while unthinkingly choosing to adorn his person in the costume of the military? Here I could win an argument about the ineffectiveness of a liberal ideology. I look at Dose and feel so utterly self-conscious about my art. I remember doing the new listening stations at Amoeba that played Deep Puddle Dynamics and feeling every strained syllable of my D/DC delivery and body language on stage, how I would channel Dose’s inflections. Then I remember the past. Taking my ex-boyfriend to the Imusicast show. Sure, Jo-ey was cuter than Dose—because clearly Jo-ey’s lips were at that time a great deal more hydrated and healthy than Dose’s chain-smoker lips—but I think how an obsession with intention and technique had half-filled the time since I last had a boyfriend. Planning my alibi as the Black Doseone, the triple irony of a black person impersonating a white person impersonating a black person.
So we’re letting the silence pass in the bathroom and I’m witnessing the impression of Dose’s nipples rising up through his nonsweatshop Subtle T-shirt. It’s so hip-hop to wear a T-shirt with your band’s name on it that’s the same as the one you sell.
“I wanna suck your cock,” I finally say.
“You should come to the after party,” Dose says without a beat.
“Now.”
“No sex before the show.”
“What kind of a rock star are you?”
“I’m not a rock star. I’m a poet.”
“Rock star poet.”
“No sex before the show,” Doseone says again, and leaves the bathroom, just as someone enters.
I retreat to the handicapped stall. I think: Freedom penis dipping in a toilet of tears. It’s the hot white boy I saw on his cell phone in the street coming to LoBot. Where do these people come from? This one has sideburns. I’ve been especially enamored of sideburns lately. You know, I had a dream about this white boy before. In it he’s peeing and glances around to find me looking at him. He slips into the stall next to mine. I look under the stall wall at him and he starts jerking off. But I came before he got there, just from looking at him, so it’s too late, and then I wake up.
But this hot cell phone white boy has come into the bathroom to gaze into the mirror. Using the mirror takes her a long time. On the back of her baggy T-shirt is a picture of Bub Rubb going “Whooooo-whoooooo!” White boys love their Internet objectification of black people, don’t they? I find my cock tender and semihard as, for an improbable duration, this boy preens herself in the mirror, just for me. I masturbate, studying her from inside my stall while she anoints her insanely smooth and clear face. She has such good skin. “The no-place of an ache dangles body all around it,” Dose wrote. The sordid and masochistic suburban identification…a body in a mirror. “See me,” I think, as finally being seen feels as close as touching a streetlamp light bulb from a seat on the train poised on the aerial track over a neighborhood in West Oakland. He’ll see me in five seconds. I’m lost because all I can think is, “She’d come into the stall next to me in a split second if I was white.” Conqueror. The giving is dripping off every muscled hormonal gland and pore in my feverish, abject flesh. Or: “He’d kiss me if I was white.” I’m giving every part of my sweaty, mathematical lucubration, tightening around a pencil to go over some really pornographic diagnostics of what it is to want to slide into some skin with a couple of years knocked off mine, to feel whatever unthinkable thing is happening between self and image; to be taking careful stock of all the bone-structured angles that have never experienced worry, never drifted, never been alienated out of the confines of their own extravagant symmetry. Whiteboy: check! Hegemony: check! It’s there…yet remote, desirable. “It’s the boy in me that binds a worldly, gutted man’s angst to change. Celebratory delta paints shit-eating grins on what you and mirrors think my face looks like.” New clothes, she puts her camouflage trucker hat on, slightly off center. They must be giving them away tonight. I hate being black. I do. My cock, trembling hard, continues to drip, and my sense of history numbs. All I can see is locked suburban rooms in rows by the thousands, TV sets, a breathing semidark, and hard white cocks and faces flushed the same color. “Johnny Cock Rocket!” I recite. Skateboard, a doll-like face with impossibly blushed blood-colored lips and ocean-colored eyes…and what I do with my dick disappears into a racial Ventura rewrite, history is traded for a second of an orgasmic pang of oppressive escapism, hardening my resolve to unmake the world like a slap in the face. For exactly one instant it occurs to me that I know the precise and obvious words that would unmake the world. The moment fades. It takes me, like, two seconds to come.
THE STRAY
David May
Some are more human than others.
—Stevie Smith
Bud was discovered, as strays often are, wet, cold, and shivering in the back patio of the Seattle Eagle. It was commonly assumed that Bud had had parents and a family at some time in his life, and even a proper name, but none of this information was forthcoming. Stories spread rapidly that he’d been kidnapped and imprisoned and had only just managed to escape with his life, but with no memory of life prior to his enslavement (for cable television had supplied numerous such stories to draw on); or that he was the victim of some cruel Master who, having provided Bud with a brain injury, abandoned his amnesiac slave to Fate. While none of the scenarios being woven about his past proved to be true, neither was there ever a satisfactory explanation of Bud’s beginnings.
The facts were these: the day manager found Bud huddled in the back of the bar’s patio. Being a kind man, the day manager knelt beside him and asked, “What’s your name, bud?”
And from that moment, he answered to Bud.
The bar’s manager and staff then took it upon themselves to look after Bud, to feed and clothe him, to keep him warm and safe—just until he was able to tell them what had happened. Bud, it should be noted, had an almost unearthly handsomeness, with a compact, well-muscled, furry body; high cheekbones, and devastating green eyes complemented by a sexy scruffiness that appeared permanent. Being that sexy and that handsome, as well as agreeable, his presence was something of a commodity. Soon Bud was working at the door of the Eagle on weekends and sometimes as a towel boy at the bathhouse across the street. Customers were charmed by his guileless pleasure in being admired, to say nothing of his willingness to provide whatever pleasure his admirers might ask
of him. Thus he was treated kindly, as strays often are when they are both beautiful and agreeable.
In no time, he was collared and well cared for by a Sir who saw in Bud all that was wild and wonderful in the world. He treated Bud gently but firmly, and Bud thrived under his care. Already free with his body, Bud had no qualms about repaying the Sir’s kindness with whatever sexual reciprocation was required of him. Sir loved Bud deeply, and when he learned that he had pancreatic cancer, he took steps to be certain that someone would take care of Bud after his death.
When Sir died, Bud didn’t weep, but uttered primal cries of despair. He wandered about the apartment looking for someone he knew would never return, burying his face in Sir’s pillow and finding comfort in what remained of the man’s scent. He was adopted then, as strays frequently are when orphaned, by Sir’s friends, a couple known as the Bills. Bud slept between them, or in a pile of blankets on the floor, accepting their attentions, sexual and otherwise, with a kind of acquiescence that they found touching. In addition to cleaning house for the Bills (and Bud was nothing if not obsessed with cleanliness) and working in their garden, Bud continued to work at the Eagle on weekend nights, as a bathhouse towel boy on other nights, and as a purveyor of pleasure when the occasion arrived. Downstairs in the Bills’ playroom, Bud built himself a nook to sleep in. Closeted there, snug and secure in the dark he felt at home in, he slept through most of Seattle’s wet winter days. When the weather was fine, he slept naked, stretched out across a blanket on the back lawn, abandoning himself to the sun as if it were his only lover.
Late at night Bud would wander Capitol Hill, deftly leaping into trees, padding gently across rooftops, or gracefully running along back fences. When the moon was full, he would sit on the rooftop and stare at it for hours, finding comfort in the cold light and the smells of the night. Then he’d stretch, and gracefully, almost silently, leap to a tree, then the fence, and finally the wet, dewy earth. Shaking the pads of his feet dry, Bud quietly returned to the warmth of the Bills’ bed, where he would sleep succored by the scent and warmth of the men who had taken over his care.
When awake, Bud watched the world around him with constant curiosity, alert to subtle shifts in his surroundings. He listened carefully to every word said within his earshot, sometimes repeating what had been said word for word weeks, or even months, later. Other than these few odd habits (odd habits not being uncommon among strays), Bud smiled when expected to smile and laughed when it was proper to laugh. In short, he seemed not quite normal, but normal enough, and content with his life.
Years passed, and one May the Bills decided to take Bud with them to Chicago for International Mr. Leather. They had gone in previous years, off and on, but had been disinclined to spend their money on Bud’s airfare and food, leaving Bud at home to take care of himself. When they returned, Bud was happy to see them, seeking some sign of affection—a slap on the ass, a cock down his throat, a fierce dry fuck while he bent over the toilet—to assure himself that he was still loved. This year, however, the Bills realized that they were losing their edge, having passed the peak of their appeal as Daddies, and decided to bring Bud with them, thus securing for themselves the status of Slave Owners, and so increasing their desirability.
Bud did not take easily to being on a leash, but complied despite his desire to run free. Being led about, dressed in new gear (rubber, leather, camouflage), on display, was not something he was well suited to, but neither was being punished, so he obeyed. Not liking the crowds at the event, Bud would, when surrounded by so many admiring strangers, lean into one or both of the Bills for safety. For this he was teased but fondly caressed, and so it became a part of his strategy for survival in the noisy vastness of the hotel’s lobby. That the Bills sometimes sold his ass to strangers was of less concern to him than that he not be restrained or caged, so he remained docile while keeping an eye on the exit, a ploy common to strays whose survival depends on the kindness of others.
Late Saturday night, after an orgy that might have exhausted others (an orgy to which the Bills’ entrance had only been made possible by their ownership of so beautiful a boy), Bud’s owners collapsed into bed, snoring away almost as soon as their heads hit their pillows. Bud, accidentally left unfettered for the night, removed the leash and most of his clothes before exploring the halls and stairwells of the enormous hotel. He sniffed the air hoping to find what he was looking for, what he sensed was waiting for him.
He found men in every out-of-the-way corner, singly or in groups, wherever he looked, men unused to so much stimulus and unable to sleep for fear they miss something, men stumbling back to their beds after a night of dreamlike debauchery, men waiting in the doors of their rooms hoping for one more fuck. Some of these men reached out to him, called to him with thick, urgent voices, but Bud ignored them. They were not what he sought; they were not the one he knew was so near.
He entered the lobby bar with reluctance, even as his instincts urged him forward. A good number of men still congregated there during the late hour, some of them sad enough to earn Bud’s sympathy. He moved lithely through the milling men, eyes and ears alert. Some were laughing too loudly, some sobbing into oversized cocktails over a lover’s faithlessness; others basked in the glow of so many men, absorbing the pheromones that filled the air. And there, in the center of it all, was the one Bud sought, the one he’d sensed was there since his arrival two days before.
Bud stood and stared. The man stared back.
The man was tall, powerfully built, thick legged, and almost impossibly muscular. His sandy blond mane of thick hair was in need of cutting; a full beard covered his face almost up to the cheekbones. His mouth was large and sensual; his brown eyes glinted yellow when the light caught them; his bare arms, chest, and back were thickly matted with fur.
Someone said something funny, and he laughed, his laugh a roar, his chuckle a very loud purr. Surrounded by admirers, the man accepted their homage with a graceful acquiescence, gently touching one or another of them in their conversation, slapping another manfully on the back. Through all this camaraderie, though, he remained aloof, waiting as he was for Bud to find him. Very calmly leaving his flock of admirers, the stranger approached Bud, gently touching the small of Bud’s back, stepping close to Bud before whispering, “There’s my little bro.”
Bud’s heart stopped in his throat.
“Are you my brother?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Big bro?”
“That’s right.”
There was a kiss, gentle and deep, strong and tender, that laid claim to Bud as neither Sir nor the Bills had ever done. Big Bro put a hand on Bud’s tightly covered ass and walked away with him amidst the applause, the ohs and ahs and laughter of those who had hoped for Big Bro’s attention and now wished that they could watch the coupling to come.
Big Bro led Bud out of the hotel and hailed a cab. Nearly naked, Bud wrapped himself around Big Bro more for protection than for warmth in the night’s quite cool spring air, hiding what was exposed from an uncertain world. The cab raced along the lake, Bud nestling into the vast furriness of Big Bro’s chest, Big Bro stroking Bud’s scruffy cheeks and chuckling so loudly that it sounded more than ever like a purr.
When they reached their destination, a tower overlooking the lake, its height threatening to scrape the sky with fairy tale-like accuracy, Big Bro led Bud by the hand inside and up the elevator to a vista frequented more by birds than men.
Bud stared into the open space beyond the window for several minutes, watching the moon’s reflection on the lake that was so much like a small sea. Big Bro wrapped his arms around Bud, nibbling Bud’s ear, caressing Bud’s nipples, purring.
“Is this my new home, Big Brother?”
“Yes, little bro. This is where you belong.”
Bud knelt and removed his boots and socks, then the tight leather shorts that had been his only other clothing. Kneeling before Big Bro, he undid the button fly and pulled aside the le
ather jeans to better see what was to possess him. Unleashed suddenly from the confines of the leather, the thick phallus slapped Bud sharply across the face. Bud flinched slightly before opening his mouth and inhaling Big Bro’s mammoth member to the root. Big Bro rocked back and forth on his booted feet, his gloved hands caressing the back of Bud’s head as he pushed his cock in and out of Bud’s throat.
“Oh, little bro, oh, little bro…”
The rhythm of the rocking increased in speed, and Big Bro’s murmurs became more guttural. Holding the back of Bud’s head, he fucked Bud’s mouth long and hard until, screaming, he exploded and shot his seed down Bud’s anxious and hungry throat. Bud felt the head of the cock expand and burst, felt the ribbons of manhood cascade down his throat, and he eagerly swallowed even as the still hard cock was removed from his mouth.
After Big Bro had come to himself and had caught his breath, he knelt down next to Bud and kissed him with more longing than he had before, with more desire, more love. He held Bud close, letting their furry pelts rub against each other, kissing Bud, licking the sweat from Bud’s face and neck. Bud responded in kind, purring with pleasure at the rough texture of his lover’s tongue as it scraped against his skin and fur. He helped Big Bro out of his boots, leather jeans, harness, armbands and gloves. Licking the hairy flesh as it was newly exposed, making Big Bro purr in return, Bud sought only to please him, to mark him as his own, even as Big Bro had marked him.
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