Best Gay Erotica 2005

by Richard Labonté

  GREG HERREN is an author/editor who has published four mysteries: Murder in the Rue Dauphine, Bourbon Street Blues, Jackson Square Jazz, and Murder in the Rue St. Ann. A fifth, Mardi Gras Mambo, is forthcoming. He is the editor of four anthologies: Full Body Contact, Shadows of the Night, Fratsex, and Upon a Midnight Clear. He has also published a collection of his erotic wrestling stories, Wanna Wrestle?, from which “Wrestler for Hire” is taken. He tries to live quietly in New Orleans with his partner and their bipolar cat.

  M. S. “MAX” HUNTER, after earlier careers as a lawyer in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and as a restaurant owner/manager in Barbados, made his home on a small eastern Caribbean island in a house overlooking a white sand beach and the sparkling blue sea. The stories and novels he wrote reflected his experiences during many years of life and adventure in the West Indies. His published novels are The Buccaneer, The Final Bell, and A Killing in Paradise, published shortly after his death in July 2004, at age 72.

  MICHAEL HUXLEY, editorial director at STARbooks Press since 2002, has thus far compiled four anthologies of literotica: Fantasies Made Flesh; Saints and Sinners; Men, Amplified; and Wet Nightmares, Wet Dreams. His most recent work appears in the poetry collections Van Gogh’s Ear, Volumes 2 and 3 and the anthologies Friction 7 and Walking Higher: Gay Men Write About the Deaths of Their Mothers. He resides in Sarasota, Florida, with his long-time spouse, Paul Marquis. Feel free to contact him at mhux@flf.org.

  ALPHA MARTIAL is a thirty-nine-year-old ex-pat Brit, now living in France with his long-term partner and four cats. He is an artist’s agent by profession and, in another life, an academic researcher specializing in issues of sexuality. Past jobs include seven years as a computer analyst/programmer. He has been writing fiction for many years but only recently began submitting work to publishers. With a collaborator, he is now writing the first in a series of unconventional murder mysteries, and has completed a less genre-specific novel.

  JAY NEAL: When it comes to men, his favorite adjective is “husky,” and those best described as Big Lugs are lovingly treated in his fiction. Basically a geeky, vanilla kind of guy, he enhances his sex life by making things up. His dirty stories have appeared in American Bear, American Grizzly, and 100% BEEF magazines, and in the anthologies Best Gay Erotica 2002, 2003, and 2004; and Bearotica; Kink; Friction 7; Bear Lust; and others. He and his partner are celebrating twelve years of suburban contentment together in Washington, D.C.

  MIKE NEWMAN’s first novel, Secret Buddies, is back in print in a new edition from GLB Publishers, with the entire first chapter available for sampling at www.GLBpubs.com. His short story “Wolfie,” about a werewolf on San Francisco’s Folsom Street, can be downloaded from GLBpubs for a modest fee. “Wake the King Up Right” is excerpted from his second novel, Detour, which he hopes to finish in 2005. He has lived in and around San Francisco since 1970, tirelessly doing research for his stories.

  IAN PHILIPS (www.ianphilips.com) is the editor-in-chief (and Mama Bear) of Suspect Thoughts Press. He is also the author of two collections of literotica, See Dick Deconstruct and Satyriasis: Literotica2. In February 2004, he wed heartthrob author-publisher Greg Wharton.

  SCOTT POMFRET is cowriter of the Romentics-brand line of romance novels for gay men (www.romentics.com). He is also a writer of short stories (published in Post Road, New Delta Review, Genre Magazine, and many others), and his erotic fiction has been repeatedly selected for inclusion in Alyson’s annual Friction collection. He is looking for a publisher for both his collection of short fiction, Until the Sugar Is Caramel, and his newly completed novel, Only Say the Word.

  ANDY QUAN lives in Sydney, Australia, and is the author of Calendar Boy and Slant. His latest writing and smut has appeared in anthologies such as Law of Desire: Tales of Gay Male Lust and Obsession, The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Essays on Queer Sexuality and Desire, and Best Gay Asian Erotica. His first collection of erotica and sex writing, Six Positions, is forthcoming. His website is hungry for your visit: www.andyquan.com.

  ALEXANDER ROWLSON is a freelance writer living in Toronto. He enjoys knitting, angry female rock stars, and pretending he’s married to Kurt Cobain. He spent two years working at Toronto’s fab magazine as its youth columnist, covering the twink beat with a twist. Retired at twenty, he now divides his time between writing feature articles, working at his neighborhood queer bookstore, and licking ass. Not wanting to deprive the depraved, he has started working on his first novel.

  D. TRAVERS SCOTT’s first novel, Execution, Texas: 1987, was deemed “funny and disturbing” by David Sedaris and “halfway between Flaubert and Straight to Hell” by Robert Glück. In 2005, Suspect Thoughts Press will let loose his next novel, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other. He edited the anthology Strategic Sex: Why They Won’t Keep It in the Bedroom, and was guest judge of Best Gay Erotica 2000. He has appeared everywhere from Harper’s and This American Life to Holy Titclamps! and New Art Examiner. He lives in Seattle and runs 9099 Media, a micropress for Pacific Northwest nonfiction. And, of course: www.dtraversscott.com.

  SIMON SHEPPARD makes his tenth appearance in the Best Gay Erotica series. He’s the author of In Deep: Erotic Stories, the nonfiction work Kinkorama: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Perversion, and the upcoming Sex Parties 101. His first short story collection, Hotter than Hell, won an Erotic Authors Association Award. His work also appears in five editions of The Best American Erotica, as well as more than a hundred other anthologies, and he coedited Rough Stuff and Roughed Up. He also writes the syndicated column “Sex Talk,” and the column “Perv” for gay.com. He lives in San Francisco with his honey and loiters at www.simonsheppard.com.

  DAVEM VERNE lived in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, for several years before writing “The Bigg Mitkowski,” his love song to that city’s Midtown. He has written erotic prose for a decade—stories that are sometimes fanciful, sometimes hard core—but always his work reads true when he is writing from first-hand experience. The men of Mitkowski were his friends, lovers, or objects of sexual inquiry who dwell in his heart, larger than life. More may be written about the flesh and fantasies of Hell’s Kitchen, but the author suggests living there first.

  BOB VICKERY (www.bobvickery.com) is a regular contributor to various websites and magazines, particularly Men, Freshmen, and Inches. He has five collections of stories published: Skin Deep, Cock Tales, Cocksure, Play Buddies, and, most recently, Man Jack, an audiobook of his stories. He lives in San Francisco, and can most often be found in his neighborhood Haight Ashbury cafe, pounding out the smut on his laptop.

  GREG WHARTON is the author of the collection Johnny Was & Other Tall Tales. He is the publisher of Suspect Thoughts Press, co-coordinator for Project: QueerLit, and an editor for two web magazines, SuspectThoughts.com and VelvetMafia.com. He is also the editor of numerous anthologies, including the Lambda Literary Award Finalist The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. He lives in San Francisco with his husband, Ian, a cat named Chloe, and a lot of books.

  JAMES WILLIAMS is the author of …But I Know What You Want. His stories have appeared widely in print and online publications and anthologies, including Best American Erotica of 1995, 2001, and 2003; Best Gay Erotica 2002 and 2004; and Best SM Erotica. He was the subject of profile interviews in Different Loving, by Gloria Brame, Will Brame, and Jon Jacobs, and in Sex: An Oral History, by Harry Maurer. His essay “The Mother and Child Reunion” will appear in Walking Higher: Gay Men Write About the Deaths of Their Mothers, edited by Nicholas Hornack. He can be found in the ether at www.jaswilliams.com.

  About the Editors

  RICHARD LABONTÉ has edited the Best Gay Erotica series since 1997. After working with A Different Light Bookstores in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York from 1979 to 2001, he moved home to Ontario, Canada, where he divides his time between a communal farm near Calabogie and the rural town of Perth. He shares both with his partner of twelve years (and his husband of one year), Asa Dean Lil
es, who can’t take the winters, with their loving pooch, Percy, who has never met a squirrel he didn’t hate, and with puppy Zach. He reads many books, writing about some of them in the syndicated review column “Book Marks,” for Q Syndicate (www.qsyndicate.com), and in the Gay Men’s Edition of the Books to Watch Out For newsletter (www.btwof.com). Reach him at tattyhill@sympatico.ca.

  WILLIAM J. MANN is the author of three best-selling novels, Where the Boys Are, The Biograph Girl, and The Men from the Boys, with a fourth, All American Boy, due in spring 2005. In addition, he’s written several acclaimed studies of the Hollywood film industry: Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines (for which he won a 1998 Lammy Award), Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, and Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger. Currently completing a major cultural study of Katharine Hepburn’s life and career, he is also hard at work on his first screenplay. He lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with his husband, Dr. Tim Huber, and can be reached through www.williamjmann.com.

  Copyright © 2005 by Richard Labonté. Introduction © 2004 by William J. Mann.

  eISBN : 978-1-573-44853-6

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published in the United States.

  Cleis Press Inc., P.O. Box 14697, San Francisco, California 94114

  “Doll Boy” © 2004 by Jonathan Asche, reprinted with permission from Playguy (August 2004), where it first appeared in different form; “Romulus” © 2004 by Bruce Benderson, first appeared in fab magazine (January 2004), excerpt reprinted with permission from The Romanian (Payot & Rivages, 2004); “Derelict” © 2004 by Steve Berman, reprinted with permission from VelvetMafia.com, Issue 9, where it appeared in different form; “Yang-Qi” © 2004 by Teh-Chen Cheng, reprinted with permission from Best Gay Asian Erotica, ed. Joel B. Tan (Cleis Press, 2004); excerpt from My Name Is Rand (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2004) © 2004 by Wayne Courtois; “This Little Piggy” © 2004 by Jim Gladstone, reprinted with permission from Love Under Foot, ed. M. Christian and Greg Wharton (Harrington Park/Southern Tier Editions, 2004), where it appeared as “Days of Wine and Toesies”; “The Strange Château of Dr. Kruge” © 2004 by Drew Gummerson; “Wrestler for Hire” © 2004 by Greg Herren, reprinted with permission from Wanna Wrestle? (STARBooks, 2004); excerpt from Voodoo Lust © 2004 by M. S. Hunter; “The Bad Boys Club” © 2004 by Michael Huxley; “My Place” © 2004 by Alpha Martial; “Old Haunts” © 2004 by Jay Neal, reprinted with permission from American Bear (December 2003–January 2004); “Wake the King Up Right” © 2004 by Mike Newman; “Kindled by Vowels (An Epistolary Seduction)” © 2004 by Ian Philips and Greg Wharton, reprinted with permission from Satyriasis: Literotica2 (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2004) and Johnny Was & Other Tall Tales (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2004); “Face Value” © 2004 by Scott Pomfret, reprinted with permission from In Touch for Men (January 2004); “Surf” ©2004 by Andy Quan, reprinted with permission from Best Gay Asian Erotica, ed. Joel B. Tan (Cleis Press, 2004); “Pink Triangle-Shaped Pubes” © 2004 by Alexander Rowlson, reprinted with permission from fab magazine (January 2004); “Get on Your Bikes and Ride!” © 2004 by D. Travers Scott, reprinted with permission from Law of Desire, ed. Greg Wharton and Ian Philips (Alyson Books, 2004); “The Thanks You Get” © 2004 by Simon Sheppard, reprinted with permission from Just the Sex (Alyson Books, 2003); “The Bigg Mitkowski” © 2004 by Davem Verne; “Gamblers” © 2004 by Bob Vickery, reprinted with permission from Play Buddies (Quarter Moon Press, 2004), originally appeared in Playguy (February 2004); “All at Sea with Master E” © 2004 by James Williams, reprinted with permission from Blue Food (www.bluefood.cc).