H Is for Hardcore

by Alison Tyler

  David asked me if I wanted to mess around. I knew what he meant. I sensed what he was after. I needed a break from doing absolutely nothing, from spending all that time wasting time. We couldn’t say much, couldn’t talk too loud with this guy cuter than David sitting next to us with papers and index cards strewn. I grabbed my bag and followed him. I stared hard at the back of his head grown with salt-and-pepper waves of hair. I would have burned a hole clean through his breeder skull if I had the Superman means to do so. Like I said, he picked the wrong damn day to screw with me, to come lusting after me like some hound in heat. But that’s what he wanted, so I gave it to him. Goddamn weirdo. We sneaked into the only men’s room that was on this floor, the same stall from the last time we did this, the only one that was big enough to hold what we were about to do. Hung my bag on the coat hook screwed to the back of the stall door. I watched David unbuckle his belt, unfasten himself out of dirty jeans. He’s a maintenance worker over at the civic center, you see, so that’s why he’s so filthy. He sat upon the commode with thighs ajar, thick with waves of black fur. His red shirt that had his name embroidered in yellow letters was hiked above the belly button. His dick was no bigger than a circus peanut. He looked up into my face and smiled, showing off those perfect, Fixodent dentures. He sat there leaning against those hard toilet pipes. He’s such the freak. I worked my feet out of the black Polo flip-flops. You should have seen the way he pawed at them last time, the way he took my socks and inhaled what had been held hostage in shoes all day. Last week, he buffed my toes with his tongue to a high shine.

  David and I met through a Craigslist ad. Said he was looking for someone whose toes he could suck, whose arches and heels he could worship like gods. Answered his ad ’cause I was all too familiar with dudes like David. Encountered a few when I was living in New York. Some were into athletic sneaks, while others preferred the insides of blue-collar boots. David preferred me bare, dry, and calloused.

  The first guy I encountered that was into feet I met in a basement of a bookstore on Christopher Street that wasn’t a bookstore at all, but a place where gay porn was sold, where sex toys lined the walls. I didn’t frequent the shop for porno pricks and plastic dildos but for what awaited me just on the other side of the turnstile, just down a set of stairs. Thursdays and Sundays were my nights. For just ten bucks I could have all the dick I wanted. I descended into the basement with booths filled with men fucking and sucking behind wooden doors, men leaning against the wall fondling their dicks in denim all under the watchful eyes of security cameras and Jay Leno cracking jokes under a cloak of TV static. Men of all types, geezers and gods with booze in their eyes, drunk off poppers. Men very different from the mere puppies of Tallahassee. I was a few pounds lighter than I am now. Surviving only on tap water and bologna sandwiches will do that to you. You should have seen the way they were after my ass, staring at my bulge, like the dude I met on that fateful Sunday night. Brawny, tan around the shoulders while he was pale as hell in other areas. He was balding with a storm-gray beard. I stood there shy at the back of the basement, observing those boys sneaking in and out of booths with cum on their trousers, walking out with used rubbers stuck to the bottoms of their shoes.

  I gawked at him like the mere piece of trade he was. We played with our dicks through denim and sweats. We wouldn’t stop staring. It was like he was trying to see through my nasty little soul. Weren’t too many that I was interested in ’cause most of them I already had had in some way, shape, or uncompromising form. Picked them off in my head: Sucked him off last night, fucked him last week. Hadn’t seen him around those parts of the West Side. Cut through his gaze as he walked around, hard. Had only two hours to spare. They closed at two on Sundays. Was the last call for cock, so to speak. I returned his stare with one of my own. When I yanked at my erection, it caught the eyes of all the guys that had been after me that night. A vacant booth was sandwiched between us. Figured it wouldn’t be empty for long if we didn’t take advantage right that second. I crept within its insides. The door barely hung on its hinges as I left it cracked to let him know that he was welcome. The booth was one of the bigger ones in the basement, so it was large enough for two randy guys like us. Two men wrestling played out on the monitor before us. The screen was smudged with God knows what. As we both started to strip out of our tees and cutoff sweats, the scent of amyl nitrate filled our lungs.

  “Put away those poppers,” yelled one of the guards. I was so much of a regular that the smell had no effect on me. Tried poppers once, and they only ended up giving me a headache. I pulled my dick over elastic to show him my goods. His dick wasn’t too shabby. We watched each other as we whacked our cocks in unison. There was a concrete slab in our booth, long enough for a body. He lay there nude, jacking his sex that hung out of the cotton panel of his briefs. I felt silly standing there, the two of us massaging our hung dicks. Watched his lips move just slightly. Couldn’t make out his words for shit. I moved down and put my ear to the ground to make out his sounds. He looked so helpless. He mentioned something about smelling my feet, about sucking my toes. Thought his command was quite unorthodox but interesting. Kicked off my shoes, exposing dirty flat-footedness I inherited from my Aunt Earline on my dad’s side. My socks were black at the bottom. Held up my leg to show him my feet, my archless thirteens. Took his hand and placed it flat against it. He tugged and held my sweaty foot at his face. He jacked off as he breathed in the odor of soiled socks.

  Damn, I thought, the things these guys are into.

  I never felt more ridiculous than with myself hiked up on that anonymous face, his nose grazing along the backs of my toes.

  “Too bad you’re wearing socks,” he whispered.

  I told him he could take them off, which he wasted no time doing, tossing the socks asunder in order to give more attention to my feet. His lips felt sweet as he kissed my feet. I watched his tongue slither in and out of the grooves of plump piggies. Grimaced darkly as he sucked and slurped at toenails, as he beat off searching my face for a response to his filthy act. He bit at my meaty heels, gnawed on my toes like a disobedient puppy. He inhaled my soles like they were bottles of Rush. I watched as his dick grew harder with every sniff, with every toe that he took into his bearded mouth. We ended the night with him coming all over himself. Semen staining faded jeans. We went our separate ways with the aftermath of my feet on his tongue. I dismissed myself upstairs to a booth where I beat off to some cheesy porn movie.

  David reminded me of that bearded guy. It’s the way he liked lapping at my toes, sucking away. I pressed my socked foot against his chest grown with snow-white fur that felt rough against the flatness of my soles. My dick was stiff, but not enough for David to notice. He kissed the big toe, licked along the thick, hearty part of it. He searched my face but I had no expression to give. I could’ve kicked him in the face if I wanted. I’d had such a day of it. David looked so stupid sitting there with my foot in his mouth. Damn freak. He worked on the other toes. Got my whole foot wet with spit, but I didn’t care. We all have our vices. David made an attempt to fit all my toes in. Man was crazy. I held on to the top of the paper-towel dispenser and the metal railing as I forced my toes in his mouth. I talked dirty to him—told him to take it, to eat my toes. His face was a swell shade of blush; tears welled up in those hazel eyes. Felt guilty, like I was hurting David, so I slowly pulled out of his big mouth. I used my toes to fidget with his nipples. He liked it when I did that. My legs were becoming a four-alarm fire, so we switched positions. I sat upon the throne of the commode while he was on bended knee. Ran my foot along his aging face. I worked the other out of the flip-flop. He pressed his mug into my feet, licking at all ten of my piggies. I once thought I had a thing for feet, but that lasted all of two minutes when I couldn’t get past the dude’s hairy toes. The mischievous part of me wanted to make David bleed, but the angel won over the devil, and I fed him my toes with gentle ease. He got them good and wet like last time. Lapped at them like a back-alley mu
tt. His tongue tickled like you would not believe. Took everything in me not to laugh. I looked down as he worked his dick between his thighs. All that white pubic hair along the groin. David never looked hotter than with my feet in his mouth. Nothing was going right for me that day. Nothing except for that. Fucked his face with my size thirteens. A far cry from my well-endowed norm I would have preferred him to lick and suck upon. I wanted him to come for me. He liked me most when I would tell him what to do. Goddamn masochist.

  “Faster,” I told him. I didn’t have all day. Dirty little monkey. I looked at him and thought of bad poppers, men wrestling, and Jay Leno. He grunted as he came. Sweat trickled along his face. I pulled my feet out of his mouth and pushed him naked and spent against the stall wall that was defaced with gang insignia. Held my feet beneath the faucet and rinsed them clean of David’s aftermath. I worked them back into my flip-flops, grabbed my bag and sauntered out into the lobby, leaving David drained and naked on the basement bathroom floor. Yeah, he picked the wrong day that day, bothering someone who didn’t want to be bothered.

  TERESA NOELLE ROBERTS

  ON A KNIFE EDGE

  HONED STEEL SURROUNDED ME, and the sharp tang of the oil used to protect carbon steel filled my nostrils as I walked in the door of Anderson’s Artisan Knives. Located in an out-of-the way corner of a neighborhood filled with galleries and high-end artisans’ shops, the store—long and skinny and about the size of a good-sized closet—was quite unlike any place I’d been before in my quest for the perfect knife. None of the familiar Henckels and Wüsthof found in kitchen stores—not that I didn’t love the heft and balance of my ten-inch Henckels professional chef’s knife or the substantial feel of my Chinese cleaver, for culinary purposes, but they were mass-produced, impersonal. None of the same-old, same-old hunting knives and pocket knives I’d seen in half a dozen Army-Navy stores—perfectly good blades, useful for any number of purposes, but soulless.

  The knives here were art. Real art, not like the stupid “art knives” made to appeal to people’s inner teenage boys, with crap blades that won’t take an edge and pretty handles in the form of dragons or naked women that don’t actually fit your hand. No, these were exquisite, like something you’d see in a museum: not overly decorated, but a perfect fusion of form and function.

  Knives with elaborately incised but functional bone handles, or handles of richly grained wood, clean lined and unadorned and perfect in their simplicity.

  Knives tiny enough to hide in your palm.

  Knives that were almost swords.

  Knives that looked like they belonged in a museum, with a label something along the lines of Fifth century. Found in bog in Denmark with apparent human sacrifice.

  Carbon-steel blades, dark and, in some cases, clearly handmade, the marks of the forge and the hammer apparent on them.

  My mind buzzed with questions, but the proprietor was nowhere to be seen.

  I wandered from display case to display case, all but salivating over the wares. My heart was beating faster than normal. My palms were sweating.

  And my palms weren’t all that was damp. All that steel was getting to me.

  My fascination with knives has never been purely that of a collector. In the presence of a well-made knife with a sharp, well-honed blade, I can’t help imagining its cold kiss on my skin. First a caress, a mere brush with the flatside—running over my nipples and bringing them to instant, hard arousal. Then a tease, no pain, but that edge of anticipation, of pleasurable fear, as the sharp edge passes lightly over the surface of my skin, trailing goose bumps and ecstasy behind it.

  Then comes the cutting. My skin parting behind it. The brief lapse between cut and pain you get with a truly sharp knife. The bright jeweled blood, not a fountain or a gush, but a fine, delicate tracery welling from the cut, beautiful as rubies.

  Not that I’ve done this, not deliberately anyway, and cutting myself by accident just stings (although I admit the time I cut myself in the kitchen with a very sharp Henckels and didn’t notice until I saw blood dripping onto the carrots had a hallucinatory fascination). The fantasy involves someone else doing it, occasionally varied with me doing it to someone else. In either case, he’s faceless but the knife isn’t. Its details vary somewhat, but it’s always exquisite.

  And very like the knife I was looking at now, with its knotworkcarved bone handle and its slightly curved, very functional blade. It was fairly small, scaled well for my hand, and I could imagine it in the hand of some Viking woman, who’d use it during the day to cut meat or leather….

  And at night to mark her man so he wouldn’t forget her while he was off raiding Ireland or something. Then he’d return the favor, although maybe he’d use the matching knife, larger-bladed and scaled for a man’s hand, in the case next to it.

  Runes marked into soft flesh. Marks of possession and passion, made with a beautiful knife.

  My knees weakened, my cunt throbbed, and I had to lean against the counter to steady myself.

  And a Viking god emerged from a back room.

  Did I say “god,” generic?

  I mean Loki, the trickster, the seducer, the most capricious and dangerous of the Norse pantheon. The long reddish hair, the twinkle in his blue eyes that could equally well be called roguish or sadistic, the mischief in his ruggedly planed face, a face that wasn’t conventionally handsome but caught my attention more than if it had been. Trouble was written all over him. Might be fun trouble, might be dangerous trouble.

  Might, if I were lucky, be both.

  Not that I was likely to find out for real, but I couldn’t help thinking that the faceless man in my knife-edge fantasies had found a face.

  “May I help you?” he asked. A trace of Scandinavia burred his voice, and my knees went even weaker.

  “I’m looking for a very special knife.” I managed not to squeak as I said it, but it wasn’t exactly a helpful answer. Of course I was looking for a special knife—why else would I be in his shop?

  “All my knives are special in some way. Some I’ve made myself. Others are from other artisans, some American, some Swedish, Norwegian, German. For what purpose do you want this blade?” His voice was gentle, with a hint of tolerant amusement, but something in his eyes, his smile, told me that he knew—knew—what I wanted. And liked it.

  Hot man, cold steel, hot blood trickling….

  No, he couldn’t know. No way.

  But what if he did?

  I had to take the chance. It wasn’t as though knife fetishists lurked in every bush.

  I took a deep, steadying breath, tried to imagine that Viking woman with her well-honed little blade. She’d say what she wanted, woman to man, unafraid and blunt.

  “For cutting,” I said, then realized I was stating the obvious yet saying nothing. “Cutting flesh.”

  “Cooking? Field-dressing game?” A little cock of his head suggested he knew I was prevaricating.

  Another deep breath. “Living flesh. Human flesh.”

  His expression darkened. Still his eyes were bright, but with his face so stern and serious, it was a dangerous light, perhaps sadistic, perhaps a little crazy.

  Crazy in the same way I was?

  “Are you a cutter? Suicidal?” He loomed over the counter at me and I realized how big he was. Not broad or bulky but tall and hard-bodied, someone who could be a dancer or a danger. Loki for sure. “Get out. Get help or get an ordinary knife, but don’t use my blades for your self-destruction.” He turned from me, started to walk away.

  His backside in jeans was beautiful. His arms were beautiful. I could imagine him looming over me, holding me down as he cut me.

  “Wait,” I said, caught him before he disappeared into the back. “It’s not like that. I…. Knives turn me on. And I want one special blade.” The words came out in a shaky rush.

  He turned again, smiled at me this time. “For a special someone?” Something about the play of light and shadow there in the back corner made him both glorious and diabo
lical. Loki indeed, plotting some clever but potentially dreadful mischief.

  I wasn’t sure where I found the words, let alone the nerve to speak. “For when I find that special someone. I like to be prepared.”

  “Then you should try out a few, or have them tried out on you, if that’s your preference. And I think it is.”

  Before I could answer, he swept past me—I swear he left wind in his wake—turned his sign from open to closed, pulled a curtain across the inside of the small, barred display window to mask the shop’s interior.

  Two steps and he was pinioning me to his body, holding my arms at my sides. He smelled like steel—a sharp, cold smell—and leather and smoke and a workingman’s sweat, as if maybe he’d been bent over a forge earlier. He kissed like a wolf would, both rough and tender, devouring and devout, as if he wanted to gobble me up whole but wanted even more to make sure there was some of me left for later.

  I should have been frightened: a complete stranger whose air of danger was very much part of his attraction, and a shop full of weapons, and things moving much too quickly in a direction that, no matter how much I craved it in my fantasies, yearned for it on the surface of my skin, was potentially deadly.

  Instead, it acted like gasoline on the cold fire that steel always sets in me.

  Maybe I was frightened, deep down where I wasn’t paying attention, but the roiling in my stomach, the shaking hands, the racing heart felt more like arousal than terror, and I leaned into him, opened my lips for him, went at him with tongue and teeth myself, a she-wolf who’d finally found her mate.

  His hands were calloused and a little dirty—slurry from sharpening blades, perhaps—but when he caressed my face and down my throat, tracing the line of the jugular vein, I moaned deep in my throat, imagining the same delicate touch from a knife, just skimming my skin, hinting at a million possible deaths without doing any harm. I arched against him.