Outside, I noticed another bar across the way, Jacques, and decided to have a beer there, because you never know where a drunken Judy Garland might wind up. I stayed there until closing time, when a lithe Joan Baez–type approached and asked if she could crash at my place for the night. Her directness caught me off guard. I was in the market for a boy, not a girl, yet here was a girl in need, and since I had nothing but Dopey, a girl might be better than a dwarf. Besides, she looked sort of like a boy with her slender frame and long, straight brown hair.
I told her I lived in Harvard Square, and she said that was fine, she’d pay for a cab, and so off we went. Back at the Manor, I had no idea where this was going, especially since I had a twin bed that could barely hold one person let alone two. The arrangement forced us to cuddle in a spoon position, with our clothes on, although I remember thinking at the time that I would have gladly removed my clothes had she made the first move, but because she did not, I remained dressed but with my arms around her. When morning came, I told her to stay put while I went out and bought orange juice and muffins. After we ate, she thanked me and we said good-bye.
I never saw her again, but I did see, for the very first time ever, Julia Child shopping in the local Kirkland Street market, looking over some heads of lettuce.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
SHANE ALLISON has had poems and stories published in Best Gay Erotica, Ultimate Gay Erotica, Best Black Gay Erotica, Best Gay Love Stories, West Wind Review, Fence, Between: New Gay Poetry, and is the editor of many anthologies for Cleis Press including the best-selling, Gaybie-award winning College Boys, and Hot Cops.
ERIC ANDREWS-KATZ ([email protected]) lives in Seattle with his husband Alan. His work has appeared in So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction, The Best Date Ever, Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling and Gay City. Eric’s first novel The Jesus Injection and its sequel Balls & Chain are from Bold Strokes Books.
TOM BAKER is a graduate of the College of William and Mary who enjoyed an award-winning career in advertising. He is the author of the novel The Sound of One Horse Dancing and the story collection, Full Frontal: to Make a Long Story Short. His new novel is Paper White Narcissus.
SIMON BLEAKEN lives in Wiltshire, England. He frequently writes in the sci-fi, fantasy and horror genres, but enjoys letting his romantic side out for a whirl too. His fiction has appeared in several magazines, and in the anthologies: Eldritch Horrors: Dark Tales and Space Horrors: Full-Throttle Spaces Tales #4.
MICHAEL BRACKEN is the author of several books and more than one thousand short stories published in Best Gay Romance 2010 and 2013, Best Gay Erotica 2013, Hot Blood: Strange Bedfellows, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4 and many other anthologies and periodicals. He lives and writes in Texas.
DALE CHASE has written male erotica for seventeen years. Her second novel, Takedown: Taming John Wesley Hardin, was published in 2013; her first, Wyatt: Doc Holliday’s Account of an Intimate Friendship, came out in 2012. Dale has published several story collections and novellas while she continues to write for various anthologies.
CRAIG COTTER (craigcotter.com) is the author of three poetry collections including Chopstix Numbers and After Lunch with Frank O’Hara. His poetry has appeared in Global Tapestry Review, poems-for-all, Poetry New Zealand, Assaracus, Court Green, Eleven Eleven, Euphony, The Antigonish Review and Caliban; his prose has appeared in Foolish Hearts.
MICHAEL THOMAS FORD (michaelthomasford.com) is the author of numerous books, including the novels Full Circle, Changing Tides, What We Remember, The Road Home and Suicide Notes. Winner of five Lambda Literary Awards and a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, he is the recipient of the 2014 James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize.
DANIEL M. JAFFE is author of the novels The Genealogy of Understanding and The Limits of Pleasure. He also wrote Jewish Gentle and Other Stories of Gay-Jewish Living, compiled and edited With Signs and Wonders: An International Anthology of Jewish Fabulist Fiction, and translated the Russian-Israeli novel, Here Comes The Messiah! by Dina Rubina.
KEVIN KILLIAN lives in San Francisco where he has written fourteen books, including novels, poetry, nonfiction, plays and collections of short stories. Recent publications: a new novel, Spreadeagle; a collection of his color photographs, Tagged: Variations on a Theme; and a fourth book of stories, essays and memoirs, Who Killed Teddy Bear?
RAYMOND LUCZAK (raymondluczak.com) is the author and editor of fifteen books, including How to Kill Poetry, Mute and Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life. His novel Men with Their Hands won first place in the Project: QueerLit 2006 Contest. A playwright and filmmaker, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
GUILLERMO LUNA (misterdangerous.wordpress.com) had his first novel, The Odd Fellows, published in 2013. He received a BA in journalism from the University of Iowa and a master’s degree in cinema from the University of Southern California. He also received a second master’s degree from San Jose State University in library science.
ERIN MCRAE and RACHELINE MALTESE’S (Avian30.com) gay romance series Love in Los Angeles, set in the film and television industry, is published by Torquere Press. Racheline is a NYC-based performer and storyteller focused on themes of sex, gender, desire and mourning. Erin McRae is a writer and blogger based in Washington, D.C.
JAY MANDAL comes from southern England. He has written three novels: The Dandelion Clock, Precipice and All About Sex, and three collections: A Different Kind of Love, The Loss of Innocence and Slubberdegullion. His work has appeared in Best Gay Romance 2009, 2010 and 2011.
THOM NICKELS is the author of ten books, including: Two Novellas: Walking Water & After All This, The Boy on the Bicycle, Manayunk, Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia, Out in History and Philadelphia Architecture. He has written for The Huffington Post, The New Oxford Review, Broad Street Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer and others.
Editor of the Lambda Literary Award finalist Tented: Gay Erotic Tales from Under the Big Top, as well as four other erotica anthologies for Bold Strokes Books, JERRY L. WHEELER’S first collection of short fiction, Strawberries and Other Erotic Fruits was a Lambda Literary Award finalist in 2013.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
FELICE PICANO (felicepicano.net) is the author of thirty-five books of poetry, fiction, memoirs and nonfiction. His work is translated into sixteen languages; several titles were national and international bestsellers. Four of Picano’s plays have been produced. He’s considered a founder of modern gay literature along with other members of the Violet Quill. He’s won or been nominated for numerous awards, including being a finalist for five Lambda Literary Awards in four categories. He received the City of West Hollywood’s Rainbow Key award in 2013. Picano’s recent work includes 20th Century Un-limited: Two Novellas (2013), True Stories Too: People and Places From My Past (2014) and Nights at Rizzoli: a Memoir (2014).
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