Table of Contents
Title Page
Foreword
Introduction
COMMERCE: A NOT VERY CAUTIONARY TALE
DELIVERING THE GOODS
TRAINING TYLER
YOUR JOCK
BEFORE THE PLANE
SUNDAY IN THE PARK
THE ROBIN CLUB
Saturday, April 25, 1942
Monday, December 29, 1941
Friday Evening, May 8, 1942
Tuesday Morning, June 9, 1942
Wednesday Night, October 31, 1945—Halloween
BRYCE CANYON
FOREIGNERS IN SITGES
TRANSLATIONS
THREE BOYS AND A BOAT —OR POSSIBLY FIVE
FOR JORDAN
ONCE UPON A TIME, IN 1969
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Copyright Page
FOREWORD: GOOD WRITING, GOOD WANKING: THAT’S THE GOAL
By the end of 2012, I’ll have edited some forty anthologies for three publishers, more than thirty of them for Cleis Press, which set me on the unintentional career path of porn when I was asked by Felice Newman and Frédérique Delacoste to assemble, on short notice, the second collection in the BGE series, Best Gay Erotica 1997.
I like them all, the hot anthologies and the rough anthologies, the bearish anthologies and the Daddy anthologies, the coming-out anthologies and the buff- and beautiful-boy anthologies; a couple of hundred different contributors, hundreds and hundreds of stories, hundreds of thousands of words; lots and lots of cocks and passion, butts and lust, cum and love.
But I like the books in this pioneering series the best, because I share assembling the table of contents with writers who appreciate a well-turned phrase, a well-wrought image, a well-cast character (as do I), but who also bring a fresh set of eyes and a different taste in fetish and fantasy than merely mine to selecting the “bests.”
The colleagues I invite to judge the stories—among them, over the years, Christopher Bram, Felice Picano, William J. Mann, Emanuel Xavier, Blair Mastbaum, Kirk Read and Timothy J. Lambert—aren’t themselves primarily writers of erotica, though they all certainly know their way around a set of cock and balls; what they share is an appreciation for the goose-bump combination of good writing and good storytelling.
The erotic is always the intent with this series, yes indeed, but every year I ask my guest judge to look for those goose bumps—to balance craftsmanship with cocksmanship, selecting stories with two standards in mind, the literary and the erotic. Or, as this year’s judge, Larry Duplechan, notes in his introduction: “I applied a two-tiered criterion: a basic ten-scale for overall writing (How good is this story as a story?); and one to five boners (How good is this story as wank fodder?).” Good writing, good wanking: that’s the goal with all of my anthologies.
But it’s always a pleasure to have writers—whose own work I’ve relished over my four decades of reading queer lit—share their sensibility and their insight with me in reaching that goal.
Richard Labonté
Bowen Island, British Columbia
INTRODUCTION: EATING A FUNK SUNDAE: NEWEROTICA, OLD PORN AND “FAP” LIKE THAT
In spite of having written it on occasion, I don’t read much fiction; gay fiction even less; and gay erotica even less than that. My taste in pleasure reading runs to nonfiction—biography, history, theology. True, there was a time when I did read a certain amount of gay erotic fiction: back in my teens and early twenties (this was the mid-to-late 1970s, by the way), I was quite a fan of the old “one-handers,” those little porn novels (sometimes sparsely illustrated, sometimes not at all) with titles like Biker’s Boy, Trucker’s Load and Horny Seaman—indifferently written, short on plot and character development, long on purple prose describing purple-headed penises.
After a year or two, I graduated to Gordon Merrick’s The Lord Won’t Mind series: larger books, hardcover; the plot and character development marginally better than Trucker’s Load, the prose and the penises just as purple. By the mid-1980s, I was writing gay fiction myself—at least in part as a small black man’s reaction to the six-foot-tall Rinso-white protagonists of Merrick’s oeuvre. And modesty aside, I think I write about sex rather well, which makes me something of a tough room when it comes to fiction that purports both to tell a story and get the reader hot under the waistband of his tighty-whities.
So when my old buddy (and longtime Larry Duplechan booster) Richard Labonté invited me to judge Best Gay Erotica 2012, my initial reaction was: “Suffer through thirty or forty badly written fuck stories for a few bucks and my name on another book cover? I think not.” Happily, I reconsidered. In your hand (and I’m assuming you’re leaving one hand free) you hold the cream (all entendres intended) of recent dude-on-dude-action short fiction. In choosing these stories, I applied a two-tiered criterion: a basic ten-scale for overall writing (How good is this story as a story?); and one to five boners (How good is this story as wank fodder?). The included baker’s dozen short stories, and one luscious lagniappe of a mini-comic book, all rated high in both categories.
Obviously, there are only so many ways for an author to get fictional characters introduced, established and ejaculating, in twenty pages or less. With a story whose chief raison is the description of two or more men engaging in sexual activity—as the old song says: “It ain’t what you do (it’s the way that you do it).” In “Training Tyler,” Jace Barton takes that hoariest of plots—making it with the “straight” roommate (which storyline I believe originated in Greece, sometime during the fourth century BCE)—and makes it seem very nearly fresh, applying a light, humorous touch and a delicious sensuality. Anthony McDonald turns a similar scenario into a three-way Highland fling, complete with Scots accents, kilts and considerable foreskin, in “Delivering the Goods”; while Tony Pike gives us Brit boys bunking together on holiday on the Cornish coast in 1976 in “Three Boys and a Boat—or Possibly Five,” with an exponential increase in partners, positions and (naturally) purple-headed penises.
David May flips the “Daddy breaks boy” scenario in “Commerce: A Not Very Cautionary Tale,” in which the entrepreneurial “boy” breaks “Daddy,” a veteran porn star, to the betterment of both men’s respective careers. In “The Robin Club,” David Holly weaves the World War II–era tale of a group of teenage comic book geeks who create a private sex club, and a peculiar sort of family, behind a clubhouse door with a No GIRLS ALLOWED sign on it. The result is as touching as Stand By Me, and as sexy as an orgy-by-the-pool DVD by Hot House: the only story here that made me hard and also made me cry.
As previously confessed, I currently read very little gay erotic fiction. Which is not to say I don’t read any at all. Over the past several years, I have become a huge fan of gay erotic comic books: the incomparable hard-core raunch of the “Big Sig” series by Bill Schmeling, aka The Hun; the candy-colored priapics of the Class Comics line (particularly the adventures of preposterously hung space heroes by the great Patrick Fillion; and various Japanese bara manga (erotic comics created by and for gay men, featuring brick-muscled manly-men; as opposed to the willowy, huge-eyed, lady-boys of the made-for-schoolgirls comics known as yaoi), from the light-hearted sex-frolics of Jiraiya to the dark, S/M-heavy works of Gen Tagame. For me and my fellow comic geeks, “Touched” is a special treat—a hard rock fantasy, story by Dale Lazarov (of the STICKY, MANLY and NIGHTLIFE books), told entirely in pictures by Kardyman. Side note: In gay sex comics translated from the Japanese, the sound of male masturbation is most often rendered “fap fap fap.” The term has seeped its way into the household lexicon between my husband and me, both as a sound effect and as a verb: I fap, you fap, we all be fappin’.
I
feel oddly compelled to mention Jock Ripper’s “For Jordan,” for a nom de smut that actually caused me to say, “Oh, no she didn’t,” (though that was before the author opted to use his nom de real), and “Your Jock,” by Simon Sheppard, for broadening my personal horizons concerning uses for raw eggs, and for my single favorite metaphor in all of these stories: “Eating a funk sundae.”
I would encourage you all to kick back with this book and the personal lubricant of your choice, and enjoy; but I am confident that you will reach that decision with no encouragement from me. You bought the book, after all.
Fap on, bros.
Larry Duplechan
Los Angeles, California
COMMERCE: A NOT VERY CAUTIONARY TALE
David May
You don’t feel like a man till you leave some money on the bed.
—Warren Miller
“Hey, look, Joe, it’s Ben Bohner!”
Randy was used to being recognized, and had learned to accept the usual adulation accorded porn stars with a cheerful nod, responding verbally only when required.
“Ben Dover? That’s not Ben Dover!”
“Not Ben Dover, Ben Bohner! You know, the top! See, over there?”
“Yeah, right. Man he’s hot.”
“You gonna talk to him, Rock?”
“Sure as hell gonna try. I was jerking off to him since middle school!”
Walking through this particular Chicago hotel on Memorial Day Weekend, its lobby rank with leather and pheromones and crackling with sexual energy, Randy hoped that the presence of a plethora of more recently popular porn stars wouldn’t overshadow his ability to work. He hadn’t realized until recently that he was an icon, a remnant from a fabled golden age that younger men looked upon with romantic notions of the fight for freedoms that they now took for granted. Randy had been a Pioneer in Porn, one of a handful of stars that successfully made the transition to video in the 1980s. It surprised him to learn he was still admired for something he had done not for the fame but for the mere fun of being paid to fuck.
“Hey, Bohner? My name’s Rock, short for Rockland—don’t ask. Hey, I just wanted to say I think you’re the hottest man that ever did porn, man.”
Randy turned to the young man, barely more than a boy at first glance. Rock’s smile was genuine, shared with Randy as much out of respect for his elder as for the thrill of meeting the famous Ben Bohner. In his blond crew cut and neat moustache (worn without the irony with which he wore a Cub Scout cap backward on his head), the tailored blue T-shirt with FUCK DADDY.COM printed in yellow letters, his combat boots and Nasty Pig jeans, Rock was an homage to Randy’s misspent youth: the post-plague incarnation of the clone. Randy smiled, reached for the offered hand.
“Thanks, son. It feels good to be appreciated.”
“Okay, that gave me wood, Dad.”
“What did?”
“You called me son. Here, feel.”
Rock put Randy’s hand on his groin, where a substantial erection was forcing its way beneath the denim. Randy took a deep breath. He rarely found himself so well matched, and more rarely was he impressed with the girth and length of another man’s member.
“Damn, son. You’re as big as me.”
“Fuck, yeah, Dad. Gotta kiss you now, motherfucker.”
Randy’s career had been an accident, as these things frequently are. Having left his family’s farm in Nebraska, he headed to San Francisco on the strength of the Village People’s coded proclamation of the City’s alleged Freedom. His family embraced his departure with more relief than goodwill and Randy was freed of any of the familial restraints that had hindered his happiness. On the Greyhound he had sex for the first time, with a man some twenty years older who stank of mentholated cigarettes but was able to service Randy’s huge cock with more expertise than Randy would encounter for years to come. So wonderful was the pleasure afforded by the man, who removed his teeth before sucking, that Randy returned again and again to the toilet in the back of the bus to be brought to that same joyous conclusion. He waved to the older man when he got off at Bakersfield, leaving Randy to the ministrations of his own two hands.
When he arrived at the seedy Greyhound Station in San Francisco, he took what little money he had to the YMCA, and after a shower and a hand job from another resident, set out in the pursuit of a job. Fortune smiling on him, he was quickly hired (an able-bodied young man not strung out on drugs) washing dishes at the Zim’s on Market Street and Van Ness, a job he neither relished nor dreaded. From there he was promoted to busboy, enabling him to share a room in a residency club with a closeted Christian in his thirties, a man whose time was split between street preaching and sucking dick in Tenderloin peep shows. When the man was arrested for public lewdness, his disappearance from the club went unnoticed until someone came to remove his personal effects. What was not taken was a roll of bills hidden beneath the bathroom sink, the man’s life savings that were only discovered by Randy when the tape gave way and the bills spilled to the tiled floor. Randy now had enough money to get an apartment of his own, a flea-bitten furnished studio on Larkin Street that felt like the height of luxury to someone whose days were spent earning just enough money to live while getting laid as often as possible.
The truth was he was far from handsome. Only his smile, now emphasized by the required moustache, disguised his plainness and made him appealing to those who saw past the bent nose and irregular ears (now hidden by the ubiquitous shaggy haircut) to the laughing blue eyes and enthusiasm for fleshly pleasures.
It was when he decided to join the migration to the Castro that he took a second job in one of the many dirty bookstores situated along Polk Street. He worked from eleven in the evening until four in the morning, giving him twelve hours to sleep, eat and fuck before he was called back to Zim’s the next afternoon. It had been less than a year, but Randy had already become something of a fixture on the street, at the baths, or perched high atop the desk that looked over the narrow aisles crowded with pornography and silent strangers making furtive purchases. The neighborhood boys were less circumspect, asking loudly for dildos, poppers or cock rings with the kind of aplomb that came from liberty mistaken for license. These men he served cheerfully, just as he served the frightened suburbanites with discreet, judgment-free silence.
One of these furtive men, a frequent customer, hovered quietly near Randy’s perch until they were alone for some minutes before asking: “How much?”
“Which brand?”
“Uh, your brand.”
“I like Crypt.”
“No, not poppers. You. How much for you? I wanna…”
“Want to?”
“Suck it. How much to suck it?”
“I never…”
“Hey, I’ll give you fifty, but only ’cause I know how big it is. I seen it at the tubs. Fifty to let me suck it. Ten more if you cum.”
Fifty dollars was fifty dollars, a third of his current month’s rent, a quarter of the rent he’d pay in the Castro. Randy agreed to the transaction with a nod and led the man into the back. The man knelt like an acolyte and unbuttoned Randy’s Levi’s. Ten minutes later Randy had sixty dollars in his pocket and a satisfied smile on his face. It had never crossed his mind that he could sell what he frequently gave away, and new possibilities presented themselves.
Walking down Polk Street, he observed the boys working the street and saw them as largely effeminate, sad, almost lifeless; smiling only when potential customers appeared on the street, and then showing the ravages of dental neglect and chronic drug abuse. To succeed, Randy reasoned, he would have to be what they were not: strong, masculine, approachable and friendly. His smile, he had come to realize, was the reason for much of his success thus far, and that it would carry him farther he had no doubt.
At first his sex work was incidental. Wearing the tightest jeans possible, he smiled at the men passing in automobiles and was sometimes motioned over. The slight drawl he had tried to erase since his arrival in San Franc
isco, he now emphasized when negotiating fees, learning that an accent from the outer reaches made him both exotic and slightly threatening, an unknown quantity whose mystery was worth the risk.
“Are you working?”
“Sure am. What can I do for you?”
“Is that package you’re showing all you?”
“Every last damn inch of it, pal.”
“How much?”
“Fifty.”
“Fifty? You gotta be kidding me!”
“If you don’t think the tool’s worth the price, I’ll find another guy who does.”
Most of the time, the customer agreed to the price. It was only when he had the fifty dollars in hand and the stranger was trying to wrap his mouth around Randy’s humongous member, that the client was informed that Randy’s ejaculate would cost another twenty dollars, payment in advance. Yet he was generous, willing to kiss and happy to comply with whatever fantasy was tentatively suggested. He remained affable unless asked to be otherwise. He took to wearing cowboy boots and a leather jacket, and to walking with a swagger. Soon he had enough to move to an apartment right on Eighteenth and Castro streets, a small, dark one-bedroom on the lowest floor. Better yet, he got hired at the Neon Chicken across the street. There he bussed tables or tended the bar. He joined City Athletic Club, took to wearing flannel shirts year round and, only on the rarest of occasions, found reason to head north of Buena Vista Park, west of Twin Peaks, south of Harrison Street or east of the Opera House. He was one of many men, a community of men convinced they had reinvented the world. A few years later someone dismissed them with the quip: Castro Clones.
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