Best Gay Erotica 2012

by Richard Labonté

I blushed. “Okay. Once.” Since we were being so open with each other, I decided to tell him the whole truth. “Just once. Right after I picked your funky underwear off the floor and almost took a whiff.”

  He laughed. “Really?”

  “Really.” I sat up.

  Tyler stood and surveyed the room. He found what he was looking for. His underwear. He tossed them to me. “Have a souvenir. Of our first time.”

  I saw he was getting hard. I took a sniff of the underwear and nodded in approval. I was getting hard too. “You know,” I said. “Showers are excellent places for next times.”

  We grinned at each other. He took my hand. We raced to the bathroom. We didn’t bother closing the door.

  YOUR JOCK

  Simon Sheppard

  Even the worst sex can be grist for a decent story. The same with emotional train wrecks. An author should be grateful for whatever inspiration pops up, for the intervention of even the most unattractive of muses. So I want to thank you—and your jockstrap—for this particular piece.

  It’s the depths of January. You show up at my door just three minutes after the time we’d arranged, which pleases me; punctuality is at a premium when it comes to sex that’s been arranged for online.

  And—why not just say it?—I’ve really been looking forward to your arrival. For several reasons.

  First off, I have—perhaps stupidly—something of a fetish for English guys. I have no idea where that comes from, though I suspect it might date back to my formative years, when the Rolling Stones were king and “English” equaled “cool.” And yes, I know full well that some white boy from London looks like some white boy from New Jersey, that it’s really just a matter of accent…and the increased probability of foreskin. Nevertheless, when I saw that your email header read Brit boy, my dick took tumescent notice.

  Then, too, there’s the way you look…of course. Not impeccably gorgeous, but then, that was never my thing. Perhaps it stemmed from my own insecurity, or I took it as a maybe-accurate sign of vulnerability on your part, but the trace of zits in your attached JPEG—combined with your full lips and the almost-challenging look in your eyes—had made my dick even harder. And there was, yes, a second shot, too: a close-up of your erect cock wrapped in a rubber, shoving its way out of ripped-up, ostentatiously stained white briefs. Pervert’s paradise!

  You were, too, apparently quite kinky…charmingly so, judging by our one and only phone conversation (when I’d happily wallowed in the sound of your accent, rubbing myself all the while). But then, I’m perverse enough to love any sex-based conversation that ends with, “Okay, I’ll stop at Trader Joe’s before I get there.”

  Which you have. When I open the door, there’s a grocery bag on the hallway floor. You’ve put it there because we’ve arranged that you’ll de-pants in the hall, and sure enough, by the time I first see you, you’ve already kicked off your shoes and are unzipping your fly. And yes, you are hot, so hot, as you stare into my eyes while, only a bit awkwardly, taking off your jeans. And then there you are, clad only in your T-shirt, patterned socks and jockstrap. A moderately bulging jockstrap, nicely stained, just north of slim and very hairy thighs.

  Your jock.

  Which is not to say that I have any sort of a jock fetish. You do, though, and that makes this hot.

  Your jock.

  Your fucking jock.

  You’re standing there, looking expectant. I’d be happy just gazing at you a good long time, but there’s someone who lives just across the hall, and he’s a Republican.

  “Pick up your stuff and come in,” I say, aiming for a tone of quiet dominance. Who knows, maybe I achieve it.

  You walk in, shopping bag in one hand, pants and shoes in the other, and I point the way to the bedroom, following your delightfully hairy ass—oh, excuse me, arse—that’s framed, irresistibly, by stretchy white elastic.

  Proud as an eight-year-old, you set down the grocery bag and show me what you’ve brought: whipped cream, yogurt, a dozen eggs. I try to exhibit enthusiasm. I did warn you that I wasn’t particularly into food play. But hey, I’m a top; unlike many a self-styled submissive bottom, I aim to please.

  What immediately follows is the Usual Basic Stuff. You whip out your dick, uncut as expected, though I could have done with a bit more foreskin, and, pleasingly, sporting a nice thick drop of precum at the tip. I slap your ass. You suck my cock. All the while, I keep glancing over at the can of whipped cream, anticipating the main event.

  I’d quickly found out in that phone call that you, like me, are overeducated; when I’d mentioned Foucault’s notion of power, you’d known without further explanation just what I meant. And we’d talked about The Story of the Eye, a famous transgressive novel by Georges Bataille, a famous French drunk. There was a scene in that book in which a naked woman sits in a bowl of raw eggs. Now life was about to imitate art. Or something.

  Of course, the French think too much about everything, and then talk about it even more. So perhaps it’s permissible to point out that the Bataille book used the egg as a symbol of generative power, albeit perverted, redirected toward pleasure, not reproduction. But that was a het scene; when it’s a matter of two men, things are bound to get symbolically mucked up. Nevertheless, I’m more than willing to live with that. Especially since my cock is so goddamn hard.

  I get you on all fours. You have, as per my request, not showered, and your ass is, I already can tell, fairly ripe. I reach over for the whipped cream, shake the can, spread your buttcheeks and plant a graceful little rosette right in the middle of your hairy crack. Oh, yum. I dive in, licking away the cream until I get to the hole, eating a funk sundae.

  “And now,” I say, your smell on my lips, “time for the main course.”

  Once we get to the bathroom, I strip down and join you in the tub. We stand face-to-face, me suddenly noticing how very, very blue your eyes are. I reach over into the carton perched on the back of the toilet and pluck out an egg. I crack the shell on the curtain rod. Your blue eyes widen. The egg is still cold in my hand. I hold it in front of your face, pull apart the shell, and let the raw goo ooze down over your hairy chest.

  You sigh, then moan. It is, if not precisely my erotic dream of a lifetime, exciting enough to keep my dick fully charged. When I reach over for another egg, you say, “Put it in my jock. Please. Sir.” So how can I resist? I crack open the shell, pull your jock away from your hard dick with one hand, and do a one-handed egg dump into the pouch with the other, dexterous as Julia Child. And then a second one, the stretchy, prestained pouch starting to fill up, egg white, then yolk, oozing out of the elastic mesh.

  The floor of the tub, spattered with raw egg and broken shells, has gotten perilously slippery. Unsafe sex for sure, but I still manage to get three more eggs broken into your athletic supporter without falling down.

  And then you say, in that charming accent of yours, “I’ve really got to piss, Sir. Please?”

  I nod gravely, orphanage owner to your Oliver Twist.

  And piss spurts out of your pouch, not one stream, but several, jetting off in divergent directions.

  It’s ravishing, simply ravishing.

  When the bright-yellow flows have ceased, I crack an egg on your head, slapstick if it weren’t so sexy. The contents ooze down over your pretty face, sullying what’s already appealingly imperfect. You’re so fucking happy that you look like an angel. Then you, cheekily, reach for an egg and crack it over my head in turn. It’s cold and gooey. Clearly, you’re not as submissive as all that. I think I’m falling in love.

  I grab the container of yogurt and smear a chilly handful over your chest, then another on your belly, and you dip into the dairy and smear me in turn, and that’s when the giggling starts. Instead of two very naughty serious men, we have become two very naughty laughing boys.

  Mutual masturbation ensues. And some kissing, fraught with the peril of salmonella.

  After an extended cleanup, in which I carefully hose down the tub so neithe
r of us will slip and kill himself—an odd demise to explain to a coroner, even in San Francisco—we chat for a while as you slowly get dressed.

  “I don’t think,” you say in that irresistible accent of yours, “we’ll be doing this again. See, I find you fascinating, and I prefer not to have sex with people I actually like. I’m sorry, but…”

  My mind glosses over the unearned compliment and goes straight to the “Oh, shit” moment.

  After you leave, I jack off; you had come when we were in the tub, but I had never gotten around to it. It feels great, and is a dandy way to put off cleaning up the bathroom.

  You’ve left your wringing-wet jockstrap behind, so there is some hope we’ll at least see each other sometime. I let it dry, but it retains a distinct stench—a rotten-egg smell, not the appealing stink of sex—and I end up washing it.

  It’s not until the following day that I remember that some years back I published a story, “The Boy Who Read Bataille,” that contained a raw egg scene. I send it to you without rereading it. You write back that you were sad because the guys in the story don’t remain together, perhaps ironic in light of your having already told me that our little fandango, too, was a one-off.

  I decide to let you make the next move. You don’t. Then, quite unexpectedly, after weeks of silence, you get in touch, just when I’m partway through writing a story about you and me, tentatively titled “Your Jock.” (I always assure folks that I do not in fact base my short stories on anything that’s really happened to me, but the authorial flesh is weak.)

  I tell you that I’ve been wearing your jock, with its woven mantra of Bike Bike Bike, around the house, pissing in it, using it to wipe up my cum, in an attempt to restore its stinky faded glory. I find that very hot, my dick being where yours has been.

  This apparently strikes a chord with you, as well. You propose going for a walk in Dolores Park on this warm February day, just for a chat, nothing more.

  I meet you there, of course I do, you looking particularly sweet in bicycle shorts that calculatedly show off your hairy legs.

  But I don’t even have time to ask you why, though you’ve told me you went to Oxford, your Facebook page says you were educated somewhere considerably less glamorous—hell, you’d lied about your age, too—before you grab my crotch and murmur to me that you want to get fucked.

  So we walk back to my place and you, a mere ten minutes later, are sitting on my hard-on while wearing your jock. Your jock. There’s a certain amount of excessive bouncing, but as I look up at your face, it’s heaven, really it is. You come too quickly, but I don’t mind. What I do find disappointing is your telling me once again that you’re feeling weird about the sex because, well, you like me and you figure this will be the last time, no, really….

  I do ask for the chance to bury my face in your armpit just once more. You seem never to use deodorant, which makes me very happy, and the smell will linger on my face for hours.

  Days after that equivocal fuck, resigned to not having any further sex—much less messily egg-splatted sex—with you, I email you to invite you to go see a movie. Twice. No response.

  And then a third email, just to see what’s up. I even tell you that I can take a hint, but I’ll give it one more shot. Again, no response from you. Hey. Maybe you’ve left town or found a monogamous boyfriend. But more probably, I’ve been unceremoniously dropped; I suppose I’m just too fascinating for my own good. It’s a shame you’re neither polite nor courageous enough to drop me a line, but then, I’ve always been a remarkably bad judge of character where crushes are concerned.

  In the meantime, I’ve finished writing “Your Jock,” and read it at Perverts Put Out!, a local performance series that I host, dropping my pants at the end to show the audience that I am, yes, still wearing your athletic supporter. The audience loves it. Later, I even offer to email the story to you so you can read it, an offer you pretty fortunately don’t take me up on.

  Weeks pass. The memory of you, like the thought of many another glorious trick of the past, fades into present lusts.

  In time, I even stop jacking off to your picture.

  Then one April day I realize, with a minor start, that the deadline for submitting stories to Best Gay Erotica fast approaches. I decide to revamp “Your Jock” and send it along. Which is when, through sheer serendipity, I run across a quote from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the avatar of—yes!—masochism. Venus in Furs and all that. “The moral of the tale is this,” sayeth he. “Whoever allows himself to be whipped deserves to be whipped.”

  Since I’m getting horny rewriting the egg scene, I put an anonymous ad up on Craigslist, an ad almost identical to the one you originally answered. And—just like in one of my creaky stories—the first response that comes in is yours; you apparently didn’t even recognize the picture of my dick.

  So you seemingly are still alive and well and at least sporadically horny. And—for whatever reason—now utterly disinterested in me. When I email a “What a coincidence!” response, I don’t expect to hear any more from you. And of course, I don’t. Not a word. Not even a “Give me back my fucking jock!”

  And now this tale has reached its little foredoomed end, at least for now.

  But I still have it, I do.

  I’m wearing it now, while I finish working on the story. It’s pressing up against my cock.

  Your jock. Your fucking jock.

  Like some perverted piece of the True Cross.

  Your jock.

  My dick is hard as the proverbial rock.

  And maybe I do deserve to be whipped.

  BEFORE THE PLANE

  Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

  When this guy asks me why I’m at the Phoenix, I say this may sound strange but I’m here because I know there’s no smoke. He wants to know if I read science books, or science fiction, or this other book that’s not really either one but it’s about the way people with mental illnesses were treated at the turn of the century and it’s very sad. It’s still sad, I say, maybe in a different way but it’s still sad. You’re right, he says.

  This is the guy who came up and asked if I wanted to talk to him—I clocked him right away as someone with a speed problem, sitting by the door all jittery he was one of the other lonely characters in the bar and he wasn’t drinking either. Lonely in a different way because maybe it’s more obvious that he doesn’t belong—he’s older, and doesn’t fit any of the fashion types—he’s from Riverdale but he lives far out in New Jersey, he likes it better because of the trees. I know where Riverdale is because Andee worked there as a nanny in this enormous house that a married couple of anesthesiologists were renovating. Andee had a glamorous suite but I’m guessing this guy is from a different part of Riverdale, not the rarefied mansions but the working-class part he wanted to escape. He’s a writer too, he writes contracts for ConEdison. When I tell him why I’m at this bar, he wants to know if I’ve been to Christopher Street; sure it’s right where I’m staying but it seems kind of quiet. I might go to Ty’s later, he says, and I could drive you over there. No thanks, I say—I’m just going to walk around. Then he wants to know if I want to go to 311 Irving Plaza. What’s 311 Irving Plaza? It’s a gay bar, he found it on the Internet and we could walk over there.

  There’s nothing for me to do at a bar like this without dancing or sex and I’m talking to this guy whose eyes stare awkwardly and jerky and just then someone calls, unknown number—I’m going to answer this call I say and no way it’s Andee, kind of late for her it’s close to eight a.m. in London. Hold on a second, I say, I’m going outside, and I say to the guy: it’s my friend Andee, who lived with me when I lived in New York I mean we went out together but now he lives in London, I’m going to go outside to talk to him but it was really nice meeting you. I like your sweater, he says, and touches my chest gently. Then I’m outside and Andee says where are you?

  This is when I’m really sad, leaving this guy who everyone leaves. I mean he’s scared and no one’s talking to hi
m and then he touched my sweater and I hate gay bars there’s no reason for me to go to gay bars and Andee says where are you?

  I’m on Avenue A, walking by all the places we used to go together, saying to tell you the truth I wish Wonderbar was still open but if it was then there would probably be smoke and then I couldn’t go there anyway and I’m going to that convenience store where I used to get bottled water that wasn’t cold, it was lined up in the window, where is that convenience store is it this one? No, maybe it’s not there anymore, oh here it this—dammit I need to get something to eat but I don’t want to go back to Second Avenue to the place with the vegan pizza because I’m trying to get to some place on Avenue C to see if there’s any smoke or maybe I’ll go to 7A and get steamed vegetables.

  I wish I were there with you, Andee says. If you were here, I say, we could go to the place with the vegan pizza—you would like that place.

  Okay, I need to get past steamed vegetables and past the bar that used to be Wonderbar, maybe I should go in just to see; while I’m walking past I notice that maybe mainstream gay people look at me differently here, they kind of seem interested like they’re cruising me, I mean the ones who don’t immediately giggle or glance in that shady way but anyway I’m getting past that and past Avenue C where the bar I’m going to says it’s closed for renovations. Now I’m getting to that point where my body is hurting from too much walking, even without a bag I left the house without a bag I was saying to Andee that’s one thing I like about New York, that I can find something late at night that I can eat and Andee said: a plane?

  I know. A plane. It’s going to destroy me. I’ll be sick for weeks, and then I’ll fall into that deep dark sinus-induced depression that lasts forever.

  Andee says: it’s the same distance to London, you should fly to London.

  But then I wouldn’t be able to get back.

  New York is even preppier than I remembered—even the fashionistas are wearing peacoats just something a little more tailored. Or one of those army-type jackets with big hoods, lined with fleece or fake fur, is that an anorak? Or a parka? Gina has one that everyone wants—I have to look at it more closely to figure out why. She wants it because it fits her, and it keeps her warm so she doesn’t even have to wear a scarf but I know that’s not why everyone wants it.