Best of the Best Gay Erotica

by Richard Labonté

  And the older guys: Trolling, married, shut-down, falling asleep…fuckfuckfuck.

  What I’d give for one fierce guy.

  He cut through the alley, staring at his black Docs scuffing the gravel, listening to the regular jangle of his wallet chain. Chink-chink-chink. Another regular beat, some industrial ambient dub thing. Mix in a little Violet Arcana, maybe, and it could’ve graced the clove cigarette smoke in the chill room. Chink-chink-chink-Juh-jangle.

  The dissonant beat startled Ian. He stopped, looked up. The dreadlocked guy, one hand supporting himself against a dumpster, stood across the alley from Ian. Facing the club’s rear, his suede jacket glowed a scabby red in the halogen streetlight.

  The man looked over his shoulder. “Oh—you. Hey.”

  He turned, releasing a splattering piss-stream against the mossy bricks.

  Ian stood silent, watching the piss steam slightly, frothy trickles pooling around his boots.

  The dreaded man looked back over his shoulder.

  Ian didn’t move.

  The man’s boot-heels ground into the muddy gravel. He pivoted to face Ian. His piss-stream, spewing a circular arc like a suburban lawn sprinkler, rained across the alley between them.

  Ian met his gaze. The man frowned.

  Ian dropped to his knees, immersing himself. The bitter piss ran into his eyes, dripping from his forehead, shoulders and chest; gathering and falling from his face in thick, round drops, splattering on the earth.

  The man shook off the final drops, tucked, buttoned. Ian’s jaw dropped, the dour drops hitting his tongue. His eyes burned; his T-shirt, soaked and cold.

  “Come on,” the man whispered.

  Ian followed him out of the alley.

  “We’ll just aim for starting the outline tonight. Just see how far we can go.”

  “I can take it.”

  Stevik’s hand sifted through Ian’s hairy chest, callouses stretching out a nipple like fleshy caramel. “I know you can. I know you can.”

  He jerked out a couple of hairs from around the aureole. Ian stiffened, inhaled briskly.

  “I’ll give it to you,” Stevik said. “All of it and more. You know I will. But not ’til you’re mine.”

  Ian’s hard-on thumped against his belly, disconsolate.

  Stevik unlocked the door of the metal Quonset hut. Ian followed him deep into the high-arched space, filled with only a few chairs, a couch, some cinder blocks. Eight-foot sheetrock walls set off a room in the far back corner. In the ceiling’s dark recesses, rain splattered against the corrugated metal.

  A light clicked on beneath the furthest wall. Ian shut the door behind him and twisted the deadbolt. He felt his way toward the light.

  He stood in the doorway, blinking in the light. Stevik sat on the edge of a bed which descended from the ceiling on heavy wooden braces.

  Stevik looked up, almost surprised.

  “What?” Stevik stopped, holding one boot in his hand.

  “What do you want?”

  “I—ah—” Ian struggled for a response. “Well, why’d you bring me here?”

  Stevik rolled his eyes and yanked off the other boot. “Why’d you follow me here?” he shot back, tossing the boot onto the floor.

  Ian shrugged. He took a step toward the bed.

  “Look!” Stevik barked, “I don’t want to touch you, get it? Little fuck; I don’t know shit about you, if you’re even worth it. I just…. You can stay here, tonight, if you want.”

  He jerked his thumb toward a pile of dirty clothes in the corner.

  “There. Sleep over there if you want.”

  Ian stared at him. Stevik rolled away, still in his clothes, and jerked a plaid comforter up over himself. He clapped twice and the lights went out.

  Ian found the pile of clothes in the dark. He could smell them.

  Ian climbed off the floor into the chair. He stared ahead at the screen Stevik had set between the chair and the store’s windows.

  “Bet you’ve dreamed about my dick,” Stevik said, rolling open his station’s drawer.

  Stevik pulled out a rustling sheaf of carbon papers. Ian had seen him working on them. It was the design, the tat for his scalp. Stevik hadn’t let him see it finished.

  “What it feels like, how it smells. You’ve only seen it pissing. You don’t even know what it looks like hard, how it feels in your hand, all hot and heavy.”

  At the apex of the Broadway Bridge, Stevik told him to stop.

  Ian stared at Stevik, a few feet before him, hands across chest. A curtain of vertical lights rose behind Stevik, a skyscraper-light mirage that made Portland look, at night, like the metropolis it wasn’t. The verticals of lights were only expensive houses rising up along the West Hills, but it had fooled Ian that night, years ago, when he’d leapt off the freight train beneath this very bridge.

  “Take your clothes off, jack off, and don’t look at me.” Stevik sauntered over the walkway’s railing and leaned back.

  Ian pulled off his T-shirt, unbuckled his belt. He was elated to have run into Stevik again, but wondered where things would go this time. He kicked off his Boks, pulled down his jeans.

  Just the boxers left. If someone comes along….

  “I said don’t look at me, dogshit!” Stevik kicked Ian’s shirt out over the bridge’s lane gratings.

  Ian scuffed off his shorts. He leaned back against the cold metal girder, its single-file row of rivet-heads pressing into his back like a formation of soldier-cocks. He licked his palm and rubbed his shriveled dick, trying to coax a hard-on. He kept his eyes moving to avoid Stevik: The tiny scythe-blades of moonlight on the Willamette River, the splintery wood planks of the walkway, the kitschy yellow lily of the suicide-hotline sign.

  A dull roar grew. Cold whiteness rose up his bare side; Ian kept a steady rhythm pulling on his soft dick.

  A breeze whipped against him as the truck plowed by; the bridge vibrated against his back and ass and feet. Silence. Ian was raging hard.

  Relaxed, he stared up at the stars. Orion guarded him above, bow drawn. Ian stared at his jeweled belt, and came. “Good,” Stevik said. He was standing right at Ian’s side, holding Ian’s shorts.

  “Here.”

  Ian slipped them on, his jeans, socks, shoes…. He looked over at his tire-tracked shirt stretched across the grating. Stevik set his jacket on the girder and pulled his own T-shirt off. “Here. Yours is trashed.”

  Ian swallowed and pulled the shirt over his head, Stevik’s smell surrounding him.

  “You don’t always have to wait to just run into me, you know,” Stevik said jovially as they descended the bridge. “You can just come by the shop.”

  Stevik sprayed disinfectant onto Ian’s scalp, minty-cool mist dancing across his raw skin as it evaporated dry.

  “I bet you dream about it in your mouth, going down your throat, sucking it dry, swallowing all the cum I can shoot out.”

  A sticky bar ran across his head, leaving residue. Ian smelled of Mennen Speed Stick, a cloying musk of ineffectual father-macho.

  Ian waited across the street at Subway, watching Stevik work. He chewed pepperoncini thoughtfully. Watching Stevik from a distance afforded him moments of striking lucidity, quite distinct from the blind heat saturating his mind in the man’s close proximity.

  This is so weird, he thought. It was one thing when it was so—casual, but now…. Fuck, Ellen’s already rented my room out to that sculptor-guy.

  He’s never hurt me, though. He’s never done anything I haven’t loved.

  “And your ass just itches, don’t it? It hurts—don’t it hurt so bad, the way you want it? You think of me up there, my arms crushing your chest, my tongue in your ear and my dick, that dick of mine you dream about just ramming away up inside your ass, plowing into your hot gut. Goin’ in and out.” Stevik pressed the carbon against his scalp, the design transferring to the adhesive deodorant.

  “Put some music on,” Stevik muttered as they entered the loft. He wandered into t
he kitchen for a beer. Ian flicked on the living-room light and rifled through the CDs.

  “Wanna Sheaf?”

  “Yeah, that’s great.” Ian hummed happily. Stev had never asked him to pick out the music before. Some old Front Line Assembly would be fun, he thought. Or maybe more mellow—This Mortal Coil or something. Or Coil—yeah, that’d be the perfect combination.

  None to be found: Marc Almond, Everything But the Girl, Annie Lennox, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday—

  God, I’ve gotta unpack my discs soon.

  Stevik walked into the room with the two brown bottles of Australian stout.

  “God, Stev,” Ian quipped, scowling at the track listing on Billie’s Blues, “you got anything besides all this diva-queen crap?”

  Stevik set the bottles down carefully on the floor. His fist plowed squarely into Ian’s gut.

  Ian collapsed to the floor, gasping.

  “Put on the headphones—and listen to that CD,” Stevik seethed through grit teeth. “Don’t go to bed ’til you get it.” He picked up both bottles and stalked into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

  Four A.M.

  “Stevik.”

  Stevik rolled over, blinked.

  “Can I go to sleep now?”

  Ian was crying.

  “Yeah.”

  Ian knelt to spread out his blanket.

  “No—”

  Stevik pulled off the sheet, stretching out in a black T-shirt and shorts.

  “Get in here. You ain’t gonna get anything, and don’t cling on me all night, but—just go ahead and get up here. You don’t have to sleep on the floor anymore.”

  “You think of me fucking you and you get all weak, doncha? Like your knees giving out.”

  Stevik peeled off the paper and set it on the counter. Ian stared at the ceiling, feeling the vinyl and chrome of the chair beneath him. Stevik spoke in a steady monotone as he set out his supplies. The ink bottles clinked against the individual glass wells as he dispensed and mixed the colors.

  Ian waited on the floor beside the chair.

  “So you’re Stev’s new boy, huh?” The woman looked down at Ian, balancing her water bottle on the shiny black hip of her PVC hot pants.

  “He marked you yet?”

  Ian smiled, shook his head.

  “Oh, so you’re still in the—uh, trial run.” She laughed.

  “He let you talk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But he told you to wait here for him, right?” She smirked.

  “Been gone a long time, hasn’t he? I think he’s up on the roof fucking my sister.”

  Ian bit his lip and tried to sound polite. “He didn’t tell me anything,” he said, “I just want him to be able to find me whenever he wants. So I’m staying in one spot.”

  “Not bad,” she appraised. She turned around to face the crowd at the far end of the Quonset hut. Stevik broke through, dragging a skinny bald guy under his arm, both howling loudly.

  “Well, your wait’s over, it looks like. He’s bringing over the ex for introductions.”

  She looked back over her shoulder at Ian, eyebrow arched. “You must rate.”

  Stevik and the bald guy tossed her happy nods in passing. They planted themselves loudly before Ian.

  Stevik slapped the bald guy’s chest proudly. His chest, arms, neck and scalp were a myriad of designs. In the dim light, Ian could barely sort out the intertwined images: An octopus sat on his head, tentacles creeping down the neck. Two figures hung down his pecs, crucified at crossed wrists just above each nipple. Geometric spirals rose out from the waistband of his black leather pants.

  “This is what real skin looks like, boy, see this? This is real work! This is the kind of work I do when I give a shit about someone.”

  The bald guy beamed proudly, his blue eyes sparkling brighter than the glinting four-inch steel spike through his septum.

  “Don’t take all the credit, now!” The bald guy grabbed Stevik’s crotch. He crouched down, confidentially, to Ian. “Stevie, now, he didn’t do all this, mind you. But, eh, he got it all started.”

  “Look at this fag’s shit!” Stevik yanked Ian’s T-shirt, pulling it up over his head.

  “See? He’s a little lost tribal boy, look at that. My!” He grabbed Ian’s arm and stretched it up high. “A chain around his arm! Tough shit! And wait, there’s more!”

  He reached over and grabbed the back belt loop of Ian’s cords.

  “Stand up, fuck,” he muttered.

  He spun Ian around and pulled down the back of his shorts, exposing the dogpatch hair leading down to Ian’s ass. Off to the left side, where the hair faded into pale fawn-down, was an ankh.

  “Wook! It’s a wittle ankhy-wankhy!” Stevik sneered. “Itn’t it twoo tweet?”

  Stevik howled. His friend belched. Ian stood, patiently waiting.

  “Toad,” Stevik said to the bald guy, “this little turd wants me to mark him. He wants me to put my art on the same skin with all this other piss-ass shit.” He snorted.

  Toad smiled. “Now why don’t you just, eh, cut out those old ones, eh, Stevie?”

  Stevik laughed. “Nah, no scars for him yet. Maybe we get Ben to brand him someday. For now I want his skin clean.” Toad nodded. “Then you’ll just have to cover.”

  They stared up at Ian. He held his head bowed.

  “Look at me, fuck.”

  Ian raised his eyes to the short, dark man.

  “You really want to get marked by me? Like Toad here?” Ian nodded.

  “I had to earn this, you see,” Toad said with quiet pride.

  “I understand.”

  “It was quite difficult.”

  Ian nodded.

  Stevik and Toad exchanged glances. Stevik shrugged.

  “Go let Toad fuck you, asshole. Head’s clear.”

  Stevik jerked his head toward the crowded rear of his space. “Keep the door open,” he called out as they walked away. Stevik shifted weight in the worn easy chair cushions, his boots propped up on a cinder block. He watched across the space ’til Toad’s serpent-entwined arm shoved Ian out through the bathroom door, to the cheers of the crowd. They gathered around Toad, laughing. Ian pegged his shorts back up. He looked around the floor by the chair for his shirt. It was soaked with beer and cigarette ash, marked in the middle with a bootprint where it’d been used to swab the floor.

  Ian wiped the wet cum-muck off his face with the back of his arm. Sticky smears clung to his hairy abdomen.

  “Sit down,” Stevik muttered.

  Ian sat, wrapping his bare arms around his chest.

  Ian looked at Stevik’s boots. He leaned forward.

  “Touch me and I’ll beat the living shit out of you, right here.”

  Ian froze.

  “Christ, you stink.”

  “Like you wanna cry. You think about how bad you want me inside you, how you want my dickhead kissing your heart, my cock’s shit-smeared blessing. You want it so bad you can’t stand it. You think of it and you think you’ll just collapse in a big whimpering, slobbering mess, begging for me to do it. Doncha? Doncha?”

  He slapped the boy’s naked stomach.

  Ian nodded, dislodging tears that dripped onto his chest, trickled down the sides of his neck.

  Ian heard Stevik tear open the needle package.

  “But you haven’t, have you?”

  Ian shook his head proudly.

  “No, you haven’t. You’re tough. You never even asked me for it, never went around with your ass in the air like some damn cat in heat.”

  Stevik ran his gloved hand down the side of Ian’s face, wiping away the saltwater, the rubber dragging across Ian’s lips. Ian kissed.

  Stevik kissed the clean scalp.

  “You already got it, man. You already got it. Everything I’m ever gonna give you—you already got it.”

  Studying the Alliance of Professional Tattooists manual and the Oregon state regs, Ian imagined Stevik marking him. He imagined Stevik fucking him, �
��til the two fantasies meshed. The tat machine and Stevik’s all-but unseen, imagined, longed-for dick merged—the machine’s rabbit ear screwed into the base of Stevik’s pubis, its mechanism sticking out from the pubic hairs. The armature bar shot upward as the base of his shaft; DC coil, spring contact points and base all curled into an electromagnetic nutsack. The rubber bands were black neosporene cockrings. A dark brown foreskin stretched out over the armature bar and sanitary tube—it skinned back to reveal a five-point grouping of liner needles arranged in an X like five dots on a die, like a man spreadeagled. The red cock-needles shot in and out, woodpeckering Ian’s scalp through scaly layer, epidermis, into dermis. Stevik pushed his cock needles further, standing above, Ian bowed at his feet. The needles mixed Stevik’s precum-ink with Ian’s head-blood, sucking the serum up into the foreskin tube through capillary action, Ian’s capillaries got some action, filling with Stevik’s Number C Hard Black spunk. Stevik marked deeper, aiming for Ian’s fontenels, poking through the skull-joints’ cart, past the blood/brain barrier. Ian’s whole body spasmed, muscles fibrillating with abandon.

  Ian’s fantasy lost physical specifics at this point. He couldn’t visualize or verbalize, only feel a destruction, absorption, union.

  Stevik stuffed cotton wads into Ian’s ears.

  Ian looked over at the tat machine in his hand.

  Time slowed down. Ian watched. Current flowed through the coils and the base of the machine. Electromagnetized, it pulled the bar down, pulling down the needles and opening the silver contact points. Opening the points killed the magnet, and the spring assembly brought the bar back, causing the needles to move up and contact the points, conducting current and repeating the cycle. Again. Again. A cycle of opposite motions and polarities, endlessly repeating.