“Cool!” Matt chirps excitedly. He sucks in his already concave stomach.
“So you made it. That’s great.” He tucks his arm around Matt’s waist in a familiar way and takes a long drink from a plastic cup filled with beer.
Sergei has a wide inviting smile, clean-shaven head, short facial hair, dark bold eyebrows and bright blue eyes. He wears a tight, solidly black uniform shirt that strains against his broad chest and muscular arms. A hint of what looks like a dark blue comet tattooed on his left arm creeps out from under the sleeve. His stern face is filled with compassion. It’s obvious that numerous lovers would eagerly bare themselves for this god of the heavens and earth.
“Yeah, we’ve been looking around,” Matt laughs derisively, scanning the scene around us. “This is…quite the crowd.”
“Yes. Have a blast, you guys,” he nods to us before Matt can do introductions. “I’ll catch up with you later.” He pats Matt on the back and rushes off to speak to a DJ.
Sergei glances at me while he goes past and hands me his cup of beer. I know in an instant that he can give me what I need. Watching him walk away, the guys turn to Matt with faces contorted in quizzical humor as if to say, This is what we came all the way here for? Clearly the masculine busy man doesn’t meet our standards. Matt says, “Let’s have a look around. I’ll see if I can get a minute alone with him.” I sip from the cup, savoring the wet half-moon ring on the cup’s rim where Sergei’s lips have been.
Matt wants to linger, hoping to catch another moment with the healthy, energetic event organizer and seduce him. Our group stations itself beside one of the drinks tents, sipping mojitos while scanning the crowd and making catty comments. We are like explorers lost in a foreign land. I try to take Sylvan’s hand and put it around my waist to protect me, but he’s too busy checking the news headlines on his BlackBerry. Looking at the crowd it’s difficult to distinguish the meeting between two old friends who vigorously embrace and squeeze each other’s butts from that of two new friends who spontaneously give rough kisses and quick, hungry gropes. At one point we spy Sergei in the distance smiling amid a jostling group of excited leathermen. He is holding a flogger aloft like a thunderbolt. Matt tries to make his way through the crowd to him. But, by the time he arrives at the group, Sergei is nowhere to be seen. The air is humming with possibility. There are strict rules and no rules at the same time. The vulgar and obscene are admired as beautiful by the majority of the crowd, whereas we find it laughable and sad. Soon we pick up on common signs, especially among the older leathermen. We see men with sunken cheeks and sickly looking emaciated bodies that signal that they have consumed spoiled fruit and might soon pay for it with their lives.
“This isn’t funny anymore,” Jay says emphatically. “I’ve had enough of this fucking AIDS death camp.”
Signs of death offend us. We return to L.A.
Weeks pass. During this time my erotic imagination begins to filter the atmosphere that I had witnessed at the fair into an entirely new sensibility. I begin to see through Sergei’s clear blue eyes. Mysterious elements within me erupt to the surface. Staying late at work to compile a report analyzing statistics on global precious metals, I find myself conducting an extensive and frantic Internet search on this man I’d only glimpsed briefly. I study the fetish fair’s website, fan sites and social networking sites, tracking down information and pictures of Sergei. Every detail I collect adds to my craving for him: he is of Russian heritage; he took a vacation to Australia; he’s had a boyfriend for six years; he is a fan of British sitcoms; he’s worked at Folsom for three years helping to raise thousands and thousands of dollars for charities while throwing a massive fetish party out in the open; in early photos he has small simple tattoos on his arms. but these have recently developed into full blocks of intricately designed patterns and color. Finding a public conversation between Sergei and a friend of his on one social networking website, I discover a casual comment he made about a kinky dating website. I quickly join this website and scan the profiles of San Francisco members. Finally I find his profile. By now it is three in the morning in our starch-white open-plan office, but I still spend another hour drinking the gold mine of information contained in his pictures, personal description and lists of fetishes. He prefers being a top; he likes it sweaty; he is HIV positive: each revelatory fact makes him more perfect in my feverish imagination.
Sergei invades my daytime thoughts and my nighttime self quickly smothers my efficient lively everyday persona. The small motions of daily life are infused with a perverse devotion for this virtual stranger I’ve inexplicably become obsessed with. I jostle through papers on my desk without noticing their contents. I stand beside the water cooler with my coworkers listening to complaints about the new intern who can’t spell and laugh with disinterest. I sit at a table in a fashionable new Asian-American restaurant with my friends sipping warmed sake and discuss the dishiest waiters. All the while, I think about how to alter my appearance, modify myself to become more desirable to him. My mind is polluted by passion. Suddenly, I declare to my friends that I want to grow a beard and get some leather pants. Their eyes are filled with disgust, and Sylvan’s arched eyebrow lets me know how disposable I am.
Later on, fresh out of the shower, I practice posing in the mirror inhabiting a tough-guy persona and snap photos of myself. I spend some time creating a gallery of sexually suggestive pictures and upload it to my profile on the kinky website. Then I laboriously compose a profile description that I think will cater to Sergei’s tastes: New masculine sub hungry to explore: very obedient, very fit, very frisky.
It’s some indeterminable time in the night. I send Sergei a quick flirtatious email through the dating website’s messaging system. Then I jerk my hard cock while imagining Sergei’s boot stepping on the small of my naked back, lifting my head with an iron-gripped fistful of hair and hearing the muscular god whispering what a dirty cunt I am. I want to crawl along the grimy floor struggling to kiss his toes, bare my ass to him for a whipping, sleep chained to the foot of his bed waiting for the tiniest sign of affection. I crave the feel of his hand around my throat while he forces his lips upon mine and then wrenches open my mouth to swallow his thick dick so far that I gag, a punch to the gut and his knee in my balls. I want him to beat me, leaving me gasping for breath and begging to sniff his sweaty armpits. He’ll clean me by pissing on my naked form in a ghetto’s concrete alleyway, then force my face into his ass to lick his hole out, and he’ll fuck my cold trembling body and leave me covered in grime for passersby to spit at. Enslaved, I’ll run my tongue along the dirty underside of his toilet seat, offer him all my money and possessions and suck his dick clean after he’s fucked his boyfriend. He’ll screw my faggot ass at a second’s notice, pounding me with such force that my bent naked body will snap in two and my face will be rubbed raw against the floor. I will abstain and deny myself all comforts so that any sensations of pleasure or pain I feel will be because he deemed it…. Sylvan is sleeping peacefully in our four-poster Queen Anne mahogany bed under ivory silk sheets. The streetlamps cast an amber glow that penetrates our blinds. Sticky semen oozes between the fingers of my clenched fist, and my body smarts from innumerable imaginary bruises. It’s almost time for me to get up for work.
Sylvan and I sit at our antique Shaker dining room table in the morning eating carefully measured portions of steaming oatmeal with thin slivers of banana out of Jasper Conran Wedgwood bowls. Our laptops are open and we are spending this half hour together over breakfast checking email, blogs and news websites.
“Jay’s friend Michael is DJ-ing at Club Ripples. I told Tony and Sam I’d meet them there for shots at eight.”
“Fab. I’ve got after-work drinks for Sahara at Fubar, but I can catch a cab there by nine.”
“Tony’s sis Jessica might be there too.”
“Ugh! Have you seen her latest Facebook picture? Jess should really slow down on the Botox before she has a total bat face. But maybe she should go bac
k under the knife and do something about that nose.”
“Seriously. I mean, hello! That nose hasn’t been in fashion since the late nineties.”
“Doubt it would help that horse face of hers. Or her hyena laugh.”
“I know. And she laughs at the stupidest shit. Things that aren’t even funny.”
“She’s got the personality of a jellyfish. She’s a total coke head too.”
“She’s got a killer body though. Great knockers.”
“Fantastic breasts.”
“We should get her over for dinner.”
“Yeah, and her sexy boyfriend Drake.”
We down our cappuccinos and kiss before leaving for work.
Sergei and I exchange several messages over the next week. I don’t mention seeing him at the fair or that I’ve been tracking him over cyberspace. I pretend to have stumbled across his profile when searching for a hookup. His messages are clipped erotic half sentences that sear my imagination. We chat tentatively about meeting up, but I don’t want to see him anywhere near my life here. I want to give myself to him on some foreign ground, where the echoes of my screams as he devours me can’t be heard by anyone familiar. I read another discussion between him and a friend on a social networking site, discovering that he’ll be at a leather fair in New York City in three weeks.
The next morning I tell Sylvan that I have to attend a conference for work in New York City.
I enter Sergei’s suite at a fashionable downtown hotel. The paint looks fresh on the walls, the air feels carefully circulated and there are sleek modern lines to the decor. Black-and-white framed photographs featuring dramatically lit monuments and statues adorn the walls. He shutters the large window view of placid, gray sky and bulky, concrete buildings by pressing a button. I say that I need to have a piss, at which he nods and says he’ll pour us a drink. The black marble stone bathroom has a glass counter and silver washbasin. Numerous small orange bottles filled with pills are carefully lined up on one side. I look at these in wonder and excitement, studying and instantly forgetting the many prescription drug names like a tourist. I hear the thumping introductory beats of some music through the half-closed door. He is waiting, the man I am trembling with need to give myself to. I flush the toilet and quickly turn on and off the tap, making a show to hide the fact that I just wanted a moment alone to savor the anticipation.
The room’s lights have been substantially dimmed. His iPod is set on a stylish stereo dock that is glowing blue. A thumping electronic beat rings out through the speakers, and a mournful Central European-sounding female voice begins singing a low-pitched melody. He walks up to me and tilts his head to the side as if sizing me up. I’m frozen in place as he grabs my jaw and forces his mouth onto mine. His kiss is wet and deep and urgent. As he opens his mouth to enclose mine, his body begins to grind against me. I respond and fit myself against him, treasuring the feel of his muscular arm as it encloses me and the gruff scrape of his beard against my smooth face. I’m only aware of the music in my ears and of his touch. He releases me and walks away so quickly I almost fall forward. He changes the song to one with quick drumbeats and an electronic hum. Two women sing mournfully over each other. He slides out of his clothes, letting them fall to the floor, and steps up to me again, fully naked with his hard cock bobbing up and down. This is a man of such strength, confidence and lusty beauty that I’m completely entranced. I kiss him again and let him undress me, only helping to undo my complex belt buckle when he fumbles with it. I’m ready to be struck down. Fully naked we rub against each other for some time until he wrestles me onto the floor. His rough face slides down my body, digging at the dark alcoves of it with his tongue and gripping my limbs in his strong hands. He directs me onto my front and laps at my ass. In my mind, I whisper for him to fuck me and then I’m shouting it aloud, my voice in combat with the thumping music. He stands and retrieves a condom from the pocket of his crumpled jeans on the carpet.
Painfully I twist my neck around to look up at him. I slam my fists against the floor with my ass still angled up in air. “Fuck me bareback! I want to feel your cock inside me!”
Sergei stares at me with the metallic square wrapper in his hand and his hard cock pointing upward. I shout it again. I beg him to fuck me and shove his skin into my hole.
“I told you in a message I’m HIV positive. It’s in my profile: only safe sex.”
I stand and wrap my arms around him hungrily, kissing and groping him. He responds and rubs against me. I take the condom from his hand and throw it to the floor, then pull him on top of me on the bed and lift my legs so they are over his shoulders.
“Fuck me,” I demand.
I look up at him angrily. His eyebrows narrow and he sneers at me in fury. He throws my legs off, stands up and firmly says no. He begins to dress and I begin to cry, first slowly and then with strong heaving sobs. I curl up on top of the crisp bedspread and hug my knees to my chest. I feel him crawl behind me, enclosing me warmly in his arms, kissing my burning ears and telling me it’s going to be all right. We fall asleep in a strange sort of embrace.
In the morning I stare at his sleeping naked form. His hideously large skull covered in a thin layer of taut near-transparent skin reveals purple-blue veins. His tattoos look slightly faded, and it’s easy to imagine how sickly they will appear once his skin starts to sag and wrinkle. Patches of his skin are blotched red from sleeping on his arm. His mouth hangs slightly open and emits a choking hiss of a snore. Numerous lines have permanently creased the sides of his eyes and his forehead. Small pink pimples dot his shoulders from where he’s plucked or shaved the hair. Lube mixed with my anal juices left faint brown stains on his fingers. He is old and ugly and dying. I am disgusted by the sight of him. I want to punish him.
I slip quietly into the marble bathroom. The hard floor freezes my sensitive naked feet. I pick up and examine the numerous small orange medicine bottles. My mirror image appears young, painfully thin, and my skin has a healthy glow under the recessed lighting. The pills make a satisfying clicking sound as I turn them in my hands, studying the complex names printed on the labels. I open them and pour the contents of each one into my hands until I have a large palm full of variously shaped white, cream, yellow and blue pills. These I tip into the toilet bowl. I carefully recap each medicine bottle and put it back in its place on the countertop. Then I have a long piss and flush the toilet. There are some splashes of water on the taps and the glass surface, which I wipe down until they shine, and I’m careful to leave the towels neatly straightened on their racks. I dress and leave before Sergei wakes up.
On the flight back to the West Coast I stare into my glass of champagne, watching the bubbles scream to the surface. The sound is barely audible against the electronic screech of the aircraft sailing through the sky and the boisterous businessmen in the seats nearby who sling back glasses of scotch and tear carnivorously into the prettily arranged beef empanada. I refuse all of the courses offered by the immaculately presented stewardess, and I choose instead to only pick through a fruit salad and make friends with the bottles on the alcohol trolley.
Sinking back into the plush leather seat, I glance out the small oval window at the blue slate of sky hiding the surface of Middle America. It’s a comfort that we’re traversing the length of the country without even noticing the numerous banal towns and tedious cities scattered over the rural landscape. I imagine that this plane is a sort of escape pod that has delivered me from the little town where I was born. It still exists down there somewhere, inhabited by my family and childhood friends, who writhe miserably in their provincial lives and are smothered by tedium. My heart actually races when I think how I’ve escaped what could have been my life. I’m balanced upon the edge of a cliff watching a lava flow engulf a village and its hundreds of screaming inhabitants. I’m in a life raft floating on a treacherous ocean watching a ship in flames collapsing into the roaring water. I’ve wrestled a tornado that’s destroyed everything, and now I’m return
ing to my enchanted city. This is the only way I know how to survive.
I can’t afford this first-class flight, but I booked it on my credit card anyway. I’m nearing the limits on several cards and have no idea how I’ll pay them off, despite the good salary and generous bonuses I receive. I suspect Sylvan is in similar financial trouble, but we never discuss money. No one in our group cares about money; we simply expect it to be there. I’ve worn my new Gucci shirt to meet Sylvan at the airport—although he wasn’t certain if he’d have time to make it out to LAX, and I might just see him back at the apartment. That is, unless he got caught up having drinks with colleagues. In which case, I might not see him until the next morning.
ATTACKMAN
Rob Wolfsham
Alex liked it when Max Weston treated him like shit. The star attackman of the lacrosse team shoved the skinny skater to the ground and straddled his back, squeezing Alex’s sides with his knees as the younger boy writhed beneath him. Max pressed Alex’s skateboard against the back of his head, pushing his face into damp, cold weeds. Sweaty jocks laughed. One lacrosse player said, “Max, c’mon, get off him, man.”
Max tossed the skateboard aside and released the shaggy-haired skater, unfolding into a long-boned nineteen-year-old boy.
Alex rolled onto his back, grabbed his skateboard and swung it like a bat at Max.
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