Best Gay Erotica 2011

by Richard Labont

  Guys made stupid ooh sounds.

  Max jumped back grinning, flashing the gap between his two front teeth. “Faggot wants to get tough, huh?” Freckles dotted his high cheekbones. His chestnut hair was buzzed on the sides, slicked forward on top and spiked up at his forehead. He snarled through his piggish nose. He looked like an all-American teen from a fifties advertisement for baseball or killing Russians.

  Alex stood up. Weed stems and grass leaves flaked from his baggy clothes. He rubbed his nest of dyed black hair, threaded with grass. More grass clung to his pearly face and sharp nose. He held his skateboard like a sword. “Go get syphilis again.”

  Max cupped his hands around his mouth, walking backward toward his friends, swaggering. “Faggot, next time you get near my car, I’m going to shove your face in more than just grass.”

  Guys laughed. Alex kept the lip of his skateboard aimed at the receding pack of jocks.

  Mr. Albrecht, the only cool English teacher at the school, marched up to Max Weston and his gang. “Guys, guys, touching boys means detention. Don’t let me fuck up your season.”

  Max spat into the grass, barely missing Mr. Albrecht’s khaki pants. The athlete and his crowd walked past the short, red-faced teacher, who had thinning hair and big square glasses.

  Mr. Albrecht approached Alex, still in his defense posture. “Shields down?” the teacher asked, curling a smile.

  Alex let his skateboard fall to the ground. “What did you say?”

  “Enough, I hope.”

  “Fucking diplomacy,” Alex said. He tossed his board on the sidewalk and skated off through the parking lot, weaving through dozens of cars lined around campus waiting to pick up students. It was February of senior year. He had just turned eighteen with only three months left until the freedom of graduation, the freedom of complete uncertainty. Alex skateboarded down the sidewalk along a busy boulevard under a heatless sun, wheels clicking over segments of concrete.

  He tightened the blue hoodie around his face and plucked smaller stems of weeds off his clothes. Cars zoomed down the road. Max Weston’s black Chevy Tahoe roared by. Nothing happened. Alex felt empty.

  The skater reached home and entered through the back gate and back door, shuffling through the laundry room past a rumbling washer and dryer.

  Alex’s mother stood in the kitchen holding up a big sheet of lasagna pasta. “Italian night,” she sang happily as Alex walked by.

  “Oh,” he said. He burst into his room, locked the door, stripped naked, flopped onto his bed and fingered his cock. He pushed his fingers into new bruises on his legs and sides. He imagined his ankles suspended in the air, skin raw from rope burn. He imagined things Max Weston’s body could do. He gazed at his ceiling photo collage of skaters and snowboarders printed from random blogs and cut out. His eyelids fell and his feet spread. He jacked himself slowly.

  In the wet grass of an endless field, Max Weston stood glistening and sun-licked, naked except for black padded lacrosse gloves with bumpy grips. Alex was on all fours, his pale, hairless asscheeks facing Max. Fog encased them like hot steam. He was filthy, covered in grass stains and dirt.

  The lacrosse team lounged nude on bleachers, their scratched knees stretched apart, cocks out, casual observers of ritual.

  Max’s gloved fists gripped a lacrosse stick. The plastic of the gloves crinkled, tightening over his knuckles before the lacrosse star growled and swung the stick across Alex’s back. Netting popped against the skater’s bony spine and shoulder blades. Alex groaned, throwing his head back, mouth agape. A waffle pattern glowed red on his back.

  The lacrosse attackman got on his knees and shoved the head of the stick between Alex’s legs, scooping up Alex’s dangling balls and cock in the netted cup, encasing them. He jerked the stick up, nearly lifting Alex off the ground. The skater cried out in a mix of pain and ecstasy, balls straining against the netting.

  Max’s glove grabbed the skater’s neck and yanked him against his sinewy long chest. “I want you to enjoy this,” he breathed into Alex’s ear. He rammed himself into Alex with no preparation or warning. Alex cried out but three fingers clawed into his mouth, then four, gagging him. The lacrosse player fucked him, chewed his ear with his gapped teeth, pulled on the inside of his cheek, called him shit eater as his flexing quads slapped the skater’s asscheeks. Alex came.

  A loud knock on his door jolted Alex from his daydream. “Don’t come in,” he said, panting, sucked back to a reality where he lay on his back, hair in his red face, scooping cum off his chest. “I’m about to shower.”

  His mother spoke through the door: “I was just going to say, I got an email from your English teacher today? We’re going to talk about that later, okay?”

  “Leave me alone, thank you,” Alex said. He lay in silence watching the door. He exhaled and dangled his fingers over his face, drooling the snotty webs of cum into his mouth.

  Nothing happened for a week. Mr. Albrecht’s threat seemed to keep Max and the jocks away from Alex, until the day when the general P.E. class shared the locker room with the lacrosse team. Alex changed alone in his corner several rows of lockers away from everyone else. The rest of the guys crowded on the other side, changing and chatting.

  Mr. Albrecht entered the musty concrete room wearing blue bike shorts, an orange tank top, sweatbands around his forehead and wrists and a whistle dangling from his neck. As the English and drama teacher, he made his physical education duties a performance piece.

  “Mr. Albrecht,” said one student as the teacher passed. “I’m sharing a locker with Jason, and he’s not back yet. Can you open it?”

  “Guys, this is ridiculous,” Mr. Albrecht said. “There are enough lockers. Look over there.” He pointed to the other side of the room where Alex was pulling his shirt off, revealing a brilliantly pale, skinny body.

  “That section is closed due to AIDS,” Max said. His lacrosse buddies laughed.

  “What?” Mr. Albrecht asked with genuine confusion.

  “Nothing,” Max said pulling his shirt off over his head and tossing it into a locker.

  “No,” Mr. Albrecht said. “I’m serious. What did you mean by that?”

  Jimmy, a Mexican jock with a thick accent, said with confused concern, “No one wants a homo to look at them.”

  Mr. Albrecht looked over at Alex, sitting shirtless, untying bright purple shoelaces on his Vans.

  Mr. Albrecht said, “If I hear anyone say that word again they’re getting an in-school suspension.”

  No one said anything.

  The teacher pointed his clipboard at everyone. “Take your shit out of the lockers. You’re all spreading out over there. Assigned lockers from now on.”

  The guys groaned and shuffled. Even Alex looked up and said, “Fuck no.” Most of the lacrosse team didn’t budge.

  “I’m serious,” Mr. Albrecht said. He poked his thick square glasses up his nose.

  “You can’t make us go over there,” Max said.

  The English teacher looked at his clipboard. “Actually I can. When the lacrosse team is in here during my P.E. period, you follow my rules. You can ask Coach Starkey.”

  All the guys started shuffling unenthusiastically, spreading through the locker room with their books and clothes, slamming doors. Max was the only one who didn’t move.

  Mr. Albrecht said, “I’ll let Coach Starkey know your undying crush on Alex Ritter is preventing you from functioning normally in here.”

  “What?” Max laughed. He grew bright red and muttered, “Fucking pervert.”

  Others who heard stopped what they were doing and watched.

  “You just got in-school suspension,” Mr. Albrecht said.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  The teacher started writing on his clipboard. “That’ll cut into practice time, too.”

  “No, c’mon,” Max said. He quickly took his stuff over to Alex and dropped it next to him. Alex stepped away. Max threw his arms around the bony, shaggy-haired skater, squeezi
ng him. “Look, we’re buddies. He likes it.”

  Alex slinked out from under Max’s grip. The athlete yanked the skater back against his chest and wrapped his arms around his stomach, lightly tickling him.

  Alex squirmed. “Get off me.”

  Max grinned at Mr. Albrecht from over Alex’s bony shoulder.

  “Faggots,” Jimmy laughed.

  Mr. Albrecht headed for the locker room door. “I don’t have time for this. You’re seniors. Act like it. Get changed and get out of here.”

  When the door shut, Max shoved Alex against a locker. “You’re gonna fucking get me suspended.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Alex said.

  “Yeah, except be a faggot.”

  The bell rang and everyone had finished changing except Alex and Max. The rest of the lacrosse team and general P.E. class shuffled out of the room, leaving the skater and athlete alone.

  “Now I’m going to be late,” Max said.

  “You care about class?” Alex asked. They sat down several feet away from each other.

  “Fuck you, homo,” Max said.

  “No. I’m trying to stay STD free.”

  “Can you shut the fuck up? I’m clean now, okay? Becky Benson is the whore. It wasn’t my fault.”

  They said nothing for a while. The lacrosse player pulled his shorts off, quickly wrapped a towel around himself and stood.

  “What are you doing?” Alex asked.

  “What does it look like? I’m showering.”

  “We have like four minutes until class.”

  “You’re not going to shower?”

  “General P.E. doesn’t have to shower.”

  “That’s fucking gross, man,” Max said. “You were just running around outside for an hour. Fucking shower.”

  “No, I don’t want to shower,” Alex said.

  “Take your fucking shorts off and shower, faggot,” Max said.

  Alex stared ahead at the blue caged doors of the row of lockers, hiding a creeping thrill in his lips and loins. “Fuck off. I don’t have a towel.”

  Max pulled an extra towel from his locker and threw it at Alex. It hit him in the side of the head and fell to the floor. Max walked to the showers, big feet slapping his flip-flops. Alex yanked his shorts off, wrapped the towel around himself and followed.

  They showered in silence for sixty seconds in the open tile room, five nozzles away from each other, rapidly scrubbing themselves. Alex looked at Max Weston once or twice by accident, taking in the solid glutes of the lacrosse player’s ass. A river delta of Old Spice soap suds seeped down Max’s pale cheeks and quads and long powerful calf muscles. A thick cut cock dangled under a soapy bush.

  Max side-eyed Alex’s glistening, bony frame. Alex’s shaggy black hair tickled his shoulders and thick strands hung over his deep-set eyes and sharp nose. Their eyes caught each other but moved on as though enjoying the scenery of some imaginary landscape behind their bodies. But Alex glimpsed a semi-boner out of the corner of his eye.

  They dried, dressed and walked out separate doors of the locker room as the late bell rang.

  “Where were you?” Alex’s friend Greg asked when the skater took his seat in the back of a noisy, aimless history class. The teacher flipped through channels on a TV attached to the ceiling.

  Greg was a skinny nerd with thick, round glasses and brown, spiked hair. He liked to pretend to be stoned all the time. “I heard you got in a fight with Max Weston after P.E.”

  “It wasn’t a fight,” Alex said.

  “I heard he shoved you.”

  “It wasn’t a fight.”

  “Man, you gotta fight back and shit,” Greg said, knuckling Alex’s arm. “Gay power and shit, right?”

  “I’m not going to fight Max Weston. Fuck coming out. I take it back. I should have waited until graduation.”

  “Dude, no one cares except Max Weston and his dumb jock friends. Look around the fucking room.” Greg held his hand out to the noisy classroom packed with students talking and messing with their cell phones, some sitting on the floor. A young teacher in his midtwenties was putting a DVD in the TV. “This school has like three thousand people who don’t care about anything, or would make fun of you for something else anyway. I’m not gay and I get called faggot all the time.”

  “Yeah, I know, but it’s like he’s obsessed with me.”

  “Okay, yeah, some people did think it was weird the other day when he, like, rode your ass on the ground and shoved your face in the grass.”

  “You saw that?”

  “Yeah, the whole school saw it. Someone said you had a boner.”

  “I did not have a boner.”

  “Everyone saw your boner.”

  “Shut up,” Alex said.

  “Mr. Albrecht had a boner, too.”

  “Mr. Albrecht did jack shit,” Alex said.

  “I know. He’s kind of lame, right? I heard he has kiddie porn. We should hack his laptop and try to find it.”

  “That’s fucking retarded. You’re not a hacker.”

  “Dude, did you shower?”

  “No, leave me alone, man.”

  “Smells nice.”

  In newspaper club the next week, Alex worked on a news story about how Sarah Palin is the goddamn devil. Mr. Albrecht, the school newspaper coordinator, handed a letter to Monica, a giggly Vietnamese-American girl who was the chief editor.

  “Alex, you’ll want to see this.” Mr. Albrecht said. “This was just sent to the newspaper email.”

  “We get emails?” Monica asked as she read the letter. Alex came over to look. It was a letter to the editor from Max Weston, a rant about the Gay-Straight Alliance club the school had started recently. In the letter the lacrosse player complained about how a Gay-Straight Alliance degraded the school and was a distraction to the learning environment. Every other word was misspelled.

  “Wow, this is dumb,” Monica said. “He can’t talk about the learning environment when he’s like functionally illiterate.”

  “Look at this part,” Alex pointed halfway down the letter. “He asks why can’t we have an Aryan Nations club since we have a GSA now. Holy shit.”

  “This letter makes him look really bad,” Monica said. “He sounds like a Nazi.”

  “He is a Nazi,” Alex said. “Monica, you have to write a response and run this letter with it.”

  “Now wait,” Mr. Albrecht said. “We can’t do that. That’s a conflict of interest.”

  “What? How?” Alex said, his excitement draining.

  “Monica is secretary of the Gay-Straight Alliance, and editor of this paper. She can’t criticize someone for their opinion on the GSA if she’s a member of the GSA.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Alex said.

  “Alex.”

  “Monica is secretary of every club in school,” Alex said. “She’s not even gay.”

  The girl shrugged. “He is right. I just like being secretary.”

  They ran the letter at the end of the month, but with no editorial response. They let the lacrosse player’s letter speak for itself.

  The wheels of Alex’s skateboard clicked over slabs of concrete on the sidewalk under a heatless sun. Cars zoomed down the adjacent road. A black Chevy Tahoe roared by. The tires screeched, rubber burning into pavement. The hulking vehicle seized to a stop ahead of Alex.

  Alex pulled his hoodie tight around his face and slowed his skateboard, unsure what to do. The Tahoe’s white reverse lights flashed, and the SUV screeched backward until it stopped next to Alex. Max Weston leaped out of the driver’s seat into the busy road and marched around the front of the SUV. He shoved Alex right off his skateboard. Cars drove around the Tahoe, honking.

  “What the fuck are you doing!” Alex shouted, jumping up from the grass.

  The lacrosse star picked up the skateboard and threw it at Alex. It hit him in the chest and knocked him off balance. Max shoved Alex as he wobbled. The gangly skater tumbled down an embankment into a heavily wooded ditch.

>   “Think you’re such a smart faggot?” Max marched down to Alex and kicked him with all his strength.

  Alex rolled into a muddy patch and wheezed for air, clutching his stomach. The ditch blocked the view from the road.

  Max grabbed the skater’s hair and dragged him through the mud, then kicked again. “They want to fucking expel me!” the athlete shouted at the curled-up boy.

  Alex panted and held his muddy palms up toward Max. Wind roared through the trees. “You wrote the email,” Alex coughed.

  “They say it’s fucking hate speech! I’m gonna lose my lacrosse scholarship!” Max got on his knees, sinking into the mud. He slammed his fist into Alex’s face.

  Alex cried out and tried to roll away.

  Max straddled him, squeezing his knees against the skater’s ribs. “Tell them I didn’t write it!”

  “Fuck you!” Alex groaned, twisting. Blood trickled from a nostril. His hands were pinned under Max’s knees. His face burned and throbbed.

  “Fucking hell, man!” Max yelled, looking up at the dense swaying treetops, then down at Alex’s bloodied red face.

  The lacrosse star had been crying. Two dried trails ran from his eyes to his thin lips. The two trails terrified Alex more than his fists.

  “Why do you have to be such a faggot?” Max grabbed Alex’s chest, bunching up the skater’s muddy hoodie in his fists like he wanted to rip something out.

  “Get off of me,” Alex breathed.

  “Why do you like dick?”

  “Get the fuck off of me!”

  “Why are you a faggot!” Max yelled in his face like a machine on repeat.

  “Fuck you!”

  “What? You like this, right?” The athlete grabbed the skater’s knees, spread them and slammed his crotch against his, athletic shorts grinding into baggy jeans.

  “I don’t!” The skater’s eyes widened. He felt Max’s solid boner poking his balls.

  Max laughed. “Yeah, feel that? Like that?”

  Alex moaned, unable to stop himself. He squirmed against Max’s massive dick, blood rushing to his own.