Best gay erotica 2006, p.1
Best Gay Erotica 2006, page 1
BEST GAY EROTICA 2006
Series Editor
RICHARD LABONTÉ
Selected and Introduced by
MATTILDA, A.K.A.
MATT BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE
Copyright © 2005 by Richard Labonté.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by Cleis Press Inc., P.O. Box 14697, San Francisco, California 94114
Printed in the United States.
Cover design: Scott Idleman
Cover photograph: Celesta Danger
Text design: Frank Wiedemann
Cleis logo art: Juana Alicia
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
eISBN: 978-1-57344-706-5
“Foreword” © 2005 by Richard Labonté.
“Dangerous and Lovely” © 2005 by Mattilda, a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore
“Fucking Doseone” © 2005 by Ralowe Trinitrotoluene Ampu. “Gender Queer” © 2005 by Patrick Califia, reprinted with permission from Boy in the Middle (Cleis Press, 2005). “Best Friendster Date Ever” © 2005 by Alexander Chee. “Site 1” © 2005 by Dennis Cooper, reprinted with permission from The Sluts (Void Books and Carroll & Graf, 2005). Excerpt from Sexile © 2004, originally published by and reprinted with permission of the Institute for Gay Men’s Health, a collaboration between the AIDS Project Los Angeles and Gay Men’s Health Crisis. “They Can’t Stop Us” © 2005 by Tim Doody. “In Bed with Allen” © 2004 by Marcus Ewert, first appeared in Velvet Mafia, Issue 14. “The Pancake Circus” © 2005 by Trebor Healey, reprinted with permission from Out of Control: Hot, Trashy Man-on-Man Erotica, ed. by Greg Wharton (Suspect Thoughts, 2005). “DogBoy and the BetaGoth” © 2005 by Nadyalec Hijazi and Ben Blackthorne, first appeared in Suspect Thoughts: A Journal of Subversive Writing, Issue 14 (January-June, 2005). Excerpt from What We Do is Secret by Thorn Kief Hillsbery © 2005 by Villard Books/Random House, reprinted with permission. “Electrical Type of Thing” reprinted with permission from The Wild Creatures: Collected Stories of Sam D’Allesandro © 2005 by Kevin Killian (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2005). “Too Far” © 2004 by Kevin Killian and Thom Wolf, reprinted with permission from Frozen Tears II, ed. by John Russell (ARTicle Press). “Jailbait” © 2005 by Darin Klein. “Depression Halved Production Costs” © 2005 by Sam J. Miller, reprinted with permission from Smut! (June, 2005). “Half-Eaten Lollipop” © 2005 by blake nemec. “Stephen” © 2005 by Kirk Read. “Lizard Killing” © 2005 by July Shark. “Marcos y Che” © 2005 by Simon Sheppard. “All the Creatures Were Stirring” © 2004 by Andrew Spieldenner, reprinted with permission from Corpus (Vol. 2, No. 2, fall 2004). “Garlic” © 2004 by Bob Vickery, first appeared in Men (November, 2004). “Now Fix Me” © 2005 by Duane Williams, first appeared in Velvet Mafia, Issue 12. “Trouble Loves Me” © 2005 by Steven Zeeland, reprinted with permission from Barracks Bad Boys: Authentic Accounts of Sex in the Armed Forces, ed. by Alex Buchman (Harrington Park Press, 2004).
For a tenth time
for Asa Dean Liles—
now almost a Canadian
FOREWORD
Richard Labonté
The Best Gay Erotica series is eleven years old with this edition—and this is the tenth volume in the series that I’ve edited: many thousands of stories read, several hundred of them enjoyed, a couple of hundred “bests” selected by a distinguished array of guest judges, from Douglas Sadownick in 1997 to, this year, Mattilda, a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore.
As with every judge, she—think gender fluidity, eh?—brings a unique sensibility in story selection. Every year, I cull a few dozen stories from the many, many submissions, searching not for a unifying theme, but rather for overall excellence and intriguing originality; what sets each year’s BGE apart from the erotic anthology hordes, I believe, is that each edition, year to year, reflects the ultimate taste of writerly intelligences: Christopher Bram and Felice Picano and D. Travers Scott and Neal Drinnan and Randy Boyd and Kirk Read and Michael Rowe and William J. Mann—like Sadownick, all past judges—epitomize queer quality; what they write and how they write are markedly different in voice, and each of them stamped their year of Best Gay Erotica with a distinct style.
Just so, Mattilda—in a young lifetime a lusty hustler, an able editor, a fierce activist, and a gifted writer—brought a number of newer writers to my attention, encouraging them to submit stories. Not all of them made my cut, but it’s a pleasure this year to include new fiction by Ralowe Trinitrotoluene Ampu, Tim Doody, July Shark, Darin Klein, Sam J. Miller, and blake nemec—I hope their appearance between the covers of this collection of “bests” is as good for them as it is for me. Ditto for the writing partners Nadyalec Hijazi and Ben Blackthorne, whose rambunctious story came my way through one of the several online journals that have matured into fecund homes for new writers.
Anthology virgins they are not; newish (and sometimes youngish) they are. Count Marcus Ewert (with a story from Beatboy, his memoir-in-progress), Kirk Read (author of the memoir How I Learned to Snap), Alexander Chee (Edinburgh and the forthcoming The Queen of the Night), Trebor Healey (Through It Came Bright Colors), Duane Williams, and Andrew Spieldenner among writers whose prose I’ll read anywhere, anytime, and whom we feature most enthusiastically in this year’s collection.
Older by a writing generation or two—though none is nearing any sort of dotage, of course—are contributors Simon Sheppard, Patrick Califia, Bob Vickery, Kevin Killian (with coauthor Thom Wolf), and Dennis Cooper: writers whose work has almost nothing in common with the others except for stylish strength, daunting depth, and immense intelligence. Sheppard, Califia, Vickery, and Killian are BGE veterans, writers whose work, erotic or not, is always at its best; this is Cooper’s first BGE appearance, with an excerpt from The Sluts, an uncommon, uneasy, and unsettling read that explicates depravity with an astonishing blend of dark humor, potent truth, and spooky realism.
Somewhere in the middle, as generations go, are Thorn Kief Hillsbery, with an excerpt from What We Do Is Secret, and Steven Zeeland, editor of five best-selling military-sex books from Haworth Press.
And Sam D’Allesandro—well, his writing transcends generations. He died in 1988, even before his first collection The Zombie Pit (Crossing Press, 1989) was published; “Electrical Type of Thing” is from The Wild Creatures (Suspect Thought, 2005) a collection that reprints stories from The Zombie Pit and adds work from writing he left behind, shepherded into print by his literary executor, Kevin Killian. Twenty-five years after AIDS began to kill off a generation of gay writers and editors—Bo Huston, Joseph Beam, Stan Leventhal, Essex Hemphill, Allan Barnett, Steven Corbin, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Melvin Dixon, Paul Monette, Steve Abbott, so many more—there is a grace about bringing writing from a melancholy past into the vibrant present.
Mattilda and I both wanted to feature graphic narrative in BGE06. Rounding out the selections this year is the first-chapter excerpt from Jaime Cortez’s dazzling graphic biography: Sexile, based on interviews with Adela Vazquez, showcases how beautifully art and words can fuse to tell a tale.
And that’s the book. I’m celebrating my tenth anniversary with one of the best of the Bests, a collection with literary astonishments and erotic eclecticism aplenty.
Thanks, as always, to Frédérique Delacoste and Felice Newman, consummate publishers; to Diane Levinson and Chris Fox, who round out the Cleis empire; to Ottawa bookseller David Rimmer, who points me to new smut on the shelves of After Stonewall for my annual consideration; to book collector extraordinaire Bryan Wannop and his partner in dusting, Frank Kajfes; to old Canadian friends Andrew Currie and Nik Sheehan; to old American friends Justin Chin, Lawrence Schimel, Ian Philips (and, though we’ve never met, his husband, Mr. Greg Wharton); and to Shane Allison, whose story didn’t make it into Best Gay Erotica 2006—but he’s a writer of poetry and prose to watch out for.
Richard Labonté
Perth, Ontario
August 2005
DANGEROUS AND LOVELY:
AN INTRODUCTION
Mattilda, a.k.a Matt Bernstein Sycamore
I was thirteen the first time I had sex in a public bathroom. Or maybe I was fourteen, but anyway it happened at Woodie’s—not the bar in Philadelphia, but the department store in Washington, D.C.—or actually at the Friendship Heights branch literally steps across the Maryland state line. I was on the way to my father’s office after school, so that he could drive me home. I stopped at the Woodie’s makeup counter to look for a suitable base to cover up my acne, and the salesperson asked if I was shopping for my mother. I could feel my face turning red. The only thing I could bring myself to ask about was the Evian Brumisateur, spring water in a metal can with a nozzle that sprayed out a fine mist. I bought some: Gay consumerism hit me early.
But back to the bathroom, I stood at a urinal right next to someone, which made me nervous but my father was always yelling at me to get used to it, what was I so afraid of, any normal kid would just pull it out and piss. Normal kids had been calling me faggot since I could remember, way before I knew what it meant. I’d go home to my father screaming at me about everything else. He didn’t even know that I jerked off to pictures of guys in onionskin shorts, that I planned to live in an East Village commu
But back to the urinal, I was staring straight ahead at the wall so that I wouldn’t get accused of looking, but I could still see what was next to me, which was this guy’s dick sticking straight out after he dropped his right hand. My heart started pounding, I didn’t know how to breathe. My dick got hard and I covered it with my hands. I stood there for a while, facing straight ahead with my eyes looking diagonally down to the left. I didn’t know what to do. I dropped my left hand.
I reached over to touch this guy’s dick, and he reached for mine. Someone came in, I stuffed my dick into my pants and practically ran. Never again, I promised myself. Never again. I was back a week later, then several times a week throughout high school. Woodie’s Friendship Heights, Woodie’s downtown, Mazza Gallery, Georgetown Park, Georgetown Public Library, Bethesda Public Library. Always promising: never again.
I want to say that every time I came, it was an explosion of unbridled passion. I want to say that every time I looked into the eyes of some old guy with pasty skin standing next to me, tongue flicking in and out of his mouth in anticipation of my eager erection, I was in heaven. I want to say that every time I saw some man shaking out of fear and longing, sweat appearing in the armpits of his starched shirt, I wanted to hold him.
The truth is that I grew up in a world that wanted me dead, in a family that was ready to kill me, except then who would be around to carry on the family name? Kids had been calling me sissy for so long—I knew about gender deviance, but I didn’t know how to claim it. What I knew is that I didn’t want to feel, that if I just kept going back to the bathrooms, holding my body shut while men opened their mouths down there, then maybe I would win.
Winning meant defeating my father on every front—doing better in school, going to a more prestigious college, getting a higher-paying job. This was the ’80s, not the ’80s we now see on the fashion runways but the late-’80s that seemed like the tail end of a decade of greed (little did we know what was to come). And winning also meant learning not to feel, because then I wouldn’t have to remember my father splitting me open, over the sink in the basement, with all that mold entering my nostrils, when I was a broken toy. I’d already blocked that out, now I just needed to conquer my desires and then no one would be able to erase all my accomplishments with a single word.
Faggot. My sex life started with guilt and shame and grabbing that guy’s dick in the Woodie’s bathroom, it felt so huge and warm and spongy. My sex life started with the urinals, usually me and some old white guy with puckering lips or a business type with a briefcase on the floor between us. Was I attracted to them? I was hard, I wanted to come, I didn’t want to feel it.
I graduated from urinals to stalls after this one guy waved me in; when I pulled down my pants he put his hands under my shirt. Someone entered the bathroom, this guy sat on the toilet and pulled me onto his lap. Shh, he said. He hugged me and this flooded me with so much sensation. But I could feel his dick pressing up against me, I was afraid that it would get inside, that I would get AIDS. When the other guy left, I slid away, pulled up my pants, opened the stall door, and hurried out. Soon I heard the guy behind me, looked back to see his curly hair and glasses, black overcoat with brown leather shoulder bag. I literally ran—out the door and through the parking lot, up the hill and over to my father’s fateful fucking office.
Okay, so you’re wondering about all this seriousness in a porn anthology, but I just stopped writing to jerk off. I kept spitting on my hands, and there was a little bit of food residue in my mouth; now that I’ve switched chairs I can see little spots all over the pillows where I was just sitting. I could say: You made me jerk off so hard that my hands are burning, forearms tight with exertion, shoulders aching. Go ahead: Shoot your load too, smear your come all over this paragraph and then make all your boyfriends peel the pages open. Or better yet: Send it to me, pages stuck together—I dare you.
Or I could say: I have such terrible, chronic pain that even jerking off makes my body hurt. I still want to come, I just called the phone sex line and was about to hook up with some guy who sounded hot and was only seven blocks away, but he needed twenty minutes to leave the house and it was already 4:12 a.m. though now it’s 4:32. I could be fucking that guy’s face, instead of just jerking off and hurting, which is what I’m doing now. I’m jerking off while I’m writing this—voice activation software has some advantages, though it’s not helping my jock itch. Okay, my dick is shining with spit, I’m rolling my ergonomic desk chair over to the mirror so I can watch myself, the curve in my dick that used to make me think that I couldn’t get all the way hard. But now I know better. I’m hard, staring at the vein on the bottom of my dick in the mirror.
But let’s return to the bathrooms, which were my first safe gay spaces—or not safe, really, but more comfortable than the rest of the world. I discovered a hidden culture of foot tapping and notes written on toilet paper, wrapped around pens, and passed underneath stall walls. I imagined entire worlds around shoes and socks and ankles, the texture of hands, the skin underneath wristwatches, the pattern of hair on thighs. I pressed my body against metal partitions while guys on the other side offered hands and tongues and lips and mouths.
I grew bolder, cock against cock or my hand cupping his balls. At the Georgetown Public Library, I would kneel on the floor when no one was around and inhale the smell of stale piss. I came all over the floor of the bathroom at Mazza Gallery, right in the center of the room, halfway between the stalls and the sinks, and left it there. I led guys into stairwells and parking lots, I jerked guys off in the safety of their cars. One guy wanted me to meet his wife, another handed me his business card: Capitol Hill. Just after I learned to drive, I picked a guy up at a gas station, by leaving my hand at my crotch a little too long and then moving my gaze to the hill across the street. It wasn’t a hill, really, just some landfill between buildings, but we jerked each other off in the sun anyway. He pulled way too hard.
And yes, every time I promised: never again. Until I got away, not from the bathrooms but from high school and my parents and Washington, D.C., and then farther away after a year at some fancy college still trying to outdo my father. I decided, instead, to beat him on my own terms. I cruised bathrooms and sex clubs and beaches and alleys, phone sex lines and backrooms and more bathrooms and backrooms and sex clubs and beaches. I want to say that I reveled in indecency, that I embraced sluttiness with a passion. And I did. But I also found myself in a sexual world that worshipped the masculinity I despised, elevating it to a preeminent space in the pantheon of the gods.
I longed for something else, but I took what I could get. I discovered a whole universe of shaking and moaning and panting and groaning, so much sweat and spit and come on my face and my chest, in my hands and my clothes. Boston’s Fens, in the middle of a freezing winter, with the reeds cut down so that no one could hide—fifty guys in a circle just grabbing and holding and petting, gripping and pumping and shaking and grinding, somehow I was close to the middle, almost getting squashed, just feeling it. Or San Francisco’s Buena Vista Park, with the trees tossing in the wind and making strange screeching sounds, the fog tinting the sky pink, and I’m standing up into so many guys’ arms. Or the backroom at The Cock in New York, kneeling on the floor and sucking one cock after another, there’s no use trying to stop because if you stand up then you’re pushed back by the crowd pushing forward; finally you do it anyway and find yourself up against this one guy hugging you with his dick angled right at your asshole.
But back to the disease of unquestioned masculinity—in 1996, I got kicked out of a sex club for delivering unrepentant queeniness with integrity and charm. This was at Blow Buddies in San Francisco: A friend and I pulled open a curtain to glimpse two steroid-pumped manimals humping, a third specimen bent over with his ass in the air, and I guess they didn’t want us in their Gymlandia because the guy doing the fucking rudely pulled the curtain shut. We thought this was the funniest thing, and pretty soon we were cackling at every he-man trying so desperately to shun our sisterhood. Someone summoned the door guy, who told us we were being too loud, which made us louder, yelling with more testosterone than he could handle: Yeah, suck that dick man, yeah!
