Best gay erotica 2001, p.1
Best Gay Erotica 2001, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction
Knowing Johnny
Foucault’s Pendulous…
from Onyx
The Show Palaces
1. 1993
2. 1994
3. 1996
Just Another Night at the World’s Greatest Gay Diner
Warm-up
“You Need a Boy”
Thursday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
For Hire: A Date with John
Shiloh: The Other Size Queen
Aaron: The Suburban Hustler
Bino: The Classic Eros
Iseha: The Video Fantasy
Jonathan: The Tourist Trap
Johnny: The New New Yorker
Niko: The New Economy
Gucci
Gymnasty
Knot of Roads
1.
2.
The Future of the Future
When We Are Very Old
Bear Basher
Heart
AIDS Is Over
Body Symphony
The Hittite Slave
Five a Day
Artichoke
Mango
Asparagus
Apple
Yam
Never Trust a Pretty Face
Prolonged Exposure May Cause Dizziness
Woof. Yea. Uhuh. Yea, that’s it. Uhuh. Yeaaa.
About the Authors
About the Editors
Copyright Page
Six legs, two hearts, my family
for Asa & Percy
Foreword
Richard Labonté
After five years and several thousand stories, one might become numb to the arousal power, either physical or intellectual, of written porn.
One has not.
It’s an enduring delight, really, to encounter the varied ways in which writers of the porn form (mainly men, but a few women, too, submitted work for this edition) play across the spectrum of gay male fantasy fulfillment. Nothing is taboo, no fetish unrealized, no pleasure is off limits: In a “best of” anthology such as this, where there is no set theme, it’s a broadband world, with room for everything from heavy petting to heavy whipping, a tongue in the ear to a fist up the butt, serious tit play to sensual mind-fucking. Some vanilla here, some shit there, the stink of sweaty pits, and the scent of sweet breath—writing, in short, with many flavors.
This year’s sixth edition of the Best Gay Erotica series, my fifth, sees the return of several repeat performers to its pages, among them Simon Sheppard (1996, ’97, ’98, ’00), Bob Vickery (’98), Ian Philips (’99 and ’00), Thomas P. Roche (’96), Andrew Ramer (’97), Larry Townsend (’99) and, from 2000, Matt Bernstein Sycamore, Karl von Uhl, and Dimitri Apessos: Welcome back. Of course, Felice Picano is a veteran, too, with a distinguished three-decade career as a popular writer and critic, and with a stint as BGE judge in 1999, though this is his first appearance as a winner.
I’m also pleased when new names appear, with their first published work ever (Eddie Moreno), or for the first time in Best Gay Erotica (Jaime Cortez, Marshall Moore, Sandip Roy, D-L Alvarez, Doug Harrison, Marc Almond, Michael Stamp, Sean Meriwether, Jesse Grant, Michael V. Smith, and Barry Webster). New blood is invigorating, and I see the series as a place where the table of contents should offer a few surprises, rather than a roster of regulars; that’s why I’ve enjoyed working with this year’s judge, Randy Boyd, and past judges D. Travers Scott, Felice Picano, Christopher Bram, and Douglas Sadownick, all of whom understood that the goal each year is to uncover provocative sex writing that is as literate as it is lusty, and that “best” is not merely pedigree. This year, as in past years, more than half the selections are original bests, as picked by Boyd from among the 47 stories he was sent for judging (culled from 313 that I considered, 106 of which were submitted by writers, 207 of which I’d bookmarked in the preceding 12 months while skimming magazines and anthologies, reading novels and nonfiction books, downloading Web pages, and attending a few readings).
As ever, the winners range widely in tone and type, starting with the sly, wry insider attitude of Bob Vickery’s “writergod” tale, “Knowing Johnny,” which plays cleverly with a central conceit of professional porn: that it’s fantasy, after all, and not real life. But could it be? Why the hell not! Erotic writing offers readers the chance to enter vicariously into a story, to take its sexual energy and to play with it (with oneself, of course). But what if the characters could step out of those same stories…
That playful element—maybe it doesn’t happen quite this way in real life, but it should—also imbues “Gymnasty” by Jesse Grant, where a good-humored jock fantasy comes to pass, and the harsher but no less cock-teasing “Bear Basher” by Thomas P. Roche, where the consequences of an apparent gay bashing go very, very…right, and the satisfying payback tale “Heart” by Simon Sheppard, where revenge is sweet, and the rowdy, bittersweet “AIDS Is Over” by Karl von Uhl, where the sex itself, joyous and unbridled, is as much political act as it is physical release. On the other hand, real life is in fact the essence of two selections: Marc Almond’s wistful, straightforward sex-club vignette series “The Show Palaces” and Sean Meriwether’s self-voyeuristic hustler suite “For Hire: A Date with John,” both of which immerse the reader in sex-charged settings: naked reporting, the erotic as personal memory, not as writer’s fantasy, also inviting vicarious participation.
While I haven’t quizzed the authors on how precisely their stories hew to their personal experience, enticing autobiographical elements appear in a number of this year’s picks: “Just Another Night at the World’s Greatest Gay Diner” by Dimitri Apessos is a charming account of a quick encounter that reads like a first-person pick-up; “Warm-up” by Matt Bernstein Sycamore, a more intense sexual snapshot, hums with the pleasure of the pursuit and that same sense of “this happened”; in “Knot of Roads,” D-L Alvarez explores the pent-up frustrations of a kid who knows that survival lies only in escape (it’s a preview of a work-in-progress charting the author’s central California childhood); Doug Harrison reports on a fierce rite of passage, with unflinching honesty and exciting expertise, in “‘You Need a Boy’”; Sandip Roy cruises and loses in the sauna, where “Prolonged Exposure May Cause Dizziness”; and Eddie Moreno wraps his love for music, his passion for the man who got away, his faith in family, and his unabashed sex play into the solid, sizzling package of “Woof. Yea. Uhuh. Yea, That’s It. Uhuh. Yeaaa.”
There’s poetry, too, in the charged prose of Andrew Ramer’s spiritual ode to enduring physical love, “When We Are Very Old,” and in Jaime Cortez’s paean to fleshy fruity pleasure, “Five a Day,” two short-short stories whose metaphors ask that the reader’s imagination merge with the writers’ visions.
Erotica is of course a genre all its own, but there’s double the fun when it’s meshed with another, as it is in three of this year’s works: Michael Stamp’s shaggy-dog “Never Trust a Pretty Face,” with its Depression-era hardboiled-detective main character, who comes a cropper when confronted by a most devious villain; Larry Townsend’s historical “The Hittite Slave,” set in ancient Egypt, where careful scholarship informs an unflinching story about circumcision; and Marshall Moore’s adroit “The Future of the Future,” where the Internet becomes deliciously interactive in a story that would be quite at home in a broad-minded science fiction magazine.
The fantasy inspired by good sex writing can take on absurdist tones, too, as in Barry Webster’s “Body Symphony,” in which a certain Russian composer finds inspiration in consummation, and in Ian Philip’s “Foucault’s Pendulous…” where a certain French philosopher is both intellectually and sexually dominant: two stories whose “what-if?” element borrows imaginatively from real personalities.
There’s a romantic side to the erotic, too—there must be, otherwise the fantasy would be entirely one-handed—and it’s expressed sweetly in our last two tales, “Onyx” by Felice Picano and “Gucci” by Michael V. Smith. In the former, the most highly charged moments come when the hunt is on; the sex is just the chaser. In the latter, the most highly charged moments come after the sex show; it’s the yearning not realized that’s the most moving.
Do find pleasure in the variety. I did.
Some thanks: to Frédérique and Don and Felice at Cleis Press, book professionals with whom it’s a great pleasure to work; to Kirk Read, so much a part of Asa’s and my life, though he’s missed two deadlines in two years; to friends Justin Chin and Lawrence Schimel, who are never shy about sharing their opinions; and to the former staff of the old A Different Light Bookstore in San Francisco, who over five years of Best Gay Erotica guided me through my many old-dog days of computer tricks: Jim Breeden, Caroline Boyden, James Rafferty, and especially Ken White and Tommi Avicolli Mecca.
Introduction: On to the Sex!
Randy Boyd
If you’re reading this introduction to Best Gay Erotica 2001, either you like a slow buildup before doing The Bump and Grind, or you’re doing what my high school journalism teacher said people usually do with their yearbooks: Go back and read the fine print some days, weeks, months, or even years after previously only gorging on the meat of the book (with yearbooks, that’s the photos).
Either way, I’ll be quick about it.
Consider this, then, a brief debriefing.
Damn, we gay men have had some good sex. Throughout history and around the globe. In all kinds of places with all types of men in all sorts of situations filled with twists, surprises, and, yes, even eroticism. Because we are sexual beings, because we are men, because we are hunters who don’t always know the sexual orientation of the hunted, because the privacy of our own homes isn’t always the most convenient or erotic of places…because, because, because of an infinite number of reasons (as varied and vast as we gay individuals are), our sex always has the potential to be hotter than South Beach in July (you blond Argentinian with one of the best, plumpest asses I’ve ever laid my hands on, if you’re having this translated into Spanish, here’s licking at you, kid). Hell, sex is so good, it even survived the confusion and chaos of the last twenty years of the 20th century. And it still survives the confusion and chaos of the beginning of the 21st century. Go figure. Sex and cockroaches—that’s what will still be around after any Armageddon. So we embrace sex, shove our faces in it, invite it into our orifices, give it long, slow sensuous kisses, hug it, worship it, love it. And write about it. Oh, how we write about it!
Choosing the stories for this collection was both a pleasure and a challenging task that notched up my sexual heat over the period in which I read the submissions. What was I looking for ultimately? What kinds of stories grabbed me by the balls and kept my interest, like the mouth of a well-trained cocksucker on my perfectly shaped, long, and bulbous black dick? First and foremost, stories that stayed with me after reading them, stories that I couldn’t just set aside upon completion and move on to the next submission or next task in my day. This usually meant stories that held twists and unexpected turns. Stories that took me places I’d never been before (not many of those around). Ones that provided a fresh take on the familiar. Or stories in which the authors’ passion clearly exploded onto the page. Then there were intense stories that took no prisoners, stories in which the writer wasn’t afraid to grab a particular fetish by the balls and hold it up for all the world to see. That takes guts æ yet the results can be very erotic, even if the reader doesn’t share the author’s particular lust. Boldness can be its own reward. So can honesty.
The writers in this collection have been both bold and honest, creating characters who admit to cravings that most gay men walking down the street might think about, but would sooner suppress than admit to (to say nothing of act on). Moreover, the authors of these stories clearly enjoyed their creations. For them, putting their creation on paper wasn’t only about getting their nut, as some urban men call it. For these writers, the journey was just as thrilling and important and erotic as arriving at the destination. For a few, the journey was actually better than arriving (and who hasn’t been there?).
Good writing takes honesty. Each human being possesses a unique, individual perspective on life and the world. Sure, we share common experiences, but, like a snowflake or fingerprint, no two human perspectives are exactly alike. When a writer writes from the heart—or any other vitally important organ—he writes from his own unique perspective, and the reader is thereby afforded a glimpse into the writer’s mind. When the writer truly shoots his wad on the page by baring all or part of his soul, passion is bound to show through; and no matter the subject, a unique take on life and the world evolves and emanates. The familiar is made fresh, and it is then that we the reader see universal truths about ourselves and our world æ and we connect. Like two pairs of eyes locked on each other during orgasm, the results can be powerful.
This book holds powerful jets of energy, sexual and emotional and physical. It barely contains its own body heat. It brings honesty and passion to demonstrating the power of the thing they say humankind thinks about every few seconds. This book presents sex. On to it!
Knowing Johnny
Bob Vickery
The single bulb that lights up the hallway is busted, and I have to negotiate my way to Rico’s apartment by trailing my fingers against the wall, counting the doors. In the dark, the smells of the place seem a lot stronger: boiled cabbage, mildew, old piss. Heavy-metal music blasts out from one of the doors I pass, and I get a sickly sweet whiff of crack. Fucking junkies. I can hear loud voices arguing in the apartment across the hallway, then the sound of furniture breaking. Rico’s apartment is the next one down. I grope my way to it and knock on the door.
I stand there for a minute, waiting. “Who’s there?” a voice finally asks from inside.
“Open up, Rico,” I say. “It’s me, Al.”
I hear the sounds of bolts being drawn back. The door opens an inch, still chained, and Rico’s eye peers at me through the crack. He closes the door, undoes the chain, and opens it wide this time. “Get in,” he growls. I slip in, and Rico bolts the door behind me. The room is small: an unmade bed, a beat-up dresser, a table by the window. The kid Rico told me about on the phone is sitting at the table, looking scared and trying not to show it. It’s quieter in here than in the hall, even with the sounds of traffic coming in from the window. I can faintly hear above our heads the clicking of writergod’s keyboard.
I keep my eyes trained on the kid. He’s sitting in a shaft of light pouring in from the street, and I take in the shaggy blond hair, the strong jaw, the firm, lean body. “Where’d you find him?” I ask Rico, without turning my head.
“Out on the street, hustling,” Rico says. “I convinced him he could do better with a little management.” Rico walks into my line of sight. “He tells me he’s 18.” Of course, writergod has Rico say that to keep the censors happy.
“What’s your name,” I ask the kid.
“Johnny,” he says. There’s a slight quaver in his voice.
“Did Rico rough you up?” Rico stirs, but I silence him with a gesture. “Did he force you up here?” And again, writergod is having me ask this for the sake of the fucking censors. If there’s coercion, the story won’t sell.
Johnny shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I wanted to go with him. Rico told me about you. I thought maybe you could help me.” His voice is steadier now, firmer. But the wideness of his dark eyes still gives away his fear.
I look at him for a long moment, gauging him. “How good are you at taking orders?”
Johnny licks his lips and swallows. “Real good,” he says.
This is the first sex scene of the story. Writergod usually limits it to oral only, saving butt fucking for the end-of-story finale. “Stand up,” I say. Johnny climbs to his feet. “I always sample my merchandise first, Johnny,” I say. “I want you to come over here and suck my dick. Suck it until I shoot my load.”
Johnny’s eyes flicker toward Rico, and then back at me again. He shifts his weight to his other foot, but doesn’t move. He seems to be weighing his options. “OK,” he finally says. He walks over to me and drops to his knees. His hands are all businesslike as they unbuckle my belt, pull my zipper down, and tug my jeans and boxers down below my knees. I keep my face stony, but my dick gives away my excitement. It springs up and swings heavily in front of Johnny’s face. Johnny drinks it in with his eyes. “You got a beautiful dick,” he says.
