The Erotic Comedies (Vassi Collection Volume XI)

by Marco Vassi

  Here, fifty men gathered together for no other reason than to see whether any or all of them would, in one way or another, share a moment of sexual surrender. And they were braving the demons of repression by being open enough to suck cock in public. The mood of that meeting was as exalted as any I have ever been to. Although I was probably the only one there interested in the politics of the thing. I repeat, there was as much real revolution taking place in that open crypt as in any other activity going on anywhere among the forces of life on this earth. What happened there transcended the notion of homosexuality.

  The man next to me was six feet tall, black, round, and horny. It was both easy and excruciatingly difficult to do what I wanted to do just then. For all my metaphysical meandering, the idea of sinking to my knees and acknowledging my desire so openly made me hesitate. I tested my responses, and concluded that if I were alone with the man, I would not hesitate to suck the cock which was already bulging in his jeans. I felt the familiar pressure in my chest, the slight tug at the corners of my mouth. I have blown many men, in beds, in hallways, in the baths. There is nothing more I need know about the act itself, or about my motivations in performing it. It is nothing more than a taste I own, as I do for hot buttered croissants at Sutter's. It is likely that I have known all the variations to the act. Then why there? Why then?

  I think as much to prove the point to myself as it was for any purpose of sensual gratification. I would not have been at peace with myself had I not done the thing which I felt I must do in order to plumb the circumstance to its depths. And as a hundred eyes watched, I began the timeless ritual of falling slowly and consciously to my knees, letting my jaw drop open, letting my lips be full and my tongue be easy, and awaiting the pleasure of the man who stood over me.

  As I entered the dance whose details have been known and described countless times by gay writers through the centuries, I entered a space of reverie. The cocksucking was not relegated to the mechanical, but to the peripheral. After all, I had a relatively large and attentive audience; I had no worry that I would not be appreciated. It was clear that at that moment. I was the focus of energy, and I didn't need to strain. The man attached to the cock in my mouth was presumed to be in command of his own decisions. If what I did ceased to interest him, he could pull out without bad feelings on anyone's part.

  It was this very dissociation which gave rise to an interesting insight, which is that excitement is generally an affectation. It is the product of the sexual energy crashing against more or less aesthetic, but always negative, internal and external resistances. The ideal sexual act has no friction, and therefore no heat. It is the form taken by pure vibrant energy within and between the b dies. And so it was with perfect sang froid that I charted the course of his orgasm through the tactile faculties of my lips, tongue, and mouth. When he came, my only feeling was delight, and his sperm was delicious.

  My only complete homosexual experience as a teenager had been with Ralph. We had gone to Randall's Island to play "chance apiece," a game in which each of us got to dry-hump the other for sixty seconds. Ralph had caught my eye during a circle-jerk among the younger boys he oversaw; we were thirteen and he was sixteen and presided over our antics with feigned boredom, pretending to attend merely out of anthropological necessity. But when he asked me to bicycle to the island with him, I knew he had chosen me as "his" and was blushingly flattered.

  Of course, the code of the neighborhood insisted that I maintain a pose of gruffness, or else be thought, "queer." Odd that the honest enjoyment of a perfectly beautiful interchange between men should be branded as sinful by society at large and a model of hypocrisy planted in its place. Yet such is the culture that we live in. Of all of us, only Joey was brave, and when his mother was at her job, he would invite the gang to stand around the bed and masturbate over him as he fingered himself and brought himself to a frantic climax with a thick broomstick. The simple urge to couple, forbidden by his culture, forced him into such grotesqueries. I often wonder what became of him (I wouldn't recognize him now if I saw him) and pay him belated homage.

  Ralph and I pretended to wrestle until it became quite obvious to both of us that we were interested in his fucking me, and were ready to cast off the formalities of the neighborhood code which required equal time from both partners in both directions. He lay on his back and I squatted over him, wondering whether anyone was watching and could see that we were not really wrestling, until he pushed me off him, pulled his cock out, and spilled the semen on the grass. Then—and this picture is indelibly inscribed in my memory—he wiped the tip of his cock against a tree, an action I found, and still find, absolutely startling.

  We did not speak or exchange glances and rode with muted excitement back to the neighborhood and went down to the cellar where we had our clubhouse. The vibrations were thick. Up to that moment, even our indiscretions had been within ethical bounds, but what was being suggested by our mood took us into very dangerous territory For a trembling teenager born and raised in an Italian neo-feudalism, the ramifications of my desire were immense. What we were about to do was worse than sin, it was disgusting.

  Yet, the thin troubled teenager that I was could find no reason in my body or heart or mind to deny what so strongly called to me. This was the problem of sexual freedom in its sharpest outline. Both of us were too unlettered even to know the word homosexual. Our knowledge of sex was rudimentary, and in a sense, quite healthy. Pole went into hole, that was all we knew. And now, after decades of sexual libertinism, I find that after all there is little more to it than that. The richness lies in the depth of experience and awareness of the moment, not in physiological flourishes.

  No one else was in the cellar. My breathing became shallow. What we wanted was incapable of justification by any of the understandings which had been passed on by our priests, parents, and teachers. If we did it, it would have to be a totally secret act, for punishment would be equally heavy if we were caught. It would be, not because we wanted it so but because it was so given to us, an act of liberation, a blow for freedom of expression.

  We mumbled a few words, I don't even remember what we said, and found our way unthinkingly to a dark corner at the very rear of the cellar, where the coal was stored. Rats scuttled in the gloom. I could feel the power of my desire, and the shame which encased it. I pulled my pants down and bent over, putting my palms against the wall. To this day I can remember the texture of the moist crumbling plaster. I closed my eyes and did not know what was going to happen, how it would feel. My knees grew weak with anticipation.

  And then the pressure between my buttocks. A sliding sense, a burgeoning warmth, fullness. Something clicked in my mind and I felt pain. Had either of us been more at ease we would have waited a moment until I stretched to accommodate him, and then gone on. But I tensed and panicked, and pulled away. Neither of us moved. I could feel his lust laced with embarrassment. A moment passed.

  "I want to fuck you again," he whispered.

  My stomach dropped. Often, in reliving the memory, I picture myself whirling about and murmuring "Yes" with my arms curled about him. But I was far from the ability to act so spontaneously. His cock went into me again, and almost before I could adjust to his presence, he came, and pulled out at once.

  I sought him out later, wanting to do it again, but he was distant and angry. He had undoubtedly experienced the disgust that those of us raised as Catholics associate with orgasm after so many years of being told how sinful and damaging sex is, how it is an affront to God, and how even touching oneself would land one in the eternal fires of hell. He pushed me away and told me never to bother him again. He was older, bigger, stronger. I was confused and hurt. And my masturbatory fantasies for years were attempts to recapture the moment and bring it to fruition.

  The man behind the trucks scratched my head, as one would do to a friendly dog, then zipped up, and sidled off. I stood up and found that all eyes had turned away from me. It was either the height of delicacy or an i
nstantaneous mass attack of indifference in my further behavior.

  For the rest of the time I remained there, some five or ten minutes, there was no more "sex." Occasionally one man might rub against another, and a hand would go to someone's genitals, some fondling took place. I thought of the Subud circle, in which no one does anything until the "spirit" is felt. Only, in this case, the thing most often done was a simple physical contact, man touching man. These people were there not merely for sex, but for the freedom to be in a space where sex could take place without unnecessarily elaborate social game playing.

  I am aware of the viewpoint which will lament the sadness of men who have to huddle in urine-soaked stone caves to make some brief contact. But surely that perspective has been overdone to the point of tedium. It is time to see even the smallest, most seemingly pitiful action in a new light, the light of human beings who will go to such lengths to maintain any contact at all. We have reached the state of repression in this society where we are afraid to touch or be touched, suffocating on our needs and strangling in our inhibitions.

  For sexual freedom is not a political movement, not an idea, not a new life style, not an organization. It is the moment-to-moment sensitivity to the fluctuations of the sexual state. And anyone human enough to brave the imprinted taboos, the repressive influences of all society including one's friends, and the very real police danger, ought to understand that the desperation which surrounds sex is due to the times we live in, and does not inhere in the act itself. One wonders how often this must be repeated until one realizes that it is possible to get hooked on guilt, the way a junkie comes to enjoy the penetration of the needle quite independently from the stuff he shoots from it into his arm.

  I walked back to the street feeling very high and very solid. The vibration behind me had all the power of a group of men chanting Om. The nature of the small group in front of the car had not changed, although some of the individuals were different. I thought of the difference between these men and those whose rigid hyperheterosexuality results in the misery of a world, and I saw cocksucking from a new perspective.

  Getting on our knees is just the way we pray.

  Bisexuality, Therapy, and Revolution

  These thoughts crystalized during a four-hour period of fucking-meditation at the St. Mark's Baths, a place I visit on the average of once or twice a week for steam and cold plunges, sex, honest conversation, and a species of rumination I find possible in few other environments. I prefer the St. Mark's to the newer, more fashionable baths, partially out of nostalgia, partially out of its historic designation as the birthplace of James Fenimore Cooper, whose ghost haunts the steam room, but also because I have, as a friend once pointed out, "a taste for the seedy."

  I went in at eight in the evening holding a single need: to be fucked. I cared for little more than to lie face down on a cot, to stretch out at full length, a pillow under my thighs raising naked buttocks to complete view, and be entered by anywhere from one to twenty men, whose faces I might not even see. I wouldn't leave until I was sated. Nor was I the only man there with such a program in mind. I showered, went to my room, applied a liberal amount of Vaseline to my anus, and flung myself down on the creaky bed, leaving the door open and wondering whether this would be a good night for studs.

  Within a few minutes, Lou, one of the attendants, came in. He shut the door behind him and the atmosphere of the room changed immediately. Lou is old school, a fat homely man in his late forties who still refers to gay men as "fags" in a tone not heard since schoolyard days. But I am not prejudiced, especially when my central concern is cock. Also, there is no reason why homosexual encounters must dispense with all elements of perversity. I am not at all certain that the gay militants, in their historically necessary role of changing homosexuals' consciousness, have not insinuated an idealized wholesomeness into the homophile mystique. For myself, I still have a sweet tooth for certain kinds of depravity.

  "I'm going to rape you," said Lou, launching into his macho monologue. Since I have discovered that when I assume an overtly passive role it is best to let the active partner set the mood of the intercourse, I complied with his fantasy and allowed myself to imagine myself as a young girl being assaulted by a burly construction worker. I knew enough about Lou and about that kind of mentality in general to realize that his pleasure was dependent on a more complex interaction than simple rape. He needed to imagine that I was at first protesting and then, overwhelmed by his brute masculinity, giving in despite myself. That I was hating myself for enjoying what he was doing to me.

  He tied my wrists to the metal headboard with a slip chain and bound my ankles with a strap. He gloated over me for a few minutes. I raised my buttocks and he slapped the cheeks once, very hard. The stinging sensation coupled with the flashing images it provoked ricocheted down the mirrored hallways of my mind, providing a rich and delicious amalgam of annotated feelings. To a large extent, we had become extraneous to one another, for each was fully engrossed in a private scenario which was only incidentally complementary to the other's script.

  "I'm going to shove my cock up your ass," he hissed, "and stuff a popper in your nose."

  "Good," I thought.

  If he had spoken these words in a purely matter-of-fact manner, they would have been categorized as description, but there was a note of accusation in his voice. He at once indicated that what was about to happen was dirty and nasty, and that I was sluttish for wanting it. I thereupon let myself be a slut, an open hole craving penetration. I squirmed on the sheet and tightened my buttocks. It was interesting to play this role of wanton. I knew that if my actions matched his fantasy, he would fuck me with greater force, and to be fucked, you will remember, was my single goal for the evening.

  I don't know how many others, men or women, have experienced the desire so cleanly, so simply. The entire social and psychological matrix within which the fucking took place was unimportant; it was the act itself which called me. I strained to raise my buttocks as high as I could and was surprised to hear a whimper of desire escape my lips. I wallowed in voluptuous surrender to the moment.

  The question occurred to me: to whom am I surrendering? On the face of it, I was giving myself to him, but a second look revealed that it was to myself that I was yielding. I was giving myself to my own expression. That it emerged as an imitation of a classic image of a lascivious woman was colorful enough, but incidental in terms of meaning. In the midst of my pondering, he mounted me abruptly, having dropped his pants to his knees and not even having bothered to remove his shoes and socks. Added to the other elements, I now had the picture of the partially undressed man lying heavily on the naked body beneath him. It was gloriously whorish.

  He raised his pelvis, slid his cock between my thighs, and brought the tip of it to my asshole. With no warning, he burst inside me rudely, I gasped with shock, and my entire body froze, as though I had been impaled on a hook. He gave me no time to relax the sphincter muscle, but began pumping at once, with extreme vigor. Pleasure and pain fought their usual battle, and for perhaps half a minute I disengaged my attention from my feelings and turned to analysis of the sensations between my buttocks. For that space of time I ceased being a voluptuary being fucked and became a psychologist working in the laboratory of lust, registering impressions, cataloguing, structuring.

  This had the ancillary effect of allowing enough distraction for my muscles to relax, and I observed that pleasure and pain lost all their connotations and became nothing more than conceptual markers along the total spectrum of undifferentiated sensation. Having accomplished my aim in that area of research, I put aside my charts and switched back to a mode of non-critical appreciation of what was happening.

  What Lou lacked in subtlety he made up for in strength. I felt his thighs thrashing against the backs of my legs, his arms wrapped tightly around my chest, his cock hard and imperative, charging the tender tissues of my analogue cunt. I dove into a mindless state, relinquishing all control, all responsi
bility, and experienced the lazy enjoyment of voluntary bondage. I needed to do nothing but let him use me as a pillow for his ride. He cared only that I act as victim, and that freed me to have my feelings in private. I wondered how many women waste so much time blaming a man for what he doesn't give them instead of learning to enjoy what he is capable of?

  His chatter was criminally inane. "You like that, don't you?" he kept saying. At first I heard the bravado, the necessity of the male to assert himself. But after a bit I could detect the whine of insecurity that hummed beneath it. It is a commonplace observation that to the degree a person pushes the ambience of a scene, to that degree he is uncertain of himself within that scene. I became aware that Lou's breathing was shallow, that he was holding himself rigidly against me. I momentarily despaired at being in the arms of such an uptight lover, but I dipped beneath that to find a hint of compassion. So often in the past, when I had struggled with myself in the embrace of a woman, I had been met with contempt. And I contrasted that to the times when a woman continued to give of herself, despite my fears and clumsiness, and how much I came to care for the simple human warmth involved in that.

  Realizing that it was senseless to condemn, I pushed back and pressed my buttocks into him, splitting myself apart on his cock, hanging my fleshy weight on that insistent pole. Only those who have experienced that particular sensation will know the breath-stopping wonder of it. I ground my hips around, contracted my cheeks, and pushed my anus out. This was the second part of the scenario: the rapist's victim contacts her own desire and begins to respond.

  At that point he snapped the ampule of amyl nitrate and held it to my nostrils. The sixty seconds of whirring began, the amplification of contact, the giddy descent into sensitized helplessness.

  "Oh you fuck, you little bitch, you cunt!" he said, and climaxed inside me, his whole torso clenched in a single orgasmic spasm. There were none of the flowing melting rippling feelings which mark the orgasm of a relaxed man. This was a sniggering come, a lonely guilt-ridden ejaculation. I accepted it and then sagged onto the bed.