Best Gay Romance 2014

by R. D. Cochrane

  “Maybe, but no one likes someone else’s mush.”

  “Absolutely true. It was a painful lesson for me to learn, that keeping my mush to myself is less agonizing than the indignity of sharing with someone who is banefully indifferent.”

  He sat on the dog-shredded brown-and-burgundy rug by my mattress, touching in turn a cluster of objects as if he were an infant learning textures—a small pile of half-written postcards to friends back East and overseas, Band-Aids, and an Aleksandar Hemon novel I sometimes quoted to him because I thought he, as an immigrant, could appreciate the wit of the Bosnian cum Chicagoan author.

  He picked up a postcard addressed to Tayfun and read in a low voice, squinting to decipher my tiny print, “This city is too sexual; I can’t tune it out. I miss the arduous pursuits of Istanbul. Sex shouldn’t be too easy, too readily available. Don’t you agree? Still, I hope you have found a lover, someone worthy of your singular spirit.” Placing the postcard back on the floor, he looked at me. “Do you think he will understand that? The vocabulary, I mean?”

  “Tayfun revels in having reason to pull out the petite yellow dictionary he carries around.”

  “I wore out numerous petite dicts when I was in grad school. Now I can knock almost any American guy down in a vocab fight.” He made a boxing gesture, punching my shoulder and pushing me back on the mattress. “Even you, I bet, word-nerd white boy,” he whispered, hovering above my face.

  I reached my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down on top of me, with a wide goofy smile like the kind I stifled when being photographed. “My sexy word fighter.” My words came out with a subtle romantic flourish that frightened me upon hearing it. I grabbed his groin. “Your big vocabulary more than compensates for—” He let loose a long string of drool and clenched my jaw still so that I couldn’t squirm to avoid it. I didn’t really want to anyhow. As his spit snaked its way down from my lower lip to my chin, then my Adam’s apple, he rose off of me, and when he brought his gaze back to my lustful one, his eyes glinted with rage.

  “Yours?” he asked forcefully, observing my befuddlement. “Your fighter?”

  My confusion gave way to embarrassment. In my playful spirit, I’d spoken as if the world was of my design. It was an embellishment of our connection. Unconsciously, I’d laid some tentative claim on him, not a possessing but an acknowledgment that we offered to each other some experience that circumvented the trappings of other lovers; at least those were my unexamined sentiments.

  Ordinarily I withdrew from any hostility or threat of confrontation. But his anger, even more than it confused me, captivated me. His unflinching gaze was a warped sort of gift whose unwrapping required cunning.

  Finally I looked over at the tiny clock beside my mattress and thought out loud, “This is the longest you have stayed,” then watched the subtle storm of his countenance like a neophyte scientist.

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  I turned to the window, as if the answer were in the balmy evening light, sunlight draining in concordance with the simplicity of our relations. There was so much about him to untangle: his animosity toward his parents, his homeland and America—all only mentions between critical sighs. I was somehow certain that his ambivalence toward San Francisco was akin to my own and that there was something beneath his brooding that justified it.

  But my experience in romance was like his in his nations of residence; I knew the pitfalls, the statistical likelihood of disappointment and even the possibility of despair if too much was ventured. It was like interrogating a suspected terrorist who could either blow you up or be the inspiration for your memoir.

  As I turned back to the room, my eyes passed over my laptop on the desk in the corner. “I have an article to revise,” I said.

  When he rose, standing atop my mattress like the somber prince of a precarious pile of rubble, I thought he was preparing to get dressed and leave, but he let the afghan fall from his body and stood motionless for a moment. “Do you know why I hate this color?” he asked, indicating the afghan. I shook my head. “It’s like the crimson of Harvard.”

  “Do you have a personal vendetta against Harvard?”

  “When I was a junior in high school, my parents insisted I apply to Harvard and other such bullshit institutions, completely ignoring my explanations that they weren’t even renowned for illustration, what I wanted to study. It didn’t matter what I wanted. They only wanted some easy-to-articulate prestige for their son. All I wanted was California and art that gives a potent fuck-you to propriety, which to them meant I could go to Stanford and take a literature elective. I even considered flying back to Iran just to undo everything they did for me. That was going to be my contemptuous living suicide, my Persian version of the American bottom slut who opens up his ass to HIV.”

  I imagined my hastened heartbeat was percussion for his monologue. Despite the fact that he appeared to be onstage with me his audience of one, there was no aura of performance in his delivery. He was watching for my response. I was still terrified and rapt when he continued.

  “I’ve only taken raw cock once outside of dating, and it was exhilarating and frightening. Three buddies took turns with me in Buena Vista Park, and even as it was happening I was sickened by my delight. Kind of like my feelings for this city—a wild rush of visceral elation, interrupted in intervals by revulsion. As the last guy was finishing with me, I checked my watch and realized I would miss the last train. I just rolled over and cried myself to sleep in the park. I woke at dawn to a homeless man grumbling, ‘Hey kid, someone stole your shoes.’ I hadn’t worn socks, and I recall stepping on slimy fried-chicken bones seemingly all the way from Haight down to Sixteenth. I started laughing like a fucking loony, embracing the disgusting cold feeling between my toes, and fantasizing that there was a form of lobotomy that could eviscerate libido. I wanted it gone. I felt like I could deal with my penchant for destructive behavior without lust. Lust is what really fucks things up.”

  I stared into the dark hair of his chest, wanting to capture and keep his confession in some solid form, wanting to tell him I had had the same sentiments about lust, wanting most of all to respond. But the moment could only be degraded by anything I said.

  He relaxed his stance and watched me. He was entering one of the brooding intervals I had come to take as his trademark, a louder version of what invariably overtook him after we got off. I thought, How does such a sullen boy make any tips as a waiter?

  He squatted in front of me, the lowering sun caressing the crown of his head. It occurred to me it was peculiar that we were still nude despite the chill. “Did you mean what you said before?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “That I could say whatever to you.”

  “Of course.” I bit my lip, brushed a crumb of something from my toe. “I’ve grown awkwardly fond of you, Mohsen.”

  His smile dissipated as abruptly as it had appeared. “Why is it awkward?”

  “Well, it’s not necessary for what we have. I mean, we respect each other and find each other hot. It seems there’s no room for anything else in the equation.”

  He rose to his feet and stepped down off the mattress with a thud. Then he was carving a jagged path around my studio, as if clumsily encircling prey. Was this his way of controlling rage? Some obscure part of me rebelled against my own passivity. I was inept at getting at what I really wanted from someone like Mohsen—the difficult narrative, the tenebrous bits he wouldn’t utter to other lovers and the chance to be a counterforce. Fucking wasn’t enough, even with tinges of tenderness.

  I heard his foot colliding with my closet door.

  “It’s always the same in this fucking country. I can’t explain this feeling to you. It’s that every consolation that has gotten me through is empty. The goddamn people here—there is the guy I go to Occupy protests with, the punk I get drunk with, the Daddy I let fuck me like an animal and treat me to overpriced dinners, the workmate I bitch and moan about obnoxious custo
mers with, then there’s you.”

  I backed up against the wall, beneath the window. He seemed to be gauging how hurtful he wanted to be.

  “You are the gentle fuckbuddy. A little conversation thrown in to make it more reasonable, less animalistic, sex that isn’t just fucking but isn’t quite lovemaking. Dead-end caresses, but fabulous orgasms.” He said fabulous as if mocking all of gay identity.

  He moved toward me but ended up in the corner by my desk. He glanced at my laptop as if he wanted to thrash it against the wall; instead, he turned toward the wall and thrust his fist into it as if exorcising a murderous will.

  He turned as he spoke. “I can’t do it anymore. I just need one whole person. Not a fucking husband but one whole person I can spend a day with—eat, shit, wake up, fight the world, get wasted, get sober, sleep beside. One person who can stick around long enough to get a different fucking view.”

  His eyes, spilling rage, were like black funnels grasping for my response. In the same way one laughs at a funeral, I found myself fixating on an image of us shitting in unison, then climbing down the fire escape, our britches still down, and waddling to the Civic Center for a protest. I still felt impotent and absurd, but through it all I knew there was something strong rising to my surface. Mohsen’s rage was a challenge.

  He approached, bent down and gingerly took my left nipple between his fingers as if preparing to twist hard. I shut my eyes, recalling having told him about my profound dread of nipple pain. His stillness allowed my fear, lust and affection to comingle in an odd moment before he continued. “I don’t want you if you’re like the others. What is the use in being outwardly strange if you’re really just the same?” I cut my eyes toward the window when I heard a siren on Turk Street. “Silence is not an option this time, fuckhead,” he declared as he intensified his hold on my nipple.

  I relaxed the squinting muscles of my eyes. The sensation of his fingers softly grasping my nipple, not pinching but not releasing, felt like a tender subversion. He was waiting. I leaned my head into his chest, blowing my hot breath on his chest hair, like a taut summer breeze ruffling reed grass. “Spend the night and tomorrow with me. I’m going to a demonstration downtown. We can eat a nice meal on the way, moan about puerile people, fuck like animals and finish with the whiskey in my cupboard.”

  DANDELIONS

  Tony Calvert

  My nightmares are wallpapered in pale blue with little pink roses.

  Wait; it wasn’t a nightmare. I was at my mother’s house. It was eight A.M. She was right outside the door vacuuming. This was real. All too real.

  What right-thinking woman would be vacuuming at eight A.M.? I stumbled out of bed and threw open the door to confront Lilah Lynn Hutton with her villainy.

  She didn’t miss a beat. “Morning Jimmy. We have guests coming this afternoon, so we have to get the place ready.”

  “Morning, Mom.”

  She grimaced. “Honestly, you look like you’ve been on a three-day bender. Take a shower. Breakfast in twenty minutes.”

  I nodded and closed the door. That hadn’t gone as I’d planned.

  “Don’t forget to brush your teeth!”

  It wasn’t her reminding me to brush my teeth that annoyed me so much; it was the singsong way she said it that got me.

  My move back to Mississippi to live with my mother hadn’t been high on my “to do” list. I had two brothers and a sister, all living the American Dream, all married, all with children, all living their lives elsewhere. I was single. I was a writer. I was gay. When it came to taking care of Mom and Dad in their golden years, I was everyone’s obvious choice; nothing held me to one place.

  But I hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.

  My father had died three months before. He and Mom had gone to dinner with Max and Ellen Avery. When he started complaining about chest pains, my mother thought he was faking it. I got that; the Averys were pretty gruesome in a smug, country-club way. Everything happened fast. Dad passed away before Mom was even able to call to let any of us know he was in the hospital.

  As soon as I heard, I knew I was leaving Atlanta. I was going back to my old home, back to my old room and back to a life I didn’t want. I was trying to make the best of it, and I wasn’t sure that was working.

  “You can write anywhere. Mom needs the help. It’s not like you have anything else going on,” Tom, my oldest brother, had said at the funeral. His words made me angry, mainly because they were true. In a few years I’d be forty; I wrote historical romances under an assumed name and I’d never been in love. I didn’t have anything going on.

  Standing in the shower for an extra ten minutes wasn’t going to wash that feeling off.

  Mom believed in a big breakfast, at least for other people. She’d made me a mess of SOS, and no one appreciated chipped beef and gravy over toast like me. Mom picked at her muffin while I ate.

  “We have a lot to do today. It’s the first time we’ll have guests since your father passed.”

  When I’d first left home, my brothers and sister had been concerned that Lilah Lynn and good old Frank were going to have problems with the empty nest thing. That hadn’t been the case. As soon as I was in the car, Frank and Lilah Lynn were traveling. They hit every bed-and-breakfast in the South. When they returned home, they began remodeling the house, and two years later they were the proud proprietors of The Dandy Lyons Inn.

  Tourism had boomed in my little hometown. The secondhand stores and junk shops from my childhood were now antique boutiques. Small galleries filled with the work of local painters. Folk art ruled, with new festivals and craft fairs that hadn’t been around when I’d left. It was impossible to walk downtown without seeing a painted gourd in a store window. The Dandy Lyons Inn was cashing in.

  Three couples were arriving that weekend. Mom scribbled on her notepad and said, “We’ll have pecan pie and cornbread for dinner, of course.” She dropped her voice to a whisper even though we were the only two in the house. “They’re all from up North; they’ll expect that.”

  Apparently having Yankees in the house was something we still had to keep from the neighbors.

  “What says welcome more, chicken and dumplings or fried chicken and okra?”

  I thought for a moment. “Fried chicken and okra: isn’t that too much fried?”

  “Good point. Chicken and dumplings it is. You’re like your father; he always knew what we should serve.”

  She’d finished her muffin and gone into the kitchen.

  “Not really. I just love chicken and dumplings.”

  “Just like your father,” she called back as I shoved in another mouthful.

  I considered that. SOS. Chicken and dumplings. I needed to start working out.

  Lilah sat back down, fresh cup of coffee in her hand. “All three couples are newlyweds. That’s so exciting!”

  I kept eating.

  “Jimmy, don’t roll your eyes at me.”

  I wasn’t aware that I had.

  “Mom, most people call me Jim now, because you know, I’m a man, not a twelve-year-old.”

  “If there’s one thing I never understood, it’s why you have such a disdain for love.”

  “What? I don’t have a disdain for love. I write about love. I’m all about love! I am love!”

  She put her cup down. “No, Avalon Dupre is all about love. Jimmy Hutton is scared of it. I have to tell you: Avalon Dupre is the most ridiculous name. Where did you get that?”

  “Lots of people like Avalon Dupre.” It was true. I wasn’t a best seller, but I made a pretty decent living from writing historicals, or hystericals as Tom called them.

  “And why do you refer to her like she’s real?” She pursed her lips the way she always did when she thought she was making a good point. “You’re Avalon Dupre. Have you ever wondered why you write all those dramatic love stories?”

  “I wouldn’t call them dramatic.”

  “Anything that features pirates is dramatic.”

  “
One pirate. I’ve only done the pirate thing once.”

  “What’s the one you’re writing now?”

  “It’s titled Under the Gypsy Moon.”

  “You don’t think pirates and gypsies are just a tinge dramatic?”

  “Mom…” I really didn’t want to explain my writing to her, especially at breakfast after I’d been awakened by a vacuum cleaner.

  “I’m just saying. I think you write these sweeping love stories because that’s what you’re looking for. You and your sister Valerie have always had these grand expectations. That’s why she’s been married three times and you’ve never made it down the aisle once.”

  “Or maybe because it isn’t legal.”

  “Love can be a very quiet thing.”

  I knew she was thinking of Dad. I considered her judgment of my sister and me. It might be true that Valerie was looking for the dramatic; certainly she’d married some swindling jackasses who were missing a few teeth. But I wrote about a betrayed, justice-seeking pirate with a heart of gold in The Scoundrel Takes a Mistress, and all I’d ever wanted was a love story like my parents’.

  Frank and Lilah were introduced on a blind date arranged by friends who thought they’d complement each other. Frank Hutton was reserved and quiet, and Lilah Lynn Lyons was a force of nature, free spirited and wild. The night ended when my mother danced in the fountain in the center of town during a rainstorm. Frank fell in love. They were married for almost fifty years, and they never stopped dating. When a kid grew up bearing witness to the world’s greatest romance, it was hard not to want the same thing.

  Lilah swooped in and took my plate. “Let’s go. How many times do I need to tell you we have lots to do?”

  Our first errand was at a craft store, where we picked up items for our guests’ gift baskets. At the liquor store, she bought a few bottles of champagne and her box of sangria. Then we went to the bakery and the grocery store, where I had my revenge. There was someone on every aisle eager to strike up a conversation, and I kept the cart moving and reminded her, “Lots to do!”