Best of the Best Gay Erotica

by Richard Labonté

  I arrived after midnight. Mama had died that morning, and everyone else was sound asleep or staying at a motel. From the cars out front, I figured that my brothers Dennis and Troy were home, and my Aunt Ruth was in the guest house. She was always in the guest house. Dennis and Troy, no doubt, were passed out in their childhood beds. They drank hard, and they drank for hard sleep. The boys had all left home. My four sisters lived nearby with their families. Mama had always talked about getting us all out of the house so she could have some peace, but none of our childhood rooms had been redecorated.

  So I was alone in the house with nothing but the smell of my Mama and the sight of hallways stacked so high with boxes that you could barely pass without elbowing the packed-up remains of one ancestor or another.

  I’d known for years I’d be responsible for all this splendor, the scattered belongings of my parents. Mama always told me that as the baby, I was bound to turn out right. I stopped in front of the hallway mirror and looked at myself. I saw the baby Mama had loved hardest. The crushed beer cans in the background confirmed that my brothers were home. They lined the mantle in the living room with the precision only drunks can muster.

  Six—no, eight—cans stood proudly under the portrait of my grandfather. Between the third and fourth cans was the urn Mama had rescued from the fire that took up our first house. It had held many Entsmingers, plus one beloved neighbor, and was about to be filled again.

  I turned back to the mirror. I was an orphan now—a dazed, blush-stained orphan. I walked into the bathroom and stared into the full-length mirror opposite the sink. I turned the water to hot, stripped off my clothes, and stood, mesmerized by my reflection.

  A few days earlier, I’d asked a barber to buzz my reddish brown hair “so I could see skin on the sides.” My green eyes, changeable as a mood ring, were muddy, and missed the shield of my unruly bowl cut. I wondered when my cheeks would grow out of their perpetual blush. At that moment, I felt eleven years old. I figured I might as well look it.

  I reached onto the counter for what appeared to be the only razor in the house. My brothers, too shiftless to replace or purchase razors, shared until they bled. I lathered my body, armpits to ankles, with the shaving cream Mama had stopped using on her legs six months ago. Slowly, with insistent strokes, I removed every offending trace of adulthood. Hair by hair, I scraped away the years. I was thorough. I knew I’d need to remove every follicle, from the knuckles of my fingers to the swollen joints of my toes.

  I ran my fingers over the tiny boy mound of my groin, now cool and hairless. I rubbed circles over the skin and traced a path to the inside of my asscheeks, which were damp and scraped clean. I was again the rosy-cheeked boy who stuffed stolen grocery store candy into the side pockets of Mama’s purse.

  I opened the cabinet and pulled out one of the diapers we’d put on Daddy when he was getting ready to leave us. Having changed Daddy a thousand times, Mama wouldn’t let a diaper touch her hips.

  “Just pile towels under me,” she said. “That’s why God made washing machines.”

  I pulled the adhesive strips into a tight fit around my waist. I ran my fingertips from the prominent bones in my ribcage down to the place where my hipbones gave way to flesh so tender it tickled when anyone touched it. At five-six, I was still the runt of the family.

  I turned out the light. The plastic sounded like a distant fire as I walked into the hallway. I reached into the blackness and pulled down the steps to the attic.

  I’d been up there so many times I trusted the dark. I felt my way through instinct and memory to the dim corner under the skylight. Hanging on a piece of fish line was the mobile I’d had over my crib. I turned on the bulb. Amazingly, it still worked, and dozens of yellow pinpoints of light filled the attic. It’s a wonder every child in my family wasn’t epileptic.

  Beneath the mobile stood our family crib, the post-womb home for all of Mama’s brood. I’d spent several years climbing out of it, and now I was climbing back in. I was a late walker and talker. Mama always used to point to the places on the crib where I’d gnawed on the wood, saying “You always did like that crib. It kept the boys from throwing you around.”

  I lay on my back, mesmerized by the lights. The oak crib was huge, more like a puppy cage, with one hinged side that could be lowered to the floor.

  I cry until Dennis gets there. Sometimes, when he passes out, the only thing that works is dragging my silver rattle along the side of the crib, like an inmate in some deep county jail. He reaches into the crib, cupping the back of my two-year-old head, holding my skull with his hand, callused at sixteen by chopping firewood. His sandy knuckles rub at the blond wisps on my skull. He hoists me to eye level and pulls me to his chest. I pull the hair sprouting on his chest and bite his collar with the beginnings of teeth. He feeds me two of his fingers. No matter how hard I bite, he never flinches or jerks them away. He stares placidly into my face and rubs his fingertips across my gums. That’s when I stop crying.

  I reached into the corner for that silver rattle, found it at my feet, and raked it along the slatted sides of the crib. I started on the right, then dragged it over every standing piece of wood, until I was in a frenzy. Soon I was shifting the rattle from hand to hand and hammering the metal into the corners. My brothers always said I was “strong as hell for such a little mutt.” I figure it was either from fighting my brothers off or demanding that they pay attention to me. I knew that if Dennis was still breathing, somewhere in this house, he’d be joining me tonight under the yellow lights. I mumbled his name, whispered it, gurgled it up to a scream, until suddenly the rattle flew from my hand. It hit the floor, bounced down the steps to the bedroom-lined hallway below.

  I heard footsteps, then the muffled sound of a beer can being crushed. With each creak of the attic steps, I tensed, my skin slick with sweat; I shivered so violently I was almost paralyzed. When I saw the top of his dirty blond head rise over the steps, my skin flooded with goosebumps. I soaked my diaper. My screaming turned into a soft whimper, and a warm sheet of urine trickled over my quivering buns.

  Dennis stood over the crib, a cigarette in his right hand, the crushed can in his left. He dropped the can and kicked it into the darkness of the attic. I’d always been able to smell Dennis before I saw him. Mama always said he smelled like a billy goat, but I swapped our pillowcases to smell him until I was eleven, when he moved out for good.

  He dropped the expired Winston to the floor, twisted the ball of his bare foot to crush it, and unlatched the hinged side of the crib. He reached down with both hands and gripped my hips, pulling me to him. My butt slid along the sweaty vinyl that lined my childhood bed. My ass was now balanced on the edge of the cushion, my ankles resting in the grooves of the flattened, hinged door.

  Neither of us said a word. Two long fingers brushed my cheek, stroked my lips, and wormed gently into my mouth. I closed my lips around his tightly bent fingers and tasted nicotine and gasoline. His other hand reached for my hair, which he was used to tugging. Instead, he rubbed my head like a dog he was about to reward with a biscuit. He fixed his foggy green eyes on my face and matching eyes. Then he winked at me as he undid the snaps of his overalls. They slid to the floor; he stood naked and half hard. I sucked a third finger into my mouth and traced his fingernails, bitten to the quick, with my tongue.

  Dennis brushed the palm of his hand from the top of my chest down to the top of my diaper, then sank to his knees to lick my belly. He knew, from years of tormenting me, where I was ticklish, and dragged his tongue, carpet-like from cigarettes, over the skin barely beneath my bellybutton. I bucked, giggled, and kicked. I slapped the side of his head hard enough to make him look up and grin.

  He stopped.

  He pulled his fingers from my mouth, replaced them with his tongue, heavy with beer and smoke. He cradled my head now with both hands and pulled me to a sitting position. His knuckles, more callused than the last time he held me, moved to my shoulders, then to my hips. He tugged gently a
t the diaper’s adhesive bonds. The jagged skin of his palms brushed against the head of my dick, now poking out the top of the diaper. He pulled down the front and laid it flat against the bedding. His mouth moved over my cock, still warm with piss. He licked me clean, tracing his tongue up over my silky belly, then back down to my cock and around my ballsac, which was bunched up from the chill of the shave. He stretched his lips over his teeth and pulled on my balls. He sucked them so far from my body I thought he was going to swallow them.

  I took a deep breath and he let go, wrapping his hand around my sac, which was now stretched thin. He licked precum from my dickhead, catching a few stray drops which had rolled into my belly button. He took my cock deeply into his mouth, his nose rubbing against my pubic bone.

  His fingers, still wet with my spit, pushed at my hole. I moaned softly, then felt his middle finger sinking into me. After years of yelling at him for biting his nails, I was now relieved by his habit. He dropped a long stream of spit and worked in his second finger.

  With the other hand on the back of my head, Dennis pulled my face to his now throbbing cock. I’d always dreamed about what it would look like hard. As he stood there, hands on his belly, his cock pointed due north. It was so hard it twitched every few seconds. Like mine.

  I closed my eyes, opened my mouth, and saw blotches of yellow light through my eyelids. Dennis filled my mouth, shoved so far into my throat that his balls pushed against the tiny cleft in my chin. The two fingers in my ass became three as he again dribbled spit onto my crack, then smeared it over my sphincter.

  He was cut, like the rest of us, with the impossibly long, skinny dick God sometimes gives tall boys. He dragged his fingers across my head as his cock picked up speed in my mouth and his fingers plunged deeper into my ass. His cockhead curved gracefully down my throat, then withdrew to the edge of my gums. I was trying like hell to keep up with his thrusts. Drool was running out of the sides of my mouth, and with each thrust, I gripped the sheet beneath us.

  Dennis sensed my mouth was tiring, my jaws were numb, and sank his cock into my throat in one long, slow push. His hand still behind my head, he pulled out and lowered me to the floor. He placed my ankles over the top of the crib, so that I lay back staring into the torrent of spinning yellow light.

  Dennis cupped his hand over my mouth, and I filled his palm with spit. He coated his cock with it. He leaned back on the balls of his feet and pulled his fingers from my ass. The sudden void made me shiver. With my propped feet, I lifted my ass from the diaper. Dennis clamped his hands around my hips and worked himself in.

  Several handsfull of spit later, we were belly to belly, his cock deep into my hole, and I ached for the relief of an upstroke.

  My eyes rolled back. I was mumbling gibberish, the long forgotten language of my infancy. Dennis tightened his grip on my hips, pulling my ass into the air to match his rhythm. Each stroke was heaven until that last excruciating inch. After fifteen minutes of steady pounding, that last inch wasn’t any easier. Finally, I bit my tongue. I tasted bittersweet blood on the roof of my mouth.

  I clutched the sides of the crib with both hands to steady myself: Dennis had forgotten all about tenderness now and was slamming my ass with the fervor of a careless schoolboy. I took shallow breaths and squeezed my ass muscles as hard as I could around his cock. He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and growled like I’d bitten him. His body shook and in wild, angry bursts, he filled my ass. I couldn’t tell when he stopped coming, because his pelvis kept slamming into me in wild, involuntary bursts.

  He knelt in front of me for what seemed forever, then pulled out slowly, as if removing a Band-Aid. He stood just as slowly, and without saying a word pulled up his overalls, snapped them on, and knelt down again. His cum was dribbling out of my ass, onto the diaper.

  Dennis tugged the front of the soaked diaper to my belly, wrapped the wings around my hips, and resealed the adhesive. He covered me with a blanket draped over the side of the crib. He let the blanket waft down over my body as if I were asleep and he didn’t want to wake me. He lifted the crib’s open side and closed its latch.

  He bent down, ran his fingers across my close-shorn scalp, and pressed his lips to my forehead. He retreated to his bedroom. My breathing slowed and deepened, and the spinning yellow lights lulled me to sleep.

  About the Authors

  DIMITRI APESSOS, a freelance writer, keeps his stuff in New York but lives on Amtrak, in an attempt to confuse evil spirits. It is not working. He is writing three novels, all of them queer replicas of the work of James Joyce, though he has yet to read Finnegan’s Wake. Dimitri lives vicariously through his e-mail address, TilApplesGrow@yahoo.com.

  PANSY BRADSHAW is co-author of the best-selling Betty & Pansy’s Severe Queer Review of San Francisco (now in its fifth edition) and was a contributing editor to Scott O’Hara’s Steam (A Literary Queer’s Guide to Sex and Controversy). Born to poor white trash more than half a century ago, he was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger…the rest is history. He now lives in rural Montana, where he writes, teaches and nannies, and is at the center of an active queer community.

  KEN BUTLER grew up in the Bible Belt but managed never to feel guilty about being queer, perhaps because he figured out early that many of those farmers and miners liked getting their cocks sucked by another guy. He has a degree in music and works in theatre administration. He’s been happily ensconced in an intergenerational relationship of very long standing.

  JUSTIN CHIN is the author of two books, Bite Hard and Mongrel. His poetry and prose have appeared in several magazines, including ZYZZYVA and The Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, and several anthologies, including A Day For A Lay, The World In Us and Male Lust. He lives in San Francisco.

  M. CHRISTIAN has been called “one of the finest living writers of erotica” by Pat Califia and “today’s premiere erotic shape-shifter” by Carol Queen. The author of more than one hundred published short stories, his work can be found in previous volumes of Best Gay Erotica, Best American Erotica, The Mammoth Books of Erotica and many other books and magazines. He’s the editor of several anthologies, including The Burning Pen, Guilty Pleasures, and Rough Stuff (with Simon Sheppard). A collection of his short stories, Dirty Words, is forthcoming from Alyson Books. He thinks WAY too much about sex.

  CORNELIUS CONBOY, SF Leather Daddy XIII, has been called a natural-born sadist. He has written for Oblivion and Drummer magazines, and spoke on “family values” at San Francisco’s 1996 Pride celebration. Prior to his relocation to Los Angeles he was a sought-after emcee within the San Francisco leather community. He celebrates change, growth and the spiritually transformative nature of radical sexplay whenever he can.

  JORGE IGNACIO CORTIÑAS’ fiction has been awarded first prize in the 1998 Bay Guardian Fiction Contest, and the 1999 James Assatly Memorial Prize. His plays include Maleta Mulata (Campo Santo Theatre Company, San Francisco) and Odiseo, could you stop for some bread and eggs on your way home? (INTAR, New York). His most recent play, Sleepwalkers, recently completed a two month run at the Area Stage in Miami. It was awarded a Carbonell Award by the South Florida Critics Circle in the category of Best New Work.

  JAMESON CURRIER is the author of a collection of short stories, Dancing on the Moon, a documentary film, Living Proof, and a novel, Where The Rainbow Ends, which was awarded a fiction grant from the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation and received a 1999 Lambda Literary Award nomination. His short fiction has been anthologized in Men on Men 5, Man of My Dreams, All The Ways Home, Men Seeking Men, The Mammoth Book of Gay Erotica, Best American Gay Fiction 3, and several editions of Best Gay Erotica.

  GRIGORAKIS DASKALOGRIGORAKIS was born in Crete, grew up in the Rocky Mountains, lived a while in Manhattan and now lives in Los Angeles, where he sees a lot of movies.

  JACK FRITSCHER is a San Francisco humanist writer/photographer /videographer who in 1967 introduced emerging gay culture into the new American Popular Culture Association. With
a doctorate in American Literature and Criticism from Loyola University, Chicago, he was founding San Francisco editor-in-chief of Drummer magazine. Some Dance to Remember, his epic novel of gay history in San Francisco (1970-1982), will be released as an Alyson Classics Edition in 2002. His nonfiction titles include his memoir of his scandalous lover, Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera, as well as Popular Witchcraft: Straight from the Witch’s Mouth, which in 1972 was the first book to address gay wicca. Not a prisoner of gender, he is also the author of the humanist novel about young lesbians in the 1950s South, The Geography of Women: A Romantic Comedy.

  KEVIN KILLIAN is a poet, novelist, critic and playwright. His books include Bedrooms Have Windows, Shy, Little Men, and Argento Series. With Lewis Ellingham he has written Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance (Wesleyan, 1998), the first biography of the important U.S. poet. “Heat Wave” became a chapter in a novel, Arctic Summer (New York: Hard Candy, 1997). Kevin lives in San Francisco.

  MICHAEL LASSELL is a poet, writer and editor and the author of five books, the most recent a collection of short stories titled Certain Ecstasies (Painted Leaf Press). His poems, stories, and essays have been included in scores of anthologies and textbooks, including High Risk, New York Sex, and The Mammoth Book of Gay Erotica, and translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Catalan. He is the editor of Men Seeking Men: Adventures in the Personals (Painted Leaf) and five additional books of poems and essays, including Two Hearts Desire: Gay Couples on Their Love (with Lawrence Schimel) and, with Elena Georgiou, The World In Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave (St. Martin’s Press, 2000).