Desire

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 188 of 344 · 20 per page

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  He will store memories of this abundant weekend for the dreaded, strange times when the hunt turns indifferently cruel against him. To get into the gay baths throughout the city, you must be a member. To be a member—and some clubs screen out only the already-rejected old, the very unattractive—you merely pay dues. Jim will go to one of the most popular in the city. Wordlessly the attendant hands him a towel and a basket for his possessions, a key to a locker. Jim undresses in an empty room, puts his clothes in the assigned locker, and he looks admiringly at his nude body in a full-length mirror. Towel wrapped around his middle, he passes the television room. Other toweled men, a few, the more subdued, sit pretending to be watching the screen. Jim walks on. His room—small, with a cot—will be one of many along dim corridors. Nude figures prowl. Bodies lie on cots in the cubicles, doors open. Naked men stand in doorways, playing with their cocks. Someone enters a cubicle. A door closes, another opens. Jim moves on to the orgy room. Within dim lights, naked bodies toss and squirm in one groaning mass, heads, feet, hands, buttocks bob occasionally out of the sea of flesh. The bodies could be crushing each other soundlessly. Only occasional moans rise out of the amyl-tinged air. Jim has barely entered the room when several hands are pulling him into the twisting flesh. He had not expected this many hunters—perhaps a dozen. The mass of flesh stirs, changing shapes. Jim leaves the room. The showers are better lighted. He can be special. Four men are here. Jim moves along splashing hot water to the end of the row, alone. An attractive man glides through the misty steam toward him. The man edges his ass closer to Jim's cock. The man Jim really wants has not come over, is merely looking at him through alternately clearing, thickening pools of steam. The man near Jim touches his ass to Jim's rising cock. Now the man Jim wants approaches—reaches for Jim's flushed cock— and guides it into the ass of the other man. Jim pushes it in. The man who guided Jim's prick into the other now turns his own lubricated ass to him. Pulling it out of the one, Jim enters the other. The first man he fucked now presses against Jim's buttocks, attempting to spread them with his fingers, to enter him. But Jim has never been fucked and he pushes the probing fingers and the eager cock away. The man now presses his ass against the cock of the man Jim is fucking. Two others watch the sandwiched bodies. The man being fucked by Jim and fucking the other, turns his mouth to Jim's, which opens.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Never completed, the structure has begun to age, a dank odor clings to the naked boards. Stepping carefully to avoid exposed areas on the floor, they move into what would have been an inner room. Skeletal boards randomly dissect the moonless, cloudless sky. An old mattress lies on the patched floor; a mattress brought here by whom? In the gutless house, they remove all their clothes, they lie on the cast-off mattress, head to feet, cock to mouth, mouth to cock. Jim feels the gathering sperm at his balls; the rushing feeling spreads, his hips thrust into the other's mouth, which receives the jetting liquid. The other's cock, abandoned at that moment by Jim's mouth, shoots into the warm air. 2:51 A.M. Outside Andy's. Although he just came, the outlaw excitement still rages. Jim drives past Andy's, the all-hours coffeeshop. Leathermen, glitterers, hustlers, queens, all are here, milling outside. Jim gets out at the corner, intending to “hitchhike”—but a man wearing a cowboy hat just circled the block, looking back at him. Moments later, they sit in the car parked on a dim street. The man licks Jim's torso, the tongue nestling under his armpits, pulling at the hairs there. 3:05 A.M. The Garages, Yards, and Alleys Along Bierce Place. As he drives to Bierce Place, he glances apprehensively at his watch. Still time before night turns purgatorial purple at dawn. Several cars cruise the area, many men roam the alleys. An afterhours club, a bathhouse, a gay theater—these lure the hunters here after 2:00 in the morning. Nearby, neat trim houses slumber cozily, unaware that for a distance of about three blocks and lasting till just before dawn, orgies will recur in their garages, yards; under stairs, unlocked patios, store entryways, open spaces between buildings, and on the street itself. In the gray night, Jim walks along the alley. The sexual odor of amyl permeates the misty air. Men drift gracefully like dark searching ghosts in a silent ballet; flowing forms unite, float away to another, others. In the garages, darker bunched shadows stir. Under a stairway, at least five men devour each other, slowly, slowly. Against walls and in cars, bodies connect. Suspended in the dark, forms emerge recurrently beyond the misty scrim. Like in a dream. Jim stops his thoughts by surrendering to hands and mouths in protected shadows, his cock only barely hardening. In the lighted window of an upstairs room over a garage, a naked man signals Jim as he cruises the alley. Jim looks away, walks toward the corner. The naked man has come down the stairs, is now standing in the street. He reaches out for Jim—but Jim pulls away. Although the man is attractive, his exhibitionism is too blatant. Jim crosses the street, to another alley. Under a sheltered stairway shadows shift. Stirrings in a garage; shadows materialize. Men lean against telephone poles.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  That would be a vast improvement in my circumstances.” Sophie watched him then, and he wanted to retreat from her. To hide from her probing gaze. He made a silly face and asked, “Is there another hole in my shirt?” “So you wrote ‘French Whatchamacallit’ on the board and just hung out for two hours?” Sophie tucked her chin between her knees. It was the same posture she had assumed at the potluck, and it brought to mind the cold of the time they spent on the porch after dinner, how close they had gotten, her hand in his palm, the gritty texture of the porch. He swallowed the coffee. Felt his nasal cavities fill with heat and a burning smell. “Yeah—like I said, even an idiot like me couldn’t mess it up.” Sophie narrowed her eyes at him and reached for his mug of coffee, as if she’d read his mind, and he pushed it gently toward her until she drew it back to herself. She drank from it, and Lionel felt a thrill of pleasure in his stomach, the idea of her lips touching a place where his lips had been, and there was something like a presentiment or a premonition or some other ephemeral, fleeting thought, that Charles had been a similar kind of conduit. A thing that they had both touched and been touched by, and he got a little hard remembering it, Charles sliding into him that first time, the awful discomfort of it, the smell like sweat and breath and piss, but it wasn’t just remembering that Charles had fucked him, it was remembering it while sitting here with Sophie, and thinking that Sophie, too, had fucked Charles. She drank from his mug, and he felt exposed. “Tell me about last night,” she said calmly. “Was he good? Did you like it?” “The potluck?” “Charles,” she said, her lips tracing his name. Lionel closed his eyes and saw Charles before him, how beautiful his body was, how solid, how real, how warm. He felt dizzy again, as if his center of gravity had shifted violently and suddenly upward. He gripped the underside of the table. Opened his eyes. Sophie was watching him, her lids low, lips parted just so. “He came to my apartment. I thought—I don’t know what I thought, but apparently, he was calling my name and chasing me and I ran.” “You ran?” “And kind of slid? By the time he caught up with me, I couldn’t really use my keys. But he helped me.” “You poor thing,” she said, and she meant it. She actually meant it. Lionel’s mouth was dry and he motioned for the cup back. She shook her head, refused him. “But then he came in.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  Through the kitchen window, Damian watched his boss, Stan, begin the job interview with the day’s target. Damian had to lube up his ass in preparation for his cue. He usually felt nervous and aroused at this stage, but today there was also exhaustion. He’d been fucked constantly. Would there never be a break? The target was as always, an older man, at least fifty, bearded. Damian loved being fucked and dominated by men more than twice his age, which made him perfect for Stan’s project. This man looked attractive if overweight. He appeared a bit surprised to see Stan wearing a bathrobe for a job interview, but this was Hollywood, where business was often conducted poolside while sipping rum punches. “Raymond, is it? Great to meet you,” Stan said, shaking Raymond’s hand without getting up or removing his sunglasses. “First, I need to let you know we tend to tape our interviews for our records, so please sign this release.” Raymond stroked his short beard and shrugged before signing. Damian knew the ad for the job was listed in the adult section, but it seemed that most men forgot that as they dressed up for the interview and brought résumés. Damian felt when the ad read, International corporation seeks handsome, mature gay male, they should know something related to sex was involved, but so many times the expressions of surprise were priceless. “You’ll oversee shipping of our products and monitor website traffic, among other duties,” said Stan, gesturing from his lounge chair with one hand while holding a drink in the other. “First, I should confess that the pay is a bit lower than at other companies, but we do provide one perk to make up for it. Are you thirsty?” Stan hit the intercom button built into his lounger. “Damian, come here now,” he ordered. Nude, Damian opened the sliding glass door and headed straight for Raymond, drink in hand. “Sweet mother of god.” Raymond dropped the folder containing his resume and stared in wide-eyed amazement. “I apologize—I’m sure you didn’t know I was here. I—” “Not at all, Raymond,” Stan said. “Damian is the perk I mentioned. I know it’s not much, but we have to make do.” Raymond couldn’t take his eyes off Damian. “He’s gorgeous. He’s an absolute Adonis.” Damian smiled but looked demurely away at Stan, focusing on the curls of white beard and salt-and-pepper hair. Stan had instructed Damian not to look at the target, so as to allow him to feast his eyes on Damian’s body without temerity while Stan communicated Damian’s willingness to fulfill a master’s every need. “Yes, yes, Damian’s not bad to look at, but I’m afraid he’s dumb as a post.” Damian’s dick stiffened. He didn’t want to enjoy the part where Stan informed the target that he was just a stupid piece of ass, but he always did. He reminded himself that his English teacher back in Tennessee had told him he was bright enough for college.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Since I wasn’t athletic, I had nothing to offer other people beside the flattering mirror of my attention, a service that suited my sweet, devious nature. I can’t really remember how I met Tommy. I recollect him first as a smooth cloche of shiny light brown hair sporting the slender plume of a cowlick, a head bent over a book in study hall belonging to someone I’d heard was captain of the tennis team, leader of the Crowd and Sally’s steady; then, without transition, he was my friend and he was struggling to explain to me his theory about Sartre’s Nausea as we kicked our way through autumn leaves. “Uh … uh …” he was crying out on a loud, high note, a sustained nasal sound, as he stopped walking and held a finger up. Then his small blue eyes, straining to see an idea in the distance, blinked, glanced smoothly up and down. The glitter of prophecy faded. He shrugged: “Lost it.” He exposed his palms and then pocketed his hands in his trousers. I held my breath and counted ten before I offered my soft, apologetic suggestion: “But aren’t you really saying that Sartre thinks man is …” and I filled in the blank with the closest approximation I could invent, not of Sartre’s thought, but of Tommy’s dubious interpretation of it. “That’s it! That’s it!” Tommy shouted, and again he excitedly waded out into the philosophical murk. I, who thought only of survival, had no interest in philosophical questions. The proximate ones were enough to obsess me, not as things I chose to contemplate, but as decisions rushing up at me as out of oncoming traffic. These were the things I thought about: Am I boring Tommy? Will he mind if I rest my elbow on his shoulder? Should I powder my white bucks or keep the scuff marks? How low should I let my jeans ride? If the ultimate questions—the meaning of life, time, being—interested me now, it was only because they interested Tommy. To the extent the other kids thought of me at all they considered me to be something of a brain; certainly in their eyes Tom was a jock. Ironic, then, that he was the one who did all the thinking, who had the taste for philosophy—ironic but predictable, since his sovereignty gave him the ease to wonder about what it all meant, whereas I had to concentrate on means, not meaning. The meaning seemed quite clear: to survive and then to become popular. The game of monarch I’d played in the snow or sand or in cloud castles now became real. The princess, asleep for so many years, awakes to the taste of the prince’s lips, a slightly sour taste; she stares up into a face visored in shadow. In that old, comfortable suburb even the biggest mansions hunkered democratically down on the curb and sat right next to other dwellings. No concealing hedges or isolating parks could be seen anywhere.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  In and out of my heart flowed my rainbow blood. I would give her till half-past-nine. Going back to the lobby, I found there a change: a number of people in floral dresses or black cloth had formed little groups here and there, and some elfish chance offered me the sight of a delightful child of Lolita’s age, in Lolita’s type of frock, but pure white, and there was a white ribbon in her black hair. She was not pretty, but she was a nymphet, and her ivory pale legs and lily neck formed for one memorable moment a most pleasurable antiphony (in terms of spinal music) to my desire for Lolita, brown and pink, flushed and fouled. The pale child noticed my gaze (which was really quite casual and debonair), and being ridiculously self-conscious, lost countenance completely, rolling her eyes and putting the back of her hand to her cheek, and pulling at the hem of her skirt, and finally turning her thin mobile shoulder blades to me in specious chat with her cow-like mother. I left the loud lobby and stood outside, on the white steps, looking at the hundreds of powdered bugs wheeling around the lamps in the soggy black night, full of ripple and stir. All I would do—all I would dare to do—would amount to such a trifle… Suddenly I was aware that in the darkness next to me there was somebody sitting in a chair on the pillared porch. I could not really see him but what gave him away was the rasp of a screwing off, then a discreet gurgle, then the final note of a placid screwing on. I was about to move away when his voice addressed me: “Where the devil did you get her?” “I beg your pardon?” “I said: the weather is getting better.” “Seems so.” “Who’s the lassie?” “My daughter.” “You lie—she’s not.” “I beg your pardon?” “I said: July was hot. Where’s her mother?” “Dead.” “I see. Sorry. By the way, why don’t you two lunch with me tomorrow. That dreadful crowd will be gone by then.” “We’ll be gone too. Good night.” “Sorry. I’m pretty drunk. Good night. That child of yours needs a lot of sleep. Sleep is a rose, as the Persians say. Smoke?” “Not now.” He struck a light, but because he was drunk, or because the wind was, the flame illumined not him but another person, a very old man, one of those permanent guests of old hotels—and his white rocker. Nobody said anything and the darkness returned to its initial place. Then I heard the old-timer cough and deliver himself of some sepulchral mucus.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Tonight, for the Ngosts, she is making some sort of soup. Lots of shredded chicken breast, a stock from the bones and marrow, a thick cream base, some herbs. French bread from the market. She can see the soup in her mind, the way it goes from clear to creamy white. She can smell the celery and the carrots, the onion and small pieces of beet she’ll julienne and sprinkle in. A bit of cumin, not too much. The meat for texture. She will serve a salad with berries and apricots. Or, she thinks, she could leave the chicken out of the soup and serve them cream-poached fish instead. The soup in small bowls next to the beautiful salmon. She imagines Mac and Jill, their faces warm with hunger and desire. Jill will give her a knowing look. She will reach across the table, squeeze Sylvia’s hands. Her mouth will become a perfect circle. Mac will eat, but while he chews, his eyes will stay on her. She is certain of this, can already feel the long pull of his gaze at her body. But it is Jill who sits at the center of this fantasy. She is its white-hot core. Jill, with her longer fingers and sensible haircut. Jill, the investment banker. Jill, the insatiable. Sylvia presses the glass between her legs to keep it still. It’s cold and slick against her skin. Her stomach aches. There is something moving through her, working its way up her belly and into her chest, coiling and uncoiling. She grips her knees and tries to calm herself. Inside, Sylvia can hear the soft rumble of footsteps. The girl. Up the stairs Sylvia goes, passing the pictures of the family, how they seem to regress as she goes. The two children vanish, and the parents recede back through their years, gaining hair, gaining smiles, gaining happiness. A family blooms, uncles and aunts, sisters and brothers, grandparents. It’s like tracing a muddy stream to its clear, frothy headwaters. At the top of the stairs, she pauses. The sound of footsteps farther ahead. Yes, the girl. Except she is in her parents’ room. Sylvia rolls her eyes. She is still a little jagged, a little rough. She tries to conceal her wolf’s teeth, the part of her that wants to reach out and snatch the girl and tear her to pieces.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  In the kitchen, they all wait for the fries. The twins sit at the table with their coloring, the boy struggling to decide between red and blue to fill in the crude tree he’s drawn and the girl staring at him hatefully. Sylvia would like to go over there and color the whole thing green. It’s a disservice to let children go on thinking the world can be something it cannot. Her parents hadn’t let her think that sort of thing for long—that life could be what she wanted it to be, that all she needed was to try. “Sylvie,” the boy says with his cheeks between his hands. “Hungry.” “Is that a whole thought?” she asks, and he frowns, folds his arms across his chest. “Hungry.” “Five more minutes.” The boy licks his lips until his whole mouth is wet and bubbly with spit. Booger eater, she thinks. The girl cuts her eyes at him. “Sylvie. Hungry,” the boy says again. The fries crackle and hiss on the sheet pan. Sylvia wedges them free instead of letting them cool and transfers them to a plate that she leaves at the center of the table. They sit in a steaming mound flecked with coarse sea salt and red-pepper flakes. She hoists herself up onto the counter and watches the twins watch the fries. The boy licks his lips again. He is first, of course he is. Boys are greedy, always taking. But the world will make a mess of this boy. He’s all nerve and skin. Nothing between him and the outside. The food burns his fingers, and he drops the fries onto the table. He tries again, blows on one of the fries. Sylvia can see his mouth watering. He makes little chewing motions. Oh, he wants it bad. Like his father. Scratching at her bedroom door these last few nights. She has fewer reasons to say no, and the last time that she let him go down on her, he had seemed so grateful that Sylvia had only felt a little guilty and a little selfish. Impossible not to see the resemblance between their two wants. Sylvia tucks her knees against her chest and watches as he tries and fails, tries and fails, burns his mouth and his tongue. But he keeps trying. Eventually, he gets it in his mouth and keeps it there, chewing it into white mush. He smiles at her broadly, shows his food. “Good!” he says, as if approving of her. “Good! Like!” The girl, because she is smart, stabs a fry through with a crayon and blows on it. Then she shoves the whole thing into her mouth, crayon and all. She gulps it down. Good for you. • • •

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Later, an hour later, he’d descend to his squire’s breakfast, shaved and dressed in a white shirt, silk tie and double-breasted suit, his eyes young, sharp and intelligent in a head I’d seen earlier from an odd, wounded angle. He was now polite to the cook, deferential to my mother and lighthearted and cutting with my sister and me—he who’d been nothing but a felled deity exuding a cold sweat an hour before. This transformation of the mystery man in the tangle of sheets into the bantering gentleman I attributed to the rites of the bathroom mirror and the bracing smell of carbolic soap and witch hazel. How he’d study himself in that mirror, both taps running full blast, as though out of the haze on the glass his true identity might emerge under a swipe of the towel—a cutting of the self if not the full blossoming branch. Dad had a friend of sorts—to him possibly a very minor business associate—whom my sister and I worshipped because he gave us money. “Dollar Bill,” we called him, since he was William and always gave us a dollar each. Though we wanted for nothing and we dimly sensed that our way of living cost many, many dollars, this unseen cash meant nothing to us compared to the actual loot Dollar Bill handed over. If the Devil or Hitler had offered us even a single dollar for our parents’ heads, we would have cut them off and presented the bloody, bulky packages in happy exchange. How greedy we were, we who’d learned so early the value and sinister glory of the dollar. How we’d fawn on Dollar Bill, hugging his legs and kissing his neck. How we’d squeal with excitement when we spied him coming down the walk. The grown-ups would guffaw in chorus over our gold-digging antics, pleased to see us miming their own sentiments—much as one might be pleased to see chimps mounting or presenting in inflated purple imitation a human desire less colorful but no less persistent. In a sense all of our daddy’s dollars were casters on which the furniture of our lives glided noiselessly; every dollar was assigned a function and kept out of sight. Dollar Bill, however, liberated two dollars a week from invisible utility. We loved him more than anyone we knew.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  I felt his blond crotch slam solid against my lips. He was home. He fully holstered his rod in my throat. He worked me wild. I felt his cock throb and expand in the sheath of my throat and feared I’d drown if he shot his load into my lungs, but I didn’t care, ’cuz he’d give me mouth-to-mouth and hold me in his arms, and at the precise moment when he blew, my own cock, untouched, shot across my belly, sort of like his huge cock was inside my cock, and his white cum came boiling up out of my nose, my mouth, and, yeah, out of my cock. His cum shooting out of my cock. His cum that turned into Young Tags with ten-inch dicks. His twelve-inch cock, seeming inside my dick, stretched my own rod out a full foot so my dick skin strained like a rubber stuffed to bursting with a studbull cock. I could feel what it felt like to pack a twelve-inch rod! Oh, god. You get the picture. I did. I do. That summer I had more “Tags” on me than a Blue Light Special at the WalMart. Young Tag had a cousin, Big Tag’s brother’s son, Lawayne MacRory Taggart, who everybody called “MacTag,” because he said so. He was tough and streetwise and he liked to wrestle, freestyle, slam-banging and clowning like the pro wrestlers on TV. He’d gone beyond his once-beloved Hulk Hogan and was idolizing the muscular Sonny Butts, the buffed and black Jamal “Reggie Reggae” Deshaw, and the outrageous tag team, the Slap Warriors. He fed the campers a liar-liar-pants-on-fire line about how he wrestled on TV, billing himself the “Masked Counselor.” The campers loved it. Especially when he pulled a black wrestling mask over his blond head and climbed into the ring with one of the tougher, huskier, older ones, both of them stripped down to nylon briefs and wrestling boots, bouncing off the ropes, MacTag picking the kid up, throwing him across his shoulders and spinning him around, slamming him to the padded canvas, flopping across the kid, full body, pinning his shoulders, while the crowd went wild screaming, “Next! Next! Me next!” MacTag was their chance to act out a fantasy. Now I know. One night that last week after camp, I stood in my Speedos in the door of MacTag’s cabin. I could feel the full moon falling warm on my shoulders and back. MacTag looked up from the table where by the light of a Coleman lantern he was reading Leaves of Grass, buck naked, playing with himself. “Next!” I whispered.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  “It sure as hell is.” “Your name is Bottom.” Turning on my heel, I gave my parting shot: “You’re fuckin’ nuts.” His words were honeyed as he enticed me back. “Say your name is Bottom. Say it and you can eat it.” “You’re crazier than shit.” “Tell me that your name is Bottom. Say it, and this whole piece of delicious cheesecake is all yours.” “All right, my goddamn name is fuckin’ Bottom.” Pausing, I added, “Nick Bottom the Weaver.” “So you’re literate? Good boy, Bottom.” He pushed the plate across the table. I grabbed for it, but he kept hold of the plate. “In the civilized world, we sit at the table to eat our dessert. Sit, Bottom.” I sat down, and he pulled his hand away. I picked up the fork and dug into the cheesecake. He didn’t say anything while I gobbled down the dessert. When I finished, I stood up fast. “I gotta get going.” He waved his hand. “Make sure you brush your teeth, Bottom.” “Like there’s a toothbrush and a sink in the stairwell,” I sneered. “Fuckin’ nuts.” [image file=image_rsrc1YH.jpg] The next afternoon my friend Skeet and I were running a bus ticket scam near Pioneer Courthouse Square. We begged used tickets from people getting off the bus and then sold them at reduced rates to tourists. Tourists were so preoccupied with their own shit that they usually didn’t notice that the tickets had expired. Two local real estate brokers had just told me to get a job when I noticed the old cheesecake dude. He carried an untouched fast-food bag, which he held out invitingly. “Is that for me?” “What’s your name?” “Bottom,” I said quickly. “Not enough. Show me that you’re a sissy.” “Huh?” He waved the bag until I drooled. “Show everyone that you’re a sissy. If you walk like a girl up the length of the platform, you can have the bag.” “I don’t know how.” “Wiggle it,” he ordered. “Huh?” “Wiggle your sexy butt.” “Shit.” He opened the bag, and the heady aroma of a burger and fries wafted out. “There’s a chocolate milkshake too,” he said. “All for something so simple.” I gave my ass a little shake as I took a couple of steps, but that wasn’t enough for him. “No, wiggle it like you mean it. Walk down the platform. Wiggle your ass hard enough and long enough to attract attention. I want to see eyes turning in your direction.” “Go for it, dude,” Skeet urged. “I’d shake my booty for that bag.” Hesitating no longer, I wiggled my ass for all it was worth. The cheesecake dude wasn’t satisfied until I had every eye turned upon me. I tried so hard that I nearly fell over, but I wasn’t walking like any girl. With a contemptuous remark about my performance, he handed me the bag and departed.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  One of the others stepped into their clearing. A middle-aged man in baggy running shorts and a T-shirt walked down the aisle toward the dark-haired beauty, and then stopped next to him, kneeling to tie and retie his shoe, glancing pointedly, questioningly at the boy’s crotch. The boy remained frozen, his eyes roving from side to side down the page of the novel in his hands. The predator rose to his feet, brushed past the boy, closer than he needed to, and ambled back toward the café. Steve watched him go and then turned back to the boy, who smiled, just the barest twitch of muscle beneath pale skin, but Steve saw it and his pulse beat faster in response. Steve heard a nervous cough behind him. He turned slowly, swiveling to find himself confronted by the coolly expectant eyes of a balding man in brown slacks. The old man waggled his wooly eyebrows and flicked his eyes downward. Steve looked at the man’s hands: shoved deep in the pockets of his pants, they stretched the fabric tight over a long, thin erection. Steve looked up into the man’s pale, muddy eyes and raised his right eyebrow. The aging predator misread the signal and took a step closer to Steve. He reached out and brushed his bare knuckles along Steve’s muscular thigh, his breathing growing heavier. Steve shifted his weight away and whispered, “Beat it, man.” How close am I to this? Steve fingers trembled. He turned back to look at the boy, who still held the book in his hands, but who had been watching Steve’s interaction with curious attention. Steve winked. The boy grinned, shrugged—What’re ya gonna do?—and looked back down at his book. Steve watched him without pretense now. He let his eyes move slowly across the even, bluish stubble that played across the boy’s jawline and upped his initial age estimate to twenty, maybe twenty-one. A permanent blush splashed across the boy’s cheeks, rising like the crest of a wave over the fine line of his jaw. His hair curled uncontrollably in broad waves that lapped gently against the back of his neck. Steve watched the soft cotton of the boy’s shirt rising and falling with the steady rhythm of his breathing. There were thick muscled planes beneath the cotton, nipples that strained ever so slightly against cool restraint and a few silky chestnut hairs that crested the collar. The boy’s arms were smooth marble beneath a carpet of lightly curling hair that tapered as it approached his finely crafted hands. He had perfectly proportioned fingers, firm but delicate with closely clipped nails, and he wore a thick silver band with a pattern of interlocking circles.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  When I was eleven I started going every day after school to a bookshop which was near the hotel where my mother and sister and I lived. I was fascinated by a woman who worked there. She moved and talked and even sang as though she were on a big stage and not in a very small store. I had seen an overweight and coquettish diva portray Carmen, and this woman seemed just as ready for the role—a peasant blouse worn off the shoulders and so low as to reveal the tops of large breasts; black hair drawn back into a ponytail that hopped almost of its own accord from her back up onto her shoulder, where it would perch like a pet as she nuzzled it with her cheek; a tiny waist sadistically cinched in by a stout black belt that laced up the front; ample hips in rolling motion under a long skirt that swirled in meticulously ironed pleats around her; and small flat feet with painted nails in sandals she remained true to even on snowy days. She bathed herself in a heavy, ruttish perfume that suggested neither a girl nor a matron but rather the overripe coquette, the sort of imposing beauty one could imagine a weak nineteenth-century king taking on as his mistress. This scent, as shameless as her half-naked body, billowed to conceal or shrank to disclose her other abiding odor, the smell of burning cigarettes. She could sit for hours on a high stool behind the counter with an open book and kick her pleated skirt with a dangling leg and stab out one cigarette after another into a small black ashtray from a restaurant in New York. On television I’d seen the host of a New York nightclub introduce the viewing public to celebrities; some of this glamour now attended the woman’s smoking. Each of her butts was lavishly smeared with blood-red lipstick; the growing mound of smoldering butts resembled an open grave, ghastly trough of quartered torsos. As she smoked she hummed throatily, then exhaled, coughed, paused; her eyebrows shot up, her trembling upper lip curled back on one side to reveal a big, red-flecked front tooth, her jaw dropped, her spine grew, her massive shoulders shook—and out came a high, high head tone. Then a snatch of nasal Gounod tossed off saucily, scales sung in muted vocalese ripped open here and there to full volume (dark sleeves slashed with crimson silk), then a bit of hey-nonny-nonny.… She turned a page in the novel and blindly reached for the smoking ashtray. The low scabrous radiator that ran the length of the display window clanked and hissed. Someone came in as the bell rang out merrily. The cold air cut the angled, floating panels of blue smoke to ribbons. The woman put her book down and dashed lightly to greet the customer. Her body, which in repose appeared leviathan, in motion took on a balletic lightness.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  I looked up with my sternest professor look. “If you shoot down my throat, you’ll make me a very happy papi. Got that, boy?” “Sí, papi.” With that, he fucked my mouth with abandon. I kept up with him. “Papi, papi, papi…” His balls rose as I fondled them, my lips sealed tight. “Fuck fuck fuck!” he screamed as he volleyed thick gobs of semen down my throat. He didn’t let go of my head as he quivered and deposited even more cum over my tongue. He sighed loudly when I licked cum from inside the folds of his foreskin and around his glans. I didn’t swallow. He looked down at me with a far-off look. I stood up. “What’s wrong, my boy?” “I can’t explain.” I pulled him close and rubbed his back. It was strange to have someone sob in my arms. I didn’t know what else I was feeling in that moment, but I was uncomfortable. I had spent my life fucking and sucking whomever I wanted, and I never had to hug anyone afterward. I’ve had a few guys express feelings for me, but I wasn’t interested in dealing with lovey-dovey shit. But this boy—well, he was different. I had inspired him to change his life beyond textbooks. That was a novelty for me. I kissed him on the forehead. “Thank you, papi,” he said. “You can fuck me if you want.” “Hey. You sound like a dejected student. I don’t want to hear that kind of shit coming out of your mouth. From now on, if you want to be fucked, it’s because you enjoy being fucked. If you don’t like being fucked, it’s fine too. You’re not a kept boy. I can’t afford you, and no, I don’t want your money. If I want you, it’s because you’re a fucking hot boy with a killer smile.” He flashed his irresistible teeth and lit up. “Such a hot boy.” I took his face close to mine, and stuck out my tongue. He licked the remnants of his cum off and then fed it back to me. “Open your mouth.” I spat his cum back into his mouth. “Fuck.” I opened my mouth as wide as I could. He spat his cum, diluted with our spit, back into my mouth. I swallowed, wrapped my arms around him and zeroed in on his luscious lips. Our tongues wrestled and our hands roamed. He had a gym-worthy body; the firm mounds of his pectorals had told me that much. Did he know just how fucking lucky I was to have him? “Please.” I looked down to his fingers fumbling with the shirt buttons underneath my bow tie. “What?” “I wanna see your chest.” I unsnapped my tie and unbuttoned to reveal my white undershirt. “Fuck,” he whispered as he caressed its fabric. “I always wanted to touch you like this.”

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  Jason’s fingers curled around the waistband and slowly pulled Steve’s shorts to the floor. He helped Steve step out of them and stood, holding wet cotton to his face, inhaling the musk and moaning again. Steve’s cock twitched as he heard the sweat-soaked shorts drop to the floor beside them. They faced each other, Steve completely naked, Jason barefoot in jeans and T-shirt. Steve looked into his dark eyes and then leaned in fast, kissing him roughly on the lips. Jason stepped into the kiss, pushing the front of his jeans against Steve’s cock, letting its damp head slide under the hem of his T-shirt where it finally made fiery contact with his stomach. Jason reached around to cup Steve’s ass, pulling him closer, intensifying the kiss. Steve reached for Jason’s T-shirt, pulling it roughly over his body, exposing the pale expanse of muscle perfectly bisected by a bushy trail of hair that began with the gentle valley between his pecs and descended below the waistband of his jeans. Steve ran his fingers along the furry length of the line, plunging down into the loose jeans, past the elastic of Jason’s jockeys to grasp his cock. It was thick and heavy and damp. “Take off your jeans,” Steve said, reaching for the hard twin buds of Jason’s nipples and giving them an experimental twist. Jason groaned and squirmed, taking a step back and shoving his jeans and underwear to the floor. He stepped out of them, his long hairy legs finally exposed for Steve’s inspection, but before Steve could survey them, the boy threw himself back at Steve, pushing their bodies together and returning to the rough hungry kissing. Steve’s face burned under the onslaught of Jason’s stubbled face. Their cocks slid against each other in a confluence of sweat and precum that escalated Jason’s excitement. Steve slipped his hand down Jason’s back, sliding it lightly across the boy’s beautiful ass. He felt the hairs rotating in their follicles, standing at attention under his gentle touch. Jason groaned in appreciation and pushed harder against Steve. Steve let his hands enjoy the roundness and the downy softness of Jason’s ass, lingering in one of the twin dimples before his fingers led him into the warm crevice. His fingertips burned with the wet heat radiating off Jason’s skin as his middle fingertip touched the wrinkled pucker of skin that was his destination. He circled the pucker, getting a feel for the small, understated opening before sliding his already damp finger slowly through the muscular ring. Jason gasped, “Oh, god,” and then “Oh, god, yes.” Steve pushed his finger farther inside, pushing up against supremely smooth flesh, gauging his progress by the tenor of Jason’s groans. He slid his finger back and forth and Jason started to rock, pistoning his body onto Steve’s finger. “Do you want me to fuck you?” Steve whispered. “Now,” Jason said through gritted teeth.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Jim moves out quickly. He stands among open rocks against sharp blue sky. A towel now wrapped around his middle, the tall man follows him there. They stand on the brown rocks. “Fuck me,” the man says to Jim. Despite the earlier long orgasm, Jim feels his cock react. To prepare for the act, the tall man sucks Jim for moments. Now he sprawls on a towel-draped rock, his legs spread invitingly, one finger moistening his ass with suntan oil. “Cummon, baby, fuck me!” Goaded exhibitionistically by at least two other men who stand watching eagerly—and now another is straining to look over the brush—Jim manages to slide his cock, not entirely hard, into the tall man. Legs straining, the tall man came the instant Jim's cock entered him. Jim withdraws his soft cock, wiping it on the man's towel. He climbs down the hill hurriedly, drives up to the restroom outside the Observatory—and washes his cock with soap, preparing it for more encounters. 2:47 P.M. Griffith Park. The Arena. There are men all over the sexual turf—some men shirtless or tanktopped, in bluejeans; others in trunks, shorts, cutoffs, bikinis; and some—even in the hot, hot sun-stand rigidly in black leather by motorcycles like surly chrome animals. Along the road, Jim sees a hugely muscular man he's seen often in the park. Elegantly theatrical in leather shorts, strapped sandals, he walks a beautiful, sleekly muscular dog, like an extension of himself. The man glances quickly away from Jim's car, recognizing it and him, just as Jim glanced away from him, each trying to beat the other at looking away. One's obvious narcissism challenges the other's. Although each wants to, they will never come together. Leaning against the side of his car a few moments later, eyes closed, Jim is startled by a man's voice—he must have walked up from the bushes behind. “Remember me?—you jerked off in my mouth up the road a few weeks ago,” the man says. Jim doesn't remember him. “Want to do it again?” the man asks. Jim doesn't. “Sorry, I just came.” The man moves away. Replaced by an attractive one, blond. Moments later Jim and the blond youngman face each other in the sheltered brush below. Each is signaling the other by brushing his exposed groin. But there's an impasse—neither moves. “Suck me,” Jim says finally. “That's what I want you to do to me ,” the other says. Instant enemies, they move back to their cars. Now Jim will commit himself to what he calls “the arena.” Parking among many cars near a turn in the road, he breathes deeply. This “arena” demands the fullest commitment because the very abundance of choices in the shifting choreography creates the most precarious balance between success and rejection.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  He was standing in the incurve of the grand piano’s embrace, one hand pressing down on the polished black lid. “He’s staying in the parents’ suite here at school. You’ll have to hear us jam—he’s the greatest on the horn.” Somehow I was picking up the sound of sex. I was always on the alert for it, I studied boys as they came out of one another’s dorm rooms, I lounged on other guys’ beds during free time, always in expectation of a held glance, a missed beat, but I never heard a single hint. Now I was hearing something—tentative to be sure, but something real. “These jazz guys?” I said as I struck the final chord. “Yes?” “Some of them are oddballs, right? No offense, Mr. Beattie. I mean, the jazz world’s pretty progressive, right?” “Yeah. We say hip.” “Is this Bugs hip?” “How do you mean, exactly?” I smiled. The clock hands refused to move. “No, how do you mean?” Beattie repeated. He was also smiling. “Well, I was just wondering why you were putting him up in the parents’ suite instead of at your own house with your wife and kids.” Mr. Beattie’s eyes widened rhetorically; he wanted me to see them widening. “Boy,” he said, shaking his head, “you’re wild.” He covered the next beat by miming playing a saxophone. His fingers ran up and down imaginary keys and his cheeks swelled. He closed his eyes and rocked back on his heels. “Seriously,” I said, breathless and exhilarated but only in my capacity as spectator; as a performer I was beautifully calm. “Chuck says that marijuana—” “Sh-h-h!” Mr. Beattie hissed. “Don’t go talking that shit. That’s real bogue, man.” “Sorry,” I said, “Mr. Beattie.” “So what did you want to know?” His smile had migrated back and now he was wailing one more long note on his imaginary sax. “I just wanted to know if it’s good for sex.” “Is it—? Well, yeah.” He laughed. “Yeah. I had you pegged all wrong. I thought you were the Little Lord Fauntleroy type, but you’re hip. I like the way you just truck right in.” He mimed driving a truck. He took a swerve, then pressed down on the brake, glided to a halt, switched off the key, pulled it out, twirled it once and pocketed it. “Just as neat and simple as you please.” Very deliberate, now: “Yeah, kid, it’s great for sex.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Oh Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe’s and Bea Dante’s, and what little girl would not like to whirl in a circular skirt and scanties? Did I have something special in mind? coaxing voices asked me. Swimming suits? We have them in all shades. Dream pink, frosted aqua, glans mauve, tulip red, oolala black. What about playsuits? Slips? No slips. Lo and I loathed slips. One of my guides in these matters was an anthropometric entry made by her mother on Lo’s twelfth birthday (the reader remembers that Know-Your-Child book). I had the feeling that Charlotte, moved by obscure motives of envy and dislike, had added an inch here, a pound there; but since the nymphet had no doubt grown somewhat in the last seven months, I thought I could safely accept most of those January measurements: hip girth, twenty-nine inches; thigh girth (just below the gluteal sulcus), seventeen; calf girth and neck circumference, eleven; chest circumference, twenty-seven; upper arm girth, eight; waist, twenty-three; stature, fifty-seven inches; weight, seventy-eight pounds; figure, linear; intelligence quotient, 121; vermiform appendix present, thank God. Apart from measurements, I could of course visualize Lolita with hallucinational lucidity; and nursing as I did a tingle on my breastbone at the exact spot her silky top had come level once or twice with my heart; and feeling as I did her warm weight in my lap (so that, in a sense, I was always “with Lolita” as a woman is “with child”), I was not surprised to discover later that my computation had been more or less correct. Having moreover studied a midsummer sale book, it was with a very knowing air that I examined various pretty articles, sport shoes, sneakers, pumps of crushed kid for crushed kids. The painted girl in black who attended to all these poignant needs of mine turned parental scholarship and precise description into commercial euphemisms, such as “petite.” Another, much older woman, in a white dress, with a pancake make-up, seemed to be oddly impressed by my knowledge of junior fashions; perhaps I had a midget for mistress; so, when shown a skirt with two “cute” pockets in front, I intentionally put a naïve male question and was rewarded by a smiling demonstration of the way the zipper worked in the back of the skirt. I had next great fun with all kinds of shorts and briefs—phantom little Lolitas dancing, falling, daisying all over the counter. We rounded up the deal with some prim cotton pajamas in popular butcher-boy style. Humbert, the popular butcher. There is a touch of the mythological and the enchanted in those large stores where according to ads a career girl can get a complete desk-to-date wardrobe, and where little sister can dream of the day when her wool jersey will make the boys in the back row of the classroom drool. Lifesize plastic figures of snubbed-nosed children with dun-colored, greenish, brown-dotted, faunish faces floated around me.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Wednesday. In the afternoon, Haze (common-sensical shoes, tailor-made dress), said she was driving downtown to buy a present for a friend of a friend of hers, and would I please come too because I have such a wonderful taste in textures and perfumes. “Choose your favorite seduction,” she purred. What could Humbert, being in the perfume business, do? She had me cornered between the front porch and her car. “Hurry up,” she said as I laboriously doubled up my large body in order to crawl in (still desperately devising a means of escape). She had started the engine, and was genteelly swearing at a backing and turning truck in front that had just brought old invalid Miss Opposite a brand new wheel chair, when my Lolita’s sharp voice came from the parlor window: “You! Where are you going? I’m coming too! Wait!” “Ignore her,” yelped Haze (killing the motor); alas for my fair driver; Lo was already pulling at the door on my side. “This is intolerable,” began Haze; but Lo had scrambled in, shivering with glee. “Move your bottom, you,” said Lo. “Lo!” cried Haze (sideglancing at me, hoping I would throw rude Lo out). “And behold,” said Lo (not for the first time), as she jerked back, as I jerked back, as the car leapt forward. “It is intolerable,” said Haze, violently getting into second, “that a child should be so ill-mannered. And so very persevering. When she knows she is unwanted. And needs a bath.” My knuckles lay against the child’s blue jeans. She was barefooted; her toenails showed remnants of cherry-red polish and there was a bit of adhesive tape across her big toe; and, God, what would I not have given to kiss then and there those delicate-boned, long-toed, monkeyish feet! Suddenly her hand slipped into mine and without our chaperon’s seeing, I held, and stroked, and squeezed that little hot paw, all the way to the store. The wings of the driver’s Marlenesque nose shone, having shed or burned up their ration of powder, and she kept up an elegant monologue anent the local traffic, and smiled in profile, and pouted in profile, and beat her painted lashes in profile, while I prayed we would never get to that store, but we did. I have nothing else to report, save, primo: that big Haze had little Haze sit behind on our way home, and secundo: that the lady decided to keep Humbert’s Choice for the backs of her own shapely ears.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  I take my time. The best part of age is loss of the damnable urgency that cuts you short all too often. I know how to drive my dick, how to ease up to make things last, how to savor the feel of the push and pull. I am inside this boy. I have him. I allow my dick to pop out and I drive it up between his legs so I can see it hard, fucking hard, then I ram it back in because minutes are ticking by and I can’t do this all day, much as I’d like to. And the stir is beckoning and what man can resist that particular rise. So I pick up speed until I’m shooting into him, unleashing what feels like every ounce of fluid I possess in every organ I possess. And Harley is working his cock and starts to spurt and my ecstasy is doubled with us both letting to at once, awash in come young and old. Finally I must relent because I am empty. I slide out, toss the condom, and pull Harley to his feet. He allows me to kiss him. His lips are soft and willing and were we not in my office, I would get him going again but we must stop. I retreat, tell him it was wonderful, and we dress. As he picks up his backpack and prepares to leave, I make an offering. “I am available to you night and day,” I say. “For any reason.” He studies me, still sheepish, as if we’ve done no more than discuss his work. He nods and then he is gone. When a student comes in twenty minutes later for a scheduled appointment, it is a trial to pay attention but I manage. And when she is gone, I hurry to wrap up and get out of the building because I want to get home, fix a drink and replay Harley’s every detail. So I’m full steam down the hall when a rushing student crashes into me. And it is none other than Cody Morse. I teach my students that circumstance must never be used in their work even when it does, in fact, pervade real life. We encounter improbability all the time. A man travels to India and finds his dentist at the same hotel. A woman moves to another state and her next-door neighbor is the cousin of her sister-inlaw. It’s there all the time but must never appear in fiction, lest the reader see it as an easy out and feel cheated. Cody Morse on this day is pure circumstance, but it doesn’t lessen the impact. The incident is brief, we pass a look, and I hurry away. He does the same but I’d venture with less fallout.