Embarrassment

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.

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• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Don’t be. It’s fine. We all make mistakes,” he said with as much patience as scorn. “We’ll take it from the top, if that’s okay with you.” “That would be wonderful,” Charles said through a tense jaw. “From the beginning, then, Magnus,” Farnland said, nodding to the slim pianist. The music started up again, and Charles sighed. He assumed a slouched, grumpy first. He could hear his knee click. The cartilage felt hot, like a delicate, burning fiber trapped under the bone. But when Farnland’s eyes came in search of him, his body had already slipped into the stream of the combination and was, for a moment, beyond reproach. “Dismal, dismal,” he said. Charles shared his barre with Mats and Alek. Mats was light-skinned with blond and brown curls. He had a boyish face, but his body was all mean, tight lines. He could jump to Jupiter, yet his quads were humble. Alek was self-conscious about his chipped front tooth and tried to conceal it by talking as little as possible, which made him seem shy or nice. Alek was a ferocious, expressive dancer with the kind of timing that made his dancing look totally effortless. “Long night,” Mats said. “The longest,” Charles droned, drawing his body up. His knee popped as he slid his foot forward and then flexed. It didn’t hurt, exactly. It wasn’t pain in the true sense of the word. It just burned, like a low, simmering flame. And just on the one side. He could see through to the end of the pain, its temporary nature. And this was a comfort. It hurt only on certain movements. Certain configurations of tension. For example, reversing the position, sliding the leg back and flexing the other way, was totally without discomfort. He logged this information, storing it for when he would need to compensate. His body was a long tally of adjustments and allocations. He could feel, though, his feet coming to life. The muscles warming as they stretched.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “I’ll have some,” Lionel said. The host pulled a bottle of rosé from the fridge, then reached down by Lionel, right in front of his crotch, and pulled a drawer open. He extracted a pair of kitchen shears and winked at Lionel before he pushed the drawer shut, his thumb tracing the outline of Lionel’s dick. Lionel jumped at the contact though it was brief. It felt somehow like a threat. Or a promise. The host snipped the cage over the cork and pulled it free with a pop that made Lionel’s mouth water. He could almost taste the wine in the sound. Charles stood back chewing his fish and watching as the host made a big production of pouring Lionel a glass and handing it to him. “Cheers,” the host said. “Cheers.” “Are you going to congratulate me?” “Sure. Congratulations. On what?” “I’m defending right before break,” he said. “I’m a free man.” “That would explain the potluck,” Lionel said. The host nodded as he poured his wine into a mason jar. They toasted. “Congratulations. You deserve it.” The host smiled. His teeth were very white and straight in a way that suggested that they had also been very expensive. The wine was good, though there was something metallic to it. Then again, Lionel didn’t know what constituted good wine. His face felt hot, though the wine was cold and crisp. He was a little embarrassed for the host, at how deep his need was and how clearly he displayed it. Lionel felt that in that position, he wouldn’t have been so needy. If he were that lucky, if he were that fortunate, he would have played it cool. He would have worn his success easy. But when you won, you got to decide how you celebrated. And everyone else had to accept it, otherwise they were sore losers. His doctors had tried to help him get out of the habit of basing his self-image on things like success and what other people thought of him. They had tried to help him develop a robust sense of self-value. But in the host’s kitchen, he felt that old ego peek its head above the water and glare in judgment. “You hitting the job market?” Charles asked. His voice cleaved through the kitchen, and Lionel regained some sense of equilibrium. “Yeah,” the host said, “I got a couple interviews.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Charles made a big show of it, letting on how intently focused he was on the surface of the coffee, and the occasional off-gassing. Lionel depressed the plunger. “Cream?” Lionel asked. “No.” “That way is too bitter for me.” “Sophie too.” Charles took a long drink from his coffee, which must have been too hot. “I like Sophie,” Lionel said. “She’s really . . . nice.” Charles smiled. Lionel felt embarrassed, thinking of how they’d been a little mean to each other, and how that had bonded them in some way. He thought, too, with rising color in his face, of that moment when it had felt like he and Sophie might have kissed on the porch, when it would have been the most natural thing. He liked Sophie. He liked the idea of being her friend. But Charles was looking at him, and Lionel could feel that possibility closing off. Charles set the cup on the table. “Where do you sleep?” “I’ll show you,” Lionel said. • • • In the morning, Lionel left Charles in bed. He rinsed out their cups from last night. Then the French press, which he took apart and cleaned piece by piece and put in the rack to dry. He pushed up the window and propped it open with an old ruler. The cold would help air out the apartment, that stale smell from having left it shut up for almost two weeks. Lionel could still feel Charles’s hands all over him, the sureness of his grip and the grinding pressure of their bodies coming together. He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth, to brush the taste of Charles out of his mouth. By the time he got to the front of the apartment, Charles had rolled over onto his back and was lying there naked, on full display. His body was magnificent. Edges and lines and clear definition. A thatch of pubic hair. His cock was uncut and of medium length, but very thick. Everything about him was proportional. Lionel made more coffee, waiting for Charles to get up, wondering where he’d go after he left, wondering what had brought him here. But as he stood waiting for the coffee to bloom, staring down into its brown mass, the ruler snapped in half. He had used it for years with no problem. He’d had it since he was a kid, when he’d gotten it as a gift from his math camp counselor. All the lines were worn off. Now it had snapped, and for a moment the window hung suspended, as if its mechanism had magically repaired itself or gravity had ceased to function. Then it fell, slamming shut with such force that the glass broke. In cartoonish escalation, the shards fell down into the sink, shattering further. He felt something old and powdery land on his lip, but it was only a bit of dust, a flake of paint perhaps, from the windowsill. “What are you doing over there?”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Good, because I don’t have a great immune system, and, like, it’s socially irresponsible to come out if you’re not feeling well.” “Oh, ‘social responsibility,’ here we go,” the host said, rubbing his greasy fingers across Lionel’s back. “It’s not funny. I mean, not everyone has a robust immune system and—” “Maybe if you ate more vegetables and hit the gym,” the host said with a sneer. Lionel felt conflicted. The man was annoying, but the host was being unnecessarily mean, and Lionel sensed it was because the man was fat and because the host did not find him attractive. “Plant-based diets aren’t actually shown to have a significant protective effect against infections from viral vectors.” “Oh, right, yeah, totally,” the host said, beaming, looking around the room for validation, and since it was his potluck and his apartment, people did go along with him, smiling thinly and humming in assent. The man on the floor turned red, but then shrugged. “Speaking of vegetables, I should probably clean up my mess,” Lionel said. “No, stay,” the host whined. Lionel crouched near the fireplace, but his plate and the food had already been cleared away. What remained was a shiny streak on the scuffed wood flooring. Across the room, Charles had put his arms around Sophie. The two of them were looking at Lionel. Charles had leaned down to say something into her ear, and Lionel watched her eyes narrow fractionally. But then Sophie turned her head and whispered something back to Charles, and the two of them seemed to be chuckling. Lionel wished that the food was still on the floor. Then at least he’d have something to do with himself. Instead, he stood up and made his way to the kitchen. Maybe he could make himself useful, get started on the dishes. Charles followed him, and then it was the two of them at the host’s sink. More of the small fried fish lay on a plate nearby. Charles picked one up and chewed on its crispy fins. “You didn’t have to do that,” Lionel said. “I could have cleaned it up.” “Figured it was half my mess, too.” “Sophie seems nice.” Lionel ran water into a plastic cup. The sink was too full for him to want to actually help out. He’d lost his nerve or his charitable impulse or both. “She’s something else,” Charles said. Lionel was about to ask why Charles had followed him into the kitchen and why he was standing so close, when the host rounded the corner. He was a little surprised to see the two of them there, it was obvious, but he recovered like a cat shifting its weight mid-fall, and he reached around Charles to pull the fridge open. “You boys want some wine?” “None for me,” Charles said, drawing his fingers cross his neck in prohibition.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Glad to hear it,” Nolan says. “Praise the Lord.” “On high,” she says, her voice a wavering song. Then, with a glance at Milton, a failing smile, she slides between Nolan and Abe, and then she is gone. “What was that all about?” Milton asks, but Nolan has already turned away from him toward Abe. “You got it?” “Tate.” “Then I need to see Tate. Don’t go anywhere,” Nolan says directly to Milton, who nods. He, too, leaves. Abe leans against the tree and folds his arms behind his head. Milton’s digging in the ground with his shoe. “When are you going to get it over with?” Abe asks. “Get what over with?” Abe smiles. He comes away from the tree toward Milton, and Milton takes a step back, roots himself against the ground, bracing. Abe leans down and whispers, wet against Milton’s ear: “When are you going to suck his dick? It’s getting pathetic.” “Fuck you, Ahab,” Milton says, but he’s shaken by it. For a moment he worries that Abe’s voice has carried to Nolan, who is just a few feet away. “Oh, it’s not me you want to fuck,” he says, licking his lips. “I’m not the fag.” “I didn’t say you were,” Abe says, calmly, evenly. “I said you wanted to suck Nolan’s dick.” “Please shut up.” “There’s no shame,” he says. “I mean, I don’t blame you. It’s nice.” “Oh, and what do you know?” “Plenty,” he says, and then steps backward. There’s a small drop-off, where you slide down until you’re standing under the crest of the hill. Abe vanishes. Milton follows him through the veil of gray night, down the grassy hill. “What are you talking about?” “You know what I’m talking about,” Abe says, even as he’s reaching for Milton’s pants to undo them. Milton grabs Abe’s thick wrists, stills him. “What is it you think I know?” “Oh, you have to know,” Abe says. “About Nolan and those girls and me. He had to have told you.” “No,” Milton says, his mouth dry. “I don’t know anything about it.” Abe grips him through his pants, and he’s hard, against his will, he’s hard. Abe starts to pump his dick through his jeans, and he smirks. “Well, last week, he says, hey, bud, I got this girl. She and her friend are a couple of freaks, do you want to come over? I say, yes. I come over. They’re already naked, going at it, licking each other all over like a bunch of cats.” “You’re lying,” Milton says. Abe guffaws, soft and deep. He pushes open Milton’s jeans and grips his bare cock. Abe’s hand is warm and rough. “I’m not. One of the girls gets real antsy about it. Nolan’s already poking around inside of her, and she’s like, no, you gotta stop, you gotta stop. And Nolan is like, let me finish, and I’ll stop.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “For letting you have Charlie. When are you going to thank me for that?” she asked, and Lionel flushed. His mouth went dry. And he looked to Charles and then back to Sophie. He felt ill. Charles stood up, awkwardly. He winced. Lionel thought of his knee. “That seems,” Lionel started to say, “I don’t know, Sophie. That seems. Bad.” Charles put on his hat and pulled the door open. “You don’t have to,” Lionel said. “Jesus Christ. Nobody’s going to make you suck their dick. I can drive you,” Charles said. He nudged Lionel toward the door, and Sophie called after them. “Lionel, your manners,” she said. • • • He was right about the air being comforting. There was so much cold black air that he could scarcely imagine a time when it wasn’t this way, when winter wasn’t this deep. He inhaled. Charles was stomping out ahead of him. “I’m sorry,” Lionel said. “You really don’t have to drive me.” Charles stopped and turned. He wet his lips, though they dried immediately in the cold. “I don’t get you,” he said. “I don’t get you.” “What’s to get?” Charles stared at him in open amazement, and Lionel felt a little rush of pride. “Right,” he said. Back to stomping in the cold. He could be so childish. Lionel jogged a little bit to catch up to him. He playfully bumped their shoulders together. “Come on,” Lionel said. “Come on,” Charles mocked, but he was thawing. They were tracing the route back to campus, which meant that Lionel could see the mountain of warm air over the trees. It hadn’t moved despite having earlier given the impression of moving toward them. Or perhaps this was a second mountain, a second wave of warm air pushed up out of the silos in the distance. “Why do you keep looking over there?” Charles asked. “What’s over there?” “Oh, I like the way the warm air looks,” Lionel said. “Like a mountain.”

• From Escape (2007)

  Once I stopped complaining about her, neither Merril nor Barbara had reason to congratulate her. I acted as though she didn’t exist. I found some cousins who were also taking classes and they agreed to give me a ride home. I explained that Lenore and I had scheduling conflicts and they were happy to help out. That night, Lenore told Merril I refused to ride home with her. When she finished speaking to him, she pranced into the room and told me to come to the phone. Merril demanded to know what was going on. I said I’d simply made other arrangements since Lenore had been unable to pick me up. This seemed easier, and I thought everyone would be happy. Merril exploded. “You’re the only one that is happy about this! Embarrassing me like this is terrible. I want you to ride home with Lenore and nobody else.” I was perfectly acquiescent. I started having my cousins drop me off a few blocks from the apartment so Lenore would think that I had walked. I was too embarrassed to tell my cousins what was really going on. I would always wait at the arranged place and sometimes Lenore would come to pick me up. If she did not, I knew my cousins would come for me within forty-five minutes. Merril called every night. I told him that everything was fine. This drove Lenore right up the wall. How could she be rewarded for abusing me if I didn’t complain? Her grades slipped. I had cut her out of my life and found other friends. Lenore was isolated and very unhappy. One day I heard her call Barbara at Page. “Carolyn thinks she’s so much better than I am. She treats me like I am total scum and refuses to talk to me.” Listening to Lenore’s meltdown, I almost felt sorry for her. She was a pawn in Barbara and Merril’s game. They were using her to do their dirty work and betraying her in the process. A few hours after her teary call with Barbara, Merril called and talked to Lenore for several hours. The next day, several of her sisters arrived to spend the rest of the week with us. This worked to my advantage because Lenore took a break from torturing me to enjoy her sisters. But in the long run, nothing changed. Lenore complained to them that I was mistreating her and that she was all alone. Her grades were suffering because I was so mean. She was only going to school to assist Father. Poor Lenore.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “No way,” Sophie said. “You stay put.” He felt her foot then against his knee, keeping in place. She smiled at him, but it was not a joke. Then she turned to Charles and asked him if he wanted some water or a coffee. Charles said that he wanted an espresso, with a tonic back. She made an elaborate bow at him and got up. Charles took her chair, and when she was around the corner, when they could hear her tamping out the used coffee, Charles turned to Lionel. “What’s all this?” “She asked me here,” Lionel said. “I’m not trying anything.” “That is so typical of her.” Charles shook his head, leaned back in the chair. “She’s playing a game. She thinks everything is fucking hilarious.” “She said she knew already. About last night.” “Yeah, I told her earlier—sorry if that was supposed to be a secret or something,” Charles said. Lionel watched his lips shape into an amused smirk, the little dimple in his right cheek appearing, then vanishing. “She seemed fine with it.” Charles turned and gripped the back of the chair, gave his body a hard wrench. Lionel’s breath caught at the mobility of his joints. How easy it was for him to attain such a ridiculous position. The espresso machine hissed. “You all right?” “I can go if you want.” “No, don’t. She’d just make a whole case about it,” Charles said. “Better to let her have her way.” Sophie returned with the espresso and the small glass boot filled with tonic water. Charles shifted over to the empty chair closer to the window, away from Lionel, and Sophie reclaimed her seat. The small espresso cup was a deep caramel color. The crema was beautiful, perfect, and Charles sipped it to test the heat. Sophie had her chin on her palm, appraising his reaction. They had a whole routine down. One that excluded Lionel, made him feel extraneous, with his collar with the hole in it and his scarf and his anxiety. He rolled his sleeves down and buttoned them, and in the process drew Sophie’s attention. Not in any obvious way, but he could feel the tension in her gaze shift slightly in his direction. Charles had seen him naked, of course, and had touched him. But that touching and that seeing had been focused in its particulars. They hadn’t talked about their bodies, only used them. It was different in the café. He had that feeling again, the one like watching an intimate function at a friend’s house, the way two people who loved each other shared a context that had nothing to do with him. He was stupid for staying, for listening, when Charles and Sophie told him to stay put. He should have listened to himself. After all, his duty was to himself. Like that old line from his doctors: Your duty is to your health. You owe yourself that much.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  At that moment he wishes he had come in the other's mouth and had taken the other's cum in his. 12:51 A.M. Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue. As he stands hitchhiking vaguely, his thumb just barely held out at his thigh, he considers going back to his car and driving to the most popular of the glitterbars. Floor sprinkled with tiny silvery lights, colored strobes pounding to disco rock, it attracts a wide spectrum of the gay, bisexual, and, increasingly, the straight worlds. Beautiful boys and youngmen primp there; handsome masculine ones often in cutoffs and tanktops cruise. And gorgeous straight women, vaguely costumed, dance alone sometimes, sometimes with men, sometimes with women—men and men, men and women, women and women gyrating in graceful, studiedly orgasmic movements. But Jim decides against going there. Saturdays it's jammed, and there is only the mildest revolution there. Perhaps he'll drive to the beach. On warm evenings, hunters gather about the area of the shadowy pier. FLASHBACK: The Beach at Night A Week Ago. Shadows fused in the double darkness under the crumbling boards of the pier. Jim walked to the edge of the ocean, sprayed with silver foam. He is always aware of the mysterious darkness beyond the water—black; locking secrets. An outlaw followed him, now another, the three a shrinking triangle moving to the sensual sighing of the ocean. At the edge of the shore, Jim removed his clothes and lay on the still-warm sand. No fog tonight, the moon naked too. One of the two other outlaws stripped wordlessly next to him. For long, they lay side by side, touching. A few feet away the third man lay clothed on the sand watching them. 12:55 A.M. Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue. But the beach is unpredictable, especially on weekends. He might drive for miles and find it deserted. A car stops to give him a ride, but he waves it away and returns to his own. VOICE OVER: The Gay Sensibility VOICE OVER: The Gay Sensibility I' M SUPPOSED TO represent the “underground voice” in a program on Sensuality in the Arts. It's gone badly—two movie stars have read and posed too long, and one man has actually been hooted; I comfort myself by telling myself that he deserved it for being an asshole. The large audience, tacky, middleclass, predominantly straight, here mainly to see the movie stars, is noisy and restive. I'll be followed by a strutting harlequin of a man, who's pissed because the program is going on too long—he's right about that—and people are going to leave without hearing him. Why I agreed to be here, I suddenly don't know. I'm embarrassed, and I consider splitting. But my friends are here, and I've already been introduced. Fuck. In the first row a woman is knitting furiously. Madame DeFarge?

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  “Engineer, somewhat specialized.” His eyes locked onto Craig’s and they swam in each other’s gaze. “I pull a few hours from a hectic Silicon Valley schedule to make it to the gym with forays to the track, especially on weekends—I enjoy long, solitary runs.” Daddy smiled and Craig threw him a thumbs-up. I scowled. Just then two girls, or should I say young ladies, sauntered by. They weren’t the Playboy Bunny type, but close enough. They wore matching orange string bikinis, covering their crotches but not their butts. Not too bad for a woman. Their halter thingies covered their nipples, but just barely. Craig watched them closely, but Daddy couldn’t care less. They were gym toned, with small but well-defined biceps, a smattering of ab development, and firm thighs, and probably entered physique contests. What was going on? A freakin’ convention? A nearby body building competition? Well, I guess the well-heeled pot-bellied, bald business execs and their overweight, bejeweled wives with beehive hairdos claimed some other portion of the beach—like unto like. The Amazons looked toward us, giggled, linked arms and ran into the water. “Are we supposed to follow?” Daddy teased. “You won’t keep up with them in those balloon pants,” I snapped. “All right, wise-ass,” Daddy said, and stood. He untied his drawstring with a fluid motion. Then he teased his long Velcro fly open, reveling in the staccato crackle he orchestrated. Finally, ever so slowly, he lowered his shorts. The top of a black Speedo appeared. Next the crotch. Then his knees. “Go haole, go!” A cluster of Hawaiian teenage boys hooted and threw Daddy a shaka. He lowered his clown pants to the ground, stepped out and tossed them onto our pile of clothes. “Satisfied?” he beamed. My “Yes, Sir!” and Craig’s “Yeah!” were an impromptu offkey duet. Daddy did a half turn and faced the boys, arms akimbo. “You’re a walking gym ad,” one shouted. “Mahalo,” Daddy answered, and turned back to us. Daddy hadn’t shaved his legs—his last “appearance” didn’t require it—and his leg fur turned me on, as usual. A tuft of black hair rose from the rear of his suit, reaching for the small of his back. He kicked my leg. “Roll over,” he ordered, “it’s your turn.” “Daddiee,” I whined. “No arguments,” he said. “Do it now.” I complied. Slowly. Craig raised himself onto his elbow. “Good goddamn, he’s wearing a thong.” My entire body blushed. “What a motherfuckin’ bubblebutt,” Craig said. “And stripes! A great caning job—well spaced and even on both sides. More surprises in this little family.” Daddy swatted both my cheeks with his palms, and none too gently. “Yeouch,” I yelled, and jumped into a crouch. “I see the outlines of a butt plug,” Craig announced. “Yep,” said Daddy. “He takes a medium thong and a large butt plug. Hard to dress.” “Jesus Christ!” I pounded my fists into the blanket. “He loves the attention,” Craig hooted. “You’ve got his number,” Daddy shot back.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Looped arms and hooked thumbs into each other’s pockets. They poured wine and spooned things onto each other’s plates. The loud whack of plastic trays and the tinkle of ice, the hiss of seltzer. As they finished and squeezed by Lionel, he saw that they were about his age, twenty-four, or a little older. They smelled like tobacco and bright, vegetal things—orchids, hydrangeas. They said hey and hi and excuse me , and he stepped back to let them pass. When the kitchen was empty and everyone had settled down to eat, Lionel made his own plate of baked asparagus, brown rice, kale salad. He leaned against the flaking yellow counter and pushed the food around until it had all been drawn across and through itself. The kitchen was humid, redolent of people and their colognes, shampoos, lotions. But the open window let in a shaft of cold, clear air. The wind whistled as it caught stray openings in the screen. “Lionel!” the host called from the other room. “Lionel, what are you doing in there? Come on!” He felt silly being summoned. When he was in the doorway, the host clapped loudly in a way that made the overhead lights flicker brighter in Lionel’s vision. His teeth hurt. “There he is, there he is!” The others did not clap, which made the host’s gesture seem both pitiful and cruel. Lionel could see the full array of people who had come to the potluck. The chubby man on the floor between two chairs kept insisting that he was fine. A blond woman sat with both feet on her chair and a plate balanced on her knees. The host shared the chaise with a couple who looked like siblings, in matching black corduroy pants and gray socks. The woman had a messy topknot, and the man wore his scraggly hair down to his shoulders under a felt baseball cap. An androgynous person, tall, striking, with a platinum buzzcut and septum piercing gestured at a black woman in overalls with pierced cheeks. Some skinny gay men in Breton sweaters, one black-white, the other white-black, were flirting with an equally skinny black man wearing sunglasses. A woman in chinos sat scowling at the space between her knees. Their faces were a wall of pleasant, bland expressions, but then they sank back into their own conversations. The chatter rose above the low music. Near the defunct fireplace, over which someone had mounted a set of steer horns, Lionel squeezed into an opening on the floor next to a man in a burgundy turtleneck. The man was densely, unnecessarily muscular and looked like someone who enjoyed being looked at and could hold eye contact.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  He believed that since I’d missed out on a loving childhood I had to feel my way backward in time, to regress in order to be raised all over again by him. “An adult,” he said, “has no right to expect unqualified love, but a child does. That’s what I’m offering you: love with no strings tied.” He invariably made that mistake—“tied” not “attached.” Sometime during each session he would repeat this extraordinary assertion of his love, and each time I felt embarrassed, for I couldn’t help noticing how poorly he remembered the names of my parents and best friends and the major facts of my life. Perhaps foolishly, I thought of knowledge as a necessary if not sufficient condition for love. When I told him of my doubts about him he chastised me for being overly cerebral. “But you see,” he said, “that’s your unconscious pushing me aside because on some level you realize how much I love you. You’re afraid of intimacy. Real love would force you to discard the mother imago you’ve introjected.” Spring approached and the gold Buddha grew more resplendent as rain washed away winter smuts. Although we were hundreds of miles inland, on some days the air smelled of salt and I half expected to see a gull perching on the statue’s topknot like Maitreya, the Bodhisattva of the future. Everything quickened, even my heartbeat. The sense of smell, so long banished from out-of-doors save for a whiff of exhaust or the scent of desultory smoke unspooling from a chimney, now returned and released memories long buried in the pockets of earth’s apron. I’d cross the piazza at school and smell something earthy or rusty or a dog’s stale turd, much washed and often salted, leeched of everything except its palest quintessence. Or last autumn would rise like a revenant from a scattered pile of burned leaves long covered with snow, and behind that ghost stood one even taller, more deeply shrouded in sadness—the memory of the hollow behind the house where I’d lived and played as a child. But if all these odors awakened memories, the salt smell, suggesting nothing of my past, promised a future, a journey, and I could hear sails luffing and snapping as they were cranked up the mast until they shivered under the weight of the cold wind.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Then he wondered if he should have waited for them to seat themselves and put away their study materials. So he erased his writing, turned to them. He pulled up the PDF with the class roster and instructions and saw that he was supposed to have them sign in. But he had not gone to the departmental office to pick up the slip for them to sign. “Does anyone have . . . ?” he motioned as if to write on air, and one of the students, tallish in some sort of gray sweatsuit, ripped a sheet of paper from his notebook and held it out between two fingers. Lionel took the sheet and then, realizing he’d forgotten to bring a pen, looked up and scribbled in the air again. The same boy rolled his eyes and offered Lionel his pen. Lionel took it, wrote the name and number of the course across the top of the sheet, then drew a line down the center and wrote two column headings: name and student id #. The boy wrote his name with a scratching swiftness and handed it over his shoulder. He wrestled himself out of his sweatshirt. His hair was oily and dirty blond, and he had greasy pit stains on the T-shirt he wore underneath. He had what looked to be four-day stubble. He stretched in his chair. The paper went back and up the next row, but then one of the boys said, “Uh, this isn’t like, secure.” “What do you mean?” Lionel asked. “Our ID numbers. Like, they’re right here. I could take a pic and use them.” The boy held the sheet up and gestured at it with his pen. “Do you plan to take a picture and use them?” “No, but I could. That’s the point. This isn’t secure. This is kind of a violation of privacy.” “I see your point,” Lionel said. “But, honor system, right? Nobody steal anyone’s identity.” There was a petty, pitying kind of amusement in the room at that joke. But the boy with the security issue wasn’t pleased. He squinted down at the sheet of paper and said, “Do you mind if I don’t? Like, I don’t feel comfortable.” “Sure,” Lionel said. “Okay. Whatever you want.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  To win it, or at least to ward off their silent, sighing resentment, I’d learned how to make my own bed and cook my own breakfast. But nothing I could do seemed to make up to them for the terrible loss they’d endured. In my father’s office I worked an Addressograph machine (then something of a novelty) with Alice, a woman of forty who, like a restless sleeper tangled in sheets, tossed about all day in her fantasies. She was a chubby but pert woman who wore pearls to cover the pale line across her neck, the scar from some sort of surgical intervention. It was a very thin line, but she could never trust her disguise and ran to the mirror in the ladies’ room six or seven times a day to reevaluate the effect. The rest of her energy went into elaborating her fantasies. There was a man on the bus every morning who always stationed himself opposite her and arrogantly undressed her with his dark eyes. Upstairs from her apartment another man lurked, growling with desire, his ear pressed to the floor as he listened through an inverted glass for the glissando of a silk slip she might be stepping out of. “Should I put another lock on my door?” she’d ask. Later she’d ask with wide-eyed sweetness, “Should I invite him down for a cup of coffee?” I advised her not to; he might be dangerous. The voraciousness of her need for men made me act younger than usual; around her I took refuge in being a boy, not a man. Her speculations would cause her to sigh, drink water and return to the mirror. My stepmother said she considered this woman to be a “ninny.” My family and their friends almost never characterized people we actually knew, certainly not dismissively. I felt a gleeful shame in thinking of my colleague as a “ninny”—sometimes I’d laugh out loud when the word popped into my head. I found it both exciting and alarming to feel superior to a grown-up. Something about our work stimulated thoughts of sex in us. Our tasks (feeding envelopes into a trough, stamping them with addresses, stuffing them with brochures, later sealing them and running them through the postage meter) required just enough attention to prevent connected conversation but not so much as to absorb us. We were left with amoeboid desires that split or merged as we stacked and folded, as we tossed and turned. “When he looks at me,” Alice said, “I know he wants to hurt me.” As she said that, her sweet, chubby face looked as though it was emerging out of a cloud.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  She’d cried because she’d expected it to be awful, and it hadn’t been. But she felt embarrassed about the kiss, and she’d asked Sigrid if she could just lie there next to her, if it was all right just to be in bed together, and Sigrid had said, Of course, of course , which had felt like both an act of mercy and an act of contrition. The first time Marta met Sigrid’s friends from graduate school in a downtown bar, she was surprised by how normal they looked. They weren’t in tweed and collared shirts and chinos. They weren’t dressed like miniature professors. They wore jeans and T-shirts and baseball caps with logos from minor teams around the Midwest. They wore boots and sneakers. They spoke in the flat, clipped way she was accustomed to, and at first she fell right in with the rhythm of their conversation: the weather, the price of gas, the merits of cheap beer and free time. Marta, in her stretch-waist pants and scuffed steel-toes, felt at ease among them. She sat next to Sigrid along the bar, her arm loosely around her shoulders, Sigrid’s arm around her waist. Sometimes they’d catch each other’s eye and couldn’t stop from smiling. But at some point in the night the conversation cinched in the middle, as if someone had tightened a belt around it, so that all their focus and energy had been funneled down to a point so small Marta that could barely grasp it. Something about semiotics. Something about the nature of knowledge. It wasn’t that Marta was dumb. She had been an excellent student. In Indiana, she had topped the state exams in mathematics and science. She had been selected to represent her state in a national mathematics contest, had won a blue ribbon and a full scholarship. Yet in the bar that first night she had felt out of her depth, out and behind everyone else as they talked and raced full steam toward whatever they were arguing about. She’d stood there, her finger tucked through Sigrid’s belt loop, and Sigrid would sometimes look back at her with a smile, as if she were checking on a pet. She hated that look. Its knowing, gentle easiness. She hated it when people treated her like some kind of unwashed beast that needed a long leash and a slow walk. They fought about that look after the bar that night as Marta drove Sigrid home to the Near East Side, over by Willy Street Co-op, where Sigrid worked shifts and bought ugly produce half-off. In Sigrid’s driveway, they parked and listened to the engine click. Marta clenched the wheel because she didn’t know what else to do with her hands. Sigrid was drunk and tired, over it already. “You think I’m dumb,” she said. But Sigrid said, “Don’t put it on me, Marta. If you feel that way, it’s because you feel that way.” And Marta said, “No. It’s not me. It’s not.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  [image file=image_rsrc1YJ.jpg] Next day my step is lighter as I attempt to keep down the budding crush or whatever in hell Harley Keith has set upon me. I teach two other classes because it is Tuesday and Harley’s class is Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So I am free of him yet find myself wondering who else he is terrorizing. Does he have Wayland for English Lit? Wayland who fucks everything that moves? Or maybe Jackson, the math guy who’s married but jerks off in the teachers’ bathroom? If I start adding it up, more of the faculty is after boys than girls. I am one of many, even as I feel so apart. What I have for Harley is born of his talent for words, his genius. By the time Thursday office hours arrive, I’m a happy wreck. My cock hasn’t had such a workout since I don’t know when and there’s a fresh come rag in my office drawer. I jerk off in the shower morning and night. I could barely get it up after Carl died. It was Cody Morse who got my juices flowing again but with disastrous results. And since then there has been a determination to never again so indulge. But now I awaken hard every morning. My cock stirs at the sight of young men and when I see Harley, it fills and aims, begging me to follow. So when I am behind my desk at the appointed hour, I am already hard. And then the boy comes into the room, flushed, hair tousled, ten minutes late. “Sorry, professor,” he says. “I got caught up in a discussion with a couple of jerks and you know how that is.” I nod, amused by his easy familiarity. He settles into the chair opposite but not before I get a look at his crotch where I find what I want, the roundness of a half-hard dick. He is dressed in jeans and a light-blue polo shirt, appearing grown up even as his face looks younger than the rest. His voice is soft, hesitant, an easy baritone. Does he sing? Would he sing for me? “Now what can I help you with?” I ask. “It’s about my story,” he says as he pulls it from his backpack. He leans forward, radiating an intensity that builds like a cock rising. “Your comments and all the red. I don’t understand. I mean, I understand there are rules of composition, but this isn’t some essay, it’s life and you said that’s what you wanted. It’s real.” “And then some,” I offer which seems to puzzle him.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  When the kitchen was empty and everyone had settled down to eat, Lionel made his own plate of baked asparagus, brown rice, kale salad. He leaned against the flaking yellow counter and pushed the food around until it had all been drawn across and through itself. The kitchen was humid, redolent of people and their colognes, shampoos, lotions. But the open window let in a shaft of cold, clear air. The wind whistled as it caught stray openings in the screen. “Lionel!” the host called from the other room. “Lionel, what are you doing in there? Come on!” He felt silly being summoned. When he was in the doorway, the host clapped loudly in a way that made the overhead lights flicker brighter in Lionel’s vision. His teeth hurt. “There he is, there he is!” The others did not clap, which made the host’s gesture seem both pitiful and cruel. Lionel could see the full array of people who had come to the potluck. The chubby man on the floor between two chairs kept insisting that he was fine. A blond woman sat with both feet on her chair and a plate balanced on her knees. The host shared the chaise with a couple who looked like siblings, in matching black corduroy pants and gray socks. The woman had a messy topknot, and the man wore his scraggly hair down to his shoulders under a felt baseball cap. An androgynous person, tall, striking, with a platinum buzzcut and septum piercing gestured at a black woman in overalls with pierced cheeks. Some skinny gay men in Breton sweaters, one black-white, the other white-black, were flirting with an equally skinny black man wearing sunglasses. A woman in chinos sat scowling at the space between her knees. Their faces were a wall of pleasant, bland expressions, but then they sank back into their own conversations. The chatter rose above the low music. Near the defunct fireplace, over which someone had mounted a set of steer horns, Lionel squeezed into an opening on the floor next to a man in a burgundy turtleneck. The man was densely, unnecessarily muscular and looked like someone who enjoyed being looked at and could hold eye contact.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Lionel ran water into a plastic cup. The sink was too full for him to want to actually help out. He’d lost his nerve or his charitable impulse or both. “She’s something else,” Charles said. Lionel was about to ask why Charles had followed him into the kitchen and why he was standing so close, when the host rounded the corner. He was a little surprised to see the two of them there, it was obvious, but he recovered like a cat shifting its weight mid-fall, and he reached around Charles to pull the fridge open. “You boys want some wine?” “None for me,” Charles said, drawing his fingers cross his neck in prohibition. “I’ll have some,” Lionel said. The host pulled a bottle of rosé from the fridge, then reached down by Lionel, right in front of his crotch, and pulled a drawer open. He extracted a pair of kitchen shears and winked at Lionel before he pushed the drawer shut, his thumb tracing the outline of Lionel’s dick. Lionel jumped at the contact though it was brief. It felt somehow like a threat. Or a promise. The host snipped the cage over the cork and pulled it free with a pop that made Lionel’s mouth water. He could almost taste the wine in the sound. Charles stood back chewing his fish and watching as the host made a big production of pouring Lionel a glass and handing it to him. “Cheers,” the host said. “Cheers.” “Are you going to congratulate me?” “Sure. Congratulations. On what?” “I’m defending right before break,” he said. “I’m a free man.” “That would explain the potluck,” Lionel said. The host nodded as he poured his wine into a mason jar. They toasted. “Congratulations. You deserve it.” The host smiled. His teeth were very white and straight in a way that suggested that they had also been very expensive. The wine was good, though there was something metallic to it. Then again, Lionel didn’t know what constituted good wine. His face felt hot, though the wine was cold and crisp. He was a little embarrassed for the host, at how deep his need was and how clearly he displayed it. Lionel felt that in that position, he wouldn’t have been so needy. If he were that lucky, if he were that fortunate, he would have played it cool. He would have worn his success easy. But when you won, you got to decide how you celebrated. And everyone else had to accept it, otherwise they were sore losers. His doctors had tried to help him get out of the habit of basing his self-image on things like success and what other people thought of him. They had tried to help him develop a robust sense of self-value. But in the host’s kitchen, he felt that old ego peek its head above the water and glare in judgment. “You hitting the job market?”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “I’ll have some,” Lionel said. The host pulled a bottle of rosé from the fridge, then reached down by Lionel, right in front of his crotch, and pulled a drawer open. He extracted a pair of kitchen shears and winked at Lionel before he pushed the drawer shut, his thumb tracing the outline of Lionel’s dick. Lionel jumped at the contact though it was brief. It felt somehow like a threat. Or a promise. The host snipped the cage over the cork and pulled it free with a pop that made Lionel’s mouth water. He could almost taste the wine in the sound. Charles stood back chewing his fish and watching as the host made a big production of pouring Lionel a glass and handing it to him. “Cheers,” the host said. “Cheers.” “Are you going to congratulate me?” “Sure. Congratulations. On what?” “I’m defending right before break,” he said. “I’m a free man.” “That would explain the potluck,” Lionel said. The host nodded as he poured his wine into a mason jar. They toasted. “Congratulations. You deserve it.” The host smiled. His teeth were very white and straight in a way that suggested that they had also been very expensive. The wine was good, though there was something metallic to it. Then again, Lionel didn’t know what constituted good wine. His face felt hot, though the wine was cold and crisp. He was a little embarrassed for the host, at how deep his need was and how clearly he displayed it. Lionel felt that in that position, he wouldn’t have been so needy. If he were that lucky, if he were that fortunate, he would have played it cool. He would have worn his success easy. But when you won, you got to decide how you celebrated. And everyone else had to accept it, otherwise they were sore losers. His doctors had tried to help him get out of the habit of basing his self-image on things like success and what other people thought of him. They had tried to help him develop a robust sense of self-value. But in the host’s kitchen, he felt that old ego peek its head above the water and glare in judgment. “You hitting the job market?” Charles asked. His voice cleaved through the kitchen, and Lionel regained some sense of equilibrium. “Yeah,” the host said, “I got a couple interviews.”

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Jim flexes back, but he's becoming increasingly uncomfortable with this scene. Is this all the man wants—the two posing for each other, here? The man keeps shifting from one pose to another, each time waiting for Jim to follow. But now Jim feels silly. Still, identifying narcissistically with the man, he doesn't want to walk away too fast and leave him flexing in the bushes in the middle of the night! But just this, exciting as it was as a short preliminary, is not enough for Jim; he has to break it. Slowly he moves out. He puts on his vest, walks away from the strange charade. The helicopter is gone. The hunters who fled return, recharged. The bar has closed. Men wander in the dark, lean against vans, walls, stand before open car windows. The odor of amyl nitrite perfumes the night with sex. Jim moves to a lighted corner. Several men pass by. All ignore each other pointedly, defensively. Two men drive by. “Wanna come to an orgy?” one calls out to Jim. “Uh—just tell me where.” The man tells him the address. The two drive off, stop before another idling man: “Wanna come to an orgy?” Jim returns into the misty darkness of the lots. 2:17 A.M. The Garage on Oak Street. In minutes the area outside the costume bars is deserted. Now the hunt will transfer to the sidewalks, the streets, and the garage near a jammed afterhours club. The quiet street is filled with cars—parking, driving. Men cruise the long blocks under tall trees. Stepping over the crushed barbed wire at its sides, figures are moving steadily to the back of the abandoned garage. FLASHBACK: The Garage. A Year Ago. The inside of the garage was the size of a large living room. Parched, cold cement for a floor. Walls crumbling into dusty patches. Its large sliding tin door was chained. One side door leading in was ripped open. When you entered, you saw nothing, heard only muffled sounds; you smelled amyl. Then your outlaw eyes adjusted; you saw tangled figures throughout. At times the bodies spilled out into the back, fusing outside among the dead brush. Jim had just walked out of the garage; countless mouths and hands touched, grasped, and licked bodies in the dark. Only minutes later—safe by his car across the street—he looked back and saw the area of the garage ablaze in white lights; he heard even from this distance the chilling words: “Vice officers! Everybody stay where you are!” He saw outlaws running—some made it, some didn't, and those who didn't were thrust violently onto the sidewalk, faces pressed hard against the dirt, cops anxious to grope and mount in violence the bodies they dare not touch in sex. “Fucking goddam queers!” the threatened, desperate invaders roared. They lined the bloodied outlaws before the garage. Handcuffs clanged. Jim felt the mixture of pain and rage.