Joy

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 78 of 299 · 20 per page

• From Escape (2007)

  Dan arranged to have some of his family and friends who were coming on the trip take turns driving my family. That made it much easier on me. He even had someone to help me with Harrison. Dan’s continual kindness to me was miraculous. When we got to San Diego we had two rooms in a hotel that was down the beach from Dan’s home. The kitchenette was stocked with food, so I wouldn’t have to shop. One of the rooms had a sliding glass door that opened directly onto the beach. The moment we awakened, we put on our swimsuits and my kids raced through the soft sand to splash and play at the water’s edge. Merrilee and Bryson ran up and down the beach chasing sea gulls. They were still at that wondrous age when they believed that if they just ran a little faster they could wrap their arms around a big bird. Bryson was almost two. He couldn’t talk a lot, but one of the words he said very well was ducks. He toddled up and down the beach on his chubby legs, waving his arms and shouting, “Ducks, ducks, ducks.” Merrilee was busy building princess sand castles. She was just about to turn six and princesses were her new discovery. The week we escaped she watched a Cinderella video for the first time. Merrilee watched it so many times that the tape finally broke. Everything in her life now revolved around being a princess. Patrick and Andrew used their imaginations to build forts out of sand and play games on the beach. They were still scared of the water because in the FLDS you are not allowed to go near it. None of my children knew how to swim, so they’d only wade up to their knees. I spent three relaxing days with my children on the beach and at the hotel. At night I’d go up to Dan and Leenie’s beach house to be with the adults. It was wonderful to be able to drink wine, laugh, eat, and talk. I hadn’t socialized like that before. Dan and Leenie brought a lot of their married children along on the trip, so their beach house was happy, noisy, and fun. Arthur, who was fifteen, and LuAnne, who was eleven, spent most of their time there with the older children. These were the most carefree days of childhood they’d ever had. I had never known this kind of happiness was possible. I Meet the Attorney General Shortly after we returned from San Diego, Merrilee turned six and we had a princess birthday party for her. It was the first party she had ever had in her life.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  He turns off the water. And what was found? What was searched for? Depression knots tightly at the center of his being. He stands naked before the mirror. The joy returns. Without looking out the window at the dawn, he pulls the drapes against it. He lies naked on the white sheets. His hand cups his cock. Saturday 10:08 A.M. The Apartment The Gym. H E WOKE CHARGED with energy from last night's hunt. He has breakfast—several eggs mixed with milk, honey, and protein powder; all-grain bread with butter; and—his one indulgence to “trash food”—coffee. He takes a fistful of vitamins. Ordinarily he doesn't work out on Saturdays, but kinetic power demands it today. He'll pump his arms. He inclines a long board on the back of a weighted chair. He grabs a loaded dumbbell. Propping his upper arm and elbow on the decline, he curls the dumbbell with careful slowness, feeling the resistance. One arm, then the other. One set each. Another. Two sets. Four, five. Seven sets. Exhaling in audible bursts, filling his lungs with oxygen, he forces more, low sets. One more repetition. And one more. Just… one … more. He inspects himself in the mirror. He's ready. Outside, the sun is white over shaggy palmtrees. 11:05 A.M. Greenstone Park. He chooses Greenstone Park for the first few minutes of sunning. Relatively subdued in the afternoon—at times completely placid—it is still always potentially a sexual arena. On the open spoon of grass next to the parking area, a few subdued exiles have gathered to sun in trunks. Jim doesn't join them. He walks under the concrete grotto and onto the path. So different in the daylight. Sun penetrates the trees in warm patches. Choosing one just large enough to contain his body, he lies on the beach mat, thermos filled with protein beside him, and strips to tiny trunks, almost a posing strap. Minutes pass under the tanning sun. Half an hour. He's glad for the isolation, himself and the sexual sun. Footsteps. Jim opens his eyes narrowly. A hunter is staring at him. Jim stretches his body. “You've got a beautiful body,” the man says. Jim feels the outlaw excitement stir. “I've seen you hustling on Selma, I've got some money, I don't live far,” the man invites. Just that was enough for now. “Sorry, man, I'm in a hurry today. Another time, okay?” Jim tells the man. The admiration, the offer of sexmoney—newly charged, Jim drinks from the thermos jar. For moments more he lies luxuriating in the hot sun and the awareness of his own body. 12:23 P.M. Griffith Park. Griffith Park is the capital of the sexual underground. Sprawling, all alcoves, grottos, paths, glens, branch-formed “caves,” craggy inclines. Miles of sexhunting along declining paths, hills to the sides of the road.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  And then it began. Oh, yeah! The fuck of my life. Craig knelt and pushed his way into me. I took all of his long dick and he flopped onto my back, his arms on either side of me, push-up style. He grunted as Daddy entered him slowly, pulled back slightly, pushed in a bit more, pulled back again and then with a mighty shove made it all the way in. Craig yelped. Daddy must’ve plopped onto Craig’s back, ’cause Craig felt heavier. Daddy started a slow pump, Craig followed, and I inched forward. I couldn’t decide if I should brace myself or go with the flow. I relaxed and went where two sweaty, grunting hunks propelled me, which was into the pillow. I grabbed the headboard and pushed back and forced Craig’s dick deeper into me, which had a chain reaction effect on Daddy’s dick. “Ride ’em, cowboy!” Craig hooted. “Fuck me, Sirs, oh, yeah, fuck this boy good, real good!” I screamed. “You got it, boy!” Daddy answered and threw his weight into Craig. “Oh shit, I’m coming,” Craig howled. “I’m gonna fill your boy up.” “I’m with you!” Daddy bayed. “Yeah, dump your load in me, big Daddy!” Craig answered with a final thrust. I swear I could feel his condom swelling in me. He collapsed onto my back, panting, and our perspiration joined into a slippery puddle—which only made him slide farther along my back with Daddy’s final heave. “Jesus!” Daddy bellowed. He paused, pulled out with a pop and collapsed onto his back. Craig followed. The two men lay side by side, perpendicular to me, breathing hard. I turned and lay facedown next to them, sweaty and sore, and reveled in my bliss. Daddy got up and brought us each a bottle of fresh water. We gulped in contented silence. “Your boy hasn’t come yet,” Craig announced. Daddy retrieved a key and handed it to Craig. We both stood, me stock-still. Craig knelt in front of me, finally figured out my cage’s lock and clasp arrangement, fumbled with the lock and unfastened the strap that circumscribed my cock and balls. Then he slowly, ever so carefully pulled the cage off. Daddy watched the entire process. His smile broadened and he pleasured himself as Craig completed each step. Craig threw the cage onto the bed, put his hands around my hips and drew me into his mouth—not with a slow, deliberate, teasing motion, but rapidly, greedily, insistently. No complaints from me. And this was the best way yet to view those shoulders and biceps. I grabbed the back of his head. Daddy straddled Craig’s ass and latched on to my nipples, knowing only too well what I needed, what I craved. Craig laved my dickhead and shaft with copious spit, in, out, in, out, and Daddy matched Craig’s motions with tit pinching and pulling. It didn’t take long.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  They were cranky on the drive home, and mean, waspish to each other. They sniped and fought and insulted each other, until Marta pulled them over into a roadside motel, where the sheets were scratchy and hard. And she pushed Sigrid onto the bed and pulled her pants off. She pressed her face between Sigrid’s legs and kissed her against the outside of her panties. Sigrid was warm. She smelled like the field. After that, it was easygoing. They drove with the soft, blurry focus of people in love. Sigrid, who had gotten sunburned on the last day, drowsed. Marta played a Billie Holiday song and hummed along as they moved downward through the state. The trees gave way, turning steadily into flat fields drenched in yellow and green. The air grew thicker, heavier. And then, eventually, they were back. • • • ONE EVENING IN THE FALL, Marta returned home to find Peter on her doorstep. He was tan and had filled out. He looked like a high-definition version of himself. He stood up the moment he saw her car. And, as she got out of it, he walked over to her. “Marta, it’s been a while,” he said. “A year,” she said, leaning against her car door. “How long have you been here?” “Here, as in the country, or here, as in town, or here, as in on your doorstep?” “All three, I guess,” she said. “I got in yesterday,” he said. “I came over a little while ago to see if you’d be here. But then I decided to wait.” She almost asked him what he was waiting for, but she didn’t. She almost asked him inside, but she didn’t. Peter seemed to be waiting for that, didn’t know what to do without the offer. “Can we sit down somewhere?” he asked, looking back toward the house. “The place is a mess,” she said. “Let’s just sit in my car.” “All right, then,” he said, and they got inside. Marta rested her hands on the wheel out of habit, stared directly ahead. Peter squirmed in the passenger seat. He had always driven when they were together. “This is funny, being in here again,” he said. “It is,” Marta offered. “Well, what’s on your mind?” “Oh, well. That’s a great question, a real great question.” He was fiddling with the center console. He lifted it, stared into its maw of papers and pill bottles, then dropped it shut. “I guess you’re wondering why I’m back.” “The thought did cross my mind,” she said. “My mother’s dying,” he said. “I came back to see her, and, well. I wanted to see you, too. I miss you.” Marta clenched, both from the news that Peter’s mother was ill and from the fact that he missed her. Peter’s mother, Irina, had always been so kind to Marta. She was well into her eighties, but she had the spry energy of a seventy-year-old.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Jones and her daughters, Rhonda and Jamison, were stacking up Sloppy Joe sandwiches on silver platters. Mrs. Jones was also the Osners’ laundress, spending every Thursday at their house, washing and ironing the Osners’ clothes, their bed linens. At the end of the day Natalie’s blouses, every one perfect, would be lined up on hangers in her closet. Never any last-minute ironing with the ironing board set up in the Osners’ kitchen, the way it was at Miri’s, so that when you put on your blouse it was still warm. Mrs. Jones ironed their pillowcases, the tops of their sheets and Suzanne once told Miri that Mrs. Jones ironed their towels, but Miri hadn’t believed her. “Why would anyone iron towels?” “I don’t know, but she irons Natalie’s dungarees, too. You can see the creases. And Corinne’s underwear. I’ve seen her ironing Corinne’s slips and nightgowns.” Sometimes, when Miri was ironing one of her Ship ’n Shore blouses she pretended she was a laundress, like Mrs. Jones. But the one time she’d tried to iron a bra it had melted into nothing. Poof, and her pretty blue nylon bra was gone forever. Miri and Natalie joined the singers around the piano. When someone called out the name of a song, Dr. O didn’t hesitate. He moved right into it. For the first time every song spoke directly to Miri. He dances overhead, on the ceiling near my bed. Yes, she thought. One day you’re a regular girl, two weeks later, you’re someone in love—and wasn’t that also the title of a song? When Rusty and Tewky came to the piano, Miri stopped singing. Rusty knew every word of every song and sang them too loud, smiling at Tewky, enjoying herself. Not that Rusty didn’t sing in her room, or when she was in the bathtub, but out in public? This was something new to Miri, and she found it embarrassing. By then the dining room table was laden with platters. Not just the Sloppy Joe sandwiches, but a chafing dish of spicy meatballs in sauce, brisket sliced as thin as paper with white horseradish, cucumber salad, potato salad and pickles. There were trays of cookies and tarts. And rugeleh from the Jewish bakery. Fern ran around the table in circles, like a small, badly behaved dog, and if not exactly barking and snapping at people’s ankles, then close to it. Mrs. Barnes tried to catch her but Fern was too fast. After the buffet supper the guests headed downstairs to the finished basement, where she and Mason had first danced together. She wished he could see it tonight, with gold and silver half-moons and stars hanging from the ceiling. At the bar, bottles of Champagne sat on ice waiting for midnight toasts. And the music—instead of Nat King Cole singing “Nature Boy,” the jukebox was filled with dance music for Corinne and Dr. O’s crowd—the samba, the rhumba and the newest craze, the mambo.

• From Escape (2007)

  Even though birthday celebrations were practically taboo in the FLDS, over the years I’d given my children small presents on the sly. When my older children—Arthur, Betty, and LuAnne—were young, I was able to get away with making them a birthday cake. But none of my kids had ever had a genuine birthday party that celebrated their being who they are. As the cult became more extremist, anything that even hinted at making someone feel special on his or her birthday became strictly off-limits. Even compliments were banned. Warren Jeffs taught that it was unacceptable to acknowledge compliments. A person had to rebuff the praise or say something like, “It’s all because of my priesthood head.” Dan’s wife, Leenie, had the same birthday as Merrilee, so the celebration was even more of a bash because it was for both of them. Their house was decorated with balloons and streamers. There were tables full of food and piles of presents. Jolene had found a princess gown among her children’s Halloween costumes. Merrilee was ecstatic. This was unimaginable joy for her, and for my other children, too. We all sang “Happy Birthday” before the candles were lit. One side of the white cake with pink frosting had candles for Leenie, the other for Merrilee. My daughter was radiant and opened her presents in amazement. My children had never been in toy stores. The younger ones had been so stripped of worldly things such as dolls and stuffed animals that these presents were unbelievable not only because of what they were but also because Merrilee knew they were for her. This was an unforgettable moment for me. My daughter was happy. Every adult in that room cherished her. I had never been able to experience what would be an ordinary joy to most families: a six-year-old’s birthday party with family and friends. Laughter, singing, and silliness washed over me like a stream of love. I could simply enjoy watching my dear little girl get to be a fairy-tale princess. I was free to be happy. I could do things for and with my children that I’d never been allowed to do before in their lives. Merril was furious when he learned about Merrilee’s birthday party from Betty. He was unhappy because he did not have the power to prevent me from taking the children to San Diego. It was remarkable, though, to feel how much space opened up inside me when I didn’t have to fear Merril’s punishment anymore. I was so accustomed to being afraid that I had no way of gauging how much of me that fear consumed. For the first time in my life I could put my children to bed at night and know they were safe. No one could wake them up and make them go upstairs for prayers and then abuse them. I could feed them breakfast in the morning and not worry that later, when my back was turned, someone would punish them for eating.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  There do I abide with the innocent babes, bitten by the fangs of death, ere they were exempt from human sin. There dwell I with those who clad them not with the three holy virtues, and without offence knew the others and followed them all. But if thou knowest and canst, give us some sign whereby we may most quickly come there where Purgatory has right beginning.” He answered: “No fixed place is set for us: ’tis permitted to me to go up and around; so far as I may go, as guide I place me beside thee. But see now how the day is declining, and ascend by night we cannot; therefore ’tis well to think of some fair resting-place. Here are souls on the right apart; if thou allow it I will lead thee to them, and not without joy will they be known to thee.” “How is that?” was answered; “he who wished to ascend by night, would he be hindered by others, or would he not ascend because he could not?” And the good Sordello drew his finger across the ground, saying: “Look, even this line thou wouldst not cross after the sun is set; not for that aught else than the darkness of night gave hindrance to going upward: that hampers the will with lack of power. 3 Truly by night one might return downwards, and walk, wandering around the mountain side, while the horizon holds the day closed.” Then my Lord, as tho’ marvelling, said: “Lead us therefore where thou sayest we may have delight in tarrying.” Short way had we thence advanced, when I perceived that the mount was scooped out, after the fashion that valleys scoop them out here. “There,” said the shade, “we will go where the mountain-side makes of itself a bosom, and there will await the new day.” Neither steep nor level was a winding path, that led us to the side of that hollow, there where the valley’s edge more than half dies away. Gold and fine silver, cramoisy and white, Indian wood bright and clear, fresh emerald at the moment it is split, would each be surpassed in colour by the grass and by the flowers placed within that fold, as the less is surpassed by the greater. Not only had Nature painted there, but of the sweetness of a thousand scents made there one, unknown and indefinable. There, seated on the grass and on the flowers, singing Salve Regina, 4 saw I souls who because of the valley were not seen from without. “Ere the little sun now sinks to his nest,” began the Mantuan who had led us aside, “desire not that I guide you among them. From this terrace ye will better know the acts and faces of them all, than if received among them down in the hollow.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  6 Then ordered in the M 7 of the fifth word they stayed, so that Jove seemed silver in that place, pricked out with gold; and I saw descending other lights where was the M’s peak, and there still them; singing, I take it, the good that moveth them unto himself. Then, as at the smiting of burnt brands there rise innumerable sparks, wherefrom the foolish ones use to draw augury, 8 meseemed there rose thence more than thousand lights, and mounted some much, some little, even as the sun which kindleth them, ordained them; and when each one had stilled it in its place, an eagle’s head and neck I saw presented by that pricked-out fire. He who there painteth hath not one to guide him, but he himself doth guide, and from him cometh to the mind that power which is

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  Tag hung ten easy. Eyes closed I knew that. I felt his soft dick hardening in my mouth. I worked my lips around the velvet head, almost afraid to open my eyes, for fear I’d wake up and he’d be no more than an early morning piss-hard dream vanishing in the late-summer dawn. But his dick gelling from soft to hard in my mouth, the taste and smell of him—hey, I knew the real thing. So I opened my eyes, and, shit! It wasn’t Taggart at all! Well, it was, but it wasn’t the Taggart I thought. It was, I swear to god, the other Taggart! It was his dad, who had been a big stud at sixteen, had fathered Young Tag at seventeen and was still married to his wife, Verna Taggart. They all ran Camp Gitchygoomee with Verna knowing everything, especially bookwork and her place. The night before, we had celebrated Big Tag’s thirty-sixth birthday, telling him the truth that he didn’t look a day over twenty-six. You get the picture. He was the coach, the daddy, the husband, the stud. The Taggarts, father and son, were a special breed of the biggest cocks I ever saw. So I looked real surprised, and twice as pleased, when I opened my eyes and found Big Tag threading my throat. I’d worshipped Big Tag from afar all summer: him swimming naked in the pool, endless laps of backstroke with his long cock cutting the water, sluicing its own wake; him, in Fort Cobb, which is what we called the main toilet, flipping his big dick over the gray sheet-metal piss trough; him groping himself in his nylon shorts around the evening campfire. I saw where Young Tag, who no one ever dared call Little Tag, got his size and I knew why Verna hung around her men smiling no matter what went on. Between his thighs, Big Tag sported a real handsome piece of blue-veined meat. I’m talking twelve inches of blond cock, maybe nine inches circumference, which I think is about the exact circumference of my mouth stretched open to its widest cocksucking ring, just wide enough, I could tell, for the mushroom head, when he pulled it out of my mouth and with both fists waved it back and forth across my face, flushed that juicy hot purple peculiar to blond cocks. He smiled and said, “This is your wake-up call, Sonny.” I remember everything exactly. “Are you surprised?” I grinned like the cocksucker I’ve always been and shook my head no and stretched my tongue for his lubing piss slit. “Are you disappointed?” I snorted one of those you-gotta-be-kidding laughs and he drove the head of his cock right straight through my smile and laid pipe down my throat.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  If she’d finished her homework she might be watching TV at Irene’s with Rusty and Ben Sapphire, who sometimes slept over on Irene’s couch. Miri would leave the door between her house and Irene’s open so she could hear the phone. When it rang she’d run up the stairs, pick up the phone and drag it by its long knotted cord under the bathroom door, locking it behind her. Then she’d sit on the edge of the tub in the dark, smelling Rusty’s bath salts—lavender, citrus, musk—listening to Mason’s breaths and her own, until she could feel him breathing into her ear right through the phone. After they’d said goodnight, she’d turn on the bathroom light and look at herself in the mirror on the medicine chest. Her face was always pink and warm. She’d splash it with water to take away the blush. Then she’d flush the toilet for no reason except to announce she’d finished in case anyone was interested, return the phone to the hall table and run down the stairs to catch the rest of whatever TV show they’d been watching. Irene wouldn’t say anything. Neither would Rusty. But Miri was sure they’d had plenty to say while she was gone, unless it was Wednesday and they’d been watching Kraft Television Theatre. Then they wouldn’t have talked at all except during commercials. —EVERY OTHER SUNDAY NIGHT Miri and Suzanne babysat for the Fosters, seven-year-old Penny and four-year-old Betsy. Mr. Foster managed an appliance shop on Route 22 and Saturdays left him too tired to go out. It was okay with Rusty and Suzanne’s mother as long as they had their homework finished and were home by ten-thirty. The girls liked it because it left them free on Saturday nights. Mrs. Foster had an impressive collection of hand-knit cardigan sweaters to wear over crisp white shirts, and this night her cardigan was in a cobalt blue and had brass buttons. She wore the same shoes every time they babysat, black pumps with medium heels. She was usually easygoing but tonight she went over everything with Miri and Suzanne two or three times before leaving, while Mr. Foster, annoyed, checked his watch. She handed them lists with numbers of who to call in an emergency, including the Branford Theatre in Newark, where Bright Victory was playing, and the Weequahic Diner, where they always stopped for supper after the movie. Mrs. Foster felt more secure knowing Suzanne’s mother was a nurse. And she liked having two of them babysit, not just because she got two for the price of one. She said it was a comfort to her. “Let’s go, Jo!” Mr. Foster called. Penny and Betsy loved that. “Let’s go, Jo!” they squealed. Mrs. Foster didn’t find that funny. “I’ll be right there, Monty.” “I’ll be right there, Monty,” the little girls sang, mimicking their mother. “Stop that right now,” Mrs. Foster told them. And this time they did. “Suzanne and Miri have heard the spiel before,” Mr.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  I held him in my mouth as that magnificent hard-on slowly softened. Giving the slit a final lick, I sat up beside him. His arm was across his eyes; my worst fears were realized. He was repulsed by shame and fear: shame at flaunting convention; fear of deviant longings. Ignoring my own painful erection, I moved back to my own bag. “Danny…uh, Daniel?” A hand caught my arm. I paused. “Yeah, kid?” “Can I try it? I mean, I won’t do it good like you did, but can I try?” “You want to suck me?” I asked, a smile lifting the corners of my mouth. “Blow job. They call it a blow job, don’t they?” He peeked out from beneath his arm. I laughed aloud. “You bet they do! And don’t worry about doing a good job. Touch me with those handsome lips, and I’ll cum all over everything.” He pushed me on my back and hovered over me. Timidly, he tongued a nipple. I shivered in delight. After giving attention to the other one, he laid his head on my chest. “You did this with him, didn’t you?” “Him? You mean Beet?” I considered lying, but this wasn’t the time for it. “Yeah. How did you guess?” “You said his name.” I laughed again. “I had a mouth full of cock at the time, how could you tell?” He shrugged against my chest, sending goose bumps down my frame. “I just could.” I pulled him up to me. “Yeah, I did. I called to him. I had a ghost to lay away, Markey. And do you know what? He approves.” “He does? He approves me?” “Absolutely, you handsome fucker.” “Can I try it now? I’ll probably gag a lot, will that turn you off?” “Gag all you want, my friend—” “Lover,” he interrupted me. “We went way beyond being friends tonight. I’m your lover now.” Amazed at the confidence in his young voice, I tousled his hair. “Lover. I like the sound of that.” “Mmm,” he answered, slipping his lips over my leaking dick. He gagged, tried again and did better the second time. Then he came up and looked at me. “Did you do the other thing, too? You know, doing it to each other?” “Yeah, we did,” I answered, shoving his head down on me. There was some more sucking and gagging. He came up again. “Are we going to do that, too?” “You bet your good-looking ass!” I said. “But first you gotta finish this.” “Okay,” he said with a grin and went back to work. I’ve always had good orgasms, and those with Beet Borak were earth shaking. The first one with Marcus Markey didn’t quite rise to that level, but it would only get better. Even as I exploded, and he valiantly struggled to take everything I could deliver, I fantasized about that other thing he was anxious to try. DADDIES IN DAMIAN Gavin Atlas

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  “Eight, please,” Daddy requested. No one moved. Craig jostled his way to the floor panel, pushed the requisite button, squared his shoulders—and his towel slid to the floor. A gasp. A chuckle. Craig flexed his back muscles, reached to retrieve the towel and draped it over his shoulders. More than one woman stared at his crotch when he turned. We arrived at eight and scuttled into the hallway. A man started to disembark before a shrill voice stopped him: “No dear, let’s go to nine and walk down.” We clomped into our room and cracked up. Daddy stepped out of his board shorts, I grabbed Craig’s towel and then hopped out of my shorts before hanging them in the bathroom to dry. “Beer?” Daddy asked Craig. “Goes through me so fast I’ll have to pee straightaway.” “It’s okay, boy will take care of you,” Daddy replied as he glanced my way. I raised one eyebrow as I fetched a diet soda. “Bottoms up!” Daddy toasted. Both men looked at me. I lowered my head to hide my smile. Overeagerness can be a bottom’s bane. Daddy spread a large white fluffy towel on the couch and perched. I sat next to him while Craig sneered at a piss elegant wing chair and sprawled on the rug. “So, Jim. How did you get into this boy business?” I put my soda down and snuggled closer to Daddy. “I grew up in New England. Went to school in Boston. Majored in physics. I enjoyed mechanics and thermo a lot, so I stayed an extra year and took a double major in M.E.—mechanical engineering, that is.” Craig raised his eyebrows. “I knew you were one smart guy.” “Yeah, thanks.” “And sexy as hell to boot,” Craig added, as he stroked himself. I mimicked his stroking motions and continued. “With that background I didn’t have any trouble landing a job in the aerospace industry, so, like Daddy, I came west.” Craig focused on my collar. “Yeah, well, I went the straight route in high school, discovered guys in college, or, should I say, to be politically correct, explored my sexuality.” We all laughed. “Some interesting fags are to be found in frat houses. And, surreptitiously, gay porn. I saw one of Daddy’s flicks. His scenes were fodder for many of my JO sessions. I decided to track him down after I graduated.” “How the hell did you do that?” Craig asked. “After passing courses in advanced math and relativistic quantum mechanics, it was no sweat. I just sent a fan letter to one of the companies he worked for. With a few pictures thrown in.” We all laughed. “And the rest is history,” Daddy concluded. “I’ll drink to that,” Craig said as he downed the rest of his beer. Daddy and I followed suit. “Let’s watch the sunset.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Lionel ran through what Sophie had said and done since coming to sit next to him, trying to find the subtext. But he found nothing. Just the jangle of her voice, and the warmth of her body next to his under the blanket. Her hand was on his wrist, and then it slid down until her palm cupped his. Her hands were cold, lightly callused, but strong. She flexed her fingers through his and looked at him directly. Lionel wanted to pull his hand away, but he did not. “People are hard,” he said. “Spoken like a true introvert.” “If I were a real introvert, I would have stayed home. Which would have been the wiser choice.” “I think you really believe that,” she said in open awe. “You must really be afraid of yourself.” Lionel shivered. He did pull his hand away from Sophie. But it was just as well, because Charles had jerked the blanket from their legs and whirled it around his shoulders like a shawl. “Some of us are freezing our nuts off out here,” Charles said to them. “I tried to get you to sit with us,” Sophie said. “I didn’t want to,” Charles pouted. Sophie made a condescending sound in the back of her throat, moaning in exaggerated sympathy. Charles stuck his bottom lip out. “Sure you didn’t,” Sophie said, no longer mocking him. Charles stopped pouting, too, and there was a taut silence between them. “I’d leave it alone if I were you,” he said. “Get real.” “Sophie,” Charles barked. His eyes flashed, and his shoulders opened slightly. Out in the yard, the people had begun to leap and clap and shout. The host stood up, leaned out over the banister, and hollered. The snow was falling fully then. And everyone was howling. Charles put his head back and belted out a forceful, vibrating call. Lionel watched the muscles in his neck bulge. His skin reddened. He was the last to stop. Lionel felt soaked through with his sound. He could still hear it when they all went back inside, out of the cold. • • • Lionel said good-bye to everyone in the front hall. The host embraced him for a long time, slid his hands up Lionel’s shirt, and said, “I want you to stay.” “Next time,” Lionel whispered back. He gave Sophie a short squeeze. They exchanged numbers and promised to text or call for lunch in the next few days. Charles gripped his hand very hard and pulled him in close. “See you around, Lionel,” he said. “Good-bye, Charlie ,” Lionel whispered into Charles’s ear, surprising them both. Pleasantly buzzed, Lionel decided to walk home. The last bus was long gone, anyway, and the distance wasn’t terrible. He’d had only a couple of puffs on the joint and the one glass of wine.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I was so happy alone and in the woods, away from the dangers posed by other people. At first I wanted to tell someone else how happy I was; I needed a witness. But as the great day revolved slowly above me, as the scarlet tanager flew overhead on his black wings to the distant high trees, as an owl, hidden and remote, sounded a hoot as melancholy as winter, as the leaves, ruffled by the wind, tossed the sun about as though they were princesses at play with a golden ball, as the smell of sweet clover, of bruised sassasfras leaves, of the mulch of last year’s duff flowed over me, as I crushed the hot, sweet blueberries between my teeth and then chewed on an astringent needle from a balsam, as I sensed the descent of the sun and the slow decline of summer—oh, I was free and whole, safe from everyone, as happy as with my books. For I could thrive in the expressive, inhuman realm of nature or the expressive, human realm of books—both worlds so exalted, so guileless—but I felt imperiled by the hidden designs other people were drawing around me. The tender white bells of the flower by the rotting stump, the throbbing distillation of blue in the fringed gentian, the small, bright-green cone of the Scots pine—these were confidences nature placed in me, wordless but as trusting as a dog’s eyes. Or the pure, always comprehensible and sharply delineated thoughts and emotions of characters in fiction—these, too, were signs I could read, as one might read a marionette’s face. But the vague menace of Ralph with his increasingly haggard face, this boy at once pitiable and dangerous, who had already been caught twice this summer attempting to “hypnotize” younger campers and was now in danger of expulsion, who studied me at meals not with curiosity, much less with sympathy, but with crude speculation (Can I get him to do it? Can he relieve me?)—this menace was becoming more and more intense.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  When they spoke on the phone at lunch or after dinner, Marta listened to Sigrid’s smooth, warm voice as she explained why it was so important that she had found a re-creation of a re-creation of a re-creation of some middle passage from a diary of some shepherdess in Scotland. “That sounds great,” Marta would say, eating her sandwich on the grassy hill behind the plant. She could see the town, its gray, scraggly mass spread thin. It was cold in those early days, but she wanted to be alone to talk to Sigrid without being overheard. She hadn’t told anyone about dating women. She hadn’t wanted to explain herself to anyone—not to her roommate, Katie, not to the boys at the plant, not to any of the other faceless people who made up her life. Marta felt for the first time in a long time that she had an inner self she didn’t owe to anyone. Before, with Peter, living had always felt like a constant mingling of the outside and the inside, and people had worn her out just as a matter of course in the act of living, but Sigrid, in the quiet, small time they had spent together, allowed her, for a moment or two at least, to pretend she could be her own person in her own way. Even if she did not understand what Sigrid was talking about most of the time. Marta always signed off by sighing and saying, “Well, kiddo, I better mosey.” Sigrid would say, “Oh, I’m such a blabbermouth. I’m sorry. How are you? I wasted all our time.” And Marta would say, as easy as anything, “I’m doing fine. It’s work, you know.” And they’d talk another couple of minutes, Marta looking up at the sky, taking in a bit of the pale light, enjoying being fussed over, being told to eat her vegetables and moisturize and get some good sleep. They had not had sex and had slept in the same bed only twice in the weeks they had been seeing each other. In part this had to do with the fact that Marta lived in Baraboo and was only in Madison a few times a week, and in part it had to do with their roommates. Katie was always home, and Sigrid’s roommate, a tall law student named Thad, liked to have all his friends over, all the time. It may also have had something to do with how Marta cried the first time they went home together. She hadn’t been able to stop herself. The moment Sigrid kissed her, she’d started crying. Not because it was bad, but because it was so good and so right. She’d been waiting her whole life for it and hadn’t even known it, and the moment she felt Sigrid’s lips on hers, she’d felt a jolt, a crack of lightning in her body.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  More than a year elapsed before Pop Tingle showed Swim Slurp, one of Mr. Jack’s movies. The cold January night we watched it, Pop Tingle made Mr. Jack and me wear vibrating butt plugs. In addition to these accessories, Mr. Jack was dressed in whisper-thin spandex while I wore a cheerleader outfit with a skirt so short it barely covered my butt. After we watched a young Mr. Jack suck off the whole swim team, Pop Tingle ordered Mr. Jack to suck my dick. That was the first time. Excited, I sat in my chair with the vibrating plug up my ass, with Pop Tingle working the controls, while Mr. Jack blew me. I lolled back, relishing the vibrating fullness in my ass as the waves of pleasure grew in my dickhead. Raptures followed as my semen gushed. Mr. Jack’s throat was working as he took my cum. When he finished, he scrubbed my cock and balls with a warm washrag. Pop Tingle was sitting in his chair, fondling his cock and working the controls of my vibrator. “Don’t start thinking you’re a top because you got a blow job, Bottom,” he ordered. “You’re a receiver, not a penetrator.” Grinning, I stood and bent forward so my skirt pulled up over my ass and showed off the plug in my ass. “I could never be a top, Pop Tingle. I wish that you’d fuck my ass right now.” “Jack-Off, pull that plug out of Bottom’s asshole.” Mr. Jack hastened to comply. Pop Tingle put the remote control aside and came close behind me. “Let’s pretend we’re going to play leap frog, Bottom. You bend, and I’ll jump over you.” I assumed the position, joyfully aware that he wasn’t about to jump over me. “Keep your legs closer together,” Pop Tingle ordered. His cock was positioned a little above my asshole, so when he inserted his cock I gasped with surprise. “Keep your legs closer together, Bottom,” Pop Tingle ordered. “Won’t that hurt?” Mr. Jack rushed to reassure me. “Pop Tingle and I call it the Flying Doggie, but some gay guys say it’s Leap Frog,” Mr. Jack contributed. “In this position, keeping your legs shut slackens your anus, which is important because Pop Tingle’s angle will be downward—good for you because his cock will kindle special parts of your rectum and asshole.” “Thanks for the lecture, professor,” I quipped, which made even Pop Tingle snicker. Pop Tingle took me in the flying doggie position. Mounting my back, he drove his cock downward. When his dickhead hit my prostate, I felt a burst of sexual thrills so intense that I nearly came. Had I not just shot my load into Mr. Jack’s mouth, I would surely have gotten my rocks off. Mr. Jack smirked as Pop Tingle worked his cock in my ass. He lubed his hand and started pounding his shaft and thumbing his dickhead. Abruptly, Pop Tingle saw what Mr. Jack was doing.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I thanked her and I said I hoped I’d see her soon. For a moment it seemed as though it would be the most natural thing to kiss her on those full, soft lips (had I not seen her a moment ago covertly pop some scented thing into her mouth to prepare for just such an inevitability?). Her eyes were veiled with her awareness of her own beauty. I suppose I suddenly liked myself and I could see a light in which I’d be plausible to others. My love for Tommy was shameful, something I was also proud of but tried to hide. This moment with Helen—our tallness on the moon-lashed porch, the cool winds that sent black clouds (lit by gold from within) caravelling past a pirate moon, a coolness that glided through opening fingers that now touched, linked, squeezed, slowly drew apart—this moment made me happy, hopeful. An oppression had been lifted. A long apprenticeship to danger had abruptly ended. After I left her I raced home through the deserted streets laughing and leaping. I sang show tunes and danced and felt as fully alive as someone in a movie (since it was precisely life that was grainy and sepia-tinted, whereas the movies had the audible ping, the habitable color, the embraceable presence of reality). I was more than ready to give up my attraction to men for this marriage to Helen Paper. At last the homosexual phase of my adolescence had drawn to a close. To be sure, I’d continue to love Tommy but as he loved me: fraternally. In my dream the stowaway in the single bunk with me, whom I was trying to keep hidden under a blanket, had miraculously transformed himself into my glorious bride, as the kissed leper in the legend becomes Christ Pantocrator. When I got home my mother was in bed with the lights out. “Honey?” “Yes?” “Come in and talk to me.” “Okay,” I said. “Rub my back, okay?” “Okay,” I said. I sat beside her on the bed. She smelled of bourbon. “How was your date?” “Terrific! I never had such a good time.” “How nice. Is she a nice girl?” “Better than that. She’s charming and sophisticated and intelligent.” “You’re home earlier than I expected. Not so hard. Rub gently. You bruiser. I’m going to call you that: Bruiser. Is she playful? Is she like me? Does she say cute things?” “No, thank God.” “Why do you say that? Is she some sort of egghead?” “Not an egghead. But she’s dignified. She’s straightforward. She says what she means.” “I think girls should be playful. That doesn’t mean dishonest. I’m playful.” “———” “Well, I am. Do you think she likes you?” “How can I tell? It was just a first date.” My fingers lightly stroked her neck to either side of her spine. “I doubt if she’ll want to see me again. Why should she?” “But why not? You’re handsome and intelligent.” “Handsome! With these big nostrils!”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O I Prologue. The Poets issue on the low-lying shore east of the Mount of Purgatory, and Dante’s eyes, which in Hell have shared the misery of his heart, becomes once more the instruments of delight, as he looks into the clear blue sky and sees Venus near the eastern horizon. The South Pole of the Heavens is well above the southern horizon, and all is bathed in the light of the glorious constellation never seen since man, at the Fall, was banished to the Northern Hemisphere. Turning north, the Poet perceives the venerable figure of Cato, his face illuminated by the four stars, typifying the four moral virtues. He challenges the Poets as though fugitives from Hell; but Virgil pleads the command of a Lady of Heaven, and explains that Dante still lives, and is seeking that liberty for love of which Cato himself had renounced his life. He further appeals to him, by his love of Marcia, to further their journey through his realm. Cato is untouched by the thought of Marcia, from whom he is now inwardly severed; but in reverence for the heavenly mandate he bids Virgil gird Dante with the rush of humility and cleanse his face with dew from the stains of Hell, that he may be ready to meet the ministers of Heaven. The sun, now rising, will teach them the ascent. The Poets seek the shore, as the sea ripples under the morning breeze; and Virgil follows Cato’s behest, cleansing Dante’s face with dew, and plucking the rush, which instantly springs up again miraculously renewed. TO COURSE o’er better waters now hoists sail the little bark of my wit, leaving behind her a sea so cruel. And I will sing of that second realm, where the human spirit is purged and becomes worthy to ascend to Heaven. But here let dead poesy rise up again, O holy Muses, since yours am I, and here let Calliope 1 rise somewhat, accompanying my song with that strain whose stroke the wretched Pies felt so that they despaired of pardon. Sweet hue of orient sapphire which was gathering on the clear forehead of the sky, pure even to the first circle, to mine eyes restored delight, soon as I issued forth from the dead air which had afflicted eyes and heart. The fair planet which hearteneth to love 2 was making the whole East to laugh, veiling the Fishes that were in her train. I turned me to the right hand, and set my mind on the other pole, and saw four stars 3 never yet seen save by the first people. The heavens seemed to rejoice in their flames. O Northern widowed clime, since thou art bereft of beholding them!

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  “Everything you have is mine. I made you and I will hurt you, bleed you, eat you and fuck you as I please. That’s it, boy. Bleed for Daddy.” We share blood, Daddy and I. In that way, we make real the relationship we have created. The intensity of that sharing is what wraps around my neck and connects me to him. It is the deepest sense of belonging I know, to be Daddy’s boy, to feed him in all of his hungers. It takes everything within me to stay still for Daddy as he lays down his quirt and starts licking along my skin, drinking me in with his delicious mouth. I hold my breath with the effort, almost trembling with gladness. I can hear his boots on the floor as he walks away. “Belly on the floor. Get your mouth over here, boy.” It’s my job to use my mouth to please Daddy. I crawl on my belly toward him. He is sitting in his favorite chair. “Get your mouth on my boot, boy. Show me some appreciation for all the attention you are getting tonight.” I breathe in the scent of his boot and begin to lick. Nothing tastes like Daddy’s boots. Electric power fills them, and it surges through me as I worship. I can’t help writhing at the feel of it. This is my place. I belong on the floor at Daddy’s feet, my mouth on his boot. I know exactly what my job is, and that keeps me grounded. All of me is centered around his boot: the texture of the leather; the taste of the polish and saddle soap, with undertones of piss and cum and tears worked in over the years. I savor it all with every stroke of my tongue. “That’s it, boy. It’s your job to use your mouth to please Daddy. Show me how much you want to please me. Make me feel your mouth, boy.” His other boot comes to rest on the back of my neck, driving my mouth into his boot, making me writhe, my cock pulsing as it rubs against the floor. Daddy groans as I press my mouth onto the toe, taking it in like a cock, sucking on it. His other boot forces me onto it in a rhythm of his choosing, as I strain to take him in. “Your mouth feels so good, boy. Now pay some attention to the other one.” I lunge for the other boot, taking the toe into my mouth immediately, my cock thrusting into the floor as I work my mouth onto it. The first boot slides between my legs and drives into my balls. “The only dick that matters here is mine, boy. Daddy’s dick is the one to focus on.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  And yet on my third birthday a professional marionette troupe performed Sleeping Beauty in our living room before an audience of my mother’s lady friends’ children, imported for the occasion. The plates from which we kids had eaten cake and vanilla ice cream were collected and the curtains drawn, creating night in day, a magic trick I associated only with afternoon naps. It was a warm, sniffling, giggling audience. A little raised stage framed in blue cloth had been erected at one end of the room. The toe of a big brown shoe protruding from beneath the hem of the proscenium draperies kept in mind real dimensions only for a few more minutes; soon the reduced scale of the stage had engulfed me, as though I’d been precipitated through a beaker and sublimated into another substance altogether. I had never heard the story before. The curse of Carabosse, the Princess’s mishap in the Rose Garden, her long sleep and the funny, frozen postures of the courtiers, the arrival of the Prince and the joyous nuptials all transported me to a world of boldly modeled faces from which character could be readily deduced, a world in which menace foreshadowed disaster, evil was defeated and love crowned. In this lighted cube my emotions coalesced because they were given a firm bounding line and because things devolved with the logic of art, not life. For if the imaginary playmates were insubstantial, the overly material people who surrounded me were opaque. Now only these miniature figures—with a hooked nose punctuated by a wart, a skein of lustrous blond hair, lace cuffs, velvet trains—only they seemed lit from within and legible as they floated up out of the bottomless floor, gestured wildly, gazed as though blind in only the general direction of an interlocutor, shook with tearless sobs, growled or piped, then flew at one another for hearty, back-slapping embraces until they were whipped up into the wings. That was the secret of the imagination—its creations were feeble only to the maker but stronger than life itself to the observer. When the curtains were opened again and the puppeteers—balding husband and bespectacled wife—emerged with shy grins and joined the party, a deep sadness sounded inside me.