Best Gay Erotica 2011 (6 page)

God, that perineum.

I press PLAY again, though the screen says,
gaytrees79: You have only two free video views left today.
Whatever. I won't pay for pornography. I just want to watch the kid again. This time, I'm going to call him “Georgie.”

Georgie's sitting in the tub. He probably imagines himself as a twelve-year-old, smoothed-out. He might actually be a twelve-year-old, though this site isn't the sort of place that hosts illegal images knowingly. No doubt, he's at least eighteen. A twinky eighteen.

I can hear his mother yelling at him for spending too much time in the bathroom. Nowadays, teenage boys spend as much
time in the bathroom as teenage girls, according to the
Times
, beauty products lined up next to sinks. Instead of Venus, though, the boys have Axe or Swagger or Magnetic Attraction Exfoliating Enhancement Body Washizzle. I wonder if Georgie uses any of these, but the thought passes because he's starting to stroke faster, and my heels click together.

It's a brief James Bidgood sort of moment; I'm in the tub with him and my saliva's running all over his balls, and I have my fingers in my asshole. Georgie's holding the back of my neck. One of my hands grips the side of the tub and I start to raise myself.

Suddenly, though, his mother busts through the door. Her hair is in that very Midwestern tight bun; she's wearing a gold chain with a big fucking crucifix on it, a conservative pink blouse and mom-khakis in navy.

She screams, and it's over.

The deflation of fantasy is one of the truest routes of pleasure seeking; pursuing sexual fantasy to its logical ends makes sense, obviously, but the withholding is more rewarding. If every day of our lives was like
Pink Narcissus
or even
Fuck Me Raw: Athens Edition
, cocks would become revolting and the sweet, musty smell of butt would initiate vomiting. The mother has to interrupt, because if she didn't, everything would end in just another wadded-up tissue on my desk.

Georgie's pinky is wrapped around his dick again now, the death-grip position that means that things are about to happen. He doesn't know that this position can lead to trouble down the road, as evidenced by the countless men who write in to
sex columns confessing how years of fierce-grip masturbation have made it impossible to achieve orgasm during actual sex. I whisper, “Light touches, Georgie, light touches,” but he ignores me. It is hard to be ignored, even if I am alone in my room watching a screen, and so desperation is mirrored in this way. Georgie is posting videos of his svelteness to the Internet because he's teased at school for holding his Diet Coke with his pinky up, or because he does Irish dancing on the weekends, or because everyone knows what he tried to do to Keenan last summer during the camping trip. I empathize, and so we stare at each other and lick our lips and wonder about the possibilities of reaching through the screen and just holding on.

The funny thing is that if you're rich enough to have an iPhone, the possibility is already there. Grindr is an application that guys sign on to and, using GPS technology, search for other guys looking to hook up within a given radius. A former lover of mine tweeted a while back that
Grindr at the airport makes U look at EVERY1 diffrrntly
. I can only imagine, because iPhones kind of scare the fuck out of me, and evidently, Grindr scares the fuck out of the Apple corporation, as they're trying to ban it from their app store.

I love Georgie's stomach contracting and expanding. My friend Myles is a chubby chaser, and I've always wanted to ask him whether he gets off on the stomach thing, too, or whether there's some sort of impossibility there. I've even done it with bigger guys, in claw-foot bathtubs no less, but I cannot remember whether there was the same level of gasping and shuddering as with the skinnier types I usually go for—ribs showing themselves, the abdomen tightening, relaxinging, tightening.

Georgie's almost done. His mother's calling him for dinner.

Maybe he'll eat in silence, his kid sister babbling at his parents while they wonder what they're going to do with him. Maybe
he'll go out afterward, saying he's going to meet friends, but just walk in the park alone. Maybe he'll loiter around the toilets, waiting for the inevitable stranger to wander up, lead him into a stall and suck him off in three of the best minutes of his life. Maybe the stranger will give Georgie his number, and Georgie will throw it away in a panic before laundry day. Maybe.

It's strange how he smiles for the camera. It's not a seductive smile, really, but the sort of smile one would give for a family vacation photograph taken at the beach, posing alongside little sister, Natalia, and Mom and Dad with Atlantic waves crashing and spreading behind them. Georgie's the tallest next to the patriarch, his clavicle winging out beneath his neck. The smile isn't forced, because everyone loves being at the beach, but there's a quality of it that says, “I belong somewhere else.” To smile like this in a video on a porn site seems ludicrous, but it's just a wank piece, so Georgie can do whatever he wants and I'll understand. I'm sitting in my room, my cock wet and hanging out of my briefs, my fingers pressed against my prostate.

I wish I had an iPhone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two weeks before school started, I went to teacher orientation and found myself staring at Nathan Derricks, the new assistant coach. Nathan wasn't new to me. Eight years ago, we both attended this very high school. He was on the football team. Everyone in school knew him. Almost everyone in school wanted to be with him. Including me. He was that guy.

In a small town, teacher orientation is something of a class reunion. Most everyone runs away from his high school, his hometown, but some of us come back. We become the teachers; the parents; the ones who couldn't stay away.

There's Marcia Tungsten, who wrote every boy's name on her binder with a heart around it well into high school: music teacher. Bill Dyson, who played guitar in the quad to a small circle of tone-deaf groupies: English teacher. Davie Strunk, former bully who I had a crush on even after he slammed me into my locker: sociology teacher. Carol Jacobs, who used to give blow jobs beneath the bleachers to anyone who would take his dick out in front of her. I should know, because she gave me
one. She's the school nurse now. Then there's Nathan.

And me. I was a nobody, and now I'm a science teacher.

 

Over the summer, I grew my beard out. It makes me look older and, I think, more teacher-like. Students have a hard time paying attention to someone who looks more like an older brother than a teacher. So I grew the beard, and I let my dark hair grow longer than usual, so that it curls. I've been fighting the curls all my life, but for now I let them go.

“Are you married?” my students ask me.

“No,” I say, not lying.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” they ask.

“No,” I say, not lying.

To class, I wear a dress shirt and a sports coat. I'm a high school teacher wearing college professor drag. During the day, I lose the jacket, and I roll my sleeves up. I talk loudly, but I give my students a chance to speak, as well. I do my best to bring science to them not as an idea in a textbook but as a set of rules for questioning.

“Who is that man in that picture?” a student asks, pointing to the framed portrait on my desk. “He your dad?”

“No. That's Carl Sagan,” I say.

“Who's Carl Sagan?” he asks.

“He's the reason I love science,” I say.

 

After fourth period, I duck into the break room, hoping to have the place to myself. Instead, sitting at the table in the middle of the room, I find Nathan Derricks.

“Hey, Johnson,” he says, calling me by my last name.

“Nathan,” I say. Nathan Derricks has never said more than four words to me in my life.

“How's it going?” he asks. Seven words, now.

“Good,” I say, turning my back to him, somehow instinctively wanting him to leave me alone. Eight years later, and I fall back into the nerd roll, casting Derricks in the jock role. I focus on pouring coffee into my mug. The coffee is several hours old and smells like it.

As I stir in a packet of sugar, I realize that Derricks is standing directly behind me. He sits his coffee cup next to mine.

“Johnson, I've been meaning to ask you something,” he says.

“What's up?”

“I was wondering—”

“Yeah?”

“All those rumors back in high school: were they true?” My heart thumps hard in my chest. Did I really come back to school just so that I could get bullied again?

I take a couple of deep breaths, try to calm down. “Which rumors would those be, Nathan?”

“That you were gay.”

I don't say anything.

“If so, then I bet you had a pretty big hard-on for me, didn't you? All the girls did.”

I turn to face him. He's standing only inches away, practically on top of me. I breathe in, replacing the smell of burnt coffee with the smell of Nathan Derricks: sweat and deodorant. My dick thickens in my pants. “Nate,” I say, “what are you talking about?”

“I'm just curious,” he says. Did he just move in closer?

“That was a long time ago.” I sidestep him and manage to avoid bumping into him as he makes half a gesture to stand in my way.

I leave the break room without saying anything else.

That night, in my empty apartment, I masturbate without looking at porn for the first time in years.

In the mornings, I get to work early and run the track. Occasionally other staff members are there, but aside from a friendly nod we don't really speak to each other. We're not here for work. Running laps, I can clear my mind, stop thinking and revel in the feeling of my heart racing and my muscles burning. Summer is cooling its way into fall.

I do my best to avoid crossing paths with Nathan. It's not hard. I steal coffee refills between classes and avoid the teachers' lounge on my free hour. His few academic classes are in another wing, and he spends most of his time in the gym. I spent years learning how to avoid certain people in these halls. I'm something of a professional, now.

“Were you a student here?” a student asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Did you like it here back then?”

“Does anyone like high school while they're in it?”

 

At the end of September, Principal Lohbeck and Superintendent Lowell call another mandatory meeting to discuss the football season and the homecoming dance. Dozens of teachers fill the high school cafeteria, splintering into cliques as impenetrable as those formed by the students during the day. Against the far wall are a coffeemaker and a box of stale doughnuts, like we're in an AA meeting. I sit and try to pay attention in a way that suggests I'm not interested in doing anything but. Nathan is sitting at a table not far from me, though, and it's hard not to be aware of him. He sits with the athletic department.

After the meeting, I shuffle paperwork back into my briefcase and stand. Not far from the door, a small circle of people I can't help but recognize has formed. Marcia, the lovelorn music teacher; Bill, the prematurely balding former rock star; Davie,
the sociopathic sociology teacher; Carol, the nurse with cock-sucker lips; and Nathan. Marcia waves at me, urging me to join them. I try not to, but I'm like a meteor that can't avoid the Earth's gravity. I'm like the Moon.

“We should all go for drinks after work,” Marcia is saying. The group nods, agreeing with her. Carol looks at Nathan like she wants to duck behind the bleachers. Nathan smiles at me. I try to avoid looking him in the eyes.

“I can't believe we haven't gotten together before this,” Carol says. It's unclear whether she's talking to all of us or just Nathan.

“I know,” Marcia says. It appears that if anyone's going to stand in the way of my avoiding a high school reunion, it's her. “I can't go anywhere tonight, but what do you say we go out for happy hour on Friday night? I bet we all have so much to catch up on and so many stories.”

“Can't on Friday nights,” Nathan said. “Football.”

Carol pouted.

“But maybe some weeknight?”

The group nods in agreement, and I fake a smile and excuse myself.

In the parking lot, I walk determinedly toward my car. As I stop to find my key, a hand falls on my shoulder.