13 Reasons Why/Tape 1: Dad

Introduction

During my hiatus, I’ve received from readers a lot of very sweet emails wishing me well. Most of them have recognized the amount of work I’ve poured into my blog and have expressed their thanks. I’m so grateful for those sentiments.

Many people who’ve written, however, have made the assumption that the reason I have decided to take a break is because of the so-called haters—that is, the men who leave nasty comments on my blog, and those who go out of their way to make sure I understand how contemptible I am to them.

I’ve had plenty of haters over the years. They wear me down, yes. But more than anyone, the men who have sucked the joy out of my writing (and to a certain extent, my life) are those who meant well. They’re men who claimed to admire me, who wanted to meet me—and many of them did—and who then, whether out of clumsiness or fear or whatever, failed to recognize they’d gone too far. A man can only withstand so many successive blows to the ego (even an ego as Jericho-sturdy as mine) before it begins to tumble.

What’s more, every single one of these men read my blog. They’re men who subscribed to my point of view, who enjoyed my writing. Or read my writing, at least. Some of them wanted to be written about. Others never intended me to know they were blog fans.

Maybe one of these men is you.

If it is you? Although there’s a small and petty part of me that wants to flip a finger in your direction, I’m not going to. I’m moving on as I write this series. A friend of mine shared with me something his grandmother used to say that I truly believe: People do the best they can. If they could do better, they would.

My advice, if you think you recognize yourself . . . or even if you don’t: do better.

All of us could stand to do better.

Tape 1: Dad

There are some fantasies I can get behind.

Can I tell you something personal and true? he texts me, one hot spring morning.

You know you can, I say.

When I stumbled on your blog, I read your latest entry with the biggest boner, sir. It was hard not to jack off and shoot right there. You write so well, sir.

Thank you.

I’m sitting on my front porch, reading these words. There’s a big plastic cup of ice water sweating onto the table at my side. I reach for it, intending to drink, but my fingertips rest on the dewy surface instead, as another text pops up on my screen.

Then I read more, and more, thinking to myself, could this be . . . ? I thought I recognized you, sir. Something about the way you used your words. It sounded familiar. Then I noticed you had links to your profiles on your page, so I clicked them.

My cock stirs in my sweat shorts. I know good storytellers. This guy’s a storyteller, plain and simple. Between that and the flattery, he’s hooked me from the first line. I’m willing to follow wherever he goes.

Then fuuuuuck, sir. I saw who it was. The man I’d been rubbing myself to, the man I’d been fantasizing about giving myself to—YOU. I saw your pictures, dad. My own dad. The man whose seed made me.

I swallow. I’m still thirsty; my hand still rests on the moist tumbler of water, but I’m so rapt, so aroused, that such a mundane act as lifting the glass to my lips might break the spell.

Do you remember teaching me, dad? At night? In my bed? After mom had gone to sleep?

He expects an answer. I wouldn’t forget that, my fingers tap out. My heart is pounding so fast that I stumble over the tiny letters on my touchscreen. I wouldn’t forget teaching my own son.

It hurt so much that I thought I’d die the first time you opened my hole. Remember? How old was I?

You don’t remember?

I think I was 12 or 13. The fantasy he’s spinning conjures images, imaginary but with the sharp clarity of recollection—the distinct tang of an adolescent’s laundry hamper, the flash of a taut white ass by moonlight, the sound of a moan as my hard dick thrusts into soft flesh. I’d fantasized about it happening, and then you did it. You taught me how to take dick. My own father taught me to take his breedings.

At this point I’ve forgotten about the water entirely. My shorts are tented; my dick is rigid and in need. You needed to learn, I tell him in a text. My boy needed to learn.

He starts sending me photos. You haven’t seen me in a long time. Look how I’ve grown, he says, sending me a shot of his big, muscular body sprawled out on his sofa. His legs are spread. His dick, ignored, is a fat uncut log that lies across his hairy abdomen. His hands are spreading the golden-red cleft of fur surrounding his hole; his mouth is open in an expression of ecstasy. In another photo he’s sucking dick, his bearded jaw stretched wide to accommodate a fat black dick, while another white hand reaches from behind to grab his curly red hair. The guy—my supposed son—is fucking beautiful.

He could be mine, I think. More photos come in, each of them increasingly explicit. This ginger muscle bear of a man could have been my spawn. I would have been, well, seventeen when he was born. But it wasn’t entirely outside the realm of plausible belief.

When you and mom divorced and she took me away, I never thought I’d see you again, dad. Then I find out you’re a sex blogger . . . and still so handsome and sexy to boot. I am the luckiest boy.

On my porch, I clear my throat. There’s no hesitation when I tap out my reply. Let me make you happy in person.

I was hoping you’d say that. I’m so happy. You’ve made me so happy, dad. Will you be writing about me in your blog?

Do you want me to, son?

Yes. I want to make you proud. I’m proud that my dad is my lover. I want everyone to know about it.

We meet the next day. He makes it easy for us to connect; he doesn’t have to work during the day, his apartment is a block away from the 7 train. He wants me there. He wants to make this good for me. He wants his dad. The need is apparent in every text he sends, in every lewd photo he shares. Even as I’m taking the train to Queens, he’s texting me every couple of minutes to check on my arrival time. When I’m strolling down the block past the noisy bodega, he’s sending me a real-time photo of his furry hole.

He buzzes me in. I climb up two flights of stairs and knock. There’s a sound of footsteps on the other side. The door opens. He’s standing there wearing nothing but a jock and a pair of white sneakers.

He’s only an inch or two shorter than I. Flat red nipples sit on perfect pecs, surrounded by and covered by his red-gold fur. His beard, bushy and carefully-cultivated, reaches to his collarbone. His green eyes are alight with desire as he looks me over. This boy is so beautiful. I’m already breathless from the walk and the climb and the nervousness of the first meeting; the sight of him standing there nearly naked, his rigid short dick trying to poke a hole through one side of the jock, temporarily knocks out of me what wind I have remaining.

We stand there silently for a moment, each of us framed on either side of the door. “I know it’s been years since mom took me away from you, sir. But have I changed much?” He clears his throat. Maybe he’s as nervous as I. “Have I changed a lot, dad?”

“No, son.” I step forward through the door. I put my hands on the sharp bones of his pelvis, and let my fingers slip beneath the elastic of the band. “You’re still my boy.” When I plant my lips on his, and thrust my tongue into his mouth, he relaxes and melts into my hands.

His apartment is a mess—a narrow warren of hallways and small rooms where suitcases are stacked on top of bookcases on top of cabinets, where clothes are tucked under the desk and in the wardrobes and under the bed. It smells of cigarette smoke and some neighbor’s seafood lunch. I don’t give a fuck about the squalor. I’ve got my boy back at last. I lead him to the bed as if I already know the way, and shove him onto his back. His legs fly up as I kneel on the mattress and separate them with my knees; he links his fingers behind his head to lift it as we kiss even more deeply. He wears no deodorant; his pits smell musky and masculine. “Oh god, dad,” he moans. “I used to worry that all my memories of us were a dream, that you didn’t love me any more.”

“I didn’t forget you, son,” I say into his ear. My lips travel down his jawbone. “I couldn’t forget my only boy.”

“Do you remember when you used to come to my room after fucking mom? Do you remember what you used to say to me?”

He’s clearly expecting an answer. My mouth is more interested in chewing on those broad, flat nipples of his, but I venture a guess. “I know I used to tell you how you were a much better fuck than she was,” I say, as I drive my fingers into that hairy cleft framed by the jock. I find his hole lubed already, slick and ready for my fingers. He groans as they slip inside.

“Yesssss,” he whispers. He unhooks his fingers and grabs the toes of his sneakers to open his ass wider for me. “Did you mean it? Was I really a better fuck?”

“Oh god yes, son. So much better.”

“Was my pussy sweeter?’

“Much sweeter.”

“What was it you used to call me, that special nickname that you’d use when we were naked together?”

My dick is raging in my shorts, and I’ve stood up from the bed to let it loose. The question takes me aback a little. I try to think quickly, despite the fact that the blood that’s usually in my brain is all now located in the eight fat inches emerging over the elastic of my trunks. “Um. Daddy’s little buddy?”

“Yes.” He sighs with contentment as I kneel back on the bed. “You’re going to fuck me now, aren’t you, dad. You’re just going to take me, like you used to. Your right. I’m your boy, after all. I'm daddy’s little buddy.”

“You want to be fucked? You want dad’s dick in you again, little buddy?”

“Please dad. Please fuck me. Just fuck your son. Fuck me. Fuck me. Aaaaaah!”

He yells when I plunge in. He’s pre-lubed, and I’ve added some spit to the mix, but he’s a tight, tight fit.

“Oh god, yes. Yes. I’m so happy.”

I like making boys happy.

He sighs, contented. “So, so happy.”

I slide in an out, establishing a rhythm. He’s hanging onto his ankles like a gymnast; his face is red and flushed with heat and excitement. All this time, every moment of it, I’ve been trying to memorize the details—the hardened glint of his green eyes, the prickles of red on his skin as our fuck intensifies, the softness of his hole wrapped around my rigid meat. He’s giving me so much to remember, to write about. The entry I write about him will sizzle. Entry? Fuck. I’ll becoming back for more of this. Entries. “You still take my dick like a pro, son.”

“Thank you dad,” he says,

There’s a pause. We stare hard at each other, for the last time both perfectly content.

Then. “Remember when mom went away for a week? And you and me were alone?” I nod. Okay. Sure. “After you and mom argued? What did you argue about again?”

I’m still maintaining a steady rhythm that falters one for a split second as I try to grapple with his out-of-the-blue question. “Our arguments had nothing to do with you, son. You were a good boy.”

“I know, I know you loved me. But what did you argue about?”

He could’ve let it drop. Anyone else would’ve let it drop. But this one didn’t let it drop. “It was about money, son.”

“Yes, about money. And then she went away for a week. Where did she go?”

Christ, I thought. Seriously? “She went to stay with her sister.”

“Which one, dad?”

I blinked several times. “Your Aunt Rachel.”

“Aunt Rachel had boys too, didn’t she?” Where in the world was this going? “Didn’t she have two boys? My cousins?”

“Yes, son. She did,” I said, agreeing with him. Maybe it was the fastest way to get him back into the fuck.

“What were their names, dad?”

“I don’t remember, son. We hardly ever saw them.”

“Did you ever look at them, dad? Did you ever want to pound your fat dick into them the way you fucked me?”

I pulled my dick out of his hole. It gaped as I withdrew, and pulsated in need. “No, son. The only boy I wanted to fuck was you. My own beautiful boy. Daddy’s little buddy.”

“Oh fuck,” he says, so softly it’s little more than air. I’ve made him happy again. Finally. After all the damned questions. “Thank you, dad. Thank you so much.”

Okay. We’re back in the groove again. I pick up the pace as I plunge in and out of his hole. He’s shoved a pillow under the small of his back to support himself as he lifts his ass up with every thrust to meet me. I’m leaning down to kiss him when once again he opens his mouth to speak. “Remember how you comforted me when my dog died?”

He’s not doing this now, I think, appalled. Aloud, I say, “Really?”

“Yes, it really meant a lot to me. What was the dog’s name?”

“Bingo?” I blurt out, mortified at how ridiculous it sounds as it flys out of my mouth. A thousand dog names to choose from, and of everything I could choose, fucking BINGO as the name-o?

He didn't even seem to realize how absurd it was, either. “I was really sad when we had to put down Bingo, but you made me forget it all that night when you came to me in my room,” he said, so totally lost in the fantasy that he failed to see the increasing annoyance registering on my face. “You were deep inside me and holding me in your arms and you said. . . .”

What the actual fuck. Was this dude kidding me? Was a fucking camera hidden in the mess surrounding the bed? Was there a smarmy host of a YouTube sexual prank show about to pop out and tell me that I was being punked?

Despite the fact that I was being rapidly turned off at his weird insistence I participate in some weird kind of game of Incestual Mad Libs, I gamely tried to yank his attention back to the here and now. To me and to my fat dick inside him. To what was happening, to what was going on—to get his mind off the baroque fantasy for which he was attempting to enlist me as a mere collaborator. “You’ve got to forget all the bad times, son. Focus on the moment. You like dad’s cock, right?”

Maddeningly, he runs with it and says, “Yes, that’s exactly what you said. And it consoled me so much. You always know the right thing to say, dad. Remember when you got me my first jock? How old was I?”

“Fourteen,” I snap. Maybe if I just fuck and pretend I'm somewhere else, I'll get my nut and then I could plead some excuse to make a quick exit. Like a dog’s funeral, say.

“Right. Fourteen, and you took me to….”

“Dick’s Sporting Goods.” I preemptively add, “Bike brand. Four-ninety-five.”

“And you put it on me, didn't on you. My first jock, and you put it on me and told me I was a man now. You said that the coach would look at my ass in that jock. What was the coach’s name, dad?”

“Hey. Son. I’m not interested in him, or those memories.” I sounded brusque. I knew it. I couldn't conceal my testiness or my annoyance any longer. Having sex with this guy, muscle stud though he was, was like trying to fuck while a swarm of annoying gnats surrounded my head. Maybe a better man—or a more desperate man—might power through, but dammit, those gnats were fucking annoying. This casual encounter was turning out to have more lore than all three hundred films in the Lord of the Rings series. I fucking couldn't keep up.

But he persisted his wheedling. “What was the coach’s name?”

I excused myself to the guy’s filthy bathroom, where I remained until my temper subsided enough to leave politely.

To this day, you wonder why I won't return your online messages. Now you know.

You wanted me to write about you. For the longest time after that disastrous afternoon, I wouldn't. I don't like showing well-meaning souls behaving inanely. But by being deaf to my requests to engage in the present, to leave behind the fantasy, to set aside your complicated agenda—or at least bring it all into the moment—you turned powerful potential into the worst kind of reality.

You took a scorching hot premise for an encounter and ran too fucking far with it. In the process, you shut me down as a writer. If I'd recorded the truth of that hot spring afternoon as it really happened, you'd have hated it. If I'd glossed over your shortcomings, if I'd written puff porn for my blog, I'd have hated myself. So I stayed silent.

I don’t keep a blog to stay silent. Doing so left me a little more dead inside. At least, until now, long after, when I’m addressing a one of many resentments I should have confronted long ago.

Welcome to your tape, son.

Stupid Faggot 2

The boy’s on all fours before me. His fingers are splayed out to give him balance, as he slowly pistons his mouth up and down on my erect cock. A long ponytail of raven hair hangs over one shoulder—but there’s no denying his essential masculinity. Not with his muscular body, his lean waist, the two perfectly round semi-globes of his ass that are clenching and bouncing close to the floor. Not with that heavy, uncut Puerto Rican dick striking the floor like a drumstick.

I’m trying to find fault with his performance. I need something to nitpick. He’s not giving me any opportunities. He’s not grabbing onto my meat with a too-firm hand and squeezing the fuck out me. He’s not grabbing onto me all, in fact. He’s doing a steady, sloppy, slow back-and-forth on my cock, and licking out at my nuts when he comes in closest to them. It’s hard to censure him for that.

Then my phone vibrates. It’s in the pocket of my jeans, which he’d removed and folded and placed on a chair. Twice it rings. Three times. He’s still staring at me, rapt in his worship of my dick. I see my chance. “Well?” I snarl. He backs off me, surprised. “My phone’s not going to fucking answer itself,” I snap at him. I place one of my bare feet on his shoulder and shove hard. He doesn’t seem to know what I want him to do. In exaggerated syllables, I point at my pants and say, “Bring . . . me . . . my . . . fucking . . . phone. Key-rist. Stupid faggot.”

“Yes sir,” he says, scrambling. He scurries across the floor, pulls my phone out of a pocket already bulging with tens and twenties, and brings it to me. Quick as he is, he still can’t avoid the fact that the moment he puts the device into my waiting hands, the vibration stops and the screen goes black. “Here you are, sir.”

I stare at him like he’s insane. “It doesn’t do me any good now, does it? Is my phone buzzing?” I hold it out to him. “Well? Is it? You know what buzzing means? Como se dice?”

“No sir. It’s not buzzing.”

“Right. So I missed the call. All because of you. Fuck. Can’t do anything right, can you?”

“No sir. I’m sorry sir.”

Abasing himself before me excites him. It’s what he wants. What he hires me to do. His dick was erect before, but now it’s rock-hard and glistening. I can see a drop of pre-cum forming where his slit winks out between folds of foreskin. His eyes are just was wet and wide. Every time I curse in his direction, he becomes more and more excited. “Fuck,” I say, examining the phone. It was a quarterly courtesy call from Wells Fargo that I would’ve let go to voice mail anyway. “That was an important call I missed. You little piece of shit. You fucking little stupid spic faggot.” Every invective I throw his way only excites him. I can see his nostrils flaring at the insults. He’s breathing the way men breathe when they’re close to orgasm. “Jesus. I’ve busted open piñatas with more brains that you.”

“I’m sorry sir. I’m just a piece of shit spic faggot, sir,” he says, breathlessly.

“And?” With a tone of supreme irritation, I raise my eyebrow and look down at him from my throne on his most comfortable armchair.

“And I won’t do it again,” he ventures. I shake my head. Incorrect. “And I’ll try to do better.” Wrong again. “And I’m just a stupid faggot, sir. I’m a little piece of shit.” I crook the corner of my mouth and stare as if I can’t believe what the fuck he’s saying. “What, sir? Tell me.”

I gesture at my cock, which is lying between my thighs, slick from his spit but otherwise unoccupied. “Christ,” I mutter. It’s supposed to sound as if I’m saying to to myself, but I want him to hear. “I have to tell this stupid fucker everything. You better not stop sucking,” I warn him, as I hold the phone to my ear. “Hello? Hey man. Yeah, sorry I missed your call there. Nah, I’m not doing anything important. Just getting my dick sucked. Nah, some spic boy.” I pause. “He’s all right.” I drawl the last two words so they collide. Aaahight.

The boy’s eyes are so dilated with excitement they’re little more than two oversized pupils. He stares at me with fucking adoration writ plain on his face. The more I insult him, the better the blow job gets. “Nah, not that good. Remember that kid we let suck the both of us off at that bar? Yeah, the one in the Village. Kind of like that.” My conversation, of course, is entirely imaginary. There’s no one at the other end of the line. I don’t even have the screen on. “Huh? You want to see? Okay, hang on.”

I turn my body back so it’s squared with the boy between my legs. This time I actually unlock the phone’s screen and fire up the camera and point it down at my dick. “Fuck,” I snarl at the kid. “You ain’t no model. Keep sucking.” When I snap his photo, it captures the ardor my disdain arouses. I take four or five photos in all. They all show the face of a young man who is totally into his task of worshipping and servicing a big dick. I go back to my imaginary conversation. “Yeah, I got a couple. I’ll text you in a minute. Huh? He’s just some Puerto Rican cocksucker. Dime a dozen.” I pause, then snicker as if the other guy has said something funny.

While I do, I pull my dick out of the boy’s mouth. “Oh yeah. I remember that one. Mmm-hmm.” I shove him down onto his butt. Gesture for him to lie down on his back in front of me. Then I shove my left foot into his mouth and use the right one to stomp on the base of his cock. “Yeah, well this one’s not worth shit. He gives me two hundred to visit. Fuck, I know. First time he tried to pay me in tacos. I know, right?”

The boy is still staring at me with puppy love in his eyes as he slobbers over my foot. When I absent-mindedly grind my bare heel into his nuts, he sucks in air through his mouth, winces, and whines slightly, but he doesn’t complain. It just makes him lick up and down my sole faster and harder, using his broad flat tongue like he might on an all-day sucker. “Yeah, okay,” I say, wrapping up my imaginary call. “Sorry about missing you before. It’s the faggot’s fault.” I chuckle again. “Yeah, I don’t know how I always end up with the stupidest pieces of shit out there. Long as they give me their holes though, right? All right. Later, buddy. What? Yeah, I’ll text them. Just remember he’s an ugly motherfucker. Okay . . . later. See ya.” I pretend to click off the call, and spend a moment pretending to text the photos I’d taken a few moments before. Then I throw the phone down onto a nearby pillow.

I stretch out my feet, drawing up the right leg a few inches and letting it land on his nuts again. He gasps from the pain of it and draws up his knees to cradle my foot. “Who was that, sir?” he asks, removing my foot from between his lips.

“Is that any of your fucking business?” I scowl.

“No sir.” His dick is rock hard against my ankle. He pushes into me, excited. “I love that you talk about me to your friends, sir. I love that you call me names to your friends. Thank you sir.”

“You know what I like?” I tell him. I pick up my phone again and check my mail, like I’m bored.

“What sir?” I wait a while to speak as I continue to check my messages and open up Facebook to see what’s new. It puts him on edge. “What is it, sir? Do you like my faggot mouth? Do you want my faggot ass? Please tell me. What do you like?”

I move the phone to the side, as if I’d forgotten he was there. “I like when you don’t fucking talk at all.” He sighs, and melts into the floor. “Now shut up and suck my dick again,” I order. “That's what your mouth should be doing. Stupid fucking faggot.”

Though he doesn’t say a word for the rest of the time we spend together that afternoon, he doesn’t have to. Those expressive eyes of his articulate how much he exalts me.

Stupid Faggot

“Do I look like a stupid faggot, sir?” he asks. The boy is looking up at me from waist level. My cock is distending his left cheek. He’s got his yap wide open, his lips wrapped around my shaft. When he speaks around the inches, his syllables come out thick, slurred, and heavy, like he’s slow. Drool is trickling from the corner of his mouth. His eyes, dark as the night sky, stare up at me. They’re imploring me for an honest answer.

He’s been on my dick for a half-hour at this point, sucking it. He’s been curled up in a fetal position, lying on his side, nursing at it as deeply as he can get it into his throat. I lift my foot and kick him back so that he rolls over so heavily that the mattress shivers. “What the hell do you think?” I snarl at him. “Yeah, you look like a stupid faggot. Because you are a stupid faggot.”

“Yes sir,” he whimpers, looking at me adoringly.

“What are you?”

“A stupid faggot, sir,” he whispers.

“What the fuck was that?” I ask, irritated. “I didn’t hear that.”

“A stupid faggot, sir,” he says. This time it’s louder. More aggressive. “I’m a stupid faggot.”

“Yeah? And what are stupid faggots like you made for?”

“For superior dick,” he tells me. His fingers instinctively clutch for his own dick. It’s triangular in shape, wider at the base, short, and narrowing toward the tip. I use my foot to kick away his arm. “For superior white dick like yours.”

“That’s right,” I tell him. “Now go get me a glass of water.” I scarcely let a second pass before I roll my head with impatience. “Jesus Christ,” I snap. “Do I have to tell you twice?”

The boy hops up. His skin is the color of manila paper. He has a long ponytail pulled back into a rope that hangs to the small of his back. It ends just above his butt, which is small and muscular. He is a beautiful, beautiful young man. If I’d seen him in a bar, or supermarket, or walking along the street in his everyday work clothes, I would have stared at him in frank admiration. In fact, I do that now, as his egress sets those miniature globes of his ass revolving around an invisible axis. I hear water splashing in the sink of his miniature kitchen. A moment later he’s back, his naked body strolling toward me, then dipping as he approaches his bedside. He kneels on the floor and, holding the glass out with both hands, offers it to me.

I take the cheap tumbler and swig down the water. I need it, after all the talking I’ve been doing. The water’s cold and delicious. I let it cool the ache in my throat. But I have a point to make. “What the fuck?” I ask as I stare at him and then the drink in disbelief. “Don’t they teach you people what the fuck ice is, in Puerto Rico?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll fix it, sir,” he says, grabbing back the glass. He can’t take his eyes off me. He wears the grateful expression of a man who has gotten exactly what he’s wanted, and then some.
“Don’t you worry, papi. I’ll fix it for you, just the way you like it.”

***

Men don’t like to talk about this particular ghetto of sex, this shadowy neighborhood where so many dwell or wish they could play tourist. We don’t talk about it because of our aspirations to middle-class respectability, and this isn’t a nice place to visit. These racial and sexual extremes not how we like to think of ourselves by light of day.

Humiliation is a very real part of many people’s sex lives and fantasies, however. Pretending it’s not—just because it doesn’t fit in with a narrow and homogenized vision of the tame activities to which gay men should constrict themselves—does everyone a disservice. To do so propounds a limited vision of what we are, as sexual creatures.

Banishing humiliation to the shadows makes it only more mysterious, though. More desirable. If it’s something that only dirty men do, it’s where men will scuttle like roaches when they need to feel dirty.

Most people don’t realize how many men need to be treated like dirt, when the apartment doors are closed and the clothes come off. Upstanding businessmen can crawl on cold concrete for the privilege of being splattered with piss and called faggot. Black men can gasp and sink into ecstasy when a white man snarls the word nigger at them. Latin boys like this one can become submissive when vilified as a spic.

There’s a certain subset of so-called good people that becomes outraged by this sort of play, though. They clutch their pearls and declare they’ve never heard the like. It’s not the sort of thing respectable folk do. The people involved must be full of self-loathing. Or they’re mentally ill. They’re certainly not normal. Never mind that there are conservative forces out there who’d be happy to outlaw any kind of man-on-man sex—even the tamest—in the name of purging it from the earth. We’re all too happy to tell each other what kinds of sex we can’t have, too.

Fuck that shit. Men come to me with these fantasies because they know I’m not going to be one of the stick-in-the-ass naysayers. They know they’re safe with me. What’s more, they know that this kind of sex is play—and that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. These men craving my foot planted on their foreheads aren’t freaks. They’re not sick, or crazy.

They’re our brothers.

***

“You know you’re just a hole to me,” I tell him, after I’ve sprayed my load in his ass. “Just a fucking hole. And what is a hole, baby?”

I’m eight deep in him, and his cunt is stretched to capacity. I fucked him on all fours—like the animal he is, I told him. He’s on his back now, his hands on his dick, tugging himself to a climax. I’m twisted behind him, my hips glued to his, as my meat gently slides in and out of his slick wet hole. He’s resting on me like a comfortable sofa; his head lolls back against my face, so I can whisper in his ear. “I am, sir. I’m a hole.”

“That’s not what I asked, you dumb piece of shit.” He groans. I can see the tip of his penis glisten with a new dime-sized glob of pre-cum. “I said what is a hole. What. Qué. You understand that, right? Qué?”

We’re both sweaty from the long afternoon of sex. His Harlem apartment is a tiny little hotbox. The radiator’s been hissing with steam the entire time I’ve been there. He’s gasping for air. His eyes are slits, behind which glisten obsidian. “I understand,” he gasps. “I don’t know. What is a hole, sir?”

“A hole’s an absence. It’s nothing.”

“I’m nothing,” he says, in an almost-echo.

“Good boy. That’s right,” I say, sounding almost proud of him. “You’re nothing. A hole only becomes something when it’s filled, baby. It’s only worth something when it’s filled. Just like you,” I say into his ear. My beard is brushing against his lobe. He’s shivering and sweating at the same time. “You get it now?”

“Oh god,” he’s saying softly, over and over. Beneath the thin layer of fur on his chest, his nipples are hard and pointed. “I’m a hole, sir. A hole. A fucking hole.”

“A nasty, worthless, faggot hole,” I tell him in a normal voice. “Say it.”

“I’m a nasty, worthless, faggot hole,” he repeats obediently. “I’m a nasty faggot hole, sir.”

He’s beating himself off furiously. His hand is flying over his dick so hard that his balls are flying in the air. “Shoot that pathetic thing you call a dick, you cheap little piece of shit,” I order.

“Oh god,” he says, as he melts back into my arms. His dick erupts and spews his load all they way up to his chin. He shudders against me, becoming heavier with every spasm. My mouth is full of his hair. His hands drift away from his cock and down to my thighs, where they rest lightly. His eyes are closed; his chest rises and falls, each breath almost imperceptibly slower than the one before. “Oh, papi,” he breathes in barely a whisper. “Thank you.”

And then he relaxes completely into me, like I’m a feather bed.

***

The world’s a scary place. People say and do ugly things. Sometimes deliberately. Sometimes not. I understand why people hear the words involved in humiliation play and recoil—it’s because they’ve been taught from childhood how bad they are, how hurtful. What aren’t ripe old Anglo-Saxonisms are derogatory, even taboo. What kind of sane person would ask to have those flung at them?

Brave men, I tell you.

They’re men who choose to confront invective, to hear those derogatory phrases and refuse to run. Fuck, they don’t hear the words and slink away—they invite the slurs into their bedrooms. They face them down. They denature the ugliness and the abuse into something powerful and sexual, something pleasurable—what’s coarse and disgusting becomes, through their grace, something beautiful.

Something transformative.

Moreover, they’re doing so in a context that’s entirely different from where they might ordinarily hear those phrases. There’s a world of difference between being the skinny kid who walks down the hall of his high school and is forced to pass by a crowd of jocks snickering fucking faggot among themselves, and the adult who spreads his legs and looks lovingly into another man’s eyes as the top whispers the same words into his ear. Hearing stupid spic under the breath of a man who signs the paychecks is a world apart from choosing the man who’ll say it when you’re skin to skin with your limbs tangled among sweat-soaked sheets.

Someone who invites these powerful incivilities into his life is brave. He’s facing down those slurs on his own terms. He’s choosing when and how he hears them, who will say them to him. Not only is he saying I am what and who I am, but he’s adding a defiant cry of And even these supposed worst of words will only bring me joy.

How can anyone say that’s not courageous? That it’s not beautiful? Because it is. When someone wants to share that side of himself with me, it’s a gift of unimaginable magnitude.

I treat such gifts with the respect they deserve.

As for the nay-sayers, the clutch-my-pearls, those who turn up their nose and sneer: the names they call those men—crazy, self-loathing, sick—are as bad as any of the epithets. The urge to squelch everyone into their vision of correctness makes them condescending; it makes them as hurtful as anyone casually spewing a deliberate taunt. They reduce men of complexity into objects of derision. It’s fear that makes them do it—but when the result is the same as slapping them with invective, to what end?

There’s nothing to fear here. Nothing that any of us experience, or for which we dream, is truly unimaginable to anyone else. We’re all brothers, beneath the skin.

***

All men are equal in their slumber.

We nap together for the better part of an hour. I’m grateful for the steam from that radiator as our bodies cool. We’re glued together by sweat and spit and semen. My arms are curled around his shoulders and chest, my legs wrapped around his knees. In his sleep, he lifts his hand and lets his fingertips rest against the back of my wrist. From time to time they pulse, as if in his doze he’s typing, or playing piano.

He’s beautiful, this boy. The thin beard on his jaw grazes my own as he sighs and shifts and painfully peels apart a few inches of our flesh. There’s a smile on his face that makes him glow. When I look at it, I yearn to be the one of whom he’s dreaming.

Perhaps I am.

My own eyelids droop. I pull this boy closer in, holding him to keep the world at bay. It’s my unspoken promise to him. He’s known it from the start. Down, down into the gentle rise and fall of our breathing I drift, until I, too, am sleeping once again.

Daddy

He’s a skinny boy. Twenty-three. Tall as I am, but maybe twenty or twenty-five pounds less—one-forty, maybe. His waist is narrow and pale; I can see his hipbones jutting out above the elastic of his baggy striped boxers. From their bottoms are his long, lean legs. His nipples are small, but their tips are round and hard. He’s half-aroused in his underwear as he invites me in the house.

It’s not the best of houses. It perches on a street next to one of Richmond’s busier expressways, and the front yard is overgrown with weeds. There’s no driveway, but parked in the waist-high grass are three cars that made me balk when I pulled up off the curb and next to the closest of them; I thought this boy was going to be alone. And inside the house is a bit of a wreck. There’s debris everywhere. CD cases. DVD cases. Discarded mail and food packaging. A pizza box. It’s clean. There weren’t any surfaces so grungy that they made me recoil to touch or sit upon. But it’s cluttered.

When I’m in the door and it’s shut behind me, he grows shy. I hadn’t seen his face in the photos, and I could see why he hid it. He’s a little bit nerdy. His hair is cut in a timeless Richmond style—short but not too short, parted on the side, a cowlick poking up in the back. He wears round Harry Potter glasses. He’s not ugly by a long shot, but he obviously feels his body is his strong point. I put my hands on those hips, so sharp they could cut me, and pull that body in close. His legs automatically pull together and move between mine. His hands go around my shoulders. And then we kiss, long, and slowly, and deep.

The boy knows how to kiss. I don’t want it to stop. But he pulls away slightly. I feel a tremble shiver through his body. Then he says, “Oh, daddy.”

When I’m visiting my own daddy in Virginia, in the springtime I do so to help him out. I do all his spring yard cleaning—cutting down the sturdy trees that were mere twigs six months before, pulling out the strangling wisteria and the English ivy, pulling out the weeds from my mother’s former garden of roses, now gone wild and fragrantly feral. I fix things around the house. And when that’s all done, I perform chauffeur duty. My dad can’t drive after sunset, and doesn’t like driving anywhere he can’t reach on surface streets, so if he has errands that require distance driving, I’m his go-to guy.

The day before we’d driving all the way out to the Blue Ridge and back, allegedly to drop off a box of documents to an academic society there, but really, I think, so that my dad could have lunch at of his two favorite restaurants out that way—only he couldn’t decide which. I frankly thought the buffet at Kentucky Fried Chicken (“It’s the only KFC I’ve ever seen to have a buffet!”, he enthused) or the buffet at Golden Corral sounded both about equally vile, so I’d had to spend over an hour that morning trying to make him pick one. By rights that should’ve been the highlight of our day. Instead, on the trip home, we were talking and my car started to make one of those funny noises that cars make when something’s not right. It proved to be the plastic shield beneath the car had detached from the bumper and was alternately dragging against the highway or splintering into tiny shards.

I know nothing about cars. I really don’t. This was a fact driven home back at my dad’s place that afternoon, when his insistence that we poke around under the hood led to the astonishing revelation that in the several years I’ve owned this particular vehicle, I’d never lifted the hook, and didn’t even know how to unlatch it. (In my defense, I’m great around the house and have excellent soldering skills.) I determined that I’d get up the next morning, early, and head to the dealer for service . . . which why, at five in the morning, I’d been awake with this skinny kid begging me to come over and fuck his little hole. I need my daddy in me, he said in his messages. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to service my daddy’s dick.

Fine by me. At seven in the morning I presented myself at the dealer and, thanks to my brother’s superior car knowledge, was able to say in a blasé manner that my car’s air guard was dragging on the ground and could they please fix it so that I didn’t have to drive back to New England with it scraping all four hundred miles back? They could, but they couldn’t get the part until the next morning. Could I come back then, before I left for home?

It was nearly eight a.m. when I get on my phone and email him. He sends back his address immediately.
And now, here I am. “I’m so glad you’re in town, daddy,” he whimpers. “I’ve needed you.”
He’s playacting, but it’s not put-on. He’s genuinely happy. He genuinely does need me. I can tell that from the way his legs and hip mold against my own. He gasps and relaxes when my hands move over his smooth, hairless skin, when they shuck down his briefs like limp corn husks. “Take me to your bedroom, son,” I murmur.

He looks embarrassed. “The bedroom is . . . unavailable.” Ah. I get it. He’s got roommates. They’ve divided up this house into partitioned areas, I see now. There’s a divider between the living room and the dining room that’s an accordion-like vinyl pleat, latched in the middle. There’s probably a roommate sleeping on the other side. That would account for why we were being so quiet.

I didn’t give a fuck who was there. I led him to the sofa and let my shorts drop to the floor. The boy was on his daddy’s dick immediately, sucking it all the way to the base. Good head, too. He knew how to suck. Not too much teeth, not too much abrasion. Just the right amount of tongue action along the underside. He’s getting me close, and getting me close quickly. It’s more than most grown men can do.

I alternate between kissing him and letting him slobber all over my fuckstick. I’m not in a hurry to get back to my dad’s. His own dick—small, narrow, uncut—drips precum over his belly. There’s a long sticky thread of it connecting navel to tip, as his dick jerks and begs for his own attention. His hands are busy with my nuts, though. Stroking them. Caressing them. Squeezing them. Making my dick and balls feel good, and feel loved, the way a boy should. Yeah. He’s very good.

It’s time. I pull him up to the sofa and push him face-down on the pillows. I’ve already been licking at his little pucker from time to time. He’s wet and slick and hungry for it, so I push my dick against the sweet, warm spot and shove in. He twitches, then relaxes once more. He needs this dick. His hips raise up and push back, trying to get me deeper inside him. We try again with a little lube, and then I’m in, sliding all the way home. “Fuck, boy,” I whisper.

He starts a prayer into the seat cushion that doesn’t end the entire time I’m in him. “Oh god daddy oh god I need you daddy, fuck me, fuck me daddy, I needed this so bad, please don’t stop, please give it to me, oh god, oh god. . . .” He’s almost crying. His breath is ragged and torn as I move in and out of him. For long minutes I stroke in and out. I can tell he gets the most pleasure when I long-dick him, drawing out all but the tip before slowly pushing back in. His eyes roll up in his head when I do this. Drool hangs from the corner of his mouth, all over the pillow.

“Fuck me please, oh god daddy, please fuck me, fuck me please,” he says. The litany makes my juices flow. He’s so slick and wet now. His hot little hole grips onto me. He moans when I thrust hard. “Sssh,” I tell him. “We don’t want to wake your mom.”

This little bit of inspired roleplay sends him into a frenzy. He silences us both by craning his neck so that he can kiss me over his shoulder. Hard and keep we kiss as I shove my raw dick inside him. I’m coming before I really know it’s happening. It’s one of those orgasms in which it feels like something’s snapped, and the release is almost painful. Three, four jets of semen I shoot into him. A reluctant fifth. A small and tired sixth. We lay still.

But only for a moment. “Let me clean you,” he begs. “Let me clean you, dad.” He flips onto his back. I settle on my knees into the cushion and lower my dick into his mouth. He sucks away at my tool, cleaning off the ass juices and the semen and my sticky tool as he whacks away at his own dick.
“Good boy,” I say, stroking his hair. “I have a very, very good boy.”

When he comes, almost immediately after the words, it’s a geyser. Fluid sprays everywhere on the first shot. The second shot flies up like a ninja weapon to his nipple. He chokes slightly on my dick. I lift up and out of his mouth.

Then I watch him lying there, shuddering for a long minute after. He keeps twitching. His eyes are closed. I can almost see the electrical charge playing over his skin, from head to feet and back again. At last he subsides. By then, I have back on my clothes.

“Good boy,” I whisper, as I lean down to kiss him. “This is just between us guys, right?”

“Yes, daddy,” he whispers. A beatific smile crosses his face. With his eyes closed, he looks like an angel.
I give him one more kiss, and then I leave the house, to drive home to my own daddy.