The Hunger

Williamsburg, Virginia: 1981

I see the man’s eyes light up from the park’s far end, as my feet kick up whorls of dust from runnels of wheat-colored gravel alongside the road.

One moment, he’s just some anonymous fellow in tight jeans and a checkered jacket, relaxing on one of the park's two benches. Mid-thirties, sandy-haired, mustached, his jaw soft and his hairline receding, though in the back it hangs to his shoulders. The next, after he recognizes me loping toward him, he’s sitting up straighter, taller, crossing one denimed leg over the other. He smiles in my direction. Nods slightly. Fingers tapping with impatience, he observes as I dodge a tourist family on the sidewalk and sidle past the wooden fence into the rectangular enclosure.

Another man I don’t recognize occupies the bench at the park’s western end. He’s probably an out-of-towner, a balding, stolid suburban type trying to appear younger in sneakers a little too new and white and a puffy down vest that’s a little too orange. When I pass, the stranger leans forward, alert, hoping I’ll choose him.

My friend waits for me, though. He pretends otherwise, left arm stretched with practiced casualness across the bench’s back, legs crossed, head turned slightly away. Yet his eyes dart my way as I approach. I sit down not next to him, but at the bench’s far end, where I too can angle my body slightly away from his. We say nothing. No greeting, no remark on the weather. We don’t acknowledge the other with a glance or nod.

It’s long past the peak of this Saturday. Though the Colonial Williamsburg bus still roars to a stop at the corner not too far away, few visitors alight from its steps. In the golden light of this Virginia late autumn afternoon, diminishing numbers of tourists walk along Duke of Gloucester Street. DoG Street, we students abbreviate it. Some families straggle from the heart of the colonial village, worn from so much history and walking and in search of something for dinner. A young couple, bathed in a honeymoon glow, strolls hand in hand, unable to take their eyes off the other.

The two of us watch in silence at the newlywed pair entranced in their young love, clasped hands swinging lightly between them, until they vanish. I extend my right arm across the bench’s top. My hand dangles behind. My benchfellow shifts slightly, imperceptibly leaning closer. Behind the bench, I feel an electric shock when his skin brushes against mine. I clear my throat and look away from the man, but my long middle finger tickles one of his knuckles. From DoG Street, no one can spy how we touch, or how our fingers nuzzle and entwine. The thrill of caressing him so publicly remains our secret.

At least, it’s a secret until the stranger on the other bench leans back as if stretching. He cranes his neck to spy how my friend and I stroke the other’s fingertips. His lips compress into an annoyed moue; he lets out a sigh so exaggerated that a DoG Street jogger turns her head in concern. Upset at being excluded, he shoves his hands into his jeans and exits the park, striding in the direction of the squat brick construction at the corner.

He’ll find the action he seeks there. The men’s room there is the town’s cruisiest, active from early in the morning until it’s closed after dark. Cocksuckers crowd the three stalls that look directly onto a line of unpartitioned urinals, waiting for the next bus drop-off of Williamsburg tourists, directly outside the restroom doors. Daddies and grandpas will stream into the tiled chamber, unzip and whip out their dicks, and pee, observed through the cracks by cock-hungry cruisers. Once the tide recedes and those who merely needed to evacuate their bladders wash their hands and leave the enclosure, one or two might remain. At the urinal, they stand and stroke themselves to hardness, hoping that someone will open both their stall door and mouth to accommodate them. Come dark, the tourists are few and the restroom occupied only by those looking for action; when the Williamsburg custodians padlock the doors at nine or ten in the evening, the action moves behind the brick building, to this handkerchief-sized park behind.

Though we’re alone, my seated companion still looks away. I gaze at my sneakers. Two of his fingers tug at me, secretly, behind the bench. “You hungry?” I hear him ask nobody specific.

“Yeah,” I reply, to no one in particular.

A last squeeze. “Let’s go,” he suggests before he stands.

***

I am forever hungry. I’m six-foot-three and one hundred and five pounds, a beanpole lingering in that phase of adolescence in which my stomach is always growling. No amount of food seems to sate it. For much of high school, my mother half-wondered if I had a tapeworm.

In my first weeks of college, the problem of keeping fed has only been forced into sharper relief, for one simple reason: I am on my own for the first time in my life, and stuff is so damned expensive. I’m fortunate that my parents have scrimped and sacrificed to pay my tuition to this state school. That three thousand a year is all they can afford, though. My paternal grandmother has coughed up enough to cover the cost of housing for my freshman year, and for this year only.

Everything else is up to me.

It’s the cost of the everything else giving me ulcers. I discovered days after my arrival that textbooks are eye-poppingly overpriced. Even when I settle for the most battered used copies that aren’t actually missing entire sewn signatures, I’m already into the hundreds of dollars. The piano lessons I’ve promised to keep up threaten to chew up a significant part of my budget. For the first time I’m having to buy my own toothpaste and saline solution and shampoo and soap, not to mention clothing.

Several little part time jobs are what pay for these necessities. Thanks to the pity of the college president’s wife, I’m playing the organ for a tiny congregation of Christian Scientists; from there I’ve wheedled my way into an afternoon position sorting books and papers in their reading room. I’m working a few hours a week in the admissions office. I take whatever odd jobs I hear about.

But meals are on my coin, too. The college requires freshmen to enroll for a food services plan. I’ve opted for the less expensive that allows me two meals a day in the school’s cafeterias. At breakfast I’ll gorge and assure myself that a big morning meal will allow me to skip lunch without consequences. My stomach begins to growl and protest before eleven, though, and continues throughout the afternoon until the cafeteria opens for dinner at five.

I’m usually the first in line.

To me it seems that I’m the only student in constant anxiety over food. Charlie, my roommate who hails from the elite halls of the Phillips Exeter Academy, has never stepped foot in either of the school’s dining halls. He spends his seemingly bottomless allowance on beer, pizza, and sandwiches hot from the deli ovens. My friends keep enviable caches of junk food in their dorm rooms. When I visit for study sessions, they inevitably suggest fortifying our late-night cramming with strombolis from Paul’s Deli. This notion of being able to spring for food without thought for a budget astounds me, every time. I have to demur, claiming fullness, then watch with stomach pangs while they chow down.

There could be two easy solutions to my money and food woes: I could make easy cash doing sex work. Or I could dip into the savings account where lies the ill-gotten goods of my sex work during high school. So far, I’ve refused to do either.

From several years of experience I know that even in a tourist town like Williamsburg a lanky youth might make money with his body. It’s a town of hotels for assignations. Corny a tourist attraction as it is, it still attracts horny men wanting to sully their sheets. If I didn’t care to ply my sex trade so close to campus, any of the former clients to whom I’d said goodbye two months before would be happy to shell out for a weekend reunion. A round-trip bus ticket from the ‘Burg to Richmond costs less than fifteen bucks. I could spend a single Friday night with a happy client or two and return with enough cash to pay for next semester’s textbooks. Easy.

I won’t, though. Fitting in on this campus has been difficult enough. After years as a racial minority in my public school system, then as the only white boy in my all-Black high school, the last few weeks have been a crash course on assimilation. In an environment where I’m not the only fair-skinned kid with blond hair, I feel like an alien. I don’t listen to the same music. When my dorm mates express wild enthusiasm for The Police, it takes me a full week to figure out they’re not talking about the law enforcement for whom I keep an eye, every time I cruise. Shortly before the semester commenced, I had to consult Lisa Birnbaum’s The Official Preppy Handbook for guidelines on how I should be dressing—even though I know it’s intended as a parody.

College is supposed to homogenize me. I want college to make me normal again. I am so, so tired of being the odd boy out. If any of these bright, shiny faces surrounding me were to discover my queerness, I’d probably have to drop out. If anyone were to discover that I scored easy cash from exploiting it—well, at that point I’m not sure my life would be worth living.

I’m equally stubborn about dipping into my sex work savings. A couple of hundred bucks a semester would hardly put a dent in the total sum, but I worked hard for that money and don’t want to diminish it with stupid practicalities. Even accessing the funds would be a pain in the ass: I’d have to make a trip home, get the bank book from its hiding place, visit the local branch, hide the book again, then return to campus. Too many steps, and parents would dog me questions the entire while.

Then there’s something else. Maybe it won’t turn out to be a big thing. I’m probably complicating stuff in my own head again. But weekly, when I sit down in the campus library to pore over The Village Voice, I’ve been seeing rumors about a thing they’re calling gay cancer. I don’t live in Manhattan and the chances of me getting something like that are slim, but it’s still enough to give me pause.

So no. I won’t resort to sex work. Though it’s part of my past, I’m resolved no one will ever find out about it. I won’t trade sex for money again.

But hungry as I am, I might trade sex for food.

***

From his seat at my side, my friend watches me eat. “Good?” is all he says.

I nod with enthusiasm as I shovel grub into my mouth. The salisbury steak special—two hamburger patties and mashed potatoes smothered in brown gravy, with both green beans and applesauce as sides—has half-disappeared from my plate. I eat like a starved man. Or at least a starved kid who hasn’t had a bite to eat since seven-thirty that morning. My friend observes my frantic feeding with a smile. “How’s school?”

Again my head bobs up and down. He doesn’t need to hear about my woes with Charlie, or how painfully I’m sleep-deprived from living on a hall of kids who sleep during the day and party all night. I know better than to burden the guy with my insecurities about fitting in. He’s just making the kind of small talk murmured by everyone here in George’s Diner this evening.

Berk, his name is. At least, I think it might be. The first time we’d met in the park after dark, shortly after I started the semester, he’d told me that his name was Burke, but not spelled the usual way. Since he hasn’t told me exactly how it’s spelled, it could be Burk. Maybe it’s Burque, or an even more outlandish rendition. In my head, though, I think of him as Berk. We sit at the diner’s counter side by side like old friends, though there’s at least a two-decade gap in our ages. “How’s your mom?” I ask, remembering my manners in the midst of swallowing.

He lets out a barely audible grunt of frustration. “Gettin’ on my last nerve. The usual. You know how it is.”

The small talk over, I continue shoveling giant forkfuls into my piehole. This one dinner out will afford me an extra meal, one day this week. Already I’m strategizing: should I treat myself to lunch on Tuesday, when the cafeteria serves pizza? I love pizza, even a from a food services tray. Or should I save the punch on my card for a day when my midday hunger can’t contain itself? To my side, Berk chews his burger in deep meditation.

We don’t always eat at George’s, though I’m happy when we do. The portions here are large and the price he pays for my meal doesn’t strike me as an imposition. Sometimes he’ll drive me to a barbecue shack out near Waller Mill Reservoir. Others, we’ll hop in his pickup truck and drive up Richmond Road to the roast beef carvery, where we’ll sit camouflaged among seniors and tourists.

Once I’ve done inhaling what’s on my plate, he crosses fingers at the knuckles and smiles. “You want pie? Or should we get going?”

I want pie. But I don’t want to appear like I’m stalling, or that the food is my main reason for meeting him. “Your place?” I suggest. As if going back to my dorm room and roommate accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old man is really an option.

His blue eyes light up with pleasure. “Yeah,” he says. “My place.”

***

It’s not really his place. Berk lives in the basement of a ranch house, where worn shag carpet covers cold concrete. His furniture is castoffs—a sofa that looks comfortable but, when sat upon, seems to have been stuffed entirely with broken springs and old gears, a coffee table with one short leg propped up by a brick. Over by the washer, drier, and laundry tub is Berk’s bed, a twin made up with a chenille bedspread. Overhead, floor nails poke through exposed bare boards. Rather than use the bald overhead bulbs, Berk has turned on several smaller table lamps.

I sit in an old aluminum-framed chair from the fifties upon floral plastic cushions covered by with see-through plastic enclosures. Berk, his hands in his lap, perches cata-cornered next to me on the sofa, enduring his mother as she tousles her hair. “What are you boys doing tonight?” she asks in cheery tones.

Berk’s fair skin reddens. “Watching the game.”

“How nice.” Berk’s mom pushes a pair of thick spectacles up her nose and smooths down the polyester front of her housecoat. “Now, I’ve made some snacks for the two of you, and there’s juice and beer in the icebox upstairs.”

“Okay, Ma.” Berk’s annoyance sounds more adolescent than I am, myself. She pauses for a moment, looking over the two of us. Uncomfortable as I am at her presence, at least there’s no trace of suspicion or concern on her face. She really seems to think that her darling Berk has brought home one of his little friends to watch the game.

Berk gives me a glance intended to imply apology, once his mother finally creaks up the basement steps and shuts the door behind her. We both wait a moment, heads cocked, to make sure she’s really gone. At his nod, I climb on his lap, plant my ass firmly on the bulge in those tight jeans, and grind. Our lips meet.

“Just keep it quiet,” he says in a whisper, as if I don’t already know. Through the floorboards, I hear his mother padding around in her slippers. Berk switches on the black and white portable TV sitting on the coffee table and lets the sound drown out her footsteps. I keep an eye overhead as I slide down between his outstretch legs and begin to unzip him.

I’ll suck him swiftly and silently, the way he likes, while he suppresses his grunts and groans. He’ll come with a sigh, then zip up while I swallow his tangy load and assume my previous position on the chair. In another hour, we’ll repeat the act, wary all the while of being interrupted.

After he shoots, we hear a creak above. Berk shoves me off and scrambles to close his open pants, while I scramble for my shirt. “MOM!” he howls with fury at the top of his voice. “MOM! Are you LISTENING?!”

Hooking up with a man only five years younger than my dad, who still lives in his mom’s basement, isn’t ideal. It’s not even something I want to repeat more than once every couple of weeks.

But I get a meal out of it. So for now, I make it work.

***

Mark the accountant looks like a thumb. Unfortunate, but true. Or maybe, if I’m being more generous, a Weeble—one of those rotund egg-shaped toys weighted at its bottom so it never topples over. Heft alone doesn’t lend that impression, though he is a stout man. Viewed face on, he gives the impression of something pink, squat and round stuffed into a short-sleeved dress shirt, tan slacks, and a tie, with a belt around his middle barely keeping it all together. He sits across the table from me at Morrison’s, the cafeteria chain with a branch on Richmond Road. Through thick spectacles he stares with astonishment as I shovel down forkfuls of meatloaf, boiled corn, and mashed potatoes, then wash it down with a mouthful of Coke.

“Whoa there,” he says in mild rebuke. “Slow down a little. That food’s not going anywhere.”

I swallow, chastened, and take a moment to retrieve a niblet with my tongue from an upper recess behind a molar. I know these table manners would shame my mom, but my hunger is extreme today. Eleven hours have elapsed since breakfast with no food in the interim. Trying not to eat, as my grandmother might say, like a wild savage takes some effort. But for Mark’s sake, I make the effort.

Morrison’s is one of those old-folk’s establishments I’d never choose on my own. I dislike the humid intensity of the steam trays and the wetness of the food as it’s slopped onto a plate by an attendant from watery depths. The slow indecision of the seniors as they push their trays down the chrome railings feels like being stuck forever in an attraction line in Hell’s amusement park. Morrison’s is the place my parents want to take me to dinner when they visit, because it’s cheap.

But Morrison’s with Mark is a free meal, and my companion is fairly generous in what he allows me to pile on my tray. I don’t push with two entrees, much as I’m tempted, but he allows a side salad covered with plastic wrap as well as the corn and green beans, and didn’t protest when I added an extra corn muffin or a dark brown dessert that straddles the conceptual divide between pudding and brownie.

I take an approach of taking a bite, swallowing, then holding my hands together beneath the shiny tabletop while I ask him a question. How’s work? That’s nice. Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving? Okay. Do you go anywhere? Oh, you stay at home. Oh, your wife cooks. That’s nice, too. How long have you been—? Wow, that’s a long time.

I can’t say it’s nice, this conversation. All I want to do is inhale my food before it cools. But it feels civilized, talking and eating, instead of trying to consume everything as quick as humanly possible. It feels like dating. Almost. In my mind, dating is something forbidden me; two men don’t date. Such a thing is unthinkable. But if I could date, this probably would be what it felt like. Dating is for the straight folk; it’s their prolonged and endless way station of conventionality between meeting and fucking.

Married man Mark and I will fuck. Once I’ve scraped my bowl clean of the brown dessert, Mark and I will exit Morrison’s and hop into his brown sedan. We’ll drive through town until we reach the pebbly stretch of empty road known as the Colonial Parkway, and choose in one of the several pull-offs between Williamsburg and Yorktown. Enshrouded in absolute darkness, we will strip to the waist. Mouth upon mouth, mouth on nipple, we’ll commune with each other, breaking the silence only with moans and hushed exhalations. The heat of our bodies and breath will paint the glass with vapor; he’ll have to blast the defroster to clear faint hieroglyphs of swipes and fingerprints from the windshield.

Afterward, I’ll feel dirty. During our drive back to campus, I’ll stew in a hot puddle of shame. Not because I’ve submitted myself to a man with the general proportions of Humpty Dumpty. Not because a wife sits at home thinking her cheating husband is at an Elks meeting. I sweat and shiver because I have stepped so close to my personal line of no long whoring myself out for cash—and because I know that I’ll do it again and again, whenever I’m hungry.

***

I’m not so naive that I can ignore the transactional nature of exchanging meals for sex. I’m fully aware of the pro quo I’m expected to provide for a plateful of quid. Hustling is something I’ve promised myself I won’t do, though. In my mind, I think of prostitution as the absolute last resort because I’m ashamed to have done it all through my adolescence. There’s no cultural respect for sex work at this or any earlier point in my life. Everyone know it’s a service only the dregs of society provide. Whores, prostitutes, rent boys, hookers, hustlers, streetwalkers—upright folk spit these words with contempt. There’s no space for a culture of pride to develop around a collective of people who sell their bodies for cash.

Class bias is always a part of the condemnation. To sell one’s body for cash is to become part of the great unwashed, voluntarily to join an untouchable caste. It’s impossible for nice people to conceive of anything lower.

For four or five years I’ve played with fire, selling myself in the parks and on the Block and then taking on regular clients. In high school, when I was isolated and alone I never felt shame. Among a thousand peers who believe sex work to be a punishment, to be sinful, I begin to internalize humiliation. I’ve earned a pile of cash that I was never able to spend or enjoy for fear of attracting my parents’ attention. I’m ashamed to withdraw from the account where it sits. I’m ashamed to ask my parents for help. So I dance on this line, knowing deep down I’m whoring, yet telling myself what I do is adjacent to courting these men. Men who are married or who are mere children in adult bodies. Men whom I convince myself are all I deserve, because I can’t conceive of meriting better.

I cannot bring disgrace to my family with sex work. My secret life can’t be exposed at college. I’m a lower middle class white boy surrounded by my betters, desperately trying to fit in. Actual hustling could imperil this chance at a fresh new start.

So I prevaricate, and tell myself white lies about what I’m doing. And after each free meal, I swear it will be the last.

Tonight’s will be the last, in fact. Selling myself for Morrison’s Cafeteria is a new low.

I have to do better.

I have to reform.

***

A week later I’m sitting in the car with—I don’t remember this one’s name. Mike? Martin? He’s a Virginian Good Old Boy with only a few strands of fair, wispy hair left to comb over his pate. His stubby, moist hands paw my thighs and crotch all the way down I-64. “Can’t wait to get a taste of that,” he says with knowing certitude.

I smile and wait to shudder until I can turn my head and stare out the window. Whatever his name is, I don’t find this pickup from the park the least attractive. If anything, with his spit-slick lips and beady, almost sadistic eyes, he repels me. But he’s offered to take me to someplace called Chi-Chi’s in Hampton Roads, and I, who’ve never had any Mexican food beyond a Taco Bell Grande, am anxious to be fed.

So when he takes a hand off the steering wheel to twist my nipple savagely through my shirt and he mistakes my cry of surprise and pain for excitement, I don’t correct him. I deserve the hurt, for what I’m about to do for a meal.

Because my hunger has returned.

My hunger always returns.

***

Hey! If you've made it this far, chances are you enjoy my sexual memoir pieces. May I suggest you invest in one of my works of sexy erotica? 

If you enjoy vintage-style collections of hot, retro-themed gay fiction penned by some great authors of man on man erotica, please consider supporting me with a purchase of either Dirty Dorms & Fresh Men (which features my story Sleazy A) or Hustlers, Hoboes, & Outlaws (which features my story On the Block). 

Sleazy A is also available in epub format from Smashwords! Until December 1, use the code LE84C to purchase it for half off!

The publishing house for these projects can be found at Peterschutes.com . There are already ten vintage-style pulps on sale over there, with more to come. If you sign up for their newsletter, you’ll be eligible to receive a free eBook.

Supporting my erotic fiction helps me maintain this blog and the erotic memoir I've produced here for over a decade. 

Easy 'n' Sleazy

Just a few general announcements today. No fears—I've been working on an essay about my college days that I'm hoping to complete for you good folk within the next week. However, I'd like to announce that the short novel based on those very same college years is available in ebook format for the first time.

Sleazy A, which appeared in print format over the summer and was a smashing success, is available right now from the popular Smashwords site. The Smashwords version is in epub format, suitable for easy (and sleazy) viewing on tablets, smart phones, and computers. 

Through December 15 you can use the code LE84C and buy the book half off. That's less than the cost of a fast food coffee for some quality queer erotica, and your purchase will support and encourage my efforts here and for other hot stories in the future.

Purchase the epub of Sleazy A from Smashwords.

If you're wedded more to your Kindle, Sleazy A will also be available for download from Amazon beginning December 3. You can preorder now!

Preorder the Kindle version of Sleazy A from Amazon.

And of course, if handsome pulp-style paperbacks are your thing, Sleazy A is part of the print anthology Dirty Dorms and Fresh Men.

Order Dirty Dorms and Fresh Men from Amazon.

The response to Sleazy A has been terrific. I've gotten great emails from my readers as well as a lot of positive buzz on both Twitter and Bluesky. I've had men snapping photos of themselves in the buff reading the book. One gentleman sent me a photo of the anthology wedged between his throughly spectacular butt cheeks. 

I still return to that motivating visual from time to time.

Thank you to all those who've taken the time and effort to read and encourage me in my fictional side projects. I hope you'll consider supporting not only this queer writer, but the art form of gay erotica itself. 

See you all again very soon!

Behind the Story: On the Block

The anthology, Hoboes, Hustlers, and Outlaws: Bad Boys and Macho Men is shipping! My newest novella, On the Block, appears within its pages. It’s a story set in 1979 about a twenty-one-year-old named Nicky, a street hustler from the armpit of Virginia, who’s trying to make a better life for himself, one trick at a time.

Today, I’d like to share a little about the story’s background.

My early sexuality blossomed in the nineteen-seventies in the little Southern city of Richmond, Virginia. It was a decade in which gay sex was still a criminal act. Being detected or caught destroyed families, careers, and lives. Even casting a stray, longing glance in the direction of an undercover cop could land a man in jail and his name in the newspapers.

The effects of Stonewall had not yet reached the South. My progressive parents had a number of friends who definitely were not straight, though no one would discuss or admit it. The confirmed bachelors who lived together in houses full of fussy antiques? Gay. The fashionable aging single men who ‘hadn’t yet settled down’ but would arrive to my folks’ dinner parties bearing a straw-wrapped bottle of red in one hand and in the other, several Blossom Dearie LPs? Incredibly gay. The burly female historian who shared an apartment and a pair of bulldogs with her ‘girl friend,’ who later sold me her gently-used Malibu as my first car? So gay. None of them identified as queer. They would have gone to their graves denying it.

Many did.

It was a decade in which men looking for sex with other men found themselves pushed to the margins; they were forced to seek each other in bars run by an unlawful element, or in parks closed after dark, or along dangerous city streets at night, where nice, normal people dared not venture. In these forbidden spaces, we all were outlaws. We consorted with other outlaws—criminals that the public viewed as menaces to society. If in these spaces we were arrested, or victimized, or beaten, or killed—well, criminals deserved what they got. Right?

Cruising these spaces was always dangerous. We always had to keep an eye and ear out for the approach of an outsider, or the gleam of a cop car in the distance. In the dark, more seasoned outlaws developed an almost supernatural ability to sense the the onset of trouble long before it arrived, so that we could warn our brothers and scamper to safety. It wasn’t an environment for the weak, the stupid, or the slow. Though we looked out for each other when and while we could, once those lights flashed and the sirens started to blare, it was every man for himself.

Most of those old cruising spots of mine still exist, forty-five years later. Open up Sniffies and you’ll see that Bryan Park is still one of Richmond’s most popular hookup spots, though its roads have been reconfigured and entryways changed since the days I would visit by dark. The walks by the James River where I accepted cash for quick trysts along the riverbanks—still active. Cruisers still haunt the shadier, more forested areas of both Maymont and Byrd Parks, where I used to wander provocatively after nightfall.

Despite an abundance of gay bars that certainly weren’t around during my teens and early twenties, despite the apps and the relative openness with which queer people circulate in my old hometown, men still hit up the traditional spots in the hope of finding random dick.

All the spots but one, that is: what used to be known as The Block. It’s the only of my old cruising locations that has its own Wikipedia page. It’s also the setting for my latest anthology story, On the Block, which you can order now at the link below.

The Block survived for forty years before me as a sometimes-migrating small section of Richmond’s downtown area known for male sex workers. In the late seventies, The Block had expanded. It started at the corner of the city’s then brand spanking new public library, two blocks west down Franklin Street to the YMCA, a block south to Main Street, then two blocks east back to the library. By day, the neighborhood was just a number of run-down, anonymous townhouses in an area of the city no one really visited.

After dark, though, the street transformed into the tiniest of gay villages. A handful of queer men rented rooms in the townhouses. Home from work, they’d open their windows and loudly blast disco hits on their turntables. Some hung cheerful holiday lights around their windows, or draped table lamps with scarves and fabric to bring color both to their habitats and to the street below. Men would perch their asses on the townhouse steps, both cruising and socializing in equal measure.

Then there were the hustlers. Summer nights, they’d prowl the streets in scores. Dozens of the most hardcore—or perhaps the hardest-pressed—would still turn out during the city’s mild winters. Down Franklin they would walk, then over to Main and back to the library, treading a rectangular circuit that all the while faced the streams of one-way traffic on those two streets. Every driver was a potential customer.

Who were these men behind the wheel? Mostly white guys from the wealthy West End of town or from out in the county. Some drove in from as far away as Ashland or Fredericksburg. Most sported wedding rings; many were professionals—lawyers, businessmen, physicians—with a little extra money to burn. Some would visit only every few months, when the itch for same-sex contact grew too unbearable. Others were such frequent and enthusiastic patrons that the hustlers would wave at their vehicles and shout their names, as if Norm walked into Cheers.

One of the more curious customs of The Block during my day is how the sex workers segregated themselves by skin color. White hustlers tended to walk the outer perimeter of the rectangle; Black men the inside. One could tell by which lane of the street a car drove what flavor a john, or customer, might prefer. The self-segregation didn’t extend to socializing. During the slower hours, men of both colors crossed over to laugh and joke, or to swap gossip and news about who’d moved on to a bigger city or who’d given up the business altogether, or who was out of commission for a couple of weeks after a visit to the free clinic. Once a pair of headlights pierced the dark, though, back they’d all scatter to their respective sides of the street.

I don’t recall the day I discovered The Block, but by around 1978, when I was fourteen, I was one of the white boys walking its circuits by cover of night. I’d tell my family after dinner I was heading to the downtown library with friends. If they assumed by the stack of books in my backpack that I’d be studying, well, that was my intent. I’d ditch the books in our back yard to be retrieved on my return, take the bus downtown from my leafy neighborhood, and walk The Block for a few hours until I arrived home by ten or ten-thirty with a pocketful of crumpled bills.

Hey, the library was always within sight, when I was stomping the pavement. And I did make new friends.

Afraid of attracting the wrong kind of attention at home, though, I never hit The Block more than once a week, and never stayed late. The action really picked up in the hours after midnight. Yet I was regular enough that I could expect to be greeted by guys from both sides of the street whenever I showed.

There was an essential difference between the other regulars and myself, though—and I’m not talking mere age. My teenaged sex work was an act of secret rebellion. I was the perfect little straight-A best little boy in the world who only took a stand for what he truly was in the city’s forbidden places, among my fellow outlaws. My family wasn’t wealthy and always seemed to be teetering on the brink of financial insecurity, god knows, but unlike every other man there, I didn’t have to support myself. For me, sex work wasn’t about making ends meet.

A lot of the men I knew during those years made their only money walking The Block. A few held down part-time or low-paying jobs during the day that The Block supplemented—there was one occasion when an older men from The Block’s inner circuit showed up as my substitute civics teacher, to our mutual surprise. Some sensed they were ill-suited to retail or office positions; hustling at night let them work when and how they pleased. Several talked big about earning just enough seed money to move on to a bigger city like D.C. or Philadelphia or NYC.

I don’t like generalizing about the sex workers I knew during that period of my life. Regardless of why these men sought or resorted to sex work, I was a mere dilettante. At the end of the night, I had a family who loved me and a warm home I could return to. I didn’t owe any bills. My earnings didn’t pay for groceries.

While my last anthologized story, Sleazy A, was a semi-autobiographical mashup of men I knew during my college years, On the Block is purely fictional, save for its setting. I didn’t base the big blond lunk Nicky (in the story, the poor guy aches to be known as ‘Snake Eyes’) on anyone in particular. I did know a muscly hustler on the edge of forty who always seemed to walk The Block in a tee with the sleeves ripped off, the better to display his bulging biceps; his hair was an amateurish bleached blond and he would bum cigarettes off the other working boys and mumble about how he was destined for better things. Perhaps if Nicky remained on The Block for another twenty years after this story, that’s who he might’ve turned into. I like to think he truly made something of himself in the end, though.

On the Block examines what happens when a stranger inserts himself into The Block’s established ecosystem to push it off-balance. At no point in my youth did I ever run up against a magazine reporter trying to liven up his resume with a seedy expose of sex workers. Every time I exchanged sex for currency, however, I would have to confront the prejudices men held against working boys. Clients would assume I was trash, or dumb as a rock, or that I sucked dick for money because I’d run away, or dropped out of school, or because someone had coerced me into the life. Some johns had dreams of saving me; they’d condescendingly assure me I wasn’t like the other scum on the street and dream of a future in which they would leave their wives and families for a happily ever after with a teen boy.

Thankfully, I was a smart enough to kid to recognize the bullshit for what it was. I learned very quickly that these transactions were rarely as simple as they should have been. Outsiders—whether they’re clients, observers, or enforcers of law—tend to project all kinds of fictional narratives onto the men they hire. To the client, sex workers were rarely people in their own right. They were dimwits who required education, or victims who needed to be saved. They were lost souls to convert, or perverts and deviants to arrest. 

My experience with the men of The Block was pretty much the same as anywhere else I’ve been employed, though. There were certain individuals I was always glad to see and with whom I was friendly, and others I wish stayed in their offices or some other section of the street. Some talked off my ear; others kept to themselves. Some had grand ambitions of advancement or even fame. Most, however, just wanted to get through their work, collect their paycheck, and head home at the end of their shift.

On the Block was a blast to write. The story gave me an opportunity to revisit an old stomping ground through new eyes and to capture its quirks and little beauties as I remember it in the late seventies. As I said earlier, The Block is just about the only old cruising spot of mine that no longer exists; I didn’t know it as a teen, but it had already been in decline before my arrival. The gay bars that had once operated there were only a legend when I first came on the scene. During the eighties and the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, johns stopped driving downtown and the rent boys began to vanish. The area was dead when I returned to Richmond in 1985. Today, the townhouses have been converted into genteel law firms and financial advisories and homes, the streets thoroughly gentrified. The buildings are still there, but The Block as I knew it is gone.

That’s what happens far too often with gay history and culture, however. As we are erased, our traditions and lore can too easily vanish. If sex work was my teen rebellion—my way of being seen for what I was—then perhaps this act of pornography is an old man’s insistence that some memories should not be lost.

There is a sweet side to even the seamiest of stories. And men will do a hell of a lot for a little sweetness, as Nicky discovers in On the Block.

***

Order your copy of Hoboes, Hustlers, and Outlaws from Amazon 

Hustlers and Hoboes and Funerals

Thank you all for the many kind comments and emails I received after my last post here. I’m truly grateful for the support.

It’s been two weeks since my father passed. The shock of it has receded—somewhat, anyway. This last week, I traveled to Virginia for the viewing and funeral. Much to my surprise and relief, both went off not only without a hitch, but without any hurtful antics from the people I thought might cause a ruckus. My mom’s funeral, almost exactly thirty years ago, was a fucking circus thanks to a couple of family members. Everything this week, though, proceeded smoothly. Several old friends from middle and high school who’d happened upon my dad’s obituary in the local paper stopped by to say hello after several decades. I was pleased to talk with a number of my dad’s colleagues from his department at the university, who shared stories about his teaching legacy.

Most importantly, I was able to grieve without enduring any shenanigans.

My dad and I had a great and close relationship. I shared just about everything with him; he knew he could count on me in a crisis. Neither of us harbored secret resentments or grudges. Throughout my adult life, neither of us left anything unsaid. If we argued—and late in his life, we argued a lot about his hoarding, his stubborn refusal to consider downsizing or moving into assisted living, and his insistence that long-expired food was safe to eat—we said what was on our minds, hugged it out, and would always conclude the debate with a reminder that we loved each other. Total frankness and unconditional love: I think it’s the ideal relationship a kid can have with his parent. I was very fortunate to enjoy it with both of mine. It’s why, when both died, I mourned and continue to be sad at their loss, but I don’t have any issues left unresolved or guilt eating away at me.

It’s also why, when at various events this week people would say to me, Your dad really loved you, I confidently could reply, Thank you. I know.

One of my dad’s neighbors down his old street held a reception after the funeral. During the last couple of years, she’d been generous with him, bringing him the occasional meal when she’d made extra, or picking up treats from the supermarket. She’d also been something of a pain in my ass during the same time period. Every one of her favors struck me less like real altruism and more like a threatening quid pro quo, with my dad getting all the quids and me having to take care of the quos.

She’d take my dad a yummy dinner and tell him that oh, by the way, did he know his sagging wooden shutters were really bringing down the tone of the neighborhood? He really needed to take care of that. She and her daughter might present my dad a miniature Christmas tree during the holidays, while hinting it was a real shame how raggedy his boxwoods were getting, when all the houses around him had such nice front yards. Then my dad would report back to me how nice she’d been and what she said, and I’d have to hire handymen and landscapers to fix things up, to keep on this woman’s good side. The neighbor felt like a homeowner’s association Karen determined to enforce an imaginary neighborhood standard by holding my dad’s welfare hostage.

I wasn’t happy about having to leap whenever she decided my dad wasn’t doing his part to keep up the tone of the street—nor was I thrilled about the homophobic microaggressions I’d endure whenever I had to deal with her in person. It was because of those that I wanted to skip the reception entirely. But my dad had always been appreciative of her kindness, so I went.

It was a nice reception, sure. There were little sandwiches on buns. I love a little sandwich. What I don’t love, though, is being cut down by a meddler making passive-aggressive comments about my Northern lifestyle, or when my aunt asked when I had to return to work, cutting in to titter, oh, he’s basically retired, isn’t he? No, bitch. I am not retired, basically or remotely. Why diminish my teaching and writing in that way?

And she, like so many others, said, “Your dad really loved you!”

And I smiled and said, “Thank you! I know!”

She thought my reply the most hilarious thing ever. “I know!” she repeated, as if I’d let loose some delicious riposte. “I said your dad loved you, and you said, you know!” She laughed and walked away, shaking her head, leaving me clenching my fists and wondering if I had the nerve to do an upper decker in her downstairs guest bathroom.

My words hadn’t in the least been unpleasant in tone. I didn’t at all get her condescension. If she were to die, wouldn’t this awful woman want her daughter to carry on secure in the knowledge that she had been loved? Did this woman down the street who only knew my father for a mere four years actually think her words would be a revelation? In her family, is love something that’s never expressed?

If she’d said, I’m glad you know, that would’ve been appropriate! But laughing at my confidence in my dad’s love? I can’t fathom it.

Let the people you love know it, friends. There never should be any doubt.

***

Moving on to some good news: I have a new story appearing in another vintage-style anthology of erotic gay fiction.

This particular collection is called Hoboes, Hustlers, and Outlaws: Bad Boys and Macho Men and will hit the shelves on October 1—exactly a month from today! The publisher describes it as “four tales of riding rails, selling tail, and sitting in jail,” and honestly, I couldn’t describe it any better than that.

(Although to be fair, I managed to get a sneak peek at the jail story and it didn’t involve much sitting. I’m kind of surprised the protagonist could sit at all.)

The novella I’ve contributed is called On the Block. It’s a tale set in 1979 of a young hustler working a small-town beat, who sees a magazine reporter as his easy ticket to the big time—yet it’s entirely possible the city slicker is using him for more than just a story. You will almost certainly be pleased to hear that it features some of the sleaziest and hottest sex I’ve ever penned—including a piss play scene that somehow I made humiliating not for the recipient, but for the guy doing the pissing.

I was so grateful and happy for the reception that my novella Sleazy A received when it appeared in Dirty Dorms and Fresh Men, this summer. Many of my friends and followers took the time not only to purchase and read the tale, but to message me and let me know how much they enjoyed it. More than a handful took photos of themselves (or part of themselves) with the book; a few even allowed me to post those on social media. And I loved doing it! The release felt less like a big party in which everyone celebrated gay erotic fiction. I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing with y’all.

So let the party continue! Like Dirty Dorms and Fresh Men, you can pre=order the new Hoboes, Hustlers, and Outlaws online, or ask your local brick-and-mortar bookstore to order it for you. Bonus points if you march into a religious bookstore and make the request. If you pre-order in time, you’ll receive the book on release day.

I’ll be writing more in the future about the background behind On the Block. While it is fictional—definitely more fictional than the semi-autobiographical Sleazy A, anyway—a considerable amount of the material draws upon places and people I knew back in my own street hustling days, distant as they are.

And as for my next story, to be published much later this year? While my first two anthology inclusions were rooted firmly in the past, let’s just say the next will take place in a distant future…

Order your copy of Hoboes, Hustlers, and Outlaws from Amazon (available October 1)

Order your copy of Dirty Dorms and Fresh Men from Amazon (available now!)

In Memoriam

A note from the author: This essay is not sexual in nature. Merely personal, and maybe funny. I hope you'll read it anyway, however.

***

My dad died last Friday.

It was one of those passings that was both sudden and not. I wrote last year of finally convincing him to move from Virginia, closer to his children up north. After he got here, my dad seemed to spend more time in the hospital than out. He would fall, or develop issues from his blood condition. In his assisted living facility he’d tumble and require an emergency room visit, which would lead to him being admitted. He’d faint, or become dizzy and non responsive, or exhibit signs of another stroke. Last week he’d been admitted to the hospital after one of his breakfast fainting spells; he was fine and happily grilling the nurses on their knowledge of American history for several days—and then last Thursday he crashed and I got a call to get out there while I could.

It’s been a long time coming and something I’ve prepared for, for a year and a half. Simultaneously, those final few hours felt swift and shocking.

He had checked out long ago, though. We used to enjoy crackling banter—as I’ve recorded in these pages several times. This last year, the only topics of conversation to which he’d really warm up would be about his living center’s resident cat, and the meals served in their dining room. So I’d call, or more often visit, and hear what had been on the menu for every meal that week, and listen to his complaints about dining room baked goods, and then a rant identical to the last time I’d visited about how he’d like pancakes for breakfast sometime but they always bring him an omelette, and then I’d say well why don’t you tell them you’d like pancakes instead of an omelette and he says well I would complain but their omelette is always so good that I don’t mind eating it. Then, having exhausted everything he enjoyed talking about, we’d discuss the upcoming week’s menus, and by that time it would be lunch and he’d have to go.

He liked his new residence and had started making some friends, but it was plain that his heart wasn’t into it. His life had been so severely diminished.

***

His funeral is next week. Rather than focus any more on his death, allow me to share one story from his life—one I haven’t told before in its entirety, because it still creeps me out.

***

In the autumn of 2020, I had to live with my dad for six weeks. We were six months into the pandemic. I think as a nation we’d stopped disinfecting our groceries at that point, but restaurants were still only open for takeout. Masks were required everywhere. Schools were operating remotely, only. And my dad had prostate cancer.

He’d hidden the diagnosis for a good seven or eight months until his doctors told him his particular case was particularly aggressive. They ordered him to undergo radiation therapy five days a week for six weeks.

My father had extremely low vision. His eyesight was absolutely uncorrectable, even with the thickest lenses. He always lived in a world of blurs without edges and smears of color. He couldn’t really see faces or people’s expressions. He couldn’t read signs, even large ones. He wasn’t blind, but he could only really see clearly what he could hold an inch away from his eyes. Things like books, or an iPad, and for the former he’d still need a magnifying glass.

Because of his eyesight he couldn’t drive. During the pandemic he didn’t want to be climbing into stranger’s Ubers ten times a week to get back and forth from the cancer center.

Once I got over my irritation that he'd hidden his condition for so long, I was anxious to help.

My dad expected me to drive 375 miles both ways twice a week, heading home on the weekends, but I am not that fond of road travel. If I was going to be there for him, I was going to stay the whole time. I’d cook, I’d clean, I’d chauffeur. I packed up a bunch of clothing, my Playstation and electronics, tossed my Instant Pot in my car's back seat, and temporarily moved into my childhood house.

Away from home and loved ones, I was miserable. My quarters were uncomfortable. My dad was a hoarder, so the only place I could escape—from his stacks of magazines dating back to the early 1970s, the toppling piles of return address labels and years’ worth of canned cat food and bags of Halloween candy (some distant Halloween in the 1990s), the coffee cups jammed packed with toenail files and dried-out felt tips, the mail he never threw out and the largest collection of ketchup packets on the North American continent—was the postage-stamp sized bedroom I’d been allotted.

We got into a routine. We’d wake early and head to the cancer center. I’d drop him at the front door. Since I wasn’t allowed inside because of their Covid protocols, I’d sit in the parking lot and read until he was done with his radiation. We’d go home, we’d eat lunch. Then I’d shut myself up in the bedroom and only emerge to do some daily exercise and make a delicious dinner at which he’d turn up his nose because the name sounds funny or it has garlic?are we Italian now? or whatever happened to good solid food like Hamburger Helper? Once a week on Fridays, I’d order takeout online and bring it home. He never griped about takeout.

Everything was awful, but for the most part I bore it. Until one night at the end of the second week.

After midnight, that evening, I lay awake reading. I was finding it difficult in that place first to fall, and then to stay asleep. I was contorted in a twin bed trying to find a comfortable spot on a fifty-year-old mattress when I heard a rap on the door. “What?” I called.

My dad poked his head through the door. “Are you asleep?” he asked.

“Do you usually have conversations in your sleep?” I retorted.

“I think there’s a bird in my room.”

Now, my father at this time had the occasional memory lapse, though he refused to tell his primary physician or consult a specialist about it. I had never known him to be outright delusional, however. “A bird?”

“A bird.”

“How did a bird get into your room?”

“I don’t know. How do birds usually get into rooms?”

We weren’t getting anywhere. “Let me go look,” I sighed, heaving my aching back off the twin bed torture rack.

I already wore a t-shirt and boxer briefs. I grabbed my spectacles and put them on, because without them I was just as blind as my father. From my room we stomped across the landing to his bedroom, which ran the length of his colonial brick home. I poke my head in, expecting—what? For a pigeon to be perched on one of the curtain rods, I guess.

Nothing. There was absolutely nothing in there. “Are you sure—?” Just as I started my inquiry, however, something small and black and evil chattered and fluttered from behind a bureau to flap its foul wings in my direction. I screamed—no shame in admitting it, I screamed loud and high—grabbed my dad, and hauled him out into the hall. Once I’d slammed shut the bedroom door, I yelled at my father, “That was a bat.”

“A bat?”

“How did a bat get in your bedroom?” I demanded.

To his credit, he actually thought about the question for a little while. “The same way as the bird?”

I stomped back to my bedroom and hastily attired myself in my Bat Vanquisher costume. Apparently, I thought that consisted of an orange hoodie zipped all the way up the front with the hood string pulled so tight, I had a two-inch puckered circle as a peephole, accompanied by a pair of calf-high zip-up leather boots. Oh, and those same boxer shorts I’d been wearing earlier. For a weapon, I carried my mom’s old gut-stringed tennis racket. In this alarming and singularly ineffective ensemble, I returned to the scene of the invasion, turned the knob, and went in.

I don’t know what good I thought the hoodie was going to do. The moment the bat started flapping my way, I let out more blood-curdling screams. I am not the person anyone should turn to, when it comes to ridding the place of small mammals. Insects I’ll do. At home, though, I’ve been known to flip out when the cats find a teeny tiny mouse to play with. They won’t kill it; they’ll just bat it around to teach it a lesson or two, then transport it up to the bedroom in the middle of the night to share with me. Usually after a good fifteen minutes of shrieking bloody murder and threatening the cats with a cat orphanage, I’ll calm down, trap the mouse under a discarded salad greens container, pick it up by sliding cardboard from an Amazon box underneath, and then disposing of the horrid wriggling thing at the far end of the nearby cemetery for the neighbors there to enjoy. 

It's a process to get to that point. I have to work through my process!

But a bat? Fuck. A mouse is tiny. It can only move so fast. It moves on the ground. A bat goes everywhere. It gets in your face. It’s huge. Decades before, when a squirrel got trapped in our family's fireplace, neighbors suggested that we lay down newspaper in a path to the front door, leave the doors open, and that when we let the squirrel out, it would follow the lighter-shaded paper to the exit. None of us believed that shit and were convinced that we’d end up chasing a squirrel all over the house. But sure enough, we put down the paper, opened the fire screen, and blip blip blip, the squirrel followed the path and hippety-hopped straight out the front door.

Maybe, I thought, just maybe I could do something like that with the bat. So I had my dad go downstairs and turn on the outside porch lights. In the bedroom, certain of instant death at any moment, I opened the windows and storm windows. That was not an easy feat, as my father never, ever admitted fresh air into the house, perhaps fearing that like the treasures of an ancient Egyptian tomb exposed too quickly to an outside draft, his prehistoric collection of Virginia Quarterly Reviews and TV Guides would disintegrate to dust in mere seconds. Some of those panes hadn’t been shifted since the sixties.

Then I turned out the lights and tiptoed out of the room.

“We are going to wait for half an hour,” I said. “You may sit on the sofa downstairs. The bat should fly out the window. We’ll check back and see if it’s gone.”

He didn’t have any other options, so I sat in my bedroom with teeth chattering as I cursed my luck. A half hour passed. We reconvened outside the door. I went in again and turned on the lights.

The bat immediately began screeching my way. I screamed and ran out again.

“So was it gone?” my dad asked.

“WHAT DO YOU FUCKING THINK?” I gently replied.

“What are we going to do?”

I knew exactly what we were going to do. “We are going to collect our valuables,” I gravely announced, “And then I am going to get the lawn mower gasoline can from the basement and we are going to burn this house down, walk away, and never look back.”

“I think you’re being a little extreme.”

“I did not sign up for this!” I shrieked. My watch read well past one a.m. I was tired and I hated rodents. Particularly rodents with wings. I hated being there. I hated being the only one who could actually do anything. “I did not sign up for bats. If I had known bats were going to be involved, I would not have agreed to stay in this hellhole for six weeks with you and the bats.”

Unperturbed by my outbreak, my dad repeated, “So what are we going to do?”

I sigh. “Just wait.” Back to my bedroom in my Bat Vanquisher costume I stomped. I pulled out my phone and opened Twitter to query my timeline. Anyone have any speedy hints for getting rid of a bat in my dad’s bedroom?

Apparently I had more followers up after midnight than I anticipated, because I started getting suggestions right away. None of them were great, mind you. My friend Sam sent me a DM. It’s easy. Just bop it!

Bop it?

Yeah. Just bop it!

My thumbs stabbed out, I am going to need a little more information than ‘just bop it.’

Okay you go slow, get ready, then you creep up and…just bop it!

He made the bopping sound so easy. I could creep. I had a tennis racket. I could get a trashcan. Maybe I could handle this bop it thing after all. “Stay out here,” I told my dad as I tugged tight my hood string. “I’m going to bop it.”

Inside the bedroom, I immediately spied the bat hanging upside down from the ceiling molding in the far corner. Go slow, I told myself, following Sam’s directions. My boots made a squeaking noise across my dad’s wood floors that I immediately regretted, in case the bat mistook it for his long-lost mate. But slow I was ordered to go, so I went slow.

Get ready. I brandished my mom’s racket in my right hand. My long fingers clutched the bottom of a metal wastebasket that my dad had owned since he was a kid. It was painted in Revolutionary War soldiers, all of whom were armed and ready to assist. Past my mom’s old bed I shuffled. Past the dresser. Past the foot of my father’s bed. The bat was still motionless. Glaring at me, probably. Yes, yes, I knew that blind as a bat was a commonplace for a reason, but I wouldn’t have put glaring past this particular bat.

I was going to bop it, though. I was going to take that racket, hold up the trash can, then I was going to bop it. Bop it down into the metal bin, then cover the opening with the racket head and throw it out the window. And by it, I meant basket, racket, and bat. All I had to do was bop it. Bop it good.

The bat stayed motionless as I drew near. With one shaky arm I held up the can. I raised my racket, ready to bop. I was going to give just the littlest of bops, and…

The damned vermin lunged for me. I felt its grabby little claws on my hoodie, scrabbling at the fabric. I started screaming again despite the open windows, tried to bat it away from my head, thought better about touching a fucking bat, then just dropped to the floor and yelled a lot more. When the bat retreated, flapping ostentatiously, I ran outside again and slammed the door.

“Did you get it?” asked my dad.

“Well.” I drew myself up with as much dignity as someone wearing my particular Bat Vanquisher gear can muster. “It’s been nice knowing you.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home. North. Away from here. Good luck with your cancer thing.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll clear up,” he said, playing along.

“Stay put a minute,” I growled.

I went to my bedroom and shut the door. I didn’t cry, though I felt like it. I checked Twitter, where more suggestions were trickling in. Most of them were variations on Just bop it, so I shut down Twitter. I called home and unloaded my frustrations on my poor confused mate, who understood not a word of my rant and plaintively yawned, “How did a bat get in the bedroom?”

“OH I DON’T KNOW,” I thundered. “THE SAME WAY AS THE BIRD?”

But look. As much as I was freaked out by the task at hand, it was clear that close to two in the morning, I was going to have to conquer my fears and get the job done. The only alternate plan I could think of was to ask my dad to sleep in the living room overnight, then by daylight hire a professional to come care of the problem. I knew there were no guarantees to finding a bat control person that easily, though. Plus that would break our pandemic isolation, and I didn’t want to expose my dad to Covid.

It was up to me. This time I wasn’t tentative. I left the bedroom and was about to announce to my dad my plan. I was going to bop that bat good.

Only my dad wasn’t in the hall.

I called his name down the stairs.

He wasn’t downstairs.

I opened the bedroom door. “You coming in?” I heard my dad say. “Don’t let the bat out.”

I slipped inside and leaned against the wall. “I told you to stay outside.”

My dad was standing motionless at the foot of my mom’s bed. From somewhere he’d pulled out a plastic whiffle bat that had been mine when I was six. He’d assumed a classic batter stance. “I thought I’d go bat hunting.”

“You can’t see shit,” I pointed out.

“That just means the bat can’t see me,” he said with good cheer.

I was about to remind him that it doesn’t work that way when I remembered we could be attacked at any moment. “Where’d the bat go?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t see shit.”

I still don’t see the bat. “Did you hit it?”

“All I did was walk in and look around, and then you came in. I didn’t swing at anything.”

I didn’t get it. Did my dad scare the bat out the window? Did it just leave? I shuffled toward him and around the bed…and then I saw where the bat had gotten to.

“Don’t move,” I ordered.

Because beneath the foot of his left bedroom slipper was a slightly squished dead bat. I lowered my tennis racket for the first time that night and informed him of the fact. “Well, gawrsh,” he said in that tone of mild perpetual astonishment that I’ll forever associate with his delivery. “How the heck did that happen?”

And that, good folk, is how I prefer to remember my father. When I knew him at his best, he didn’t lose his cool while others ran around like a gay, screeching Chicken Little. In an emergency, he used to be the last person to lament and moan. And even in victory, he never gloated or aggrandized his achievements.

He couldn’t see the bat, that night. He didn’t know how to bop a bat any more than I did. But in a pinch, my dad got shit done. And I loved him for it.

(I did include an explicit no fucking bats clause in my agreements for overnight visits afterward, though.)

***

If you'd like to help support or thank me for years of candid sex blogging, the best thing you could do is purchase some of my published erotic fiction.

Dirty Dorms & Fresh Men is a vintage-style collection of hot, retro college-themed X-rated fiction penned by some pretty great authors of man on man erotica. My contribution, Sleazy A, is based on some of my own college sexcapades.

The publishing house for this project can be found at Peterschutes.com . There are already multiple vintage-style pulps on sale over there, with more to come. If you sign up for their newsletter, you’ll be eligible to receive a free eBook.

Order your copy of Dirty Dorms and Fresh Men from Amazon

Dick Dock 2024: Bear Bait

Provincetown: Bear Week 2024

In all the summers we’ve been visiting Cape Cod—annually for over a decade at this point—we’ve always heard the same thing from the locals: don’t visit during Bear Week.

Not that I dislike bears. I love bears. Maybe I'm even a bear. I’ve never self-identified as a bear or attended any bear events, but my face is certainly furry enough. Many of my best friends are bears.

Nor is it that the good people of the Cape mind the bears as a type or a population. Bears are fine people. It’s the sheer number of them, all at once, that makes the week overwhelming. Visibly bedraggled shopkeepers have told us that yes, that particular week in July is always when they move the most merchandise, but keeping up with the masses exhausts them to the bone. Restaurant owners, when we’ve shown up the week after the event to enjoy our vacation time, tell us we’re fortunate to have arrived when we did, since the Bear Week bears ate clean through their stock. From condo owners who rent out during the summers, I’ve heard nothing but horror stories of a dozen bears camping in a cozy space meant for a mere two, of furniture being disassembled and stuffed into nooks so that the bears could create sex pits, of leasing agreements being broken by content makers filming for their OnlyFans on semi-public decks and in backyards.

I like sex pits as much as the next degenerate, but restaurants running out of food? Unpardonable.

Until this year, we’d heeded the advice of the locals and avoided the event. Bear Week tends to be more expensive for rentals, anyway. The week prior or after suited just fine. Right around the turn of the new year, though, when it was time to pick a date for the season, it soon became clear that the choice was Bear Week or nothing.

So that second Saturday in July I’d hopped a train solo and journeyed all they way through Connecticut and Rhode Island to Massachusetts, walked through downtown Boston to a dock, then enjoyed an open-air ferry trip to the Cape. From the Provincetown pier, I made the final leg to my rental on the town’s west end. Every step of my trip seemed to confirm my worst fears: the town was packed. I was arriving right around dinner time and my stomach was growling, but every restaurant was already overflowing with bears. Bears in spandex and tank tops. Bears in t-shirts sporting bear logos and cartoon bears. Bears in leather, though it was ungodly warm. The Mayflower restaurant had a line out of the door and around the corner; Spiritus, where folks grab quick slices of pizza to sit on the steps and people-watch, must have had over two hundred sweat-soaked men crammed within its open doors.

I tend to be averse to large crowds, so navigating Commercial Street just as the Tea Dance was letting out felt like a nightmare. I was the lone salmon navigating upstream against a torrent of bears who’d spent the last three hours drinking at the disco. By the time I threw my sweaty carcass on the rental’s bed, I regretted coming. I spent the evening eating takeout on my deck and texting friends that Bear Week was crowded and awful.

And then, the next day, the town just kind of empties out. I never see those huge crowds again. Never have I waited at a restaurant, nor have they run out of food. The crowds aren’t intolerable. I haven’t been invited to any sex pits, much to my sorrow, but neither have I been lacking for offers of hookups. Save for that initial Saturday, Bear Week has been much like any other—only a touch busier and hornier.

It’s Thursday, toward the end of my planned stay. I’ve gorged myself on my annual platter of fried clams, and bought my yearly t-shirt and baseball cap to commemorate my stay. I’ve eaten at the restaurants I always enjoy and mourned the ones have have disappeared since my last visit. Always, there’s one or two that vanish. Like New York, Provincetown is an ever-changing landscape.

I’ve finished one excellent book and started another, and spent my lunchtimes down by the docks, sitting in the shade and eating a sandwich while watching gray seals play in the blue waters. I’ve lain in the air conditioned comfort of my rental, afternoons, to escape the oppressive heat and humidity.

And then, in the evenings, I’ve emerged for activities that are a little more social. I’ve seen a couple of shows, met a friend or two for drinks. I’ve bellowed out karaoke at the Governor Bradford, for a mixed crowd of tourists, locals, and drag queens. And I’ve indulged daily in that most social activity of all—removing my clothes with other men so we can enjoy each other’s bodies. I still bone up whenever I think of last night’s escapade, when a married couple from D.C., two worked-out military men both in need of a daddy, waited ass up and blindfolded, side by side, on their queen-sized bed at the Boatslip.

Today I’ve been waiting around on people to follow through with texts. That morning I’d had a playmate I’ve twice met on my visits here—a handsome dark-skinned Latin man who loves to kiss—promise to get in touch this evening for a repeat visit. And earlier in the week, I’d been implored to meet by an extreme sub with whom I’d connected in 2023. His situation is complicated by the fact he has an owner, though, who’s promised to issue an invitation, yet hasn’t. Though daily the sub has promised that today would be the day, I’ve still never gotten my summons. I’m starting to feel strung along.

Since it’s well after eleven, it’s safe to say neither guy is going to text me at this point. So I put my phone on the charger, change into my most lightweight shorts and tee, pull on the sneakers, and head out into the night.

It’s time to hit the Dick Dock.

I’m walking from my rental toward the waterfront when, in the patio area of a nearby cottage, a group of five or six gay boys in their early thirties are enjoying a late-night dinner. They’re shielded by tall hedges, but when I pass an opening, they call out in a chorus, “Heeeeey, daddy!”

I backtrack a couple of steps. “Hello, boys,” I carol, as I lean over the latched gate. All the boys are white, skinny gym-toned twinks with nary a facial hair among them. All shirtless and in swimsuits, all clutching mostly empty bottles of lager.

“Look. We’ve got sausage.” A plate of severely charred kielbasa or wieners sits in the middle of the table, surrounded by a bowl of chips and various condiments. The lad speaking clearly intends his declaration as a double entendre. Though they’ve been drinking—a lot—the insinuation makes them all titter as one.

“Oh yeah?” I say, looking at the burnt whatever-they-are. “What kind of sausage ya got for me?” They look to each other for an answer. I decide to help them out. “Is it Italian sausage?”

“Are you Italian?” The youngest and blondest of the group wildly flutters his lashes my way. I can feel the breeze.

“I’m Scottish,” I apologize.

The one who seems the least drunk asks the others, “Do Scot...land...ian...ish people even have sausage?” Least drunk, but still pretty intoxicated.

“They make haggis,” I supply, trying to be helpful, though the conversation is getting more and more surreal. My information is greeted with a chorus of ewwwws.

The blond one bats his lashes again. “I bet your haggis is plump and juicy.”

With a reddening face, I chuckle. “You betcha.”

Picking up one of the cold franks from the platter, the blond kid rubs it against his lips. Then he opens up and prepares to take a bite, though once he gets a mouthful of what looks like solid charcoal, he makes a quick face and changes his mind. After wiping his tongue on the back of his forearm, he says with meaning, “My sausage is Slovenian.”

In gracious, grave tones, I alliterate, “I hope someday to savor some superb Slovenian sausage.” They all erupt in wild, raucous laughter. With me, not at me. Not once have I gotten a vibe that they’re mocking me. It’s clear, though, they’re just sparring with a stranger, and not inviting me to a sex pit, so I straighten up and give them a wave. “I hope you gentlemen have a wonderful night.”

“You too!” they all cry. Over the hedges, as I continue walking down Atlantic, I hear the blond one yell, “Come back to see your Slovenian son sometime!”

I laugh aloud and shake my head. Maybe he’s serious. Maybe he’s just teasing. Minor vacation flirtations are so easy to have here. I take none of their playfulness seriously at all.

The sausage boys’ rental sits close to where Atlantic empties out on Commercial, right across the ramp to the Dock. A big grin still lingers on my face when I cross the main thoroughfare and begin the trek down to the beach. As I step on the slope between the Boatslip and the houses adjacent, I notice a handsome young man wrestling with two loads of cardboard boxes beneath his brawny arms, broken down flat but stacked high. Obviously he works there. A hot otter, this kid, with wavy hair, a dark beard, and enormous, soulful eyes that lock onto mine with the intensity of a laser beam. A pair of white jeans shorts hang low on his lean and narrow hips; his tee cuts off at the shoulders and midriff, exposing a shocking amount of thick fur. BEAR BAIT, reads the shirt in huge black capitals.

The ferocity of his stare electrifies me. I don’t break stride, but I stare him down as I continue toward the beach, my eyes fixed upon his until I disappear below street level. I know, with sibylline accuracy, that he wants me. I know that he’ll follow. And sure enough, as I reach the top of the short flight of wooden steps leading down to the Dick Dock and the beach, I hear a mighty fwoomp as armfuls of cardboard hit the concrete above. I’m at the bottom of the steps when I hear Bear Bait’s flip-flops slap the ramp, scurrying at high speed to catch up with me before I disappear into the darkness beneath the Boatslip deck.

I wait for him right near the entrance, leaning against the closest metal piling. There should be enough light that he can see me. Seconds later, he hits the sand at such speed that one of his feet flies out from under him; he has to grab onto the railing to keep himself from a face plant. Once he’s got his footing again, though, he ducks beneath the wood, blinks to adjust his eyes, and looks around. He spies me almost immediately.

For the second time this week, I experience the lung-emptying impact of a man propelling himself at me in a full-body tackle. The boy is feral. Slavering and growling, he pins me against the rusty metal, hands clawing beneath my shirt at my skin. His mouth engulfs mine as his tongue forces itself deep inside. He tastes clean and fresh. It’s clear he hasn’t been drinking on the job. He’s kissing me so furiously that it feels as if my mouth must be bruising, but it’s the sweetest possible ache.

“Fuck, sir,” he pants, pressing against me with all his weight. One of his hands braces against the wall of the Dock; the other rests close to the top of my skull. His fingers rustle through the bristles of my hair while his thumb strokes an arc across my forehead. “I saw you up there…”

“I know,” I tell him in a soft voice. We’re staring at each other with the same force as we had on the street.

“I just kinda felt we had to…”

“I know,” I repeat. Some things don’t have to be put into words. While I admire his handsome good looks, I stroke and tug at his beard. I need to spend more time in Massachusetts. Boys back home treat me nowhere near as well.

“What’s your name?”

I’m about to tell him, honest. My mouth is ajar, ready to release the lone syllable. It’s a single syllable too long for a desperate and horny youth, though. Without warning, the impatient boy huffs, widens his eyes, and lunges once more for my lips. I feel scrabbling at my chest. He’s wrenching up my tee, scraping it so tight across my face that it feels like someone has opened a fiery forge door nearby. He wrestles the flimsy cotton covering from my arms and hands and flings it onto the ground. I’m incredibly turned on in the heat of this moment, but as I watch the sand fly from the impact, part of me is still thinking, Hey! That’s my shirt!

A moment later it’s Hey! Those are my shorts! when he yanks those down, seizes my ankles, and lifts one after the other to pry them off. When he’s done, I’m standing there solely in my sneakers. It’s the nakedest I’ve ever been beneath the Dick Dock. My dick points up and at an angle. Bear Bait stares at it and breathes, “Fuck yeah.”

He’s got what he wanted. Me, in the dark, almost completely nude. I’m too breathless to say anything and part of me just wants to enjoy whatever the hell he chooses to do next. When he looks up at me, I grin, half my lip curled, teeth on display. “All yours,” I finally remark.

I get the feeling he already knew. His eyes meet mine again. He’s got a hand jammed down the front of his shorts, where it furiously works his cock. Then, without warning, he impales his throat on me. There’s no working it in—just one swift motion, the sensation of something tight popping wide open, followed by sounds of his gargling and near-choking. The kid’s not in distress, however. Hell no. He’s spiking himself on my inches like his life depends on it, puncturing his larynx with such wildness that I wonder if he’s got an extra pleasure-producing nub deep in there somewhere, like Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat.

Normally I’m wary of guys who try to take me that deep. Often they’re doing it to show off, either to me or for themselves, without a lot of regard for whether or not I’m finding it pleasurable. Bear Bait isn’t contorting my shaft to painful extremes, though. He’s not clamping down on me, vise-like, with his throat muscles. Somehow he’s made himself wide open and deep for me and I cannot get enough. I’m vaguely aware of men passing us on their way to the area deeper beneath the Dock, but all my attention is focused on that mouth, the way my cock’s head plugs and savages that wet passage, and the satisfaction of grinding my nuts against the kid’s thick beard.

Long ropes of spit and mucus hang from his lips and facial hair when at last he backs off my tool and stands. He sniffs deeply to clear his nose. “Fuck me,” he demands as if I owe him. “Come on,” he barks, this time with the attitude that I’m his to boss around. “Fuck me!”

Little shit. I’ll show him who’s boss. “Yeah?” I snarl, narrowing my eyes. “Ask nice and maybe I will.”

Chests puffed out, chins lifted, we stare each other down. There’s no real contest. I’m eight inches taller, broader, and bigger—plus I’ve got the dick he wants so badly. “Fuck me.” His voice is softer, now. Less bossy. Then he adds a meek, “Please.”

I remain impassive for a moment, but then crack a grin. I can’t help it. The kid is cute, trying to assert himself like that. I respect it. I get a quick flash of his smile before he lunges for my mouth again. “I got lube,” he whispers in my ear, before pulling out a travel bottle of Wet from his shorts. I guess it pays to be prepared, when one works at the Boatslip.

It’s the quick work of a moment for him to lube up his hole and slap a squirt or two of the gooey fluid over my angry cock. After he shoves the bottle into his back pocket, he spins around and drops his pants to the sand. I admire how he presents himself to me: back arched, butt at just the right level for plundering. I find his hole without any fumbling, and begin to push in.

He stands upright and leans back into my arms when I’ve worked myself all the way in. We kiss. With glittering eyes he regards me, happiness writ plain on his face. “Oh, shit,” he whispers, when I begin pumping in and out.

“You love it,” I declare.

He nods rapidly, one hand against the side of my face. Then he lets out a sound—how can I describe it? In my shock, it sounds as if he’s fallen asleep and begun to snore, only to rouse himself out of it immediately...several times, in rapid succession. It’s a series of whuffs and snuffles and snorts mixed with panting and ending with him rapidly moving his tongue in and out like a labrador at the water bowl. The noise isn’t off-putting, exactly. Just…surprising. He does it again when I push him down so I can probe his hole more deeply, regarding me with liquid eyes over his shoulder. For some reason, I’m convinced he's indulging in some kind of puppy play sound

Makes no difference to me. All I care about is fucking this hot, wet hole. Every thrust elicits a squelch from the mess of lube and spit and precum I’m making in his rectum. He adds to it with groans and whuffs and more of that pup noise. When I start slapping his butt, both cheeks, with a sharp overhand trajectory, he’s reduced to whimpers.

Had this been the other night, cruisers might have crowded around us or tried to join in. Bear Bait and I are obviously so much into each other, though, that no one approaches. Oh, we have an audience, all right. There are a good twenty or more men watching me plow the boy. They’re pulling down the elastic of their shorts to stroke their cocks, or they’re rubbing their bulges, or maybe hiking up the legs of their drawers to grab their knobs and pleasure themselves as they observe. But no one closes in. They stand a respectable six feet away, minimum, mostly against the cross-beams closer to the water.

Bear Bait is raising his ass as high as possible, his stance wide. His head audibly bangs the wooden wall. “Do it,” he begs. “Make it hurt.”

“Oh, you want it to hurt, huh?” I slap his ass again, harder, then jam myself in. “Squeeze.” I feel him contract his sphincter. “I said, squeeze.”

“Fuuuuuuck,” he groans, as he clamps down with every muscle in his pelvic floor.

This time, I feel it. “Good boy.”

He loves the praise. Craves it. Over and over he compresses, milking me as we both move our hips in synchronized rhythm. It honestly feels as if he has an extra hand in there, applying extra pressure. His palms planted flat on the barrier, he pushes back as hard as he can, We slam into each other with loud vigor, egging each other on

“I’m close,” I warn. Sweat’s pouring from my forehead into my eyes. There’s so much perspiration on my forearm, though, that using it to wipe my face accomplishes nothing. He’s doused, too; even in the dark I can see where his dampness has soaked the back of his cut-off shirt in the shape of a V.

“Give it to me,” he demands. He’s trying to be the boss, again. “Shoot that juice up my chute.” The kid’s not even trying to be quiet. He’s baying in his outdoor voice. “Knock me up, dad.”

“Christ,” I mutter, aroused by his insistence. Very little turns me on more than a bottom who’s aggressive and bossy in the heat of the moment.

I’m not sure whether I’m fucking him, or he’s fucking me. His hips are rabbiting up and down my meat with increasing urgency. “I want it,” he growls, making more of those puppy noises. “I want it and I’ve earned it. Shoot in me, sir.”

My vision’s already galvanic around the periphery. I’m seeing sparks, the closer I get. “Yeah?” I snarl. “You think you’ve earned it, huh?’

“Yes sir!” He looks over his shoulder and bares his teeth. “Breed your boy.”

And I do.

I’ve had some wild orgasms this week, but this one—shit. It’s like my nuts boil with lava, and I must eject it as hard and fast as possible before I spontaneously combust. The stuff keeps flowing, too. He wanted to be flooded? He’s getting it. I feel the stuff squelching from his hole and onto my balls even when there’s so, so much more to pump inside. Then, at the end, I shudder as my dick jumps and twitches, trying to expel those final, reluctant drops.

Still connected, he stands again, leans back, and cranes his neck to press his lips against mine. We kiss awkwardly until he pulls himself off, turns around, and collapses onto my naked body. This time, we make out as if we’ve only just begun. 

“Thank you for the seed in my butt, sir,” he murmurs as he nuzzles my earlobe.

“You are very welcome.”

We continue our intimacy for a moment more. “All right,” he says in normal tones, as he extricates himself from my embrace. “Gotta get back to work.” I stand back as he yanks up his shorts in one swift motion. “Thanks dad.” And with that, he’s gone, jogging across the beach back in the direction of the stairs.

I’m so wiped out from the experience that I don’t even remember I’m naked until I try leaning against the iron piling and pull away with a scaly covering of rust flakes. Where the fuck are my clothes, anyway? I find my shorts buried beneath a few handfuls of sand, no doubt kicked there during the tryst. My shirt’s a few feet in the other direction. I have to beg people’s pardon as I shake them out in the suddenly-cramped space. I really don’t want to wear the entire beach back to my rental.

“Lucky fucker,” I hear someone murmur, as I sidle by.

Lucky fucker? Maybe. Who does he mean, exactly? The Bear Bait kid? Or me? Either way, I don’t know how much luck had to do with it. This evening felt more like a monumental display of the laws of physics: two bodies exerting their gravitational attraction, perhaps, or a classic example of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable, erect object. I use the hem of my shirt to mop up the mess on my face, as I stride back onto Commercial.

When I pass the house of the sausage boys, I peek over the gate to see if they’re still gabbing away. All of them have vanished save one—the Slovenian twink, who lies sprawled sleeping on a garden bench beneath the kitchen window. He lets out a snore and shifts position. I leave him be.

Pretty soon, after a shower, I’ll be doing the same.

***

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