Dirt

The next edition of Games Perverts Play has the theme of DIRT.

I chose it because it’s a single word, which seems to be the trend for GPP. And because it has so many meanings.

Dirt evokes its opposite: cleanliness. Its used as a moral judgement or an indication of glorious perversion. I have heard the term ‘filth’ so often to describe porn, sex, etc, and it always stops me short.

Once a man called me ‘filthy’ mid coitus and I argued with him about whether that was actually technically correct. I don’t know if my puritanical background couldn’t handle the moniker, and its associations, or if I am genuinely resistant to this binary between good v bad, clean v dirty, prudish v sexy.

I also like dirt because I like my writing ‘dirty’. Not always in content but definitely in style. I reject clean lines and organised argumentation, for more of a broken, messy, filthy approach to writing.

So send me your dirty stories.

(Deadline sometime in January 2012)

QRG

PARAPHILIA

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) defines paraphilias as:

recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors generally involving 1) nonhuman objects, 2) the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner, or 3) children or other nonconsenting persons that occur over a period of at least 6 months.

The DSM only specifies nine paraphilias (exhibitionism, fetishism, frotteurism, pedophilia, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, transvestic fetishism, voyeurism, and a final category of “other” paraphilias).

http://sexuality.about.com/od/glossary/g/paraphilias.htm

I am delighted to present the third edition of Games Perverts Play, an anthology that is going from strength to perverse strength.

The writers featured here cover many of the paraphilias listed by the DSM, but what they do that the medical establishment fails to do, is to put into question how we draw the line between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ sexuality and psychology. They also manage to make the ‘abnormal’ seem quite beautiful in places.

Paraphilia includes work from some talented writers not previously featured at GPP. The essays by  Natty Soltesz and James Maker remind us that essay writing is an art in itself. I am also excited to introduce new fiction from Elise Moore and Magda Sullivan which does not pull any punches.Élodie Malade has kindly submitted a beguiling tale of love on the Paris metro.

Elliott Deline returns to GPP with a brilliant new story, and  Penny Goring, Dan Holloway and Marc Nash work their usual magic. I do not know what Marc Horne has been up to, but I sense his presence here, somewhere. And Mark Simpson  reminds us that one man’s paraphilia is another man’s ‘normality’, in his trademark irreverent  style.

Thanks to  Chris Floyd and Steve Sparshott for donating photographs, and special thanks to Mark Simpson  and Dan Hollowayfor introducing me to some of the great writers featured here.

I found Paraphilia a difficult subject to write about, and in the end I submitted an old piece of writing, and an essay by Roland Barthes. I don’t know how or why, but when it comes to the workings of my twisted heart and mind, Roland Barthes manages to express myself better than I ever could. This is dedicated to him.

Quiet Riot Girl

Cyclesexuals

A 51-year-old man caught by cleaners ‘simulating sex’ with a bicycle in his locked room in a hostel in Ayr, Scotland has been sentenced to three years probation and has been added to the Sex Offenders Register.

“In almost four decades in the law I thought I had come across every perversion known to mankind,” opined the presiding judge (talking I presume about the cases he had heard rather than other judges). “But this is a new one on me. I have never heard of a ‘cycle-sexualist’.”

Reportedly the cleaners used a master key to unlock the door and they then observed the offender “wearing only a white t-shirt, naked from the waist down… holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex.”

Both cleaners, who were “extremely shocked”, told the hostel manager who called police.

Some bleeding-heart louche metropolitan types have whinged that this case a ridiculous over-reaction and waste of judicial resources – or even, honestly!, a worrying invasion of privacy and attack on personal liberty.

What a load of inner tubes. Thank goodness someone has had the courage to take a stand against this evil vice threatening the very lycra of our society. Not to mention undermining attempts to combat Global Warming, obesity and urban congestion. Personally I think the fiend should have been given a lengthy custodial sentence and banned for life from being within 100 yards of a bike-stand.

Contrary to the ridiculous arguments of liberals, the wicked exploitation by sick perverts like this of innocent, helpless bicycles to gratify their twisted lust is not a victimless crime. How can a bicycle give consent? By pinging its own bell? Changing gear? Increasing tyre pressure? Obviously not. Any sex act with a bicycle is by definition unconsensual. Not to mention rather uncomfortable.

And what about the corrupting effect of this pedalistic depravity on those unfortunate enough to view it, even if they have to barge into someone’s locked bedroom to do so? Or the wider effect on society? The vile degradation and contamination of the entirely clean and pure pleasure of riding a bike to work, firm leather saddle chafing between thighs, pressing insistently, teasingly, against one’s freshly-talced but now nicely moistening Perineum?

If these cyclesexual monsters aren’t stopped, we’ll have to pixelate the TV coverage of the Tour de France and even episodes of Miss Marple.

Come to think of it, for the sake of even-handedness, the authorities should also arrest self-confessed petrosexual Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson. After all, he doesn’t even have the decency to conduct his perversion in private: those close-ups of Jezza all glassy-eyed and foam-flecked in the latest Ferrari, playing with its chunky gear-lever moaning and sighing how much he really, really LOVES, no, LURRRRRRVES, this SEXY, FRISKY, FOXY, BEAUTY… go out in prime-time.

OK, I’ll admit there are some very minor details of this case that could perhaps be slightly clarified. What, for instance, does the court mean by ‘simulating sex’? Does it mean that the man was pretending to have sex with the bicycle, or that he wasn’t enjoying sex with the bicycle? If the former then perhaps he and the bike were just having a laugh after the pub like lads do, if the latter then he isn’t much of a pervert.

Or does ‘simulating’ mean that, yes, he was having some kind conjugation with the bicycle, but the court calls it ‘simulated’ because, of course, you can’t actually have proper, natural, godly, man-woman baby-making sex with a bicycle – unless it’s had some major modifications. Like a vagina fitted under the saddle.

And why on earth did the hostel allow its residents to take bikes up to their bedrooms after dark?

I also wonder somewhat about the hostel cleaners. They claim they ‘knocked several times’ before using their master-key to open the door, but I find that difficult to believe.

I mean, how many of the cleaners in five star hotels give you enough time between knocking and opening the door to allow you a chance to disentangle yourself from the Corby Trouser Press?

————

NB to protect the innocent, the bicycle pictured is not the unfortunate victim, which is currently undergoing therapy. And talks with Max Clifford.

Mark Simpson

Keep Your Friends Closer

That thing about keeping your enemies closer. I never understood that. I never really had enemies, I guess. I don’t really know what I’d do with an enemy, what they’re for.

Steve was talking about “the man” like he always did. I was drinking espresso with half my mind remembering not to let on to Steve what I was thinking, and the other half doing the thinking I needed not to let on about.

“The man” was Steve’s enemy. Steve wanted to “stick it to the man.” Apparently throughout history “the man” had clung onto power for the sole purpose of using his power to piss on the likes of me and Steve.

“I don’t smell piss,” I said because it seemed like the right thing to do to keep Steve happily chuntering so the two parts of my head could get on with their job of thinking but not letting Steve see what I was thinking.

Sure enough he started up again with the kind of wind-up spring energy that wasn’t going to run down for a few minutes yet.

Steve was my best friend. I guess he’d been my best friend since I can remember. At school we sat together at the back of the class and talked about whatever it is kids talk about instead of listening to the teacher. The girls in class and what we’d do to their tits if they’d sell us a pen knife at the local store. Bombs, guns, blood spatter patterns. That kind of regular kid shit.

Even then it was about “the man” for Steve. The guns were always pointed at teachers, the bombs were always planted under the school. I didn’t really know the teachers. We never listened to them, after all. And the school was a thing, not a person, and I always got that things can’t hurt you.

Now “the man” was some bank or some government department or something where Steve had got a job. It was part of the plan, he’d explained. The plan to get “the man.”

My mind was zoning back in, and Steve was talking about Kate and Jack. I knew the names. I thought about them lots. Some of the thoughts Steve shouldn’t see. They were going to do something about “the man” at last. His eyes were bright. I hadn’t seen him that alive before. He was telling me how “fucking cool” Kate and Jack were and how “fucking cool” it was when they all hung out and talked about sticking it to “the man.”

He was talking louder and it was becoming increasingly hard to zone him out he was getting so excited. In the end the whole half of my head that was meant to be keeping the other half quiet was kept busy cancelling out the endless Kate this Jack that “the man” the other fucking blah blah cool fucking blah and the other half of my head found its way to my mouth.

“You’re my friend,” it said. “You’re my only friend and I spent my whole life watching your back and you go on and on about this fucking man, this fucking idea you care about more than you care about me and you’re so busy planning to stick it to him you didn’t notice the fucking open sore split down my middle, and along come fucking Kate and fucking Jack blah blahing about the fucking man and you worship the ground they fucking walk on and you’ve tuned me down so I’m not even a hum in your life and you think it’s OK because I don’t care about the fucking man and that makes me less than the man and the whole thing is the man isn’t real, he’s a fucking idea and ideas can’t do shit to you, it’s people that fuck you up, it’s people that stick the knife in and twist it, so no I don’t want to stick it to the man.”

And then my mouth wasn’t moving but my hands were and they had his head between them, and they kept moving. I must have been zoning out again because I didn’t hear the noise on the table and the papers said his skull was smashed in more than thirty places but I didn’t hear a single crack. I felt it though. I felt the ripples through the muscles in my arm, and I felt the endorphins surfing them, and I felt the warmth rise from my feet, the thumping orgasmic warmth that came with every single fucking movement of my hands, with every shudder of the limp leaden weight in my hands, and the smile crawl over my lips and the sense of sheer joy that I didn’t have any enemies but kept my friends so close.

“What’s that?”

“Your friends close,” says a female voice.

“Was I speaking?”

“You were talking about your friends.”

I look up. My mind comes back into focus and I see Kate. She’s smiling. “I’m glad we became friends after Steve died,” she says.

“So am I.”

Dan Holloway

Love Pig

Simon helped me load my slide reel

Simon wrote my dissertation

Simon carried my heavy portfolio

Simon prized the lid off my jam jar

Simon would do anything for me

he would eat dog shit if I asked him

he let me treat him like dirt

I let him fuck me with a ladle

he stripped me naked in the kitchen

in front of a full-length mirror

love pig was standing outside

watching us through the window

hidden by the begonias

wanking and moaning my name

Simon was sitting behind me

displaying me to the mirror

fondling my softer than yours skin

losing himself in my reflection

coating me in good cream cheese

plucking my pussy hairs

slowly easing the ladle

in the late night kitchen — lights blazing — off his face on cheap drugs

stirring me with the ladle

we were lapping it up

I only let him fuck me once with his willy

now he wants to do it again

he wants to whisk me to the sea-side

for a never-ending dirty weekend

last night he was bawling his eyes out

said he can never believe a word I say

now he’s performing on my doorstep

he’s gift-wrapped and blowing me kisses

he’s galloping round my front garden

pretending he’s a fire-breathing goat

he’s hammering and spicing his meat

he’s slobbering over her next-door’s feet

he’s covering his dick in tin foil

he’s tying red ribbons in his hairy

he’s poking his dick in my letterbox

he’s spunking all over my hall

I want the one who was watching

Penny Goring

http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/penny-goring/love-pig

Breakdown

There is never a good time to have a breakdown in communication. Some times are worse than others.

I was naked except for his collar and chain, attached to the chrome leg of the small desk in his hallway. It made for an efficient use of space. My arse was stinging from his blows. My head was heavy. The combination of anticipation, wine and a thorough beating was affecting my ability to think clearly. When he spoke to me I answered in monosyllables. It was all I could manage.

‘Do you like it when I hit you, bitch?’ he asked.

‘Yes’.

‘Yes what?’

‘Yes sir’. It was an effort to speak the words, not just because such words were foreign on my tongue. But because it was an effort to speak at all. I wanted to curl up under a warm duvet. Part of me wanted to go home.

‘Bend over’. And so I did.

My bum must have been pink, red, purple by now. It seemed to encourage him as he smacked me firmly with the flat stinging palm of his hand. Over and over and over again. My head was swimming in thick treacle. I felt as if I was going under.

‘You’re a filthy slut aren’t you?’

‘Yes’.

‘Yes sir’.

‘Yes sir’. This conversation was very limited. It was only the second time we had ever met.

As he continued to hit and scratch and pull my hair something happened. I was suddenly transported from that ground floor flat, into an upstairs bedroom, a long way away, and some years ago. Someone was hitting me, pulling my hair. Calling me ‘bitch’. I was screaming. Was I screaming now? I couldn’t tell. The two events merged into one, as my brain became heavier and heavier, the blows became harder and more frequent. I couldn’t take it anymore.

‘You’re hurting me’, I cried, stating the obvious.

‘I know’, he said, and carried on. By now my cries were turning into sobs and I was wriggling away from his hand.

‘I…’

‘What?’ he asked, irritable. He didn’t want his stroke to be interrupted.

‘Stop’, I think I said. But that can mean ‘don’t stop’ can’t it? Because we were a long way down the rabbit hole now, and everything was upside down and back to front.

As my crying became more pronounced, more miserable, my body less compliant, the panic in my eyes more real, he finally slowed then stopped hitting me.

‘Let me go’ I may have managed. He undid the chain and removed the collar, freeing me to go into the living room, throwing on my clothes before sitting  down on a sofa, facing him across the room.

‘I had a violent partner’ I said, ‘it was bringing back memories’.

‘Oh’ he replied. What else could he say?

We drank wine and in stilted voices began to share our painful pasts. He had had a stepdad who had beaten him, apparently, and a mum who had sat by and let it happen.

I’d been stalked, had my house broken into, been assaulted by my ex-boyfriend, in that uncanny mirror of what had been happening, what he’d been doing to me, just a few minutes before.

Nobody moved off their separate seat. Nobody suggested we stopped for the night and had a cuddle. Nobody said ‘I know how you feel’ or ‘isn’t life strange?’ We may have acknowledged silently, that there was some connection between the real violence in our pasts, and this, less malevolent, role-play version. Less malevolent but more confused. At least I’d known what he had meant when he’d broken down my door that time, and beaten me to shit. At least his intentions had been crystal clear.

When we went to bed it started again. He fucked my arse then hit it again, and again, and again, till I cried ‘red’ and said, ‘you bastard’. I put on my red t-shirt, I became a human safeword. I lay awake in the dark while he slept peacefully beside me.

The next morning we dozed and fucked and had breakfast as if we were a ‘normal’ couple, not two strangers too scared to look into each other’s eyes for fear of what we might see.

When he dropped me off at the station he gave me a hug, smiled brightly, then said:

‘We must do this again sometime’.

And, like the sad, lost fools that we were, we did.

Quiet Riot Girl

Things Base And Vile

Passing out is like blinking. You’re doing one thing; your eyes close. Then when you open them again less than a second later, everything’s different. It happened once when I was little. I fell from a tree. Landed right on my head. The last thing I remembered was sitting in the branch—but when I opened my eyes, people were looming over me. Mom was crying, and a man in a black uniform was telling me I’d fallen.

The same thing has happened again. I think. Maybe not the same thing, but a similar thing. All I can remember is being depressed, wanting to distract myself at the bar with drink and drugs, and I met them. Such a cool couple—he was good-looking and charming, she was pretty and sweet. And both of them were interested in me, and both of them invited me back to do some lines and stay the night. Of course I said yes.

The last thing I remember is getting into the back seat with her. Then came the blink. And now my hands and legs won’t move, and I don’t know where I am. All I know is that every few seconds, pain drums against the back of my head. It’s the thick kind, the kind that rattles my stomach, and it’s so bad that I can’t even look around for a few minutes.

But when I finally can, I wish I hadn’t.

There are two pieces of furniture—the chair I’m in, and the big clawfoot tub behind me. I can’t see into it, but the rust color staining the edge tells me I don’t want to. It’s what’s on the cabinets that starts my shaking, though. Pliers, hammers, drills, nails, needles, threads, ropes, wires, a tarp laid out beneath my seat, oh, God, what’s happening? And then the only door in the room explodes open and I buck in place because I can’t really jump, and I recognize the couple from before. Their names, what were their names? Susan and— Eric? Aaron?

He lopes into the room, eyes like ice landing right on me, and his lips peel back from teeth that seemed beautiful at the bar. “Oh good, kitten, look, it’s up. Good morning, sunshine.”

I can barely understand him over the sound of my heart.

My vision finally focuses enough that I can look down at my hands—my entire body freezes when I see the cord and duct tape, and things are starting to make sense. Aaron chuckles like he’s watching a funny movie, and his wife creeps from behind him to lean back against the counter. She won’t look at me. Not even when I think to ask, “What’s going on?” She just looks at him, and he grins.

“This is the start of your last…oh, five or so hours of life. It’s been awhile, so I’d like to make it last.” That awful grin gets wider, his eyebrows lift, and he turns toward the woman. He murmurs something and kisses her, and she smiles and stops curling her black waves around her fingers, and neither of them pay any attention to the echoing heartbeat or the whispered prayers or the sound of duct tape failing to give.

I once saw my dog kill a rabbit. She took the bunny in her jaws and snapped its neck, and the whole time the rabbit screamed and kicked and tried even though it surely knew it was a lost cause.

I can’t help but understand it, now.

“You’ve got to let me go, please, please you have to. You can’t ki-” But that’s all I can manage before I choke on the words and tears fill my eyes, and the man—he turns back to me and laughs.

“Oh, I’ve got to let you go? And I can’t kill you? Now who says I can’t?”

My brain must be rattling in my skull, the way I shake. “The law! God! Please, please, I’m a person just like you.” His smile shows me every tooth in his mouth and his eyes narrow with it so I look to the woman, who stares somewhere beyond me. “Please. My name is Nicole, I’m only twenty-six, I used to want to be an actress but now I just want to survive, please don’t kill me. It’s almost Christmas, please, please don’t kill me.”

The woman’s soft jaw clenches and she slides her hand up the man’s arm, leaning against him.

“I know it’s nearly Christmas.” Her voice is faint, quiet, but firm. “That’s why you’re here.”

Grinning all the wider, the man croons, “You spoil me,” and turns to kiss her eyebrow. Then her mouth curves up, pretty white teeth showing and eyes curling, and she hugs him.

“I love you, Richard.”

“We’re still going to have to figure out what to do with it when we’re done,” he says, almost to himself. “The ground’s bound to be hard.”

I watch and fit the name to him, memorizing, because then maybe if something happens—if I can get out of this—maybe I’ll remember. He kisses her head and steps back with a smile, glancing over to me while my heart pounds in my ears.

“My God, it’s been too long.” Richard sighs in an almost dreamy way, smirking when I give my wrists a few more jerks. Head clouded like I’m in a dream, I gasp, “Please,” again.

He snorts. “This is your own fault—going home with strangers who promise you drugs. I mean, really. You’re the single easiest mark I’ve had since I stopped going after whores. You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”

My stomach churns and I very nearly vomit, but I overcome the urge because I get the feeling it’d make things worse for me. He’s done this before, oh my God, they’ve both done this before.“Why do you do this?”

“Art’s sake, mostly.” He doesn’t even look at me as he strolls to the counter. “But this part is quality time for Delilah and myself.” When he turns around, he’s got the pliers in his hand, and I don’t know what he wants to do with them until he takes a few long steps to my side and grabs my hair with his gloved hand. Shrieking, I duck my head and twist, and the man gives a mutter of amused irritation and smashes the back of my skull into the seat. All the pain comes rushing back but I keep fighting because I can barely feel it, because I don’t want those things anywhere near my face.

So I act on instinct.

“Kitten,” he sighs, “would you come here and hel- fuck me!”

My mouth is full of copper-tasting blood and his skin parts against my teeth until something slams once, then twice, into the back of my skull, and a hand comes and opens my jaw, and I have to let go. Richard or Aaron or whatever the fuck his name is, he moves away looking like he’s just stepped in dog shit.

“You little cunt.” He starts to make a move towards me, but then the woman is between us. And this meek, quiet, pretty lady, her black eyes are burning and her face is lined with a kind of anger I’ve never seen in a human being in my whole life, and she swings her right arm, and I don’t realize she’s holding a hammer until it smashes into my mouth and my world explodes.

“You bitch! You little bitch, don’t you dare touch him!”

One, two, three, four, times, and I can only cry out once or twice at the jarring sensation of my teeth snapping, splinters of them flying back into my throat. I choke and sputter and sob and my mouth falls open and hot blood pours out and I can feel my own teeth fall into my lap, and over the loud sound of what’s more noise than music, I can hear her sharp, angry breaths stop. Through my tears I can see he’s grabbed her and kissed her, this hard, passionate romance-movie kiss like what I used to dream about.

“That thing had better not have any diseases.” He turns to the sink. While water runs, I look at the woman—Delilah, he called her, Delilah, Delilah. “How can you let him do this?” The words don’t sound right because half my face is probably already swelling and what few teeth left are snapped in half.

But she understands just the same and shakes her head. “It’s his choice. You little— you bit him,” she says, looking paler than she already is. Her nostrils flare and she snaps up the abandoned pliers, coming at me—when I try to lean away, she grabs my jaw and squeezes it, and then the pliers clamp down over my septum.

I can’t even move before it snaps—it’s the loudest, ugliest sound I’ve ever heard, and the worst pain I’ve ever felt. It’s the kind that sweeps up to my head and then down to my stomach in a great white explosion that shakes my ears and I can feel blood pour down my face while I choke on sobs and the remnants of teeth.

“Oh pussycat.” Now he’s got a bandage on his arm. “I’d ought to let them hurt me more often. Look at you.”

He grins and leans down to kiss her throat, and she takes a little breath and trembles even after he turns to face me.

“You’ve got spunk. I appreciate that. But I don’t appreciate the fact that you drew blood—you’re not ill, are you?” He waves the bandaged arm in front of my face. I shake my head. “Good. I’ll warn you, though, if you’re lying, the truth will come out. And you’ll regret it.”

“They’ll throw you in jail,” I say, but I’m even less intelligible than before. “They’ll find you and kill you.”

He only laughs and lifts his eyebrows. “Oh? And who loves some crack-addled bitch enough to report her missing, go to the police? Really, who do you have? I know your type.” The man shakes his head and turns to pick up a drill, squeezing the button for a second before placing it down again and picking up a dremel, instead.

“You’ve got three, maybe four friends, all of them on the same drugs you are. Things like you disappear often enough and then resurface without a word, and they’ll be too fucked up to acknowledge that you’re gone, and won’t think anything of your disappearance until at least six months from now—if ever.” He smiles—bares his teeth—and switches the tool on, driving the bit into the side of my knee. I shriek and sob and gag, my leg twitching and the motions only making it worse.

Jesus, Jesus, please, oh, God, can’t someone help me? Why me? I don’t deserve this—I’m into shit that I shouldn’t be, but I’ve never hurt anybody! Jesus, God, it isn’t fair.

It’s when he breaks a finger that I finally can’t feel anything.

My ears fill with static. My name is Nicole Biddle, Nicole Biddle, Nicole Biddle, Nicole Biddle, Nicole Biddle, Nicole Biddle, Nicole Biddle, I don’t deserve this, my name is Nicole Biddle, I don’t deserve this, I’m only twenty-six, I’m only twenty-six and I wanted to be an actress, but the only roles I could get were roles in porn, and I did some movies and I’m not proud of it but I needed money, when I was ten my dog got hit by a car and I cried for hours and my father buried her and my mother held me, they always loved me, but then they heard about the movies and suddenly they didn’t anymore, and I don’t have anybody, but I have me, and my name is Nicole Biddle.

“God, kitten, look at that! You certainly are improving in your drawing.”

“It’s only because of you.”

“Nonsense. I wouldn’t be able to do anything if I didn’t have such talent to start with. Why don’t you take a break and take a few photos for me?”

Behind my lids there’s the white flash of a camera and then the man, the black-haired devil, he comes to me and takes my eyelids and my whole face is covered in blood, the same that pours out of the sides of my knees and from under my fingernails and what pools in my broken hands and ribs, and he grabs a broken bottle and I scream when he jams it into me because oh God it hurts, it’s the first pain I’ve felt since my finger—then he grins and grabs the girl and fucks her in front of me like I’m not even there, because I’m not, and I don’t want to see it and she’s embarrassed about it but it’s like he can’t help himself, and she doesn’t seem to mind it, really, just a quick thing against the counter and then he kisses her and tells her how much he loves her.

And what scares me is that it sounds like he more than means it.

Then blink, blink, blink, I keep passing out even though my eyelids are gone which is terrifying and each time I wake up there’s more wrong with me, deep cuts and parts of my skin and— and now I do vomit a little, and it’s mostly blood and teeth and stomach acid and the man laughs and works on what I think is a painting but I can’t really see things right anymore and my eyes sting and then finally, finally I hear him say to the woman, “Why don’t we finish up here, and you and I can move to a room a little more…appropriate for the mood, hm?”

I can’t hear her response, but she must agree, because he comes over to me and leans down, grinning, and places leather-gloved hands around my throat and tells me “Thanks, it was fun,” and presses down on my windpipe, and my name is Nicole Biddle. Biddle Biddle Biddle Biddle. Breathing was already hard and now it’s impossible, and my body goes warm and then cold and I can’t feel a thing, Nicole Nicole Nicole Nicole, and I’m

Magda Sullivan

A Good Andromimetophile is Hard to Find

“No one is available on Mondays,” the receptionist said. She was a stout woman, with curly grey hair and glasses. Probably a volunteer.

“But you’re called AIDS Community Resources…” he said, with obvious attitude, “there has to be someone I can see.”

“Not til next week. And…” she checked a calendar, “All appointments look booked.”

“Is there somewhere else I can go? A number I can call?”

“Well, they do STD testing at the County Health Center, but I don’t know when. Here’s the number.”

She begrudgingly handed it over, avoiding the touch of his hand.

He sat in his car with his cell phone to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi there. ACR in Syracuse told me you could possibly give me a free STD test?”

“No, I’m sorry, those are only on Thursdays,” the man said, “And we aren’t doing them this week. We’ll be at the ACR building in Syracuse next week to perform them.”

“That’s where I am now. They said they’re booked next week.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Well, good luck to you sir. Try for the following week.”

“Is there nowhere I can go? I’ll travel if I have to.”

“Well, the Civic Center in Syracuse. They actually do free testing daily.”

He ended the call, annoyed. No one was going to tell him that?

He drove right down the street to the Civic Center.

He walked up to a kiosk where a young, attractive blond woman was sifting through papers. She ignored him.

“Hi,” he finally said, “Could you tell me–”

“You want room 8,” she said, giving him a bemused and disgusted look up and down.

“Excuse me? I–”

“STD testing, room 8,” she said, gesturing at a pair of young black girls chatting loudly and heading down the hall. “Follow them.”

He sat in room 8, filling out the forms. He left “Gender” blank until the end. He eventually decided to make his own box. Next to it, he wrote “FtM” and put a check mark. He returned the forms and received a number.

He sat in a plastic chair, avoiding eye contact with the mostly female occupants of the room, some with small children. The walls were covered in posters about safe sex, and tables were covered with pamphlets on every STD and drug under the sun, written in English and Spanish. A cheesy, patronizing video—the kind one would watch in Health class—played on loop.

He texted the man for the first time since the previous night.

-Hey, we didn’t use protection. You didn’t cum, right?

-Nope. You?

-No. But I never do.

-That’s really sad :  (

- You’re sure you’re HIV negative right?

-Yeah, I got tested like a week ago.

-How long since you had sex before me?

-2 months, with my ex.

-Ok. But it takes 3 months to show up on a test…

-Trust me, I get checked all the time. I don’t have HIV. I’m not some sort of asshole.

-Ok. But if you get a test soon, we can both know for sure.

He pressed send just as the nurse called his number.

“So I’ll take a swab from the tip of your penis…” the nurse said, filling out a blue sheet of paper. They were seated in a small doctors’ room. She was short, thin, probably in her mid fifties, but looked older.

He blushed. “Oh, I’m…well…have you heard of transgender?”

The woman stared for awhile before responding. “Yes?”

“Well I am. Female to male. So I have a…vagina.”

She bit her lip, thinking. “So are you female or male?”

“Well, I…have a…vagina.” Long pause. “I was born female.”

“So you’re a female.” She rolled her eyes, ripping up the sheet and grabbing a new, pink one, with a drawing of ovaries and fallopian tubes. “From now on, save us time and put that on the sheet. It said you were male.”

“I put that I was FtM. That stands for female-to-male.”

“Well, they crossed that out and checked male for you because of how you look.”

“Oh.”

“In that case, I’ll need a pap smear. I’ll leave while you get undressed.”

Each crank hurt like hell. He’d learned to tolerate doctors staring at him with his legs spread from experience. But the pain made it hard to dissociate. And when she scraped something deep with a large cue tip, the shooting pain brought back memories of the previous night. How bizarre, to hold this pose again so soon under such different circumstances. It made the fucking seem invasive in retrospect.

The nurse pulled out. “Alright, we’ll have some results on Wednesday, so just drop by and sign in. Then it’ll be another 3 months before HIV would show up.”

“Thank you.”

“And remember, put female on medical forms. Until you have a penis, you’re a female.”

Two months later he was bored and on Craigslist again. Someone had posted an ad that caught his eye. “LOST CAUSE” it said. He clicked. There was a picture of the man who fucked him. The ad said:

BE CAREFUL THERE ARE GUYS ON HERE WHO WANNA GIVE PEOPLE HIV ON PURPOSE I SLEPT AROUND AND NOW I FOUND OUT I HAVE HIV I CANT SAY FOR FROM WHO BUT BE CAREFUL!!!

He emailed the anonymous address.

-Did we hook up? Is that your picture in the ad?

-No, but that’s the guy who gave me HIV!!! he’s sick and does it on purpose. HELP THE COMMUNITY, EXPOSE THIS PERVERT NIGGER!!

The boy winced and closed out of the window. It seemed like a lie. It was probably a vengeful ex, or someone who’d been rejected, or just some racist psycho starting shit. He texted the man.

-You see the post online?

-I’m suing that guy for libel yeah. Can you help me out and tell me his email address?

-He says you have HIV.

-I dont believe this is bullshit. I really liked u and it takes something like this to get you to text me?

-I said it was a one time thing. I’m sorry, I had no idea you were hurt.

-Well I really like u

-Listen I wont know my HIV results til September. Can you go with me to the civic center just to get the rapid-result test? Just to ease my mind? Takes 10 min.

-I have work and school I cant just drop everything

-Please. anytime. Ill skip work if I have to.

-This is bullshit. I hate gay men. This is why I stuck with women for awhile, I dont need this drama.

-So you won’t go?

- I got the test results right on my desk! I’m clean alright?

-Can I drive over and see it?

-I’m going away for work tonight.

-Can you text a pic?

-I really liked you. I hoped we’d have a regular thing maybe even something more. I cant believe you think that of me.

-I told you I wasn’t looking for anything long term.

-Well I at least wanted to fuck you one more time. It was so good. You have a nice vagina.

The boy’s eyes welled up with tears. He could hear the word nice in his head, like frat boys over beers. “So I totally nailed her. She had such a tight pussy man. I destroyed that thing.” “Nice.”

-I don’t care to hear that. Don’t text again.

***

He kicked a pebble into the water and watched as the circles spread outward, like sonic waves, and then disappeared.

Closing his eyes and inhaling through his nostrils, the lake air smelled like fish and algae. Regardless, he decided it was time. He removed all his garments, climbed atop the railing, and, after a moment’s hesitation, leapt into the dark water.

It was pleasantly cool—not a shock to his system but a rejuvenation. He stayed submerged for several seconds, swimming near the rocky bottom, spreading his arms and open palms in a cyclical manner to propel forward. When he reached the sand bar, he came up for air, sputtering like humans always do.

He slicked back his hair and then ran his hands over his chest. It was largely numb, but that wasn’t uncommon. His scars were a purplish white.

His lower half was still submerged. He looked at it, glowing whitish green beneath the water. Like all ‘biological females’ on testosterone, his clit was a two inch, uncircumcised dick. The rest wasn’t visible to him without a mirror. It was only really seen by others.

“Nice.”

He did a shallow dive and swam some more. Soon his mind went blank. He felt wonderfully alive and at peace, the way he imagined many people did making love. It was the first time he’d ever done this naked, and there seemed almost a symbolic, baptismal quality. He was an atheist, but felt the touch of something divine caressing his skin.

There was no one in sight, so he stood up in the shallows. He rested his hands on his glowing white ass and leaned his head back, looking up at the stars. The Syracuse pollution dimmed them, but out here in Cicero, further north of the city, it was a regular planetarium. He closed his eyes, content.

He resented the possibility of more doctors, more medications, more stigmas, more secrets he wouldn’t know when to disclose…more reasons to be untouchable. An early death.

Yet there he was, knee deep in the lake water, smiling, wiggling his toes and watching the mini, underwater sand storms stir up and then calm again. He wasn’t afraid. His body was something miraculous and self-healing, like a starfish. It wasn’t teen-like impudence. He knew in his soul he would never wither.

He remembered their naked bodies pressed together. The rhythm. The strange and wonderful feeling of his entry, before the sobering pain.

Come what may. He regretted nothing.

Copyright 2011 Elliott Deline  All rights reserved.

Don’t Be It, Dream It

I’ve had my share of straight guys. Maybe I’ve had my fill.

I bagged the majority during my college years, that magical time when sexual identity is as addled and messy as a frat boy after his third keg stand. One straight drunk buddy made out with me at a party then invited me to his bedroom to trade blowjobs. Another got so horny looking at straight porn he whacked me off and let me return the favor.

And I’ve had others since then. Dalliances in secluded park paths and in the backrooms of adult bookstores, those playgrounds of the minivan-and-wedding-band set. Hookups with masc, discreet Internet-personals advertisers who need to be fucked quick before the gf gets home.

All of them “straight,” though in varying degrees of believability. My penchant for straight guys has come through most strongly in my writing, and I’m aware of the inherent irony in an oeuvre of gay porn about straight guys. I’ve joked that my characters think they’re straight but are actually bisexual; these days I use the term “straight-ish” to describe them. It’s something of a cop out but it serves my purposes. I’m certainly interested in the intersection of sexual identity and behavior, but I prefer to leave those conversations to the queer theorists (who need something to talk about).

My fascination lies in the fantasy of the straight guy, that persistent and near-ubiquitous gay male fetish for guys who prefer pussy but will reach for other forms of relief in a pinch. Internet porn teems with these representations, site after site of guys who only do it cause they’re horny, or tricked, or need the money.

One particular video that was making the Internet rounds a few years back had a straight-identified performer doggy-style fucking a guy whilst reading a pussy mag he’d draped over the bottom’s back. This crossed a line for many and seemed to distill the love/hate boner/shame relationship many gay men have with “straight guys.”

I thought it was hot, maybe because I make a strong distinction between representation and reality. Trading blowjobs with that guy in college was fun – having him alienate me as he fell in love with a mutual female friend was not fun. I got such a crush on one of my best straight buddies that I nearly ruined the friendship with my hopeless pining.

It’s true that there’s an element of self defeat and self hatred when it comes to fetishizing straight guys. But most of our sexual fantasies tend toward the unattainable – otherwise it’s unlikely they’d be fantasies. So it’s okay to jack off while imagining blowing your hetero married boss under his desk, but it’s not an aspiration worth losing your job for. To insist upon the fantasy is at best pathetic, at worst a tragedy. It’s not much of a waking life when you’re hung up on a dream.

So yeah, I’ll always turn my head for a little butch swagger. A football jersey, a gold chain, a splash of Drakkar Noir. But when it gets down to getting down I’d rather have the dude who’s got a spring in his step and a twinkle in his eye. He’s more likely to be aware of what he’s doing, and do it better, and do it with me again.

Natty Soltesz

The Frotteur in Love

Between Charles de Gaulle-Étoile and Louvre-Rivoli is a very sexy time. The Press happens. All bodies – nice suits on or “I love paris” t-shirts on – form The Press.

When The Press is on, we admit finally that human beings must touch each other.  Perhaps a big black guy will sag on you. Perhaps a little arab girl will rest a magazine on your upper arm. You might even be face to face with a man who looks just like you but who smells of brandy and you share the brandy now.

Philippe had his first train orgasm two years ago. Now they accounted for upwards of 80% of his sexual activity. At first he would pick nice buttocks, nice female buttocks. He would line himself up over a three minute period, each little jerk of the train acting as a kind of mechanical ratchet that Obligated him to move a centimetere more into the groove.  Unless he found himself a Fighter, he would be in good shape when he got in the groove. Trains jerk you around. He would do nothing untoward: no muscle action. She could go through her whole life telling herself it had been a courgette, an umbrella, a hip bone maybe.

He maintained absolute silence throughout. Everyone was sweating on the train, and many people had their eyes closed. In some ways he was doing nothing out of the ordinary. In some ways he was actually doing nothing at all. And when he filled his inner underpants (he always wore two pairs) he did always sigh. But then, who doesn’t sigh nowadays.

Over time he became less choosy in his target. Yes, even tourists sometimes. He carefully avoided children and men were only used when absolutely necessary.

Geneviève was an unusual woman. She was an attractive short-haired redhead who dressed nicely, but she loved money in a way few women at the bank did. There were many successful, high-powered women at P______ bank. But they loved their own money and they loved success. They did not love the intangible substance of Money. Pure Money – the measure of man’s confidence in the future. A number that appeared on  screens now, in wheelbarrows in Weimar Germany, that would disappear if a big enough war came around.

After very big transactions were done, there were a few people at the bank who would sit around later and watch the aftershocks of what they had done. Geneviève and Philippe were two in this group. And after they did a big thing to Belgium she invited him for a glass of wine in the café below their office.

A glass tuned into a bottle: the everyday magic. They laughed and enjoyed silences together. There are few people with whom you can do both of these things comfortably.

Philippe had not been with a woman for three years. And he looked back on those days as something like his childhood: necessary but done and sealed and half forgotten and half invented. But when Geneviève looked at him, he could feel something else sealing. He could feel the nature of his present, the Lighting of his present start to change.

The evening came to the point where it has to transform. They paid and left. He noticed that she was a heavy tipper, or perhaps that she carried too many coins with her. He expected it was the latter.

He planned to part at the train station with four kisses. But then she came down with him.

“You don’t normally come on this train, Geneviève,” he said and of course there was a hint of panic in there but underground tunnels and new social encounters mask panic well.

“No, but I promised my sister I would come and look at her taxes with her tonight. I hope she won’t mind I’m half drunk. Most of the tax inspectors are, so it will actually be a very good simulation.”

Philippe had a good laugh and soon with horror they were on the train together. But at least 40 centimetres apart.

He thought through the route. At this time of the evening, there would be no spot where they would be closer than twenty centimetres apart.

At Franklin D. Roosevelt, thirty-five Italian teenagers got on board. Large breasted Italian teenage girls take up a lot of space and the boys add a lot of kinetic energy to the train. August orgasms, during the tourist peak, are full of incredible teenage energy.

But they should not be here now. This was not the season. This was not good.

At Concorde a massive surge of English rugby fans exploded into the train with a masculinity that could not be countered. With gallantry, Philippe shielded Geneviève from impact, but found himself groin to navel with her, unable to move even a little.

“Here we go! Here we go!” they chanted.

The train moved off. His half erection was now full. Fuller than it had ever been. He could hear the skin stretch, it seemed to him, in the way you can hear strange things happening in your body. It pushed against her muscular abdomen. He could not feel his clothes or her clothes, but he was sure he could feel the soft down around her belly button, which was gentle and slightly curved.

“No,” he said. At first inside, a million times. Then one time out through his lips. The orgasm was too big to hide. As she looked at him, in extreme discomfort, trying to wriggle free of him, he made a big grunt like a big pig and the thing in his trousers punched her under the ribs.

The blank resignation in her face made him feel like what he truly was and had carefully never thought about. The train kept lurching. The wine they had so pleasantly shared seemed like poison in his belly.

Carelessly, he vomited in her face. A fat red puke, full of carelessly chewed meat tumbled onto her freckled face, spilling in an uncatchable stream into the chasm between her breasts.

She bucked like a donkey and quickly came.

Her tongue flashed reflexively to her cheek, licking at the bile she had smelled there.

The train stopped and they both got off.

He always carried several handkerchiefs, so they were able to clean her off nicely.

It was quiet on the platform, and a few unremarkable people passed by.

“I wish there were no such thing as memory, so we could be in love,” she said.

They shook hands and went their separate ways.

As he went to bed that night he thought about her words. He realized that she was like him and so he knew what she had meant. They could never have a moment as good as that again.

——————————————

Élodie Malade,  is a former champion fencer and ghostwriter for the
“Osez…” series of books, including “Osez… tout savoir sur
l’autofellation.” She is the Paris bureau chief for ZizekPress.com