Best Gay Erotica 2011 (22 page)

Another shot, one of my favorites: a curious honker, growing but still little. Far too hungry for sugar. Jolly Rancher is a square candy. Nostrils are round. Tell me this blockage isn't the most amazing thing you've ever seen.

You might say that it was obvious, even way back then, that I was headed for trouble.

 

I'd swarm him as soon as he took off his socks. I found a fresh day's mold irresistible, especially when packaged in new-shoe smell. The most precious substances on earth are matured: Oka cheese, 1983 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, toe funk. I loved watching NBA basketball, because I knew that the players all harbored the same beautiful problem.

His balls were a swamp where I went to get lost: scrotum so rich in folds, trapping his every secretion and distilling it into deliciousness. Piss drops would evaporate there, leaving salty rings that smelled like the semen hidden inside him, a tang like bleach. The scent of his pisshole changed with his diet: tuna, maple syrup, coffee, apples.

Lime Jell-O was a dead giveaway.

Know that I didn't kill myself over a boy. His smells were so much better than he was.

The phone rang during one of our sniff sessions, and I let it go to voice mail. Later, when I checked my messages, I heard
my doctor saying she wanted to discuss “some of her findings.” I put off calling her back, because it didn't sound like a dermatology issue. It sounded like something I didn't want to hear.

 

This one's a Polaroid. Puberty had finally given me a bit of heft, puffed me out with pride. In the shot, I'm sprouting pubes in both nostrils. With my blackheads and acne, I was engaged in all-out war with the world. My fighting stance was angular and defined, because the sun hit from the side and cast half of me in shadow, like it does with the Great Pyramids at sundown.

You'll have to forgive me for having a superiority complex. It's just that the Egyptians built the pyramids in the shape of noses, and it's all rather flattering…

 

His bike gave me months of pleasure at a time. After a sweaty, summer ride through the city, he'd strip and sink into a chair in front of the TV. A smile would creep across his face as I planted myself between his splayed legs and sniffed his nuts and perineum until I passed out from the concentrated virility. Like breathing pure, scented oxygen. His ass was equally intoxicating.

Pits are nice, but too vanilla. I've always made a point of exploring the uncharted body. The waist and wrist often smell like rubber (underwear elastic, waterproof Casio). Behind the knee can be buttery, and shins can be pine fresh.

We are all synaesthetes but with different wiring. That is to say, our senses are connected in ways we might never understand. For you, the smell of grass burning in the sun will make you feel the snakebite all over again. BBQ chicken will always sound like Radiohead.

For me—a nose—it's the opposite. All stimuli lead to smell, and that's why I'm no longer with you.

One day, the shit hit the fan. This is no cliché, because I could
actually smell the feces radiating down as it spun around on the fan blades.

I finally went to see my doctor.

“Chemosensory disturbance,” she said.

“What are you talking about.”

“You have smell impairment, and it's getting worse.”

“Impossible! I could smell you from outside,” I said.

“Dysosmia. The smells are distorted. You're already relying on memory, because you're not smelling much.”

“You're such a fucking odor-kill. I hate you.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, “but there are ways to cope with this.”

At first, I didn't think it was that bad. The nose is a memory cum-dump; I was a hard drive with forty gigs of RAM that archived every whiff, scent, waft and hint I'd ever detected. I had interpreted this man as a mindmap of smells and could conjure a Smell-O-Vision rendering of him anytime I pleased.

The memories were perfect. But that was exactly the problem. They were sterile.

His hair smelled like Pantene Pro-V, even when he hadn't taken a shower in days, his feet like laundry lint and fabric softener. Crotch? Bicycle seat and Irish Spring soap. My memory had frozen out any trace of raunch. In other words, pure fucking hell.

I was guaranteed a lifetime of smells not worth smelling.

What follows is the text from the back of a box of Lime Jell-O. I hope, for your sake, that you never have to follow these instructions:

A final photo. I'm sealed in green gelatin, entombed with my too-perfect memories the way pharaohs were buried with their treasures and gems. The Jell-O is in the shape of the Great Pyramid of Giza, replica limestone bricks jagged and crumbling where I jumped in. As limey as lime gets.

What stinks is that when I inhaled for the last time, I couldn't taste a damn thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BuTay had had enough.

You can't fake the fuck, a nut is a must—especially if you're doin' it on camera. If the one you're with isn't bringing out the freak in you, you gotta do whatever and think about
whoever
to bring it. Don't let up that you've been let down. Keep a,
ahem
, straight face and make the camera believe you. 'Cause the camera never lies.

It's not the first time he's had to put on a fuckin' happy face (or is that a happy fuckin' face?), but it will be the last. This is it for him.
This is it
. His last picture. Yes, he's said it before and he's meant it before, but this time the decision has been made for him.

This Big D. You guessed it, aka Big Dick. With a name like that if he wasn't doing porn he'd be a pimp, a rapper or some combination thereof (they are more often than not all-in-one
these days). He's a walking caricature. An obnoxious rope-a-dope chain swinging from his neck, diamond studs in each ear, silver rings on his right fingers, gold on his left (including the thumbs) and a grill that caps his upper row. Dipped in ink on his right thigh (something in Chinese), his left arm (something in Japanese), his spine (a scorpion) and above his navel (an arrow pointing downward with DA SHYT tattooed above it). And the splotchy mark just below his right shoulder blade? Apparently the result of a drive-by in Compton, where he filled his gangsta scorecard as a drug dealer.

The main attractions are the brick-house bod, that big ol' dick (a ruler by six and three-quarter inches), and the sac (dubbed “Monster's Balls”). Ever since he exploded (pun intended) on the scene a couple of years ago, he's been the talk. The public can't get enough of him.

BuTay thought he wouldn't be able to get enough of him too. The man is
f-f-f-fine
and, from what he could tell, knew how to throw it down. And BuTay felt rather honored: he would be the first man Big would do onscreen (the jury is still out on whether he has done it off). Several studios—such as FreakDawg and PitBull—tried to woo him, but he said yes to Full Moons and its president/director/producer, Ernest Jamison aka EJ, because EJ could promise him the person…no, the
ass
he's always wanted to nail.

But whatever excitement BuTay felt disintegrated when they met.

BuTay has three “hell-2-the-naw” commandments: no drugs, no bareback and no raining on his face. And in a world where the three often go hand in hand, that he's been able to avoid them all is something of a miracle.

So it's a rather poetic form of justice that he would be faced with all three today.

When they were in the “dressing/makeup room” (a large walk-in utility closet), Big decided to light up a joint. “Wanna puff?”

Not, “Do you mind if I smoke?” But, at least he offered. He has manners…. “No thanks.”

“Mo' fo' me, then.”

Good thing he's one of those artists who frowns on intimacy (i.e., kissing, hugging, cuddling); BuTay wouldn't have to inhale the stank on his lips.

As they rehearsed—choreographing their movements so that they'd always be on camera and on cue—Big had the audacity to ask, “You mind if we do this raw, dawg?” He'd done it bareback with women.

But not with BuTay. “Yes I do.”

“You ain't gotta worry. I got me.”

He kept pleading his case. “Ain't no problem. I can pull out befo' I blow.”

“You won't be pullin' in if you're not covered.”

He shrugged. “A'ight, a'ight, son. No prob.”

And after almost a half hour of some very uninspired pumpin' and pushin', it seemed as if he was about to blow—and would no doubt be springing forth his seed on BuTay's face. It was bad enough BuTay had to listen to this motherfucker have sex with
himself…

Yawn.

…and that he couldn't keep his shit up. Twice during the fuck scene BuTay had to go down on him.

He wasn't about to let Big use his face as a towel. If BuTay wanted a facial, he'd go to a spa.

And it was obvious that, despite BuTay's protests, EJ was fine with letting it happen. And why wouldn't he be: Big is an executive producer on
Big's Big Break
, a credit that EJ had always denied BuTay despite his being his biggest star and making over a million dollars for him in two years. This bit of information was revealed by Big minutes before the shoot began—and you know that left a
very
bitter taste in BuTay's mouth. When confronted, EJ at first denied it but then dismissed it as “just business.” Uh-huh. And the expression he wore as Big ejected his dick and went for the condom broadcasted the same sentiment.

It was in that moment that BuTay's whole career flashed before his eyes. His bootay had seen better days.
Much
better days.

 

BuTay—or Evan, as his parents named him—didn't fall into the biz because he was trying to feed a drug habit. Or needed a warm bed to sleep in for a night or two. He wasn't molested or sexually abused as a child and was exorcising those demons by playing with himself and others in public. Nor was he hard up for money. Or hard up.

He answered an ad in
HX Magazine
—to be an office manager. He was a junior at NYU pursuing a degree in creative writing (a career choice that disappointed his parents). He had never managed an office but the work hours fell on days he wasn't in class and the position didn't require experience. The ad stated: “Charismatic cutie with bootie needed to oversee clerical operations, Thurs-Sat, 1pm-9pm.”

Charismatic cutie with bootie
. That was him.

He got the job because he was the only Negro out of the dozen candidates that applied. That's what EJ wanted all along, but he couldn't very well include that in the ad. Why any of the
white boys showed up was a mystery: even a porn outsider like Evan was aware of EJ's predilection for dark meat.

Which is why Evan wore his tightest pair of jeans to the “interview.” One look was all it took: after dismissing all the vanilla, they sat in a corner of the Lower East Side loft that also functioned as EJ's office, where he made one offer Evan couldn't refuse—and another that he could.

After agreeing on his pay and going over his duties, EJ walked him out, zeroing in on his backside. “You oughta be in pictures with an ass like that.”

BuTay figured that most Black men he laid that line on were appreciative. Not him. “I don't think so.”

EJ was thrown by the response. “You don't think so? Why not?”

Why not. As in,
Why wouldn't you want to be in pictures, since I, the white man, said you would be good in them, I know everything, and I know what's best for everyone, including you.

“Because I know what's best for me and that's not it.”

“Well…have you ever been photographed nude? You might change your mind once you see how beautiful you are.”

Beautiful
. BuTay had heard that from many a white man eager to get into his pants. “Don't you mean how beautiful my ass is?”

“Uh, well, yeah,” he admitted with nervous laughter.

“I'll be keeping my clothes on.”