Better excerpt by Jaime Samms

In Jaime Samms' Better, getting better is about learning to live with the truth. Jesse Turbul, after filing charges that put his abusive ex-Dom behind bars, relocates across the country, hopes to escape his past—but, of course, it's never that easy. When Jesse meets third-year law student Aadon at the library where he works, their mutual attraction is instant and obvious.

Despite the sparks, they just can't seem to make it work. Aadon is mired in guilt over his inability to help his older brother, damaged by events far too similar to to Jesse's past. Jesse is stuck in his own desperate wish to forget the painful shadow that continues to threaten him and any hope of a happy future.

The only way to move forward is for Jesse to acknowledge he's broken and for Aadon to accept he can't make him better.


Better
Dreamspinner Press (January 12, 2012)
ISBN-13 (ebook): 978-1-61372-343-2
ISBN-13 (paper): 978-1-61372-342-5


Excerpt:

Jesse watched his date for a while, waiting for the blond head to lift. Only when Mike came to the table a few minutes later did Aadon look up. He glanced at Jesse, turned to Mike and placed his order, waited until Jesse had ordered and Mike had left before quietly excusing himself from the table.

Jesse waited a long time, much longer than it would take for Aadon to use the facilities, before following him.

The heavy restroom door swung open on silent hinges, and the peculiar smell of a bathroom trying too hard not to smell like a bathroom engulfed him. Jesse drew in a silent breath and stepped inside.

Aadon leaned on the counter by the sinks, his back to the mirror.

“I’m sorry.” Jesse tried to make the apology light, tried to see into Aadon’s shrouded eyes.

Finally, Aadon looked at him. “Why?”

“I got a little defensive.” He held up his hand, finger and thumb an inch apart, sheepish smile on his face.

Aadon stifled a groan. How could he be so fiery one minute, and this…adorable the next and not know how crazy it made him? He pushed himself off the sink and closed his hand around Jesse’s fingers, closing the space and kissing the fingertips. “Maybe that’s the point. As long as you feel you have to defend yourself around me, I have to be careful.” He closed his eyes, kept his lips pressed to his warm fingers.

God this was hard. He wasn’t doing Jesse any good, wanting him this bad, knowing he couldn’t—shouldn’t—and knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist much longer. He shouldn’t still even be with him. It was too much. He just wasn’t what Jesse needed.

Jesse felt the churning sensation in the pit of his stomach even before Aadon spoke again and yanked his hand free, mouth open, ready to fill the void before Aadon could speak. Before he could say what Jesse knew he was about to say. He was too slow.

Aadon took his face in both hands, tilting it up and looking into his eyes. “As long as I have to be that careful, this can’t work.”

“But—”

“Because I don’t want to be careful, Jesse,” Aadon went on, overriding his faint protest, passing a thumb over Jesse’s lips and backing him up against a stall.

“Then don’t.” The words warbled out past Jesse’s pulse fluttering in his throat. He swallowed hard. “Don’t be careful.” Aadon’s toned body pressed his against the cold metal. The rush of fear and excitement mingled, and he knew he’d lost the ability to tell which was which. He didn’t know if he cared.

“If I’m not, I could do more damage than Anthony ever did.” Aadon’s palm caressed his cheek, his fingers slid into Jesse’s hair, and he kissed; a light strike of his lips and tongue, there and gone too quickly to capture, but expertly bringing him back down to where he could almost breathe normally.

The rush faded, and Jesse wanted it back.

He gripped the front of Aadon’s shirt, preventing him from moving away. “You’re not anything like Anthony, and I’m not who I was then.” He never would have demanded Anthony answer his desire like this. Kissing Aadon firmly, not hard or angry, just without compromise, Jesse closed his eyes, willed the other man to understand. He needed this so desperately. Needed to know he was wanted, desired. Needed to know Aadon could look on him as a man and not a shattered thing.

A soft groan welled in Aadon’s throat and spilled out into Jesse’s kiss. It was so good. So sweet, and held so much conviction. It was, finally, too much to resist. He answered it, tongue stroke for tongue stroke, slowly wresting control of the kiss from Jesse as he pinned him between his hard body and the cold metal of the bathroom stall. His big hands cupped Jesse’s head, his body an immovable weight against him, soaking in Jesse’s heat and desire, keeping him still and contained.

Jesse couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and his fingers tightened to fists in Aadon’s shirt. This was exactly the kind of mindless surrender he’d always craved. Exactly what Anthony had never once given him. Because Anthony had never asked for it the way Aadon was doing with his firm, gentle touches and his warm hands, possessive, but not hard or hurtful. Jesse let go of that last bit of control and felt his head impact the stall wall with a soft thud. His hands relaxed, his body heated and melted to conform with Aadon’s, and he opened that last little bit to feel Aadon’s tongue sweep in and possess him.


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Longhorns excerpt by Victor J Banis

Longhorns by Victor J Banis is a bawdy love story set on the Texas plains. Longhorns ranges from hard riding action and sex as hot as the blazing Texas sun, to lyrical descriptions of the Old West. New MLR Press edition.



Longhorns
MLR Press (February, 2012)
ISBN: 978-1-60820-593-6 (print)
978-1-60820-594-3 (ebook)

Excerpt:

They were herding cattle, out on the range, when he first showed up, late of an afternoon.

"Looks like we got company," Red said.

Les looked in the direction Red was staring, toward the far horizon, where a distant speck gradually formed itself into a cowboy on a brown and white pinto.

Visiting strangers weren't common on a round up. It had never happened to him personally, but Les had heard tell of a time or two when that had meant trouble of one kind or another for the herders—rustlers, they said, or bandidos, though a lone rider wasn't likely to be much of a threat with a dozen or more cowboys gathered around.

Still, he broke off working with the boys and strolled out to meet the stranger as he rode into the camp in a cloud of dust. Les wore his six shooters on his hips and he did not draw them, but he hooked his thumbs in his wide leather belt, where he could get to them quick if he needed to, and if there was a faster draw in Texas, he had never met him. The cowboy jumped off his pinto, hitched his pants up, and swaggered over to where Les was standing.

"I heard you was herding some longhorns, thought you might could use an extra wrangler," he said in the way of greeting, extending his hand. "My name is Buck."

"Mine's Les." Les shook his hand and looked him over. The boy wore an old shirt, worn but clean, and those new pants, dugris, that had come up from the Bahamas—but the fellows called them dungarees, and said they were way more comfortable than the old-fashioned woolies—and he had a fancy looking pair of snakeskin boots on his feet, white, with curlicues of black and green. He wasn't more than eighteen years old, maybe nineteen, his skin already leather colored from the Texas sun, and he stood only five foot nine inches, ten at the most, fine boned and small built, but wiry. He had a piece of string under his chin to hold his faded gray Stetson, but the hat had fallen behind and his hair reached almost to his shoulders, a tangled mass of wayward curls as black as obsidian. His eyes, in the fading light, were nearly as dark. An old fashioned Winchester long rifle was slung over his shoulder, and he wore a Colt on one hip, and a Bowie in a leather sheath on the other. Despite his size and his youth, he had a cocksure air about him, like a man who has just wrestled the puma and is waiting for you to send in the grizzly.

Les himself was six foot three, broad of shoulder and chest and narrow of hip, his long legs bowed outward, like a pair of parentheses that contained his cowboy history within them. A life out of doors had etched fine lines around his mouth and eyes, and bleached his fair hair almost to a whiteness, but the thatch of it on his chest was reddish yellow still where his shirt hung open. He looked exactly like what he was, a long time cowpuncher who was man enough for just about anything that might come up, and damn well knew it.

"You Indian?" he asked the newcomer.

"Half," Buck said. He seemed unembarrassed by the fact, though not everybody around these parts took kindly to half-breeds. "Daddy was a trader, leastways so I always heard, but I never knew him. Mama was a Nasoni. A Nasoni princess, she used to claim, but she didn't live no royal kind of life, seemed to me."

"Nasoni? Don't believe I know that tribe," Les said.

"North east Texas, was where we come from. Gone now. Mostly died out the last century, or swallowed up by the Caddo, except for a few of us stragglers here and there." Buck said. "Texas is a Nasoni word though. It means friend. Guess that's why I'm so doggone friendly." He grinned again and looked Les up and down. Something about the way he looked at him made Les oddly uncomfortable, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and glanced down.

"Them's fancy boots," he said, his eyes settling on them.

"Thanks. I traded a fellow down in Galveston for them," Buck said.

"Must have given him something pretty special," Les said. "For a pair of boots like that."

"Mighty special, to tell the truth." Buck winked when he said it, and Les felt his face color slightly, and decided that he wasn't going to follow that subject any further, just to be safe.

"You new around here?" he asked instead. "I don't recall seeing you about San Antone when I been in town."

"Come from Oklahoma, but I been down Galveston way for a spell. Just come up from there. I was looking for some work, and fellows I met on the trail mentioned your name, said you was herding and that I should ride out to find you. Mighty glad they did, now that I set eyes on you."

Which Les thought was an odd thing to say, but he glanced past the kid just then for a moment to where some of the boys were working on the makeshift corral, and his attention was distracted. "Best make that fence a little higher, Red," he called across to his Segundo. "From the look of them clouds yonder, appears like we might get some weather tonight."

When he looked back at the newcomer, Les found Buck's eyes down, an intent expression on his face. Les looked too, and realized Buck was staring at him, staring right at the bulge of his crotch.

"What you got on your mind, boy?" Les said sharply.

"I was just thinking," Buck said, seeming not to mind at all that he had been caught with his eyes where they were, "'bout some of the things them sailors taught me down in Galveston. Things I had never even heard of back in Oklahoma. I tell you, them sailor boys is truly something. I got me a fair education, is sure."

"Well, they ain't no sailor boys here," Les said, doubly annoyed because they had been herding cattle out here on the prairie for several weeks now, and his prick, on the alert for any prospects, had took instant note of the attention it had gotten.

Still, one of his cowhands, Rex, had taken a fall a couple days before and broken an arm and had to ride back to the ranch—you weren't much good one-armed on a round up, and a man who couldn't work was a man who was in the way—and Matt had come down with a bad case of the trots and couldn't stop shitting, and that had kept him in camp for two days now. They had been a bit short-handed to begin with when they had set out; so the plain fact was, he could use an extra hand, and out here, there wasn't much to choose from.

"I reckon you can stick around for a day or two, see how it goes," he said. He glanced down at those fancy snakeskin boots, not a speck of dirt on them, and added, spitefully, "I'm guessing you can ride okay. We got no room here for sissies."

"Well, now, seeing it's you, and now that I have set eyes on you, I would surely love the opportunity to show just how well I can ride," Buck said with a flash of teeth in his sun-leathered face. "I got the time, if you got the inclination, and that big old patch of mesquite over there looks private enough to me."

"I expect I'll see you on your horse soon enough," Les said, hoping without much hope that he had misunderstood the suggestion.

"Oh, a horse, well, I guess so," Buck said. He turned and started toward his pinto, his shiny spurs jingling, but he looked over his shoulder to add, "I can ride them, too, case that's what you meant."

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Sapphic Planet excerpt, from an anthology edited by Beth Wylde

Welcome to Sapphic Planet, a literary realm where women are free to love one another without fear of prejudice or reprisal. Inside these pages you’ll discover nineteen stories written specifically to tease and titillate your senses.

From a frolic in the rain with a Bathing Beauty, to a concerned sibling showing his sister some Brotherly Love, and everything in between. Whether you’re in the mood for steamy romance or unrequited lust, we’ve got a story guaranteed to satisfy your cravings.

This anthology showcases just a fraction of the talent from the writers of Sapphic Planet, a group specifically created for authors and aspiring authors of quality lesbian literature.

Sapphic Planet
CreateSpace (February 26, 2012)
ISBN-10: 1466479086
ISBN-13: 978-1466479081

Excerpt from Licked by Jodi Payne

I'm the first to admit that I'm jaded. I've been around the block a few times and I'm hard to please. When I scan a dance floor I'm looking for a real woman. Her body is a factor, but it's not everything. I like a decent rack. I like to see something that makes my mouth water, who doesn't? I love a good ass. In fact, her ass is even more important than her tits. But if I have to pick a deciding factor, one particular thing that must be perfect regardless of the packaging, it's her eyes. Her eyes will tell me what I'm really in for. I look for experience, for someone whose mind is on my body, whose hands can read my goose-bumps like Braille. Someone who looks as if she can play me like a concert pianist masters Rachmaninoff. I want a woman who isn't going to rush. I willingly give a lover all night long and I expect her to use it.

So yeah, of course I laugh at the baby boi who suddenly slips her hand into mine and tugs me into a space between the gyrating bodies that's just big enough for two. Not at all the overture I'd been expecting. I mean, look at her. She's adorable, sure, with her neon-blue-tipped faux-hawk and her black sneakers. Her fresh face is set with dark almond-shaped eyes that I find alluring, and harder for me to get a read on than most. Boi, you might have that hard, hot look and you're definitely into me, but you can't be a day over twenty. Show me your fake ID.

She's quick to smile, another common curse of the young. Gutsy little thing though, I'll give her that. Her body is telling me she wants me to dance, and she moves closer.

I find it difficult to get into at first, rubbing hips with this little top-dyke in the making. She even has a harness on underneath her button-flys. She threads graceful fingers through her belt loops, grinding that dildo strapped across her bush into my hip. Say, little boi, does your mother know that you bind your chest? Does she know you suck clit? Does she know you pack cock under your tight blue jeans?

Will mommy let you stay out past ten?

She's a smooth dancer. She moves easily, freely, and though we're all moving to the same unrelenting beat, it seems as if she is creating one all her own. I let my eyes and hands travel over her slender body. She hasn't given me her name yet, or said anything at all for that matter; she just dances, and once in a while she gives me a knowing look that seems far beyond her years. I'm intrigued and I return her wily smile, giving her permission to make her move.

You think you can teach this old dog a new trick, dyke boi? Bring it on, sweetheart. Show me what you can do.

Her hands slip around my waist and up my back. No, not just up my back, but under my shirt and against my bare skin. She flattens her fingers over my spine. They're cool, and seem to mock the slowly building heat of the moment. It's a clever move, suitably forward. It speaks of intention, and I'm pleased but surprised to discover that she's not fooling around. Chalk another one up for the kid.

I'm suddenly aware of scrutinizing eyes on my back and I turn around, spotting several trend-addicted young women congregating at the bar; mostly high femmes and fag dykes. The mystery resolves itself before my eyes. My desire-induced fog lifts and I find myself the unwitting object of a school-boi dare.

“Are those your friends at the bar?” I ask, lowering my lips to the boi's ear to be heard over the music.

She nods.

“I see. They put you up to this?” I pull away and grin knowingly at her. I played this game once too and I remember how to win.

“No!” she protests, vehemently enough that I want to believe her. “No. I want you. I put myself up to this.”

“And they...?”

“They said they didn't believe you'd do it.”

Well, well. Break my unbreakable heart. She wanted me, from way over there at the bar, and her catty little girlfriends told her she wasn't worthy of me. It takes a lot of moxie to risk humiliation in front of one's friends. This little top's got courage. She deserves to win this one.

“Let's give the ladies something to chew on,” I suggest.


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September at Esplanade excerpt by Roy Kirby Chaudoir

September at Esplanade by Roy Kirby Chaudoir is set in September in the 1980s. It is a fictionalized story based on the personal journals of a promiscuous gay man. This is story follows a young man's unlucky life and psychiatric hospitalization and begins with him "indentured" to the man who signed him out of the psychiatric hospital. The protagonist has multiple sexual encounters, and even tries to form a loving partnership with someone new, but realizes that he's never lived "free" and with responsibility only for himself so he backs away from the promise of love a relationship might bring in order to face his own true self. It is a story of a confused process towards individuation.

September At Esplanade
Lulu Press (December 13, 2011)

Excerpt:

Chapter 4 “Road Trip to Biloxi”

The Apollo Arcade Intensity

The Apollo Arcade was a pretty worn place. It wasn't dirty. Well, it wasn't dirty like a park bench isn't dirty, when in fact it is probably full of pigeon droppings, hand germs, dropped food particles, all sorts of things on it but since it is a park bench you have some low expectations about just exactly how clean you would expect it to be. In reality, the Apollo Theatre in Biloxi was probably only cleaned with a push broom to get the paper wrappers of candy and potato chip bags, cigarette butts, and ashes pushed to places where a dustpan and garbage can could catch the mess. It wasn't the kind of place that had the floors mopped, and the floors were a sort of concrete floor, but the surface of the floor was so traffic worn that it seemed like a public sidewalk, only dimmer. In the dimness shadowy people seemed to scurry from area to area. There were untold hallways that wound off in a labyrinthine framework off of the main room. These halls were constructed of booths and within each a small projector screen was built into the wall, and you got in your little booth, alone or with one or two others and watched two bit's worth of a porn flick. Once the door was closed you'd do whatever it is you had come there to do. There was cruise tension in the air, so if you wanted to play the hunter-like game, it could be just like cruising in a sex park. I felt arousal from this cruising around, and endorphins kicked in and I began seeing flashing lights over every one's head.

There was no guarantee that the vice squad wasn't there in force, patrolling the large arcade, but the "let's take a chance" atmosphere seemed to bring out the danger lover in me, and forbiddance and sex always make the game more fun for me. Only, I'm with Sandy and I have to be more aware of how I act. There was one other factor that ate into my judgment. Just before we got inside the Apollo Sandy offered me a little paper tab with "windowpane" LSD on it. I took it. I had been told by my psychiatrists not to do hallucinogens. I had really taken a lot of mushrooms in the past, and still had some at home, but I knew I wasn't wound too tightly and feared I might show my craziness. Nonetheless, I took the acid.

At first we each had two rolls of quarters, and we'd been together kissing and doing it for the last day or so that we were relaxed enough to let each other go in a booth alone. It seemed Sandy wanted me to be his, and only his, but that he was not rushing me into anything like an exclusive relationship. Only, somehow being "lovers" or on our way to being "lovers" gave us some new feelings about control and possessiveness towards one another. It seemed not okay for some reason to let some other stranger suck your cock when your lover was right there with you. It was funny in a way but we got booths next to each other and thought we were being discrete and safe by letting our dicks go through the holes in the walls, the glory holes, and sucking on one another's cocks but what we didn't know was that eyes from the other adjoining booths were peeping in the other glory holes and watching us doing each other. It was a big turn-on for several voyeurs, and it made them more bold and horny in relation to us so when we came out of our booths, we found a group of six guys outside, one obviously masturbating and two watching him and the other three with hardons in their pants waiting like midnight cowboys against the wall watching for a sign from me or Sandy that we'd like to go in a booth with one of them. It began really fast to be an almost orgy scene and we found it confusing for a moment. I was beginning to hallucinate happily, too. Everything seemed so busy and crowded suddenly. It seemed I needed to be alone, and I told Sandy to go off on his own for ten minutes and I would too. He seemed okay with the idea, but I could tell he was worried about me. I wasn't. I was on some sort of animal control, and it felt good. No matter how I try to deny it in my everyday life, I really don't like to be logical and some craziness seems right for me. I am intuitive. I am scattered, too. I prefer living without a plan.

I peeked into a booth, ignoring the men in the hall giving me signals to come with them, and then I saw him. He was actually an ugly skinny black man. I peeked through a glory hole in my booth and I see a black guy with his shirt unbuttoned hanging out and his chest and stomach and pubes exposed and he was jacking off to the sights of two white guys fucking in the porn flick on the small screen.

I'm really hallucinating now. For some reason this kind of ugly guy turns me on. I think he looks really hot, but in the dim light all I can see is the shape of his face, chest and stomach, and cock. He's working himself.

I confessed all this into my journals, but never to anyone in person yet. It gets steamy to recall this. I am totally psychotic on the acid. I think acid effected everything thought this whole episode. On LSD I'm so much more sexually driven.

This dark skin black guy about mid-thirties, skinny thin, almost just bones and skin, his face pocked from year's ago acne--one of those adults who had bad acne as a teenager and it scarred his face, actually so ugly that it was beautiful, and I felt this rush of heat grow in me and I slipped my dick into the glory hole in his booth and when he sucked it felt electric. I thought I was going to be sucked off in a flash it was so hot. I dropped down, and eyeball to eyeball asked him, "Can I come in?"

"No! Wait a second!" He stood up, buttoned his shirt and left the room. I was about to flip out I felt so rejected and this heat of passion was not cooling off. I didn't have time to react, but was standing up and turning around when in my booth door this dude rushes in, pops his shirt open again, and we go belly to belly, kissing, and it feels like our skin is literally flaming with fire. We set upon one another voraciously, like two vampires.

"You're burning up you're so hot...." I told him as our stomachs touched and my t-shirt was pulled behind my head. My jeans were unbuttoned and my long five inches, or short six inches seemed longer than seven as he worked my dick with his hand then his mouth.

"Stop," he said. "You wanna fuck me?"

"Sure," I said.

"Then button up and let's go across to the other side of this joint. It be safe over there."

Not exactly sure of what is happening, I zip up, button up and hand in hand we cross the gloomy space between what appear the populated side of the arcade to an older part of the building, and water was flowing in through the roof, and there was standing water on the floor. We splashed our way into this rain soaked booth.

"In here," he said and pulled me into a booth. "Put some quarter in the machine. Ain't nobody gonna fuck with us in this dump."

The floor was unbelievable, I almost knelt down to suck but realized we had to stay off our knees or the water on the floor from a big leak in the ceiling could get us totally wet—a storm of rain and what sounded like some hail had been pelting the metal roof for the whole time we were in the maze of baths, and anyways, I couldn't kneel and he couldn't' and we stood, our shoes in almost a half inch of water. Other guys opened the door to come join us but seeing that we were standing in water up over the edges of our shoe soles they guys shut the door and backed out.

I am not believing how hot this black man is, as things progress, and his kisses were so erotic I was shaking from the excitement.

Then he turned around and dropped his pants to his knees and leaned forward on his hands and arms offering his bare ass to me, his look spoke to me

“Fuck me."

He is bending over with his hands on the seat of the bench, and shoving his skinny ass and legs out and says again more forcefully, "Fuck me!"

I shoved my cock into him and almost passed out with pleasure. He had thick greasy lube in his ass and around the pucker of his asshole. I pushed my cock into his hole it seemed like he began contracting and loosening his sphincters such that his ass was like a mouth hotly sucking my cock. I was sure I'd never had sex this hot in my life before. The rain roared on the metal roof, dripped into the booth, and now and then the door popped open and we'd slam it, and I'd put a quarter in the video machine, and I pumped until my brains shot out of the end of my cock. I saw lights going off in my mind.

I kept pumping him hard and he kept the ass action on me so hard that I was really fuckin' fucking, and I couldn't break away if I'd have wanted to. I was coming again a second time soon.

When I shot in him like ten spurts, emptying the cum from within in me so much that I felt an exhaustion overtake me, he turned and put his arms under my armpits and stopped me from falling to my knees in exhaustion and he held me up, pressed me against the wall with his body, and with one hand took my hand and licked my palm and put it on his dick and I began jacking him off and it was exciting him extremely. This was decadent beyond belief and the heat of it was beyond anything I ever knew.

When we walked across the room, I sensed from the men in the arcade that they did not approve of this black and white sex but it turned them on, too. But they were afraid to come in on us the way we acted.

I was jacking him off and he was about to shoot when he put his hand on his asshole and got it greased, then shoved two fingers between my legs, shoved me hard up against the wall, and from in front of me his long cock reached between and through my soft inner thighs, under my balls, and his penis penetrated just into my second sphincter, and he began putting it in and out of me and it felt so hot. He began to moan, and was going to pull out, but I squeezed him against me and felt him cumin' inside me.

We had to keep pumping quarters into the machine to play like we were watching the movie but we were blind somehow in an erotic cloud of a haze that made me think of Prince, the artist, and the song he had put out with the movie, "Purple Haze." The LSD was painting things rose and yellow colors swirling in a deep purple field.

I felt like this dark skinned beauty of a man had brought me into an atmosphere as strange and wonderful as any I'd ever seen or been in, and his body scent, the musk or perfume of his natural body scent magnified my arousal. I began getting hard again as he kissed me and I pulled on his cock but then he pressed me gently but firmly against the wall with my back against the wall and only his arms behind my waist holding me tummy tight to his, still taking my weight off my feet and let my thighs rest on his standing thighs, me leaning against to wall for balance and him pushing up under my balls so fine, so fine...that I melted in his arms, and he pumped gently, but he was spent, and me too. Apparently knowing I couldn't have taken his long cock from behind like he took my relatively small cock--his twelve would have split me open--he had fucked me from in front. We were done. We didn't want to stop, but we were limp now. I held his mushroom head so trying to milk him of any residual cum, and his circumcised big cock was so pleasurable to hold. I just wanted to sleep with him all night. He had fucked me like I'd never been fucked before. His super curly hair acted like Velcro for my white cum, and he rubbed my cum into his pubes to show me he loved it.

We'd forgotten about the video and some guy barged in with another guy in tow and said, "You fuckers can't hog this machine all night."

"We're just leaving," I said and laughed, and my nameless lover laughed too, and when the other guy saw he was black he said the nastiest thing, using the "N" word against my friend and me a "luvah" of the "N"...but this guy and his fuck mate were both twice our sizes and we got out of there as fast as we could.

My black partner whispered into my hear, "You are the best. Don't go near that guy, though. He hurts guys when he is finished with them."

I was about to pick up the conversation by whispering into my nameless black partner's ear when I realized he was splitting for the door. The rain was pouring on the ceiling, and I guess he felt it was a good time not to be trapped in a southern theatre, which was seemingly beginning to fill up with rednecks.

I tried to call after him to wait. I wanted to get a name and number.

He was gone. I saw him look at me like a ghost from the doorway. He was standing in the Apollo's purple neon light and rain was pouring on his head and face, and his chest an stomach were still exposed and water ran down his torso in rivulets. I saw him mouth the words, "I love you."

I did the same thing, "I love you!" He put on some shades, even though it was night, and pulled his collar together at his neck as the door of the arcade closed and then, I stood there unsure of what to do. I got my shirt and pants neater, and then I realized I was letting the guy get away and I ran to the front door, and out into the night, there were twenty or more cars and pickup trucks in the parking lot and he was no where to be seen. I went out to the side of the highway to look in both directions, and there he went, running in the rain, almost two blocks away, small against the shiny wet pavement from the street lamps, and I felt an emptiness I had only known as a boy ,an emptiness when I felt lost and afraid, this black man whose name I never knew had evoked in me something that had been dormant. He possessed a vital life force I needed desperately.

One of the reasons they called me schizophrenic at the hospital some times was just what was going on now. I began running down the street chasing this guy. I couldn't catch him. He turned a corner, and when I got there he was gone. I walked up to the first house I saw and even though it was early morning, about two a.m or later. Irrationally, I rang the door bell. I was going to ask for him. No one answered. I went to the next house and knocked. Then I realized I was being crazy. I looked to be sure no cops were around, and I ran back out of this sleeping neighborhood and to the Apollo Arcade.

I knew I was going crazy and needed to stop, find Sandy, and write in my journal about this later, so I made a mental note to write about this the next day in my journal beside the pool.

I felt something like an earthquake in me. I wondered in that moment if I would ever feel this solitude leave me, a dense and thick feeling of aloneness that was more drenching than the rain absorbed me and made me little, weak, and small.

I cursed myself for not getting a phone number because I had every intention in the world of getting his name or address, but our meeting was sudden, our time together intense, and our departure instantaneous. True anonymity. An authentically spectacular anonymous sexual encounter! It seemed sacred to me. Later I wrote about him, and it stayed true my whole life that he remained the best fuck I ever got and gave. I wanted him. I truly wanted him, this anonymous rather ragged creature. He could easily have been homeless. I could readily have given him a home.

I came back into the building from the rain, in the lobby, walked along the counter in the front areas where they sold condoms and dildos, and lube, and magazine and movies, and then there was an open door into the sex theatre. I'd buttoned up and then I saw Sandy coming out of the arcade labyrinth and we made eye contact and rushed into the movie theatre where there were men of all sizes and colors pseudo-outdoors camping and the camp tables and other props had the purpose of being a set for every kind of homosexual position in sex that you could imagine two's and three' and four's to be in. He and sat next to each other and giggled a bit, still stoned, and he said, he didn't think he would go alone in the Arcade again because he met some guy that was like a cop who was hassling the customers, and I only mentioned that I'd watched a video in a booth and some guy tried to suck me. I felt I couldn't tell him how hot the sex I had was with the black guy. I really wanted to get up and follow that man again, but not then, not later that evening, not the next days nor even in the years to come when I hit this place alone, never did I ever see the best fuck I ever had in my life again. No one knew I visited the Apollo theatre. I continued to sneak over to it for years, until it burned down.

I never saw the man again but I never forgot how hot his body was and his ass was like double delight. I thought later that probably he was with fever of some major degree to have emitted that much body heat, but I didn't know, and all I remember was the faintest outline of his body and pockmarked face and the suction of his lips and ass.

I was enthralled. I was enchanted...with another man, and there I was sitting next to my "new lover" wondering about all these relationships and the ties that bound one man to another in some semblance of exclusivity. And my ass was titillated, somehow electrified by the guy's fucking of me with the head of his long cock and his shaft sheathed in my external flesh and him in me. I developed a fever that night, and the next day I seemed to have some flulike symptoms, fever, upset stomach, burning eyes, but I was much more "lovesick" than physically sick. Whatever the fever that man had, I had it now, and I was glad to be burning up. It was like being in his wet sweaty arms, and I never wanted to stop smelling his odors. Our odors.

This was not the way the Gay world presented itself in New Orleans. This was a sex theatre where men went to meet men.

Did I feel like I belonged in the gay world? Not really. I believed I belonged in the sexual world, not gay, but homosexually sexually making it with men, not playing at marriage or imitating straight couples and all the rituals those couples go through.

I made a note in my mind to bring this up to Sandy when the time was right. It was a delicate subject: relationships.

Sandy and I sat in the movie theatre for about twenty minutes. Then from boredom and the stupidity of the sex movie, I began to get sleepy and needed something to drink or eat.

"Sandy," I said with my head on his shoulder, he seemed so much older than me suddenly, "Can we go? I'm tired?"

I heard myself sounding like his little boy and it seemed appropriate but it also scared me to think I was beginning to fit into a special role with him, beginning to acquire expectations he'd put on me, no matter how much he was open to Bert being in the bed with us while Linden was in bed fucking Drew, I knew he was being patient as a strategy.

I wanted to be free. It was a scary realization, that I didn't want to be property of Sandy, not property of anyone's at all.

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Latin Boyz excerpt by P A Brown

In P A Brown's Latin Boyz, twenty-one year old Gabe will do anything to keep his family safe from the Locusts XIII Crew, a Cypress Park gang, especially his 14-year-old sister Nattie. In Gabe's struggle to keep his small, fragile family safe, he meets LAPD patrol officer Alejandro Cerveras and must come to terms with his attraction to him--and decide whether to believe his Church’s teachings or what his heart tells him. Then tragedy strikes, fueling his rage. As the need for vengeance drives him past all reason, violence and hatred erupt between Gabe and the gangbangers, spiraling out of control, leading to tragedy and the greatest loss of all.

Latin Boyz
AmberQuill Press (February 28, 2012)
ISBN-13: 978-1-61124-256-0 (Electronic)
ISBN-13: 978-1-61124-924-8 (Paperback)

Excerpt:

I barely drifted to sleep when tires screeched outside.

The harsh blast of a car horn followed.

It was all the warning I got. The first shot blew through the bedroom wall over my head. Drywall dust puffed out, at the same time my sister, Nattie, screamed.

I bolted through the door to her bedroom in the back of the house and grabbed her around the waist. Dragging her off the bed, we hit the floor, the pink ruffles of her Disney bedskirts wrapped around both of us. I took the weight of our fall on the hard linoleum floor and my shoulder jolted under the impact of her plump, fourteen-year-old body. I rolled over, and pinned her under me.

She screamed again and smacked me. Her fist hit my back and shoulders. One slammed into my ear. My head rocked sideways and light flared behind my eyes. More shots. The living room window shattered, and the battered, twenty-one inch TV my Uncle Tio and I salvaged from the dump last year imploded.

Under me, Nattie whimpered and shivered. I stroked her hair and whispered soft nonsense words to her. Nothing penetrated her terror.

“Mami!” She flailed at me and screamed for our mother.

“Mami. No.”

All this brought back way too many memories. Memories of another day when shots took the life of our mami and left Nattie permanently brain damaged. All my work to protect her, lost in a new hail of bullets.

More shots hit the front of the house, including the room which had been my mother's until her death three months ago. The room I refused to give to Nattie, even though Tio said it was only right. I knew in my gut I didn't want her in the front of the house.

The screech of tires signaled their departure. Nattie's renewed moans and guttural grunts broke the fragile silence.

Familiar feet shuffled down the hall. I didn't look up when Tio entered the room. His weak, old man's voice quavered. Once he‟d had a cumbra’s voice. Now he was a broken man who looked to me to protect all of us, when I couldn't protect myself.

“Who is it, Gabriel?” he cried. “Who is doing this?”

I couldn't look at him while I tried to calm Nattie. Tio knew as well as I did who it was. Gangsta assholes from Locusts XIII Crew, trying to clean up the business they started three months ago.

“Go, Tio. Call 911.”

“Gabriel—”

“Go. I'll take care of Nattie.”

He left and shuffled to the kitchen where our single working phone hung on the wall.

Nattie clung to me. She no longer screamed for our dead mother. Now she only whimpered. I stroked her back through her worn flannel pajamas. I didn't need light to know it would be the ones with Winnie the Pooh and Tigger all over them. The ones she put on every night since our mother had been shot by the same gang bangers who tried to kill us again tonight. She did so many little things to give herself comfort in a world which must seem mad to her.

It took half an hour to calm her. I didn't put her back to bed.

The pigs would come soon, and they would insist on seeing her, even when they were told how useless their questions were. The sight of them, with their guns and their dark uniforms would freak her out all over, and I knew I would have to calm her again, once 5-0 left. I led her into the living room where we waited.

Dust from the walls hung in the air, the tattered curtains rippled in the breeze which moved through the broken windows. Outside, I could hear the distant wail of sirens. Too few and too late.

I settled my sister on the sofa, sat beside her and smoothed the soft hair off her face. Her eyes, when they met mine, were glazed with fear. I wanted to tell her everything was okay, but I knew the cops would be here soon and make me a liar. It wasn't ever going to be okay.

Another ten minutes passed before a pair of black-and-whites rolled up in front of our small bungalow on Merced Street. Strobes of red and blue lights flashed like they actually thought the choloz would still be hanging, waving their chrome around.

Nattie and I sat in the living room with hot cocoa that Tio made. I reread her the Pooh story to calm her. She was too big to sit on my lap, but she tried. She curled against my side, her thumb tucked firmly between large lips. Her eyes widened when car doors slammed outside and footsteps climbed the cement steps to the front door.

She paled when Tio opened the door. She knew who was out there, and they scared her almost as much as the choloz.

The first cop through the door was an old regular. I had no idea what his name was, it didn't matter, they were all alike. This one was a grizzled panzón gabacho, with his fat belly hanging over his gear, and looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here on this fine January night.

But the other one, the one who followed him into our tiny, bullet-strewn home, was one I‟d never seen before. If I had, I would have remembered. He was raza. Smooth, clean-shaven. A strong face. High cheek bones from his Aztec ancestors. His uniform was sharply pressed and stretched tight across his broad chest and thighs. A thick belt across his hips covered with all the things I was used to seeing on 5-0. Dark eyes under his peaked cap met and held mine. I caught my breath.

Beside me, Nattie stiffened. Her eyes widened and I knew she saw their weapons. Even with her soft mind she recognized guns.

I tried to stem her panic with gentle words. But she was beyond that. I broke eye contact with the younger cop and stroked my sister's sleep-matted hair. I pressed her face against my chest, whispered to her and dried her tears.

The older cop talked. After a while I realized he had introduced the two of them. Officer Adam Donnelly and Alejandro Cerveras.

“Can you tell me what happened here tonight?” The brown cop spoke Spanish. Was that supposed to give us common ground?

I didn't answer him right away. I needed to deal with Nattie first.

“Mami,” she whispered.

“Mami's not here right now, bebé,” I said.

“I need you to talk to me,” the cop said like it was only him and me in the room. “I can help you. But you have to tell me what happened tonight.” He must be new in the area. Otherwise he‟d know it didn't matter what happened. He wasn't going to be able to do anything about it.

“In a minute,” I snapped.

I knew my anger upset Nattie, but I found it hard to hold it in check. I looked up when Tio slipped back into the room. “Tio, take Nattie to her room. Read to her.”

“We'll need to speak to everyone in the house,” the Latino cop said.

“You talk to me. No one else can tell you anything.”

I didn't look at either cop when I passed the book over and urged Nattie to follow her uncle. My obedient sister did as she was told. Her bunny slippers flopped on the cracked and yellowed linoleum floor with its curled edges.

I watched until they were gone, then swung around to face Cerveras.

“Took you long enough to get here. We called over an hour ago. For all you knew, we could have been lying here, bleeding out.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“A car full of G's got busy on us.” I looked at the wall behind the cop's head where the bullets had torn holes in the already old wallpaper. Then I looked at the destroyed TV and sighed. “Again,” I added.

Cerveras's eye brows went up at that. “This has happened before?”

“Pendejo, don't you people talk to each other? Write reports?” I spun around. Both cops tensed at my sudden movement. I slowed and spread my arms to calm them. Last thing I needed were nervous cops in my living room. “We've been over this already. Every time I call you, it's the same fucking thing. I'm always calling, and it's always the same.”

“Always calling about what? Other drive-bys?” Cerveras said.

His calmness infuriated me. “I wasn't aware of any recent gang activity in this area —”

“I keep calling to find out what you guys are doing to find my mother's killers.”

“Tell me about that, sir. When did it happen?”

“Thanksgiving, last year. Mami—my mother—and my sister, Natalie, were sitting outside.” I jerked my chin toward the front step. “Taking a break. It gets hot in here when you cook. No air.” My hands tightened into fists to stop them from shaking at the memory. My fingernails dug into my flesh. It didn't do any good to know even if I had been here, it wouldn't have mattered. I would probably be dead, too. “I wasn't here. I was in the backyard.”

“And what happened?”

“Vato next door was rumoured to be White Fence. The Locust Crew sent a couple of soldiers after him. One cabrón hit the wrong house.” I rubbed my bare arms, which were crowded with goose bumps. That had been Sadboy, P-Bull's idiot brother. Sometimes I wondered how accidental it had been. Sadboy knew I didn't run with his brother anymore. He had never liked me when I did. “My mother was killed. My sister…my sister wasn't.”

Donnelly wrote something down. He looked bored. Cerveras faked his sympathy real good. As though anyone would believe he felt sorry for a couple of 'hood güisas.

“You guys were pretty useless then, too,” I added. “Nobody sees anything and you don't do anything.”

“I'm sorry. Sometimes our resources are stretched thin.”

“Especially when the ones calling you are brown, right? Then they real thin and scarce.” I brushed aside the denial I saw in his eyes. “Forget it. It's old news. Question is, you gonna do something this time?”

Cerveras looked puzzled. “If they had the wrong house last time, why are they still harassing you?”

I didn't tell him my history with the Locusts. Not his fucking business. Instead I said, “They don't like the noise I been making about them. Been trying to get you guys to do something for the 'hood, shut them down. I'm bad for their business.”

“Did you see the shooters tonight?” Donnelly asked.

“Sure, I raced out the front door and wrote down their plate number while they drove off. I'm bullet proof, vato.”

“No need for sarcasm, sir.” Donnelly seemed genuinely put out.

I rolled my eyes. “No, I did not see them. I was lying on the floor in my sister's bedroom, trying to keep us from getting our heads blown off.”

“We'll canvass the neighborhood. See if anyone saw anything,” Cerveras said. He had a strong voice. Strong, but surprisingly gentle. Something I would never have expected from an LAPD cop. He seemed regretful when he said, “We'll do what we can. But without an ID or a lead on the shooters, or their car, we have no one to approach.”

“I give you an ID. But you don't do nothing with it.”

“Who?”

“P-Bull. Him and his brother, Sadboy. Their real names are Jesus Acosta and Tomas Acosta. They used to live next door.”

“How do you know it was them?”

“P-Bull always had a hard-on for me.” At least he had since P-Bull got jumped in to the Locusts and I didn't.

“But you never saw him tonight? Either of them?”

“No.”

“We'll talk to them, sir, but with no witnesses, it's hard.”

It was about what I'd expected. Still, for the first time, I felt disappointed, and that was stupid. LAPD weren't going to stop the Locusts, no matter how good their intentions were, and I wasn't always too sure their intentions were much of anything. LAPD cared about Westside. Not South-Central. Not Cypress Park. I had to hope the Locusts got bored and found fresh targets. Leave my family alone.

Like that was going to happen.

What I really needed was to find a way out of Cypress Park.

And since I‟d just started community college, and worked a part-time, minimum-wage gig at a local car wash, that was about as likely as winning the state lotto. Some nights I dreamed about skating my way out. Years ago, there had been one carnal brother who had won some contest and got himself a bunch of sponsors, and he‟d moved to Hollywood, where last anyone heard, he had his own line of boards and was riding in style.

“It must be hard on you, having to fill in your mother's footsteps.”

“Listen, what's gonna happen here? I really need to see my sister gets to bed.”

“A detective from the gang unit will meet with you. See if they can find anything the shooters might have left behind.”

I pointed at the wall behind him where several bullets had sunk into the cheap plaster. “Feel free to collect their brass. Save me digging them out myself.”

“Start by telling us your name. We'll need it for the official report.”

“You sure there's gonna be one?”

Cerveras was insistent. “Your name.” His hand poised over a note pad with a pencil.

“Gabe.”

“Your full name.”

“Fine. Gabriel Torres Aguila. My great uncle is Marco Aguila, and my sister is Natalie Magdeline.”

“Those are the only members of your household?”

“Yes,” I ground out. My home life wasn’t any of this cop’s business, no matter if we were both raza. “That is all I have. My father died years ago.” I didn’t mention Jaime, my older brother, serving fifteen to life in Tehachapi. The last kite I got told me he was a full blown carnales for the Eme. He had let me know he had my back from inside, and every time one of his got out he sent them to me with messages. Stay cool, he always said, stay safe. I got your back.

I guess the Locust Crew didn’t have a connection to Eme. They didn’t know my brother. They missed the memo I was protected.

If this basta needed to know all that, he could find out without my help. Bad enough the assholes think we’re all bangers or chronics no matter what they see. I wasn’t gonna give him my family’s dirty history.

He didn’t give up. He wrote down everything I said. He ignored his partner, who had gone past bored and was desperate to leave. Outside, the lights from the patrol cars still pulsated. The neighbors, the ones who didn’t see anything earlier, would be watching the cops like garbage rats and would know exactly when they left.

“What’s your date of birth, Gabriel?”

When I told him, his eyebrow went up.

“You’re twenty? How old is your sister?”

Almost twenty-one, I felt like telling him. Instead I muttered, “Fourteen. What’s it to you?”

“What’s wrong with her?” he asked softly and his tenderness jolted through me. I pulled away from him, hating his pity. I took a deep breath and clenched my fists at my side.

Fuck that shit. This asshole didn’t know dick and he wanted to pretend he cared?

“The bullet that killed our mother went into Nattie’s brain,” I said. Even now, three months later I still grew nauseous at the memory of finding my baby sister on the ground beside our dead mother, her head bleeding, her skin so pale I thought she had died, too. “By the time anyone answered our 911 call, Nattie was in shock and damn near died in the ambulance.” I didn’t tell him that sometimes I thought she might have been better off if she had. She would never fulfill the goals Mami had driven us to so relentlessly. She wanted us all to go to college, but especially Nattie. We all knew she had the brains in our family. Instead, she would be a child all her life and someone would have to take care of her that long, too.

That someone, apparently, was me.

“I’m sorry.”

I pinned him with a look. “You keep saying that. Why’re you sorry? You pull the trigger? You know who did? If you do, don’t be sorry, go out and cap their ass. It won’t bring my family back, but at least you’d be doing something, which is a lot more than the rest of 5-0 doin’. Now if that’s all, I have to see about getting Nattie back to bed.”

I turned to leave and Cerveras stopped me with a touch on my bare arm. A burst of electrical heat went straight from his fingertips to my groin. In horror, I realized I felt the stirrings of an erection.

I jerked away from the touch, but not before Cerveras’s eyes widened and I knew he felt the same rush of desire. Neither of us spoke for a long time.

He broke that silence.

“We’ll let ourselves out. If you think of anything else, Gabriel, please, don’t hesitate to call.” He handed me a pale purple card with his name and Northeast Community Police Station on San Fernando. I couldn’t help staring at his hand, the fine black hairs on the knuckles, the smooth, trimmed fingernails. Surprisingly soft-looking hands. I dropped the card on the end table, planning to toss it the minute they left.

With one last, slow look, Cerveras tipped his hat, and followed his partner outside. I locked up, and stood in front of the door for several seconds. I listened to their footsteps, the muffled voices as they talked with the cops who had stayed outside, and the slam of car doors. After a while there was only silence. Still, I stood there, mind filled with unwanted thoughts that whipped back and forth.

What the hell just happened? I’d always knew I had an unholy attraction to men. I fought the desires, but I’d never been able to stop my urges whenever I saw a fine-looking man. I wasn’t sure what it was I wanted to do with them, but there had been more than one night I woke to find my sheets stained with shame, and my balls empty. So far I didn’t think anyone knew about my sinful thoughts, but if I kept on like this, it was only a matter of time. Then the Locusts would have a real reason to greenlight me and even my brother wouldn’t be able to keep me off their listas.

What the hell was I gonna to do about it this time? Because I knew I hadn’t seen the last of Alejandro Cerveras.

Rubbing sweating palms on my pant legs I took a deep breath, then I walked slowly back through the living room, down to Nattie’s bedroom, where I heard Tio reading to her and telling silly jokes which had her giggling. It struck me that Tio and I had conspired between us to protect Nattie in a world which would be happy to eat her alive. Not bad for a twenty-year-old punk.

“Everyone decent?” I called out, part of our ritual that always made Nattie laugh and me smile. No smiles tonight, though I forced my lips into a fake one. I walked in and found the two of them on Nattie’s narrow bed, the covers neatly back in place.

Tio smiled at me. Half his teeth were gone, the ones he still had were brown and crooked. The three tattooed dots beside his left eye looked odd in his wrinkled face. Mi vida loca. My uncle had that once. But his crazy life was over. “Are they gone, Gabriel?”

“Yes, Tio. They’re gone. You can go to bed now.”

Tio kissed Nattie and shuffled off to his room.

Even after he left, and I had tucked Nattie in with a kiss of my own, my thoughts wouldn’t leave Cerveras. What had happened between us tonight? And what was I going to do about it?

Because I was fucked if I couldn’t figure out a way to stop these sinful desires before I did something stupid, like act on them.

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The Girls excerpt by Victor J Banis

If you have ever loved a dog, then you will love this story, The Girls by Victor J Banis, of Jenny--a self-assured self-taught spaniel--and Prima--a shy, mostly German Shepherd Dog with jackrabbit ears--who lived 15 happy years with the author. If you have ever doubted that dogs can love, then you didn't know the girls.

December 5, 2011)
ASIN: B006IV0EII

Excerpt:

If you’ve ever doubted that dogs can love, you never knew the girls.

Their names were Jenny and Prima, but everyone called them "the girls." They were lovers, of a sort; lesbians perforce, though I can't really say if their affectionate cuddling, nestling, licking and sometimes mounting ever produced any sort of orgasm. I can't actually even say if it really was sexual in nature. I do know that Prima would lie for hours in rapture, eyes closed, a dreamy smile on her face, while Jenny patiently cleaned her ears; and sometimes at night, I would hear noises—long, languorous sighs, a happy kind of panting that sounded suspiciously like girlish laughter—from the floor beside my bed, but I never peeked. Everyone is entitled, in my opinion.

Prima, painfully shy, was clearly the femme, a pretty, mostly-Shepherd mix with no pedigree but gracious manners. Jenny, a registered Springer who seemed quite aware of her superiority to the unregistered rest of us, was the aggressive member of our ménage, an in-your-face sort, although she could be sweet and even demure when she chose.

They were bright and clever. Sometimes it seemed that they were cleverer than I. They did none of the usual doggish tricks, however. I am always astonished to see dogs roll over on command, or beg, or walk on their hind legs, all of which would have been altogether too show-offy for Prima, and which Jenny would surely have disdained as beneath her dignity. In any case, I could never have managed to teach the girls such tricks. Truth to tell, I never managed to teach them much of anything. Jenny was self-taught in all matters concerning deportment, and Prima was somehow Jenny-taught, by a system the secret of which entirely eluded me.

Jenny was with me first. When I went to the breeder's home to pick a puppy from the litter, her brothers and sisters were busy at something across the pen, but Jenny saw me and dashed over to greet me and to announce that I had been chosen for her future partner. I took her home that evening, and by the next morning she had somehow housebroken herself. I had never heard of a dog doing that, and I was utterly bewildered, but I was grateful to find that I had no need to teach her toilet manners.

I did try to teach her about leashes, but she was not fond of being paraded around on a chain like the inferior partner in some bondage relationship. She quickly made it clear on our first day at it that she could walk perfectly well beside me on her own, and if I wanted her to heel, I had only to snap my fingers and she would do so as well as any dog in a show ring, thank you very much. So we gave up leashes, except in those places where they were required by ordinance. She seemed to understand the difference, and would abide them under those circumstances, and behave perfectly well while on one, but with a certain long-suffering attitude and the occasional huff of impatience.

I came in time to believe that she was simply able to divine, by some super-sense, what it was that I wanted, and so could then do it without actual training. Certainly I never met anyone, dog or human, with whom I shared such an uncanny rapport. There was the time, for instance, during her puppyhood, when she developed a penchant for eating things. She never quite got over that, and throughout most of her life regarded anything that didn't bark back at her or run faster than she could as fair game for a snack.

On this occasion, she ate a palm tree. It was only a small one, admittedly, in a little pot on the floor by the window, where I thought it would be encouraged to grow into something large and lush and add a certain opulence to my not very elegant decor.

I don't mean that she ate a leaf or two. I mean, she ate it: leaves, trunk, roots, everything but the pot and the soil. It seemed to do her no lasting damage, but you have never known dog gas until yours has devoured a palm tree.

I discussed this chewing issue with her breeder, afraid of what might succumb next to her peculiar appetite, and the breeder said, you must surprise her at it, and scold her while she is in the act.

That sounded reasonable enough. I left her home alone the next afternoon, got in the car, slamming the door loudly for her benefit, drove several blocks away and parked. I stole back to the house, crawled around the corner, literally on hands and knees, and lifted my head to look in through the den window—and found Jenny sitting inside staring directly at me with an amused expression. All in all, I thought it wiser just to buy no more palm trees.

######

The girls shared my life for the better part of fifteen happy and loving years. About halfway through that span, we moved to a cabin in the mountains. They loved it: the great outdoors, exploring together, creeks to splash in, all sorts of scents to investigate. In the summer we took long treks in the woods. In the winter, they liked me to throw snowballs for them to catch. They got friendly with the squirrels, who lost their fear of the girls and would leap over Prima where she slept in the doorway to come inside and beg for a snack. Jenny was a jumper, and would dash at and over the most astonishing obstacles while I gaped open mouthed. Prima liked to run, because it was something at which she could beat both of us, since I was slow and Jenny, incurably curious, was forever distracted from their races by something new that had captured her attention. Prima was not much of a swimmer, but, as a spaniel, Jenny was, and she would plunge with delight into any stream, pond or pool, although a single raindrop on her nose was enough to cut short any walk beyond the bare necessity of business.

Prima discovered that the field mice were afraid of her, and it bolstered her self-esteem to think that someone thought her ferocious. Not so very ferocious, however. She came home one day with what appeared to be an odd case of the mumps, her cheeks swollen grotesquely. She came directly to me and began to disgorge from her mouth, one, two, three, six in all, baby bunnies, obviously newborn, quite unharmed. She had brought them home for me to raise, apparently—no doubt having innocently terrified their desolate mother into abandoning them. Jennie regarded these blind, helpless intruders with scorn and refused to have anything to do with what she plainly regarded as an unseemly business in a dog household, but Prima stayed close at hand for days and watched with hopeful eye as I did my best to save her orphans. It was to no avail, however. She seemed to grieve when I buried them in a box in the backyard, and Jenny sat dutifully, if unmoved, by her side throughout the little ceremony.

Jenny still ate shamelessly, preferably people food: the stem ends of tomatoes, pieces of carrots or celery, pie or cake; if it was on my plate or in my hand, it was surely meant for her as well, as she saw it. If a visitor left a strawberry daiquiri sit on the floor by her deck chair, she would shortly find her glass mysteriously empty, and Jenny would sport a pink moustache. Prima, on the other hand, would eat and drink only proper dog things. If I attempted to test her by hiding a couple of green peas in her kibble, the bowl would be licked clean when she was finished, and the peas resting untouched in its bottom.

The years passed, and we all got older. Jenny went mostly blind, and did not hear well, and she had a bad back, from all that youthful jumping. She liked to doze on the deck in the afternoon sun, and Prima and I would sit guard to watch for any hungry coyotes, who tended to look at Jenny as something desirous to be taken home for dinner and would sometimes steal close to extend the invitation.

Prima got a little gray around the snout, and you could see that her hip bothered her when the weather got cold, but otherwise she remained frisky and looked quite young for her years. She had finally grown into those jackrabbit ears and was, I thought, quite a handsome little devil, still shy, but less painfully than before.

They would not sleep in my bed, even when invited in the dead of winter, but they must be right next to it on the floor, and together, of course. When Jenny stumbled one night and fell down the stairs from the loft bedroom, I made my bed on the living room floor in front of the fireplace, and that was where the three of us slept afterward. Jenny sometimes snored. Prima liked to have me warm my feet on her back.

As a result, no doubt, of her reckless eating, Jenny developed a stomach tumor, which had to be removed—with much trepidation on my part, because the doctor warned me that surgery was iffy at her age. She survived, but I began to worry about her mortality. She was fifteen now, Prima fourteen. That was old for dogs of their size, their doctor informed me.

Astonishingly, it was Prima, who had always seemed the picture of health, whom I lost first. She got a fever, sudden and severe. I rushed her to the hospital, and the doctor put her on an intravenous solution to combat the dehydration, and I left her with him. He called me the next morning to say we had lost her.

Her death was painful to me, but watching Jenny over the next few weeks was nearly unbearable. Carson McCullers says that there is a lover and a beloved, and that they come from different countries. No one outside of any relationship can ever, of course, know its intricacies, and certainly theirs was one much of which was beyond my ken, but I had always had the impression that, in this pairing, Jenny was the beloved, and Prima the lover.

I said before that the relationship that had existed between the two of them was lesbian in nature, but I have no way of determining that for certain, and I have no doubt that there are some who would argue that it was really, say, more a matter of "sisters." That may well be, but of one thing there could be no possible argument: it was love, as profound as any celebrated by bard or songsmith.

Jenny spent her first day alone searching the house for her beloved friend and, concluding, finally, that she was truly gone, she stopped eating. Jenny, who had sometimes seemed to live to eat, never ate again.

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The Men of Grand Street excerpt by Mykola Dementiuk

In The Men of Grand Street, by Mykola Dementiuk,all students need teachers, someone to nurture and guide them as they grow up in their turbulent years. But what does a tough, NYC kid need that he already doesn't have? Perhaps a little love would be a benefit for both of them, teacher and student, both learning from one another. Is it possible for a young boy to teach and learn from his teacher? The men of Grand Street will learn these lessons, in more ways than just one. But will they get an A+ or a failing F grade? Find out for yourself in the Men of Grand Street.

The Men of Grand Street
Noble Romance
ISBN 978-1-60592-508-0

Excerpt:

We kissed, a little longer, a little more certain, giving into a melting, an oozing that was creating a new being, a sexual one, because what is that of two men coming together but that of sex? And it was bliss! My eyes were shut, but my senses opened. I felt everything about him, his lust, his power, his manliness/femininity that made me fall so readily at the sight of him just weeks ago. I drooled after him as he drooled after me. I had seen my lover but still had done nothing to attract him to me. I was scared, very frightened, but also ashamed, and that is why I had run and avoided him. But now, his longing lashed onto mine, and we kissed, we felt, we became one that could not be torn apart. Twice, I felt the euphoria of ejaculation coming upon me, but still I kept my lips clutched to his as if by separation our world would fall apart.

And it did. He broke from me, red faced and out of breath, saliva streaking from my mouth. I watched him raise his arm, and his fingers stroking the wetness on my lips.

"Such a sweet boy," he sighed, "A lovely boy."

I lowered my gaze, strangely embarrassed by what he was saying.

"You shared yourself with me, spilling your seed with mine. Our bodies met, we became one, and now we are a couple. So very lovely."

I nodded. "I came twice; I was so fucking hot!"

His lips met mine again, and we briefly kissed, but I pulled away, pushing him off me.

"I have to go," I said, zipping my pants and turning from him.

He grabbed my arm. "Go where? No, please don't go. You're too lovely. Let's go to my place. It's close, on Grand Street, near the bridge. You can see the park from my window and people walking by. You like that, don't you. Lovely, lonely boys like you." And he winked as if we were sharing a secret.

I shook my head and pulled back from his arm.

"You keep saying that, but what's so lovely about me? You don't know me."

Our eyes met, he stared at me, slowly nodding. "I know what you're after," he said, staring right at me. "You're after me!"

I squirmed from him, shaking my head. "You're nuts. I was here just taking a piss when you came in and attacked me."

He snorted. "Kissing is attacking?" Again, he shook his head. "That's a new one, that's for sure. We kissed each other because we wanted to. You were as hungry for me as I was hungry for you. It's a common biological response." And he winked at me, faintly smiling. "Give into it; you'll be a very happy man afterwards."

I looked at him, lowering my gaze. Of course, he was right. I had kissed him as though I had never kissed before, which of course I hadn't. Oh, the beauty and wonder of two sets of lips meeting. I could die like that forever . . . .

"Grand Street?" I muttered shyly. "That's close, no?"

He beamed at me. "Oh yes, very, very close."

We left the restroom, holding hands in the desolate river walkway. Young and old and holding hands . . . . Ah, if we could only hold hands openly forever, I thought.
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