Best Sex Writing 2010 (8 page)

“These black stockings,” Ray said, “I bought on sale at Bloomingdale’s. The woman who helped me asked if I wanted to try them on. Didn’t even assume they were for my wife. This was in New York. You know how they are in New York.”

I nodded. I knew exactly how they are in New York.

“In the dressing room, they pushed my cock down so much that I leaked precum right away. I was supposed to try them on over my underwear but I didn’t. So I had to buy them. They’re so thick that I’ve never had a run.”

He turned his ass toward me, which the hose pushed up and out as if it was a shelf you could put drinks on. This was confusing
the bottom part of me that was still fixated on his big floppy dick. Because now, more than anything, I wanted to fuck Ray.

“Hey Ray—I’d love to cut a hole in your stockings and fuck you right through them.”

“No,” he said, “I love these stockings too much. Maybe we can go shopping and find some that I wouldn’t mind cutting. These are sacred to me.”

Ray pulled on a pair of lacy pink panties over his panty hose, then immediately followed that with a pair of white Lycra biker shorts. You could see the lace bunching under the shorts. His bulge looked artificial, like a lead singer from a hair metal band. Like a superhero. Ray was my little superhero.

He pulled on a bra and came over to me so I could help him fasten the back.

“I can do all of this myself but I thought you might like to help.”

“Do you want to be my little girlfriend?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “we’re a couple of guys and I’m trying things on for you.”

Leave it to this Texan to have a way more complicated gender identity than a professional San Franciscan could articulate.

“Good for you, Ray,” I said. “You’re fuckin’ beautiful.”

Ray pulled a spandex T-shirt, the classic circuit-party gay-boy kind, over his torso.

“I want you to lick me through the elastic,” he said. “Lick me so hard I feel your spit sinking through the fabric.”

“Sure thing,” I said, standing up with my tongue at the ready.

“But not right now,” Ray said. “I just got started.”

Ray continued putting on every article of clothing in the bag. He pulled on a pair of gold gloves that reached up past his
biceps. He tucked the ends under his T-shirt and then put on a black spandex hood with two eyeholes and an opening for his mouth. That did it. He was completely covered. He stood there, panting out the mouth hole in his mask. He turned and faced me, holding his hands up into the air like a victorious Mexican wrestler. Humble. Brave.

I lifted my wineglass in a toast, then took a gulp. Ray kept his arms up over his head. I wasn’t sure if he was offering himself up to God or the Devil, but I think either way, it was a hell of a gesture. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. I wanted to clap or tie him up or something to make myself useful. I decided I would take my cock out and show him how hard I was looking at him in this purest of states. I unzipped and pulled my cock through my pants. I gripped my erection and grunted a little bit, not wanting to puncture this moment with useless words. Ray started making gurgling noises, like he was just about to wake up from a nightmare, the sort of sounds you can hear yourself making to jolt yourself out of sleep. I looked at his cock and saw his cum soaking through three layers of fabric. There must have been a lot of it. It created a wet spot that grew until finally he put his hands down by his side.

“Bless your heart,” Ray said. “You can go home now.” He gestured to the bedside table, where there was a stack of hundred dollar bills. He was paying me for an overnight, since that’s what we’d booked. I’d been there a little over two hours.

He stood, motionless. I pushed my cock back into my pants, wishing I could have at least jerked off for him. My work ethic was kicking in and I really wanted to do something for all that money.

“Thank you,” he said. The way he said it made me think he wanted me to leave faster, so I went into the other room, got my
overnight bag and rolled it toward the door.

“I’ll call you again,” Ray said. I closed the door and stepped into the hall, trying to remember whether the elevator was to the left or right. I heard the door echo through the hallway as it closed, like a buzzer signaling the shift change on a factory floor. I was thinking that the only part of Ray he’d let me touch was his hand.

 

 

I might have admired the efficiency of his movement (lean down buck knife click sick clack) drawing it into place, firm blade against my belly sluicing aside the sweat of fear and exhaustion that trickled there. I might have admired it but that I was mortally terrified. My feet, barely touching the cold, cold cement and my hands, numb and clasping in a mute upcast prayer, tied as they were to a hook above my head which pulled my shoulders painfully tight. My eyes were swollen shut from crying, throat swollen and raw from screaming, heart thudding with trip hammer speed and force and I hitched in a sobbing breath… and another and another…as the knife scraped its way up my belly, the tip intermittently alerting me to the fact that this knife meant business, yes it did, and the business was not good.

In a flash the knife was against my throat, and my head was brutally yanked to one side, and I was face-to-face with my
tormentor, his otherwise jovial face twisted into a flat smile, blue eyes impossibly empty, amused, hair matted to his sweaty forehead.

“Now gal, you gonna tell me what I want to know or am I gonna cut open that lyin’ throat of yours?” he drawled, and though I wanted to scream again that I had no fucking idea what he wanted me to tell him, I was past words. I just hung there limply, crying. Grabbing the nape of my neck and yanking on the hair, he twisted my head so that I looked back over my shoulder, forced me to look at the crowd gathered a few yards away.

“You see that? None of those people, not one, is gonna help you. You been kicking and screaming and no one has helped you yet, have they? Couple of ’em even helped drag your black ass back when you thought you were getting away.” As I peered through eyelids heavy with tears and vision dimmed by panic, I saw that what he said was true. I could make out a crowd of people, lingering, their interest levels seeming to swing between mildly interested, to fascinated, to focused, but no one moved to help. And it was true that, hours back, when I’d been knocked down and dragged to the feet of this motherfucker, not only had no one helped me, several had helped him to restrain me, letting him beat the hell out of me, all the while insisting I had information he was gonna get, by god, or he’d call the rest of the Night Riders in and they could take turns with me.

A cold truth coiled around the base of my spine, sibilant certainty that was, strangely, a relief.
He’s going to kill me,
I thought,
and I just hope he makes it fast because I can’t take any more. Please god, if you are listening, make it fast. Merciful.
And I wasn’t even afraid anymore. The knife had dragged its cruel intention back down my rib cage and flank, and now pressed between my legs, the tip pricking into me and I wondered how much longer it would take
to bleed out if he started there. He slapped my face again, my head wedged into my shoulder didn’t even move.

“Yeah. Another dead nigger. No one will give a shit. No one.”

And I believed it. Even as I pleaded for mercy in my heart to a god that seems to have quietly turned away from me, I knew he was right. And hope left me.

 

There are as many ways to play within the BDSM community as there are people who are practitioners. From the guy who just likes to feel overpowered by his lover with hands held about his head to the hardcore pervert spending every weekend in a local dungeon in full leathers with a rolling suitcase full of gear, there are millions of people getting their freak on. And one of the pillars of BDSM play is consent, safety, and acceptance. Tolerance of other folk’s proclivities is paramount to fostering a sense of community. With so much working against the person who wants to lead a lifestyle outside of the mainstream, it becomes even more critical that those who find fellowship in the alternative lifestyle have a safe space in which to explore their dark fantasies. “We must all hang together, gentlemen,” quoth Benjamin Franklin, “…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.”

This truth is not so self-evident if your fantasies embrace some of the darkest and most sinister truths of human nature, and are rooted in real-life oppression.

Slavery. Genocide. Holocaust. Warfare. Racism. Hate.

These are ugly realities of life. Why would you want to plunge yourself headlong into the darkest part of the human psyche for sexual gratification? How can you know anyone well enough to know that they do not
really
believe what they are saying to you? Aren’t you playing into the hands of self-hatred or real bigotry
when you do BDSM around racial identity? Aren’t you afraid of being really damaged?

These are all questions I have been asked, and asked myself, ever since I realized that I had a visceral curiosity about pushing the edges of my kinky play into the most oblique corners of my psyche.

Can you really play with the terrible truths of hatred and racism and oppression and reemerge safely?

Yes. I do. I do it, albeit selectively and extremely rarely, because it is a quick slide to one of the darkest edges of my psyche, and that of my play partners. It is emotionally dangerous. Like life. And yes, I live it. And yes, I have experienced racism. But that doesn’t lead me to fight, flight or fear…which are all heads of the same Cerberus.

I am curious about fucked-up edge play, so I “go there.”

 

Every pervert has touchstones in their lives, moments where something clicked for them, and they realized they weren’t like all of the other rabbits in the warren. Unsurprisingly, I have many. But the moment I remember as being one of the most jarring was the time I was sitting with my mother and watching “Roots” as it unfolded in all of its serialized glory. This was an amazing event, and I was glad to see the stories of people from whom I’d descended portrayed on television. And as a child actor, “Roots” was a bonanza for me: several commercials in which I appeared were running throughout the time slot. They knew millions of Black Americans were glued to their televisions, and we’d just stated to emerge as a marketable demographic.

The moment of difficulty came when I began thinking, objectively, about slavery. I wondered if, possibly…just maybe…it wouldn’t be so bad if your master was…nice. And maybe he gave
you an okay bed to sleep in, and some decent food. And if he was handsome, then that would be kind of neat, too! I started to wonder who I might like to have as my master, if I had one. I mean maybe Chuck Connors wasn’t someone I wanted as
my
master, but Captain Kirk…yeah, that would be great!

I asked my mom whether or not there were ever masters who were nice to their slaves. It made sense to me that there had to be. My mom was at first puzzled, then increasingly baffled, by my line of questioning. And so of course I dropped it.

It was clear to me I was asking questions that didn’t even have any business being asked, and I felt horrible for even doubting the unilateral evil of slavery.

Of course, I was ignorant of “consensual slavery.” And my idea of “kinky stuff” was whispered jokes about spanking and the gay men who I’d see in the West Village in chaps and leather.

It wasn’t until I had a lover with an intensely brutal sensuality and a natural capacity to inspire me to submit, to strive to please him in any way I possibly could, that it dawned on me that my kink wasn’t just a passing fancy. James was a musician, from the U.K., and even after our fast-and-furious affair ended, we kept in touch when his touring schedule took him away from the West Coast. Nothing like good old phone sex to keep the torch I carried for him burning.

One long intercontinental telephone conversation and mutual masturbation session devolved and shifted into a speculation of how beautiful my skin would look covered in whip marks.

“What, like Kunta fucking Kinte? No thanks, man. I’ll pass on that ‘Roots’ shit.”

He laughed. “You’d make am absolutely shite slave anyway.”

I bristled in mock indignation. “What are you trying to say? I would make an awesome slave!” I laughed.

“
No.
You would not. You’d be in the kitchen pulling down the china and upsetting the bloody tea cart so that you’d get your black ass beaten and shagged proper, wouldn’t you?”

I paused, something shifting along the surface of my entire body. It was as though an old “me,” a part I’d forgotten and yet was never there, was pulled, gasping, from the depth of my id.

“I… probably yeah…” I stammered, and laughed as I realized that I was more turned on than was feasible for phone-sex drive afterglow.

“That is kind of hot…” I whispered to him. “Maybe I’ll write you a story like that… about me being your slave.”

“I’d love that, baby girl,” he growled.

 

The Admiral sat on the edge of the navy blue overstuffed ottoman, extending his foot and gesturing impatiently toward his boot. Dutifully, I knelt, pulling on the heel and toe. On the second boot, I was startled by his sudden and firm grip as he grasped my jaw. My eyes widened, and I lost my balance, sliding suddenly toward the floor. My hands hit the cold polished marble to break my fall. Yet he still held my head.

He spoke in a low tone, his voice rumbling in his chest. “Look at me.” Why I was shaking, I could not say. I gazed into his eyes and was trapped as surely as the sparrow in the cobra’s reptilian stare. For an eternity, he said nothing. Finally, I could not look at him anymore and I lowered my gaze. He laughed, and tightened his grip on my throat.

“Be certain, I will discuss with your Master my desire to have you serve me, and me alone. You will be my handmaid for the duration of my sojourn here. You will obey me unconditionally while I am here, precious…I will have to retrain you myself, and that will take some time. I have little of that now, however.” As
he spoke, he undid the hooks of his breeches. I was confused, and then horrified, to see him remove his male part right then and there. I had never seen one so closely before. Part of my mind shook in terror. Yet I was unable to look away. The Admiral seemed to sense this.