Best Gay Romance 2015 Read online

“How did you know I was gay?”

  “Please. A thin, hairless twink with ink, a Tintin haircut, an earring, an A&F T-shirt and skinny jeans. That flame can be seen from space.” His eyes went to Kevin’s nether regions. “However, you do have some positive attributes. That cock ought to make you pretty popular at St. Mark’s—maybe get you a couple meals or a few nights in a warm bed with some sugar daddy.”

  “Wait, you said 1974—it’s 1974 now?”

  “I thought it’d be 1975 before you caught on. We’re still in New York City, though. I’ve taken you back in time, leaving you stranded with no clothes, no money, no possessions and no way to get back to 2012. Are you entertained yet?”

  “How long do I have to stay here?”

  The demon shrugged again. “Time is a pretty relative concept. Let’s see. I need to finish dinner, help the kids with their homework, then there’s that hentai tentacle erotica I TIVO’d—that always gets the old lady worked up—hit the sack early… mmmmm…how about…as long as I fuckin’ want you to stay here? That work for you?”

  “Not exactly,” Kevin replied, a sudden sad look in his eye once again replaced by bluster. “Maybe I’ll look up Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Give ’em some ideas, you know?”

  “And do you know how to find these entrepreneurs?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Why don’t you Google ’em?” the demon laughed, vanishing in a cloud of smoke nearly as thick as the one he’d arrived in.

  Kevin rolled his eyes. “Asshole.”

  Without the demon around, Kevin’s veneer of bravado vanished as completely as his clothes. He started to sink down on the bare wooden floor but stopped when he noticed how dusty it was. Am I that bad a housekeeper? he wondered. The floor was no cleaner in the corner, but at least he had a wall for support. He padded over, swept the area with the sole of his foot and sat down.

  The second his ass hit the cold floor, he heard what sounded like a cash register in the apartment next door, followed by a thudding bass. He swung his arm around to pound on the wall, but then thought of his next-door neighbor Mrs. Mancuso. That has to be her, he thought. She’s lived there like, forever. He couldn’t remember ever hearing music coming from her apartment, though; only the wonderful smell of marinara sauce and yeasty Italian bread. Kevin’s stomach rumbled.

  She’s cool, he thought. She’ll listen to me. Maybe even lend me a robe. Of course meeting someone when totally naked is always difficult, but these things can’t be helped. He stood up and took one more look around the apartment for a towel or a sheet, but the place was bare. Fucker’s thorough, he thought. He put on his winning smile along with his most sincere look—which was all he could put on—and opened the apartment door.

  The hallway was empty. Oddly enough, it looked nearly the same as it did in 2012. The royal-blue carpet was a bit less threadbare, but not much. Cobwebs still moored the ornate wall sconces just above reach, but they were now rooted in fussy, pansy-cluttered wallpaper instead of chipped pastel blue paint. Either way, they didn’t throw enough light to reach the locks in the doors.

  Kevin stepped out of the apartment, making sure the door was unlocked before it closed behind him in case he needed to beat a hasty retreat. He listened at Mrs. Mancuso’s door for a few seconds, hearing a ripping sax solo coming from inside. He knocked, suddenly feeling very naked—the possibility of being seen was also giving him a semi. Kevin heard shuffling from inside, then noticed the smell of weed. Mrs. Mancuso smokes dope?

  The door opened, but Mrs. Mancuso wasn’t behind it. Kevin found himself staring into the violet-blue eyes of a guy about his own age. His shoulder-length brown hair was freshly washed—still damp, in fact—and he wore a tight, faded pair of 501s with no shirt. A mat of hair encircled his large nipples, spanning his chest and tapering down to a treasure trail that dipped enticingly south. The towel draped over his shoulder fell to the floor as he smiled and extended his hand out to Kevin.

  “Hey, howyadoin’? Mikey said he was sending someone over to help, but he didn’t tell me he’d be this cute. Or this naked. C’mon in.” Kevin followed him inside and shut the door, unable to keep his eyes off the way the Levi’s hugged the guy’s ass. “Name’s Mark.”

  “I’m Kevin.”

  “So, what happened to your clothes? No, wait, don’t tell me. You stopped at a trick’s place on the way over and something happened. Maybe his old lady came home, and he hustled you out the back door before you could get dressed, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Fucker. I’m surprised the pigs didn’t pick you up. You must know some back alley routes. I got some jeans and a T-shirt you can borrow,” he said, looking back with a grin as he sauntered into the bedroom, “but I kinda like you this way.”

  Kevin took a look around the room. Braided oval throw rugs were scattered on the floor along with cardboard squares, boards and cans of paint. Two vinyl beanbag chairs flanked the large picture window overlooking the park, and beneath the window was a stereo resting on long planks held up by cinder blocks. A marred and scarred coffee table held a bag of pot, a few clay pipes and a bong along with a lighter and a fuming stick of incense.

  The sax solo faded into a wash of organ and a loping beat as Mark returned with a T-shirt for himself and some clothes he tossed to Kevin. “Don’t get too used to those,” he said, smirking. “I have a feeling they’re coming off again after we finish the signs.” He sat down with his legs crossed under the coffee table and started filling one of the pipes. “Acapulco Gold.” he said. “This is some great shit.”

  “Sure,” Kevin replied. He stepped into the jeans, discarded the T-shirt and sat down beside Mark, their legs touching beneath the table.

  “You like Pink Floyd?”

  “Who?”

  “No, Pink Floyd.” Mark gestured toward the stereo with the pipe. “Dark Side of the Moon. Best album ever made for fucking.” He lit the pipe and hit it, handing it over and letting his fingers linger on Kevin’s.

  Kevin smiled as he took a quick hit, breathed out and took a deeper one. “And you think we’re gonna fuck?” He already knew they would, but he didn’t want to appear too easy.

  Mark grinned. “I was hopin’,” he replied. He let out his breath and leaned in for a kiss. Kevin inched closer, putting an arm around Mark’s shoulder and drawing him in. The smell of his soap, the slightly bitter taste of pot resin on his lips and the fragrance of the incense all melded, making Kevin a bit dizzy. Mark’s lips were soft, and their tongues danced a slow hustle as their hands went to each other’s crotches.

  Kevin felt his cock stiffening under Mark’s touch, but as soon as he firmed up nicely, Mark pulled away and broke the kiss. “Business before pleasure,” he said with a smirk. “Why don’t you turn the record over, and I’ll open up the paint.”

  “Turn the…”

  “…record over,” Mark finished for him, “so the first side can play again.”

  Kevin wasn’t stupid—he’d seen records on the Internet and had a vague idea of the process, but he didn’t have any actual practice. Did you physically turn it over, or was there a button you pressed somewhere? He moved to grab the edges of the record but was hypnotized by the lazy revolutions of the label, a prism set in a sleek circle of black, tumbling edge over edge into infinity as the play-out groove washed toward it and receded again, a thin line ebbing and flowing, keeping immeasurable time.

  “Is the Acapulco Gold gettin’ to ya?” Mark asked, laughing as he brushed him aside. “You’d better let me do that—I don’t want my album scratched. Can you open the paint?”

  “Sure. I don’t think paint cans have changed much.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Kevin stepped off the oval rug onto the sheet-covered floor and sat down cross-legged in front of the supplies, prying the top off one of the cans of black paint with a spattered chisel. “What are we painting anyway?”

  “Signs for tomorrow.” A heartbeat, screams and talking filled
the room, intensifying until all the sounds peaked, coalescing into a loping mid-tempo bass line. “You know, the Pride march. Didn’t Mikey tell you?”

  “Oh—um, yeah.”

  Mark sat down beside him and handed him a placard. “Here—you do ‘Gay and Proud’ and I’ll do ‘Closets Are for Clothes.’” They took tokes off the pipe and got to work. Kevin loved Mark’s nearly cursive lettering, especially his Os, which were long and thin—more like matched parentheses than letters. His sign looked scrawled in comparison.

  Guitars chimed in open, drawn-out chords suspended with fat measures of sustain as Kevin held the brush in midair, watching Mark. His long hair fanned out over his bare shoulders, framing his face and those intense violet eyes, his unshaven scruff looking rugged and masculine. His belly was flat and taut, and Kevin wanted to reach out and rub it but was hesitant to startle him. He felt his cock stiffening again. He extended his big toe and gently nudged the ball of Mark’s foot, grazing the warm, hardened skin.

  Mark looked up and smiled, edging closer. “You’re dripping.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re dripping paint on your sign.”

  “Oh—sorry.”

  Mark laughed, a low chuckle that got Kevin even hornier, if that was possible. He took Kevin’s brush away and put both of them down on the rim of the paint can. “I can see we’re not gonna get anything done until we get this out of the way.”

  Pink Floyd commanded them to breathe—breathe in the air. And that’s just what Kevin did, letting Mark take hold of his hands and pin his arms over his head, laying him back and hovering over him. Soft washes of pedal steel guitar and synths filled the room, encouraging their languid explorations as Mark lowered himself onto Kevin. Their mouths connected again, rougher and less tentative, eager for the next round.

  As they kissed, Kevin freed his hands and caressed Mark’s furry chest, moving down inside his jeans to graze the oozing tip of his hard cock, drawing a sigh from him. His hand came away slick and wet, and Kevin grinned as he broke their kiss to lick the precum from his fingers. Mark sucked on Kevin’s thumb and ground his crotch into Kevin’s, their groins wet and hard against each other as the music faded and the sound of running issued from the speakers.

  Kevin and Mark matched the urgency of the footfalls echoing around them, pressing harder against each other, their fingers and hands as frantic as the pulsing vocoder line that danced around the steps and the sounds of exertion—tongues, bellies, thighs, bare feet, hairy forearms, shoulders, muscled backs, flashing teeth and hard, jutting nipples—their heavy breathing in tune and as one with the sound effects.

  They pushed each other’s jeans down, discarding them with careless urgency as the cacophony built, Mark sliding down Kevin’s chest to take his hard cock into his mouth. The footsteps got louder and the screams rose around them along with the sound of an airplane spinning out of control, much like Kevin’s head dizzied from the pot and the sound and the silken feel of Mark’s tongue bobbing up and down frantically on his dick.

  Down and down the airplane spun, the sound now all Kevin could hear as Mark caressed his balls. His load of spunk built quickly. Kevin’s legs trembled in time with the vibration of the floor and the speakers, shaking even more as Mark pumped his dick and stuck his tongue in Kevin’s hole. Kevin shuddered and exploded just as the plane crashed and silence reigned for a moment.

  But Pink Floyd wasn’t finished and neither was Mark. Kevin heard the faint sounds of a clock ticking as Mark began tickling the hairs in the crack of his ass with his fingers, diving in with his lips and tongue once again to the noise of more clocks and more ticking, as if every antique timepiece in the world was in the room counting down the seconds to orgasm. One alarm clanged, setting off all the others to a maelstrom of ringing as Mark wet a finger and pushed deeply into Kevin’s ass.

  Bells clanged as Kevin opened up and Mark settled himself between Kevin’s legs, pushing his cock relentlessly in as metronomes kept time and other percussion warmed up an irregular beat until Kevin thought his head might burst. Then suddenly they were all in time and tune, Mark’s rhythmic strokes true and ceaseless. The singer shouted about time, Kevin grabbing Mark’s hips and thrusting himself into them, pushing Mark’s cock deeper inside, pulsing to Mark’s short, sharp breaths. The guitar solo screamed, driving Kevin’s desire higher and higher as he bucked into Mark.

  Mark pounded Kevin with a steady 4/4 beat, sweat beading his forehead as he squinched his eyes and drove it home, his panting chest heaving with lustful exertion. He pulled out and jacked his cock just as the second solo ended, shooting a heavy load all over Kevin’s chest, some hitting his mouth.

  Kevin laughed and licked greedily, milking his own hard dick for a second load that shot up Mark’s back. The guitar and drums faded into a soft piano solo as Mark collapsed onto Kevin’s chest, both trying to slow their breathing as Clare Torry’s wordless vocals cooed, swooped and swirled around them. “The great gig in the sky,” Mark sighed as they cuddled on the floor, kissing softly as they listened to the fadeout.

  Then all was silent.

  “I don’t know about you,” Kevin said into Mark’s ear, “but I’m ready for Side Two.”

  “Okay,” Mark said to the seven people in his living room. “What did we do right today?”

  “We got a total of twenty-one dollars and seventy-two cents in fund contributions,” said a girl in a frizzed-out blonde Afro, jeans and an embroidered vest over a denim shirt.

  “Good, good—what else?”

  “I handed out all seventy-five leaflets,” Kevin said proudly, “and fished out thirty-five from the trash barrels around the area. That means at least forty people took theirs home.”

  “Not counting the hundreds who saw the signs and the people who stopped to talk to us,” added a guy wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt, his long, red hair in a braid. “That’s good, right?”

  “Right,” Mark nodded, smiling. “All great. But something I was thinking about today—look at how we’re all dressed. Jeans, T-shirts, grubby clothes. We need some people dressed nicer too, so the people see gay men and women of all kinds. Not just our age. We need older people too. People in uniforms, maybe. Black people, brown people, yellow people, all carrying signs.” He got up and paced around the room. “The more kinds of gay people we get, the more straights will understand that we’re everywhere and everything and everyone.”

  “Right on,” said the girl. “We need more lezzies too.”

  Everybody chuckled. “We need more of everyone,” Mark said with a smile. “Don’t get me wrong—today was great. Let’s make the next one even better.” They began gathering their signs and moving toward the door, some stopping to talk for a moment before leaving.

  “Hey you guys,” the guy with the big red braid said, approaching Mark and Kevin, “you wanna meet up later?”

  “I don’t know, Mikey,” Mark said. “Kevin and I have something going on right now.”

  Mikey looked suspiciously at Kevin. “Um…okay. Call me.”

  “You got it—so long, Mikey.”

  Mark closed the door on the group, some still talking in the hallway. “He still swears he never sent you that night.”

  Kevin snaked his arms around his waist and nuzzled his neck. “Mikey’s smoked so much dope, I’m surprised he remembers to tie his shoes. You know, I love you when you get all radical like that.”

  Mark gathered him close. “You love me like you love pepperoni pizza, or you really love me? I mean, you wouldn’t say it back to me the other day.”

  “I told you, it just surprised me, that’s all.” He snuggled into Mark as they clumsily crossed to the sofa and sat down. “You’re the first guy who ever said that to me. I had to think about how I felt. And I do love you.”

  “Good,” Mark said as he got up and dug deep into the pocket of his jeans. “Then I won’t have to take these back.” He produced two small boxes, one of them gift-wrapped.

  “Presents?” Kevin aske
d.

  “You don’t remember what today is?” he said, handing the wrapped one to Kevin. “It’s the two month anniversary of the day you walked—buck naked—into my life. And you stayed. I haven’t been the same since.”

  “I haven’t either,” Kevin agreed, tearing open his package. He opened it to find a simple silver ring with a murky oval-shaped stone.

  “I have a matching one,” Mark said, opening the other box. He grasped Kevin’s hand, took his ring and placed it on Kevin’s middle finger. “Now you do me.”

  Kevin slipped the other ring on Mark’s finger. “Aren’t we supposed to say something? Like a vow?”

  “That’s for straight people,” Mark replied with a grin. “Isn’t this enough?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is—what kind of stone is this?”

  “The guy at Bonwit Teller called it a ‘mood ring.’ It’s supposed to change color according to your mood.”

  “They’re kinda blue right now. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Must mean we’re happy,” Mark replied, drawing Kevin up from the sofa and holding him close. They kissed long and hard, Kevin reaching down to embrace Mark’s stiffening dick, but he pulled away. “Now, now,” Mark said. “That’s for later. Right now we’ve got dinner reservations at Gallagher’s Steak-house, and then we’re going to 12 West for a little disco action. Tonight’s all about us, baby.”

  The steaks were tender and the evening beautiful as they emerged from the subway station and walked the rest of the way to 12 West, laughing and talking as if they’d known each other far longer than two months. “I need some smokes,” Mark said. “There’s a little grocery store down the block. Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

  Kevin watched him walk away. Even a good half block away from the open door, he could hear the thump of classic disco. Only it’s not classic disco, he thought. It’s just disco—but it’s amazing. In fact, he was amazed by so much in his new life. There was Mark and the music and the incredible friends he’d made. And there was fighting for a cause. Something to believe in.

  Lots of battles have already been won back in 2012, he thought, but now I’m helping fight them. It’s so much better than sitting on your ass in front of a computer liking “social change” on Facebook. I don’t miss any of that. I thought I would, but it just doesn’t matter anymore. This matters—to everyone. But then he thought of how HIV would change the landscape in just a few years.