A Diverse Collection of Love and Lust

 

The newest series editor for Big Gay Romance 2015, Felice Picano, has carefully selected the best of the best short stories of gay love. With relationships that go from sweet and dreamy to quick and gritty, each sexy romance is overflowing with lust and pleasure. Best Gay Romance 2015 features elaborate tales of coming out, exhilarating secret romances, and even the excitement of a couple who’ve just met. Picano’s passion for reading and writing stories of this genre has led him to collect a diverse array of erotic encounters that maintain this series’ reputation. Called “a queer literary renaissance man” by founding series editor Richard Labonté and “a leading light in the gay literary world,” by Library Journal, Picano has put together the widest range of gay romance that is thrilling, sexy, and passionate.

 

“And when you are done reading them you will perhaps see other ways in which they reflect our wonderfully expanded and diverse gay life and queer authoring.”

—Felice Picano

About the Editor

Felice Picano graduated cum laude from Queens College in 1964 with English Department honors. He founded SeaHorse Press in 1977 and, with Terry Helbing and Larry Mitchell, The Gay Presses of New York in 1981 where he was editor-in-chief. He was an editor and writer for The Advocate, Blueboy, Mandate, Gaysweek, and Christopher Street. He was the Books Editor of The New York Native and a culture reviewer at The Los Angeles Examiner, San Francisco Examiner, New York Native, Harvard Lesbian and Gay Review, and the Lamdba Book Report. He lives in West Hollywood, CA.

 

Best Gay Romance 2015

Edited by Felice Picano

$16.95, trade paper

216 pages, 5 ½” x 8”

ISBN: 978-1-62778-092-6

Publishing on February 14, 2015

Contact: Brenda Knight, bknight@cleispress.com, 510-845-8000

EXCLUSIVE

Reader, I Married Him

By: Michael Thomas Ford

 

“Come on,” Dorrie said, taking Adam by the hand and pulling him toward the back deck. “There’s a guy I want to introduce you to.”

Adam groaned. “Not again,” he said. “The last time you played matchmaker you set me up with a guy who voted for Reagan.”

“How was I supposed to know he was a Republican?” said Dorrie. “He was in a women’s studies class. Anyway, Jay is different. You’re going to love him.”

Adam decided not to argue. He’d been friends with Dorrie long enough to know that it wouldn’t matter anyway. Once she got an idea in her head the only thing you could do was go along with her or stay out of the way and hope you weren’t dragged into whatever crazy idea she was following to its inevitably disastrous conclusion.

I’ll just meet the guy, talk to him for a few minutes, then make an excuse to leave, he thought. I’ll say I have a pile of papers to grade.

The deck was crowded with smokers. Dorrie, fearing the wrath of both her landlord and her vegan roommate, forbade smoking in the house. As a result, quite a number of the party guests were outside lighting up. The air was rich with the scent of pot, and the easy laughter of the deeply stoned echoed through the yard.

Dorrie approached a guy who was leaning against the railing that ran around the porch. Tall and dark haired, with a beard and hair that both wanted cutting, he wore jeans and a faded black T-shirt with the Cheap Trick logo on it. He was alone, but he didn’t seem at all self-conscious or concerned about it. When he saw Dorrie a lopsided smile crossed his face, as if he’d been expecting her.

“Adam,” Dorrie said. “This is Jay. Jay, this is Adam. Go.”

She turned and walked away, leaving them alone. Adam said, “And there goes Hurricane Dorrie, leaving chaos in her wake.”

Jay laughed. “I take it you two have been friends for a long time.”

“About five years,” said Adam. “We met as undergrads. Then we both ended up here for grad school. Different departments, of course.”

“You’re in the MFA program, right?” Jay said.

Adam nodded. “Working on the Great American Novel,” he joked. “What about you?”

“Poli-sci,” Jay answered. “But I’m only doing it because accumulating a mountain of student loan debt I have no intention of paying back is easier than figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.” He took a hit from the joint in his hand, exhaled, and added, “Besides, I like the idea of using government money to buy pot. It’s my personal ‘fuck you’ to Nancy Reagan.”

He held out the joint and Adam took it. “Just say yes,” said Adam, mocking the first lady’s simplistic antidrug message.

“I like your accent,” Jay said as Adam held the smoke in for as long as he could. “It’s sexy.”

“Sexy?” Adam said, choking as he laughed at Jay’s comment. “It’s been called a lot of things, but never sexy.”

“Well, it is,” said Jay. “Where are you from?”

“West Virginia,” Adam answered. “And before you ask, no, my parents aren’t brother and sister.”

“I wasn’t going to ask that,” Jay told him, taking the joint back. “Do I look like I would say something so stupid?”

“Sorry,” said Adam, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just used to people—”

“I was going to guess cousins,” Jay said, interrupting him and grinning.

Adam laughed. “You dick,” he said.

Over the course of the next half hour Adam learned that Jay was twenty-one, from a small town in upstate New York, had a sister who was born on the same date (October 9) but was seven years younger, thought U2 were overrated, didn’t own a television, loved Thai food but was ambivalent about Mexican, and lived by himself in the attic apartment of an elderly lesbian couple who owned a huge Victorian house and rented out the six bedrooms they didn’t use to grad students. Although they normally didn’t rent to men, they’d made an exception for Jay because when he’d come by to ask about the apartment their ancient pugs, Alice and Gertrude, had taken a liking to him.

“I’m the only thing in the house with a penis,” Jay said regarding his living situation. “They just pretend I’m a woman. They call me Bertha Rochester.”

Adam snorted. “That’s brilliant.”

Jay cocked his head. “It is?” he said.

“Totally,” said Adam. “You’re the madwoman in the attic. You know, from Jane Eyre. Bertha Rochester.”

“I just assumed they made it up,” Jay replied. “I didn’t know she was a real person.”

“Well, she isn’t real,” said Adam. “She’s a character in a book. She was Rochester’s first wife, who went crazy and was basically locked in the attic with a nurse to look after her. She ended up burning down the house.”

Jay laughed. “Now that I know that, it’s funny,” he said. “All this time I was annoyed that they thought I would be a Bertha.”

“You’ve really never read Jane Eyre?” Adam asked.

Jay shook his head. “I’m more of a Douglas Adams, Frank Herbert, Stephen King kind of guy,” he said. “Does that disqualify me?”

“From what?” Adam asked.

“From going home with you,” said Jay. “I’d ask you back to my place, but the ladies wouldn’t be too thrilled about sweaty man-sex going on over their heads. And I can get a little loud.”

Adam didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t accustomed to such directness. Also, it had been quite some time since he’d either made or been made such an offer. He found himself tongue-tied.

“It’s okay if you’re not into me,” Jay said. “It wouldn’t be the first time a guy turned me down. But it never hurts to ask.”

“No,” said Adam. “It’s not that. Not at all. You just caught me off guard.”

Jay reached out and grabbed Adam’s belt, pulling him in. He kissed Adam gently, then more intensely as Adam opened his mouth. Adam felt himself start to get hard. Jay’s hand slid down and cupped him.

“So you are into me,” he said.

They didn’t even say good-bye to Dorrie. Leaving the party, they walked the four blocks to the small house Adam shared with another student from the English department, a girl named Valerie who was so quiet and shy that she rarely left her bedroom except to attend class.

“It’s like living with a cat,” Adam said as he unlocked the door.

They headed straight for the bedroom, where Adam shut the door before turning on the stereo and slipping a CD in.

“The Cure?” Jay said as he pulled his T-shirt over his head, exposing a torso thickly covered in hair.

“You like them?” asked Adam, sitting on the edge of the bed and removing his shoes.

“If they put you in the mood, I do,” Jay said, kneeling behind him and beginning to unbutton Adam’s shirt.

Adam leaned into Jay and let him undress him. Jay’s hands moved over Adam’s chest, his fingers stroking the hair there and teasing Adam’s nipples. Then Jay’s mouth was on his neck, biting gently. Jay’s beard tickled. Adam was instantly hard.

Adam lay back on the bed and Jay slid on top of him. Fingers sought out buttons and zippers, and jeans were tossed to the floor. Adam’s boxers followed. He was aroused by the fact that Jay wore nothing beneath his jeans, and that he didn’t shave.

The night unfolded in slow motion, and Adam experienced it as he might a movie, a long, continuous shot of hands and mouths exploring, of legs and arms entwined, of sweat-slicked skin and damp armpits and tongues easing open musky passages and finally the sweet stickiness and breathlessness of release. Afterward they sprawled in a tangle of sheets, Jay’s head resting on Adam’s belly as he played with Adam’s cock. The CD was on its second time through, and Robert Smith was singing about strange angels dancing in the deepest oceans.

“I love that you’re uncut,” Jay said, his fingers sliding Adam’s foreskin over the head of his dick and then pulling it back again.

“A lot of guys are freaked out by it,” said Adam.

Jay traced the line of fur from Adam’s crotch to his navel, swirling the cum-drenched hair into tiny peaks. “I think it’s beautiful,” he said.

Adam didn’t know how to respond. Calling a cock beautiful seemed somehow inappropriate, but he loved that Jay had said it. “I should get a towel,” he said, and started to get up.

“Stay there,” Jay ordered. He leaned over and picked up his T-shirt, then used it to wipe Adam clean. “Now whenever I wear this I’ll think of the night we met,” he said.

“Such a romantic,” said Adam, running his fingers through Jay’s hair and looking into his eyes, which he saw now were a rich brown color, the black pupils like things caught and held forever in amber.

Jay tossed the shirt on the floor and stretched out beside Adam. Adam looked at their legs, noting the difference between Jay’s tanned skin and dark hair and his own pale skin and red hair. He wondered if Jay wanted to spend the night. He was going to ask, then stopped and asked himself if he wanted Jay to stay. He was a little surprised to find that he did. And because he wanted it, he was now afraid to ask.

“Why do you think it’s so easy for gay men to end up in bed together after they’ve just met?” Jay asked.

Adam, thankful for the distraction of the question, thought for a moment. “I don’t think it’s easy for everyone,” he said.

“Well, no, not everyone,” Jay agreed. “But for a lot of us it is.”

Adam sighed. “I don’t know. I guess maybe sex isn’t as big a deal for us. It doesn’t always have to mean something. It can just be fun.”

“Are you saying what we just did meant nothing to you?” said Jay. “Are you saying you used me?” He pretended to cry.

“I used you and you liked it,” Adam said in a mock-fierce tone. “Now knock it off, or I’ll use you again.”

Jay reached over, took Adam’s hand and laid it on his own chest, their fingers interlocked. Adam felt Jay’s heartbeat beneath his palm.

“I’m actually being serious,” Jay said. “I know this sounds weird, but I find it easier to fuck a guy than to be friends with him.”

“That’s because when you don’t know anything about him, he can be anything you want,” said Adam.

“It sounds like you’ve thought about this before,” Jay said.

“You know how it is,” said Adam. “Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night, find yourself lying beside someone whose name you can’t remember, and you have to ask yourself how you got there.”

“I almost always know how I got there,” said Jay. “What I’m usually thinking about is how I’m going to get away before he wakes up.”

            That answers that question, Adam thought. He decided that Jay was giving him a hint, and he decided to make it easy for him. “I should probably take a shower,” he said. “Do you want one?”

“You go ahead,” said Jay.

Adam got up and padded to the bathroom. He stayed in the shower long enough to give Jay a chance to leave, then got out and returned to the bedroom. When he entered he was surprised to find Jay in bed, propped up against the pillows and reading a book. Adam peered at the cover. It was a battered paperback copy of Jane Eyre.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Jay said without looking up. “I saw it in your bookcase, and since we were talking about it…”

Adam stifled a grin. “I don’t mind at all,” he said. “What do you think of it so far?”

“It’s hard to say,” said Jay. “So far all they’ve done is wander around in some leafless shrubbery, whatever the fuck that is. I thought the whole point of shrubbery was that it had leaves.”

Adam got in on the other side of the bed. “It gets better,” he said.

“When does madwoman Bertha make her grand entrance?” Jay asked.

“Oh, not for quite some time,” said Adam. “But trust me, it’s worth it.”

Jay shut the book. “I think you’re just saying that to trick me into reading this,” he said.

“Are you calling me a liar?” said Adam.

“I don’t know you well enough to know if you’re a liar or not,” Jay answered. “With that accent you’d make a great one, but something tells me you don’t have it in you.”

Adam lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t know if I should be offended or flattered,” he said.

Jay leaned over and kissed him. “You’ll have to decide for yourself,” he said. “But for the record, I meant it as a compliment.”

Adam arranged his pillows and settled in. Reaching over, he turned off the light on the nightstand on his side. To his surprise, Jay stayed where he was, opened the book, and resumed reading. A full two minutes passed before he looked over and saw Adam watching him.

“Is the light bothering you?” he asked. “I can turn it off.”

“It’s fine,” Adam said.

He didn’t know what to make of this man in his bed. They’d known each other only a few hours, but already he felt as if they’d been together for years. He knew somehow that when he closed his eyes he would fall asleep without worry. In fact, the idea of Jay staying beside him, reading, comforted him. He turned on his side, facing Jay, and threw one arm over Jay’s middle. Jay rested the book against Adam’s arm. Beneath the sheet, one of his feet rubbed along Adam’s in casual, familiar touch.

I don’t know what this is or what it’s going to be, Adam thought as he shut his eyes. But I like the way it feels.

 

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