We were tooling down the highway in the early evening at a pretty good clip in my BMW Z4 Roadster when Perry started to get frisky. Perry was this hulking blond roommate of mine who also was on the football team, but who was a couple of years older than I was and played first-string tailback. I'd just started college this year and was still warming the bench...
The soldiers were resting around a tiny fire in a small clearing. The fire was only for cooking and illumination; the steamy jungle night required no extra heat. Dan Hansen was sitting with his back propped against a tree trunk, totally exhausted, gazing at the tall figure standing at the edge of the clearing. Harris was so far away from the light that Dan i...
I hate doctors...always have. My wife insists that I visit every damn year, just for a check-up, even if I feel fine. Maryanne is sort of paranoid about that—for her, every headache means a brain tumor, every age spot cancer. And then, when I turned thirty-five, she dropped the P bomb on me. A proctologist; oh boy, talk about the one doctor every guy would b...
I was going up the on-ramp of the freeway when the gauges on the dashboard went crazy. Lights were flashing, the needles swung wildly from side-to-side, and suddenly, the power steering was gone. It took all my strength to pull the car over to the shoulder of the road. The engine died and when I turned the ignition key there was nothing. I sat numbly in th...
********** Aaron's Story V—The Confession ******************************* "Dude, I'm ordering pizza. What do you want?" Sean shouted from the kitchen. Comfortably seated on the sofa, watching a random Dracula movie (How ironic life is!) in the living room, I replied loudly. "The usual one would be great." I heard him speaking our regular order into the...
My names Joe and I'm a student at university that always thought I was straight. I've had sex with several women and even had serious long term relationships, so I never thought that I was interested in men at all. I didn't think there was anything different about me. I was always a keen masturbator, sometimes spending whole evenings wanking myself off. It...
"Oh, come on, Rob. Come with me," Josh had said. "What's the worst that could happen? You could get laid. So what? It's about time. We've never been to a gay bar before—at least I haven't. And I hear Gustaf's is a gas. All made up in Transylvania style and everything. It's Halloween. They're sure to have pulled out all the stops for the occasion." No, I'd n...
I was nearing the end of the fourth group lesson on self-defense techniques at the store-front gym under the instruction of a heavily muscled Syrian wrestler named Anwar, when he took me aside and, after telling me he thought I'd make a natural wrestler, asked me if I'd like to stay after class and have him demonstrate some holds to me. I had admired his mas...
The phone rang. It was midnight. I knew it was Joel. The dreams of his absence were over. This was the reality of hearing that voice I had held silently in my throat all these years to hear. I picked up the receiver. Joel said, "It's St. Nicks and it's raining." I told him not to be a puppet again. Not to be a marionette. To stop being sad. To stop hiding...
I was standing in the small room, in front of a curtained window. Paul's hot breath on the back of my neck was doing little to dispel the tension that was tying me in knots, even though that's exactly what we were here for. The room was pretty dreary really; just this curtained window and a padded massage table behind us against the wall. Tired paint on the...