Archive for the ‘Fiction’ Category

Etheric armies cloud the sky

March 21, 2024

From Tim Evanson on Facebook yesterday, this splendid piece of cover art for the May 1954 issue of Mystic Magazine, an illustration by Malcolm Smith showing a sci-fi Archangel Michael (as I see it) leading his etheric army of the skies in a charge into battle:


(#1) Smith’s diaphanously robed Michael, shining in white, muscular, with long arms, long legs, enormous wings, wielding a beautiful bright sword (have I mentioned that I have a thing for hunky well-um-armed men with wings?)

Etheric armies — armed men flying through the ether, the air, the sky — literally struck a chord for me. Well, they came with a specific tune, fierce and haunting, and the words etheric armies cloud the skies, which I eventually recognized as a Mystic Magazine-fostered amalgam of ten thousand angels filled the sky and a solemn darkness veils the skies. Both texts by Isaac Watts (from 1719 and 1709, respectively), tunes by William Billings (from 1778, a bright celebration of the angels attending to the resurrection and glorious ascension of Christ, while those heavenly guards around thee wait like chariots that attend thy state) for the first and by Amos Pilsbury (from 1799, that fierce and haunting tune for the same occasion, on which cherubic legions guard Him home and shout Him welcome to the skies) for the second.

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Doctor vs. vampire

October 27, 2023

A wonderful wordless cartoon by Liana Finck from the 10/30/23 issue of the New Yorker presents a  challenge in cartoon understanding: what do you have to know and what do you have to recognize in the cartoon if you’re going to understand what’s going on in it and why that’s funny?


An intense confrontation between a doctor and a vampire: the doctor seeks to repel the vampire. while the vampire, in turn, seeks to repel the doctor; each is shielding their eyes, to avoid seeing the repellent brandished by the other (the crucifix threatening the vampire, the apple threatening the doctor); the confrontation appears to be a standoff

A full appreciation of this comical Mexican standoff requires that you recognize the two characters, one drawn from the real world, the other from a fictive world of popular culture, somehow (absurdly) joined, indeed frozen, in mortal combat — which means recognizing why the crucifix is a threat to the vampire (this requires your knowing some vampire lore) and why the apple is a threat to the doctor (this requires your recognizing the joke’s inspired mainspring, a subtle pun on a proverb in English).  Truly awesome.

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He Kissed Me

August 5, 2023

(Gay porn, detailing man-on-man sex in street language, so entirely unsuitable for kids or the sexually modest)

[A short short story (under a thousand words) from 1/16/96, intended for a volume of such stories (A Thousand and One Kisses) that was never published, perhaps in part because of the sexual explicitness of this story. The story is also one piece of my fiction about the characters Sundance and Butch.]

He Kissed Me

I’d go there every so often. Cut school, which didn’t have much to say to me anyway, and ride my bike downtown (a long slow uphill, actually, which meant a nice glide back home in the late afternoon). No one remarked on me going to movies in the middle of a weekday; I looked 18 rather than 14 (early growth spurt, a pile of muscle-building farm work), so I guess the people at the Bijou thought I was just a farm boy between chores.

I loved the cowboy stuff, Montgomery Clift and Guy Madison especially. But I’d watch anything, for a while. Sooner or later I’d check out the men’s room, which was nicely placed (you went down a long flight of metal stairs into the basement, then along a corridor to an odd corner well out of the way of accidental visitors) and usually had some action, if you were willing to wait for it.

This guy I called Murphy — he looked Irish, but I never got his real name, since we never, either of us, uttered a single word — was a regular. The first time, he was standing at the last urinal with his cock hanging out, half hard. I stared at his cock and into his eyes, he turned away from the wall and towards me, I knelt down in front of him and sucked him off. He had a very sweet cock, just the right size, and he came fast, always did. When he was done he’d zip up and walk out, wordless and expressionless. He had calloused hands and wore work clothes and boots; I figured him for a construction worker of some kind, with empty times between jobs. We always played the same scene.

The fifth or sixth time I came down to the t-room I walked in on Murphy zipping up and this frat-boy type (going from bottom to top: penny loafers, pressed chinos, crisp white shirt, dark blue figured tie), curly black hair and cute as hell (I called him Mitchell, which turned out to be his name and he was a frat boy too; sometimes I just know things), was watching him with that thanks-and-see-ya look I’d seen in my own face in the mirrors here.

Our Man Murphy left, and Mitchell and I looked at one another, approvingly. Ya wanna suck my dick, shit kicker? he said, like he was offering me a beer. (Amazing! Guys almost never talked down here). I could feel my face flush with embarrassment, plus desire. Sure do, I blurted out. (I learned early that it pays to be up-front with what you want.)

He steps forward, I start bending my knees to worship in front of him, but he puts his hands behind my head and pulls me back up. And towards him. And kisses me — first just brushing his lips against mine, gently, then opening my lips with his tongue and entering my mouth. I can taste the sweetness of his mouth and, I think, a bit of the saltiness of Murphy’s cum. I do what I guess you’d call swooning — this has never happened to me before, though I’ve fantasized for years, on my bed, cock in hand, about long loving kisses from Monty or Guy — and Mitch, my lover Mitch, moves his hands down to embrace me, catch me, pull me against him. I can feel my cock, hard and leaking pre-cum, standing straight up against my belly, trapped by my briefs. Through his chinos and my dungarees I can feel his cock, a firm companion alongside mine.

Now he presses his tongue hard into my mouth and we both start moaning and I can’t believe that I can be open to, filled by, a man this way, it’s like getting fucked but with mouths, oh Jesus, I love dick up my ass (how come nobody ever fucks in this place?), oh Mitch, kiss me harder enter me. Mitch commences to growl, wolf-kisses me, and I shoot my load right in my pants, and he feels it happen. He chuckles. My mouth is hanging open, gulping air in, as Mitch puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes me down, with one hand unzips himself and pulls out his cock, with the other guides me onto it. I look up adoringly into his eyes, see that he’s past amusement, hurtling through arousal, he fills my mouth with cum.

We rested a while, my forehead on his belly, and then he helped me up so we were face to face again. We both said our thank-yous, and he kissed me a second time, affectionately, and I got hard again, and he went down on me, smiling, licking some at the first load of cum before taking my dick in his mouth and getting another.

Afterwards we kissed, third time, and I put my tongue in his mouth, we both liked that a lot. He offered his name and a short bio, and he asked for mine (I even told him about Sundance being my private name for myself). He admitted he had a thing for hunky farm kids, and I admitted I had a thing for cute college boys. I told him he was My First Kiss, and he replied gravely that it was his pleasure. (College boys are, in my experience, usually polite, unless they’ve been drinking.)

Every man I have ever loved, except one, looked enough like Mitchell to be his brother. Butch looks like Mitchell grown into a Real Man. I told Butch this a couple of years ago, and he told me it’s called imprinting. (I didn’t tell Butch that it took him some time to get past his reluctance, to get to be as good at kissing as Mitchell was at age 19.)

 

Roseate Tom

August 5, 2023

 

(This posting describes man-on-man sex in street language, so is entirely unsuitable for kids or the sexually modest)

[A lightly edited fictobiographical / porn story from 1991 (20 years ago), on a t-room theme. Note: the main events described here (the Scherzo) took place in 1967, the Coda scene in 1974. All of that was a long time ago. This is the version posted 2/5/11 (11 year ago, so 31 years from the original story) on my (livejournal) XBlog.]

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Enough rope: a short story

July 30, 2023

Imported from my XBlog on Livejournal, to find a home here on my regular blog:

A short story, a piece of fictobiography, about kids and gyms and shower rooms. Nothing of linguistic interest. Nothing XXX-rated. Not even any jockstraps. Full text below the line. (Original version from 1991, posted to Livejournal on 8/17/2010.)


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A homoerotic painting by Bruce Sargeant

July 18, 2023

… appearing on Pinterest yesterday. This led me to a most remarkable story about the painter. Who, as it turns out, is a fictitious artistic personality (complete with a complex life history and a substantial body of works) created by the prodigiously creative American artist Mark Beard.

Now, two things. First, about the actual person Mark Beard, and that’s a whale of a story in itself. Then the complete record of a 2010 exhibition by Bruce Sargeant, on the artland site: “Bruce Sargeant (1898-1938): Private Paintings (14 Jul – 14 Aug 2020)”, with extraordinary and detailed notes on this exhibition.

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Meze: male friendship in fiction

April 25, 2022

It begins in medias res. I am listening to a high-hype tv ad for a movie whose title I didn’t catch:

This compelling story of male friendship will move you deeply!

Whoa, I think, this is my stuff, I’ve gotta make a note of that URL and search for a theatrical release poster or something else I can put in a posting.

Then I realize that this is a dream, and in dreamland there’s no way to save notes and images on your computer.

I’m only two hours into my sleep for the night, but the related idea of fiction about male friendship — I’ve posted quite a lot about male friendship in the movies and tv and, of course, real life — grips me, so I get up and go to my actual computer to see what’s out there. I check stuff out for maybe an hour, taking copious notes and saving some images, and then go back to bed; returning to sleep takes me no more than a minute, sometimes I’m back in ten seconds. (Yes, I realize that this ability is some kind of gift from nature, but I’ve had it, strikingly, since I was a teenager. Occasional moments of insomnia or disordered sleep are, for me, red flags signaling a serious problem.)

Very satisfying search; report below. But first, the prequel to that dream.

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Improving your story

March 3, 2021

From Tom Gauld’s 2013 book of cartoons You’re All Just Jealous of my Jetpack:

(#1)

This is couched as advice about improving a story you’re writing — by introducing preposterous or merely very unlikely characters. However, it bears a family resemblance to another Jetpack cartoon, in a Gauld series (see my 2/27/21 posting “Gauld on adaptations for the screen”):

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Notes of cade oil, spikenard, and labdanum

February 23, 2021

Among the scent notes in the “unisex perfume” A City on Fire — burnt match is another, but that doesn’t require looking things up — from the Imaginary Authors company, whose remarkable fragrances come with synopses of fictitious works of extravagant fiction and with striking graphic-designer labels on their bottles.

The perfumes aren’t cheap — $95 for a 50 ml bottle ($38 for a 14 ml Traveler size, $6 for a 2 ml Sample size) — but then we don’t know how many bottles get sold, and how much the perfumes are actually worn, as opposed to being treasured and displayed as art objects with an olfactory as well as visual and textual dimensions.

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Writing gay porn

January 12, 2021

(About sexual acts by men, so not appropriate for kids or the sexually modest.)

Pulled from a Facebook discussion with Jeff Shaumeyer about writing gay porn (something he and I both have done), this comment from me:

A little while ago, a former undergrad student of mine [call him U] who now is a professor himself wrote to say that he had put an old short story of mine, “Roseate Tom” (available on my blog) — a piece that is *both* fictobiography (telling a somewhat fictionalized version of an event in my life) and flat-out gay porn — to good use by jacking off pleasurably to it. I was delighted and charmed (also pleased to get recent news about U’s career).

… We live in many worlds simultaneously.

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