I'm Rob Wolfsham. I'm 23. I write about guys, awkward before and afters and other things. I'm also an editor for the twitter-based poetry review escarp. Some know me from my erotica and published stories. Read excerpts, or find my work inside these books:
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complete story featured in Muscle Men: Rock Hard Gay Erotica from Cleis Press
“Jordan White,” he said flatly to the circle, tilting his head tiredly. He sat with one arm stretched on his desk, one hand on the brim of his silver athletic shorts as he slouched back, knees bouncing in and out, shaved thighs massaging his balls and dick. “I’m from Houston.” His eyes narrowed at something on the floor, then he looked up. “I’m interested in dissonance.”
The professor did a half nod, half shake. “Could you elaborate?”
Other students perked up at the break in the rhythm of bullshit.
“Yeah,” Jordan said. “Dissonance between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. You know, the idea that we’re sitting here. I’m supposed to give out a fact. That becomes a posteriori knowledge in your mind about me. But you’ll still use preconceptions and understandings about me as a twenty-two-year-old white male to deduce what my thoughts or actions will be in a future event. That’s in direct dissonance with what I’m saying.”
Fucking philosophy majors. But at the same time, I was floored by the string of word salad that came from the buff meathead.
“I read your story,” the professor said, “about the police officer robbing the convenience store. It was interesting. I look forward to what else you’ll be writing for this class.” He sighed quickly. “Okay, next.” Professor Teddy Roosevelt looked to where I sat. I was three empty seats left of Jordan.
“Um. I’m Greg,” I said. “I’m undeclared, from Dallas.” I raked blond shoulder-length hair off my ears.
“Crazy fact?” the professor asked.
I shrugged. I had a tough act to follow.
Josiah, the guy in the tight pink Lacoste shirt, coughed the word faggot. No one seemed to react.
I looked at pink shirt guy. “My crazy fact is I’m a faggot, but I don’t own a pink shirt.”
The professor’s eyes fluttered in panic, but he smiled. No one really reacted. Everyone was mentally asleep or they thought I was joking.
Pink shirt guy blurted, “It’s salmon.”
“It’s gay,” I said, icy adrenaline coursing through my stomach.
I opt for stumbling drunk. At four in the morning, I take the train home with Ten, running through blowing snow from the platform to his dwelling inside a tall apartment compound.
He falls against his door in a dim blue-lit hallway. “I want you.” His stormy gold eyes are bloodshot. He pulls on my uniform sleeve, hooking one of his claws under a badge on my forearm. I force myself forward because I’m scared he’ll tear it off.
He pulls me in for a tight hug. We’re steamy from snow and running.
My swimming head feels like it’s being sucked into a black hole. My body spins away from my brain. I give in and rub my face into the beast’s chest where his vest parts, burrowing my nose in damp fur until I feel soft skin. I squeeze his sides and muscular back. I inhale his scent, desperately filling empty years. He clutches my back and I feel him growl deeply.
“Come inside,” he murmurs into my hair. His muzzle noses my scalp with a peek of his tongue.
I pull off and stumble back, shaking my head. My back hits another tenant’s door.
“Are you okay?”
“I need to sleep,” I say, wavering in place.
“Sleep on my chest,” he says. “No pressure.”
My back slides down the door and I fall to my knees. My world goes gray and fuzzy as something pulls me up.
I wake up with a face full of matted white fur. My arms and legs are latched around Ten’s massive, long body. He’s wearing black briefs. The side of my face rests on his chest, rising and falling. He takes four long breaths for each minute. I tighten against him for a brief moment, savoring his immense warmth.
I delicately slide off and slip out of the bed. I’m shirtless. A dusting of gray and white hairs sticks to my pale bony body. I’m still wearing black cargo pants, but no boots. Ten’s apartment is a filthy hole no larger than the quarters of our old ship. A blue morning glow through a small circular window casts shadows on dirty clothes covering every square meter of concrete floor. I see my boots and socks. Food cases and drink pouches form a trail to the kitchen. I’m back on our ship. It’s six years ago. It feels like home. If mining Erdian hematite is lucrative, he’s saving his money or trying to preserve a feeling. I strip and shower in a bathroom covered in gray hairs. I scoop a clump off the shower tiles and smile. We didn’t have sex. That’s a good start to not complicating today’s journey. I get a thrill to travel with him again. I feel alive. My head throbs as lukewarm water pounds my shoulder blades—as alive as a hangover can feel.
complete story featured in Muscle Men: Rock Hard Gay Erotica from Cleis Press
I was alone. As the double doors closed, I heard footsteps stomping closer. The doors were inches apart when a hand lunged through the small opening, grabbed a door and pushed them apart.
“Fuck!” I yelled.
Jordan entered, a backpack slung over one endless shoulder. He stood about six five. He had to have been at least 230 pounds. His deep blue eyes were half open, stoned or fuming with anger. I caught my breath. “Fuck, you scared me.”
Jordan stood facing me as the doors shut behind him. “Did you really mean what you said?”
The slow-as-hell hydraulic elevator began its descent from the sixth floor. “In the critique?”
“Yes, about how the cop in my story was an example of unjust authority.”
“Well, yeah, but I wasn’t being very profound.”
“You were right. Different from the others who spoke,” he said.
“Good,” I said, unsure how to take that. “You’re different from what I expected, that’s for sure.”
“What did you expect?”
“When I read your story before class, I expected some pretentious creative writing major with a stupid mustache and a fedora.”
He smiled, the first break in his serious shell, a crumpled smile like he wanted to frown or not show his teeth. His angular face grew more attractive with a little humor in it. He said nothing and I felt like I had to fill a gap. “What did you expect when you read my story?”
“A scrawny homosexual.”
I nodded. “Oh, okay. Well, you’re perceptive. Have you bought the novel we’re supposed to read for this class? Pam Houston’s Waltzing the Cat?”
“Yes. After reading Schopenhauer, reading Pam Houston cannot compare.”
“She’s not a philosopher,” I said, offering the same smile-frown. “It’s just a light romance, a coming-of-age novel.”
“She writes to impart her simple a posteriori knowledge on her readers, her narrow view of romance, her negativity because no man wants to fuck her.”
“Didn’t Schopenhauer have a negative view of women?”
“Only a male’s intellect clouded by sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex, the fair sex.”
“What?”
“Schopenhauer said that. You haven’t read him.”
“I’ve read his Wikipedia article.”
“Wikipedia is rarely true objectivity.”
The elevator reached the first floor with a ding. Finally. I hadn’t realized it, but Jordan had backed me into the corner of the elevator. He towered over me. His pecs were solid armor. His navy blue shirt hugged his nipples in the cold, sterile air of the English building. There wasn’t an ounce of body fat on him. He was pure muscle, from his wide neck down to his bulging hairless calves.
I weaseled my way around him. “I have to get back to my dorm.”
complete story featured in Best Gay Erotica 2011 from Cleis Press, Dec 2010
The wheels of Alex’s skateboard clicked over slabs of concrete on the sidewalk under a heatless sun. Cars zoomed down the adjacent road. A black Chevy Tahoe roared by. The tires screeched, rubber burning into pavement. The hulking vehicle seized to a stop ahead of Alex.
Alex pulled his hoodie tight around his face and slowed his skateboard, unsure what to do. The Tahoe’s white reverse lights flashed and the SUV screeched backwards until it stopped next to Alex. Max Weston leaped out of the driver seat into the busy road and marched around the front of the SUV. He shoved Alex right off his skateboard. Cars drove around the Tahoe, honking.
“What the fuck are you doing!” Alex shouted, jumping up from the grass.
The lacrosse star picked up the skateboard and threw it at Alex. It hit him in the chest and knocked him off balance. Max shoved Alex as he wobbled. The gangly skater tumbled down an embankment into a heavily wooded ditch.
“Think you’re such a smart faggot?” Max marched down to Alex and kicked him with all his strength.
Alex rolled into a muddy patch and wheezed for air, curling up on his stomach. He made a short scream. The ditch blocked the view from the road.
Max grabbed the skater’s hair and dragged him through the mud, then kicked again. “They want to fucking expel me!” The athlete shouted down at the curled up boy.
Alex panted and held his muddy palms up toward Max. Wind roared through the trees. “You wrote the email,” Alex coughed.
“They say it’s fucking hate speech! I’m gonna lose my lacrosse scholarship!” Max got on his knees, sinking into the mud. He slammed his fist into Alex’s face.
Alex cried out and tried to roll away.
Max straddled him, squeezing his knees against the skater’s ribs. “Tell them I didn’t write it!”
“Fuck you!” Alex groaned, twisting. Blood trickled from a nostril. His hands were pinned under Max’s knees. His face burned and throbbed.
“Fucking hell man!” Max yelled, looking up at the dense swaying treetops, then down at Alex’s bloodied red face.
The lacrosse star had been crying. Two dried trails ran from his eyes to his thin lips. The two trails terrified Alex more than his fists.
“Why do you have to be such a faggot?” Max grabbed Alex’s chest, bunching up the skater’s muddy hoodie in his fists like he wanted to rip something out.
“Get off of me,” Alex breathed.
“Why do you like dick?”
“Get the fuck off of me!”
“Why are you faggot!” Max yelled in his face like a machine caught in a loop.
“Fuck you!”
“What? You like this right?” The athlete grabbed the skater’s knees, spread them and slammed his crotch against his, athletic shorts grinding into baggy jeans.
“I don’t!” The skater’s eyes widened as the athlete’s crotch pounded him. He felt Max’s boner poking his balls.
Max laughed a little. “Yeah, feel that? Like that?”
Alex moaned, unable to stop himself. He squirmed against Max’s tent, blood rushing to his own dick.
“I got something now,” Max grinned devilishly, flashing the gap between his front teeth. He grabbed Alex’s crotch and pumped the skater’s cock through his jeans. “Look at you go, faggot.”
“Fucking shit,” Alex moaned, throwing his head back into the mud. The trail of blood from his nostril reached his lip. Mud matted his hair. The orange sky peeked through the swaggering treetops.
I went on a date the other day with a guy. We’ll call him Travis. Travis is 19 and a freshman. He’s a skinny tall redhead. I usually go for older guys (my last boyfriend was 28), so it was sort of different. I met him through a friend.
Travis made me depressed. He rambled at a hundred miles per hour about how he has to wear designer clothes to fit in here in college and how no one talked to him before he started dressing nice and that’s just how things are in his highly competitive major. If he doesn’t dress nice and gel his hair and conform, he won’t be accepted into his major’s sophomore year.
Travis spent nearly the entire evening talking about how other guys he dated rejected him and led him on because they did things like made eye contact while talking. He referred to a friendly acquaintance of mine as a whore because they went on a date, cuddled, but afterwards they didn’t hang out for a few days. “I called and texted him every day,” Travis said, “and he just kept putting things off and ignored me so I just flat out asked him what he thought of me. Look what this fucking whore responded with.” Travis tapped around his phone, then held it up to me from across the table.
A text message said: sorry, I’ve been really busy with classes and a project. you’re cool, but I just want to be friends. Let’s hang out soon though.
“That doesn’t seem that bad,” I said.
“You’re really bad about making eye contact,” Travis said.
“Oh sorry, I didn’t notice,” I said. I moved lettuce with my fork.
“Yeah. You’re not looking at me,” he said. “It makes me think there’s something wrong with my face. Is there something wrong with my face? I feel like I’m doing all this talking and you’re kind of just looking everywhere else except my face.”
“Sorry,” I said looking up, forcing eye contact. “Didn’t realize I was doing that. There’s nothing wrong with your face.” (Travis has striking celtic features and wild green eyes.)
“God do you hear that guy over there?” he asked.
“What guy?”
“The guy at the other table talking.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess. What about him?”
Travis rolled his eyes. “Just listen.”
I listened.
“Do I sound like that?” Travis asked.
“What does he sound like?”
“Way gay.”
“Is there something wrong with that?” I asked.
“He’s reinforcing a stereotype,” he said. “Do I sound like that?”
“No, you don’t, but even if you did there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Travis rolled his eyes.
We finished eating and left. “So what are we doing now?” he asked.
“Oh, well, it’s sort of late,” I said.
“What, you want to get rid of me?”
“Um. No.”
“Cool, okay, can we go back to your place?”
“Um. Well, I have work.”
“Okay so you want to get rid of me.”
“No. I just go to sleep at ten usually, sorry.”
I took him back to his dorm. He keeps texting me.
This title is an obvious reference to Natty Soltesz’s erotic story My Sister’s Boyfriend Joey. Except what I’m about to write in this post is a real story, about my actual sister’s boyfriend Alex.
Alex is an ex-marine. 27. Tattooed. Built. He’s also a tool and about as intelligent as a can of Pringles. I went to Dallas this weekend to see my sister because she’s moving away to Tennessee with him where he got a job with one of those creepy military contractors that are paying him a ton of money to go to Afghanistan and kill people. But he won’t marry her even though she’s asked like six times. He won’t commit. Great sign right there. But she loves him.
On Saturday, me, my sis, her boyfriend Alex, and ten other people went out and got stupid in uptown Dallas at different bars and clubs. I was tweeting some pics from my phone, which you may have noticed if you spend your Saturday nights on twitter.
Long story short, Alex did lots of shots. My sister threw up, then said “I’m good let’s drink more.” Around 2 or so when everything closes, I got my car (I was DD) and went to the back of the bar to pick them up. Alex came out with a full glass of draft beer in one hand and a shot in another. My sister got in my car with a full bottle of beer.
“The car isn’t moving as long as there’s shit in here,” I said unbuckling my seatbelt and putting the Jetta in park.
“Oh it’s fine,” my sis said.
“Bro it’s cool bro, just drive,” Alex said.
“No. I’m not getting an open container DWI because of you.”
“Alex, just drink it all,” my sister said, turning around, spilling a little beer on her cleavage.
Alex slouched over spilling some of the red shot (red headed slut?) on the cloth of my backseat. “Dude, just fucking, just fucking drive bro.”
“No. Seriously. Bro. Drink it or dump it.”
My sister chugged her Miller Light, opened the door, and set the bottle on the pavement. Alex took the shot, chugged some of the beer, then burped, rubbed his head and surprisingly dumped the rest of the beer on the pavement. He shoved the tumbler glass into the back pocket of the passenger seat. “Fucking hell dude. Shit. Whatever,” he said like a brat.
“Thanks.” I drove home, weaving through uptown drunk traffic trying to get on 75 north. We made it back to my parents house in north Dallas thirty minutes later after a brief stop at Jack in the Box ordering everything on the left side of the menu. The other six girls staying at our house showed up shortly after and mostly went straight to sleep. One had to be carried. She was that fucking wasted. Alex had to be carried out of my car by two of the girls. He was pretty much delirious.
No one ate any of the Jack in the Box food except me. My sister ate one taco. Alex stumbled to the guest room that him and I were sharing, him in one twin bed, me in another. We collapsed into a deep sleep.
I woke up about an hour later to him trying to get in bed with me. Alex is a large ex-marine. He’s a tool, but he’s still attractive. He has big blue eyes and acne scarring and black geometric cut hair that has a surprising amount of gray in it for his age. He could have PTSD, I don’t know. And he was trying to crawl into a twin bed with me. Because of the thought of him sleepwalking through some Fallujah nightmare, I freaked the FUCK out and twisted away and pushed him off with my feet. He half-slid, half-stumbled out of the bed and slumped over my legs.
Then. Then. Then. I heard a nice steady stream of pee slicing against the inside of denim. I felt warmth on my feet nudged against his leg. No no. Fuuuck. It went on forever. My sister’s boyfriend was peeing on me. Alex was peeing on his girlfriend’s brother’s leg in his girlfriend’s parents’ house. He stumbled away. It was pitch dark in this room so I couldn’t see anything. I heard him unbuckle his jeans and fall against a closet door. I lay in my bed, unsure how to proceed, trying to make shapes out of the sounds in the room. I saw shadowy movement stumbling through the room. I think he fell onto his knees, then face down on the carpet with his butt in the air, wet jeans bunched down to his ankles.
I lay awake and contemplated the warm wet feeling on my feet. My sister’s boyfriend’s urine. I imagined the large pool of piss on the carpet at the side of my bed.
Then. Then. Then. I don’t know how else to say this, I’m sorry… I smelled poop. I gagged. My eyes watered. Poop! I grabbed my pillows and my blanket and scrambled off the long side of my bed. I flew out of the room and went straight to my dad’s office on the far side of the house and curled up on the floor protected within the giant boxes of books stacked throughout the office. I huddled scared, pretending none of this happened. I fell asleep.
I was shaken awake some point later. It was my sister. She said, “What happened? I just checked on Alex! He’s covered in shit!”
“That really happened,” I said to myself. I tried to act calm. I could tell my sister was horrified and embarrassed and I didn’t want to make it worse. “Is he okay?” I asked pointlessly.
“No! He’s covered in shit! It’s all over the carpet and his jeans and his shirt!”
I explained what I saw (felt).
“I’m going to go clean it up,” she said. “Please don’t tell anyone. I don’t want mom and dad or any of my friends to know.”
Yeah. Really. Because they might think this is the guy you’re moving to Tennessee for?
She left the office and I fell asleep again. My dad came into the office and woke me up some point later when the day had brightened. “Why are you in here?”
“Alex snores really loud,” I said.
We all had breakfast/lunch, sitting at the table. Everyone talked normally. My sister’s friends left. Alex left on a ten hour car ride to Tennessee where he probably contemplated what happened.
My sister and I went to the room where it happened. It smelled like carpet cleaner, but at least no trace of anything. She told me that Alex is so horribly humiliated and is scared that I’m disgusted with him. I sort of am, but I just told her that shit happens and “I feel horrible that he feels horrible, so tell him not to worry about it. It’s okay now.” I explained everything more fully, telling my sister the story I just wrote now. Then we fucking laughed about it for at least ten minutes until we were crying. I mean really, put yourself in his shoes. First he pees on his girlfriend’s brother. Then he shits all over himself and on his girlfriend’s parents’ carpet in front of his girlfriend’s brother.
My sister told him while picking up his logs and scrubbing his shit out, “Now you sort of have to marry me. You owe me.”
Moral of the story: My sister has horrible taste. And sorry that I had to talk about shit in this story. And sorry to my sister for writing this if she ever reads it.
Hey so this is my 1000th post. That shows how obsessed I am with posting random pictures of scruffy guys. Anyway, to mark this occasion, here’s an excerpt from a story I’m working on called Attackman.
…
complete story featured in Best Gay Erotica 2011 from Cleis Press, Dec 2010
Alex liked it when Max Weston treated him like shit. The star attackman of the lacrosse team shoved the skinny skater to the ground, straddled his back and rubbed his face into the damp cold weeds with the back of a skateboard. Guys cheered. One guy said “Max, c’mon, let off him man.”
Max tossed the skateboard aside and got off of the shaggy-haired skater, unfolding into a tall thin athletic nineteen-year-old boy.
Alex rolled onto his back, grabbed his skateboard and swung it like a bat into the air toward Max.
Guys made stupid ooh sounds. Max jumped back grinning. “Faggot wants to get tough, huh?” The gap between the lacrosse star’s two front teeth made him look like a cherub demon. His chestnut hair was buzzed on the sides and slick on top, combed straight forward and spiked straight up at his forehead. Freckles dotted his high cheek bones. He snarled through his piggish nose. He looked like an all-American teen from a ‘50s ad for baseball or killing Russians.
Alex stood, rubbing his mop of brown hair filled with weed stems and dead grass. Grass stuck to his pearly pale face and sharp nose. He held his skateboard like a sword. “Go get syphilis again.”
Max cupped his hands around his mouth while walking backwards towards his friends, swaggering. “Faggot, next time you get near my car, I’m going to shove your face in more than just grass.”
Guys laughed. Alex huffed with his skateboard in his hands, aimed at the receding crowd.
Mr. Albrecht, the only cool English teacher of the school, marched to Max Weston and his gang of athletes. “Guys guys, touching little boys means detention. Don’t let me fuck up your season.”
Max spat into the grass. Him and his crowd walked past the short red-faced teacher with glasses and a too-large forehead.
Mr. Albrecht approached Alex who was still in his defense posture. “Shields down?” he asked, curling a smile.
Alex let his skateboard fall to the ground. “What did you say?”
“Enough I think.”
“Diplomacy,” Alex muttered and skated off through the parking lot, weaving through the hundreds of cars lined around the building waiting in line to pick up students. It was spring senior year, only a few months until the free state of who knows. He skated down the sidewalk under a heatless sun, wheels clicking over the segments of concrete. He tightened the blue hoodie around his face and plucked stems of weeds off himself as cars zoomed by. Max Weston’s Chevy Tahoe roared by. Nothing happened. Alex was let down.
Alex reached home, went through the back gate and back door, through the laundry room past a roaring washer and dryer. His mother stood in the kitchen holding up a big sheet of pasta that would eventually go into a lasagna. “Italian night,” she sung happily as Alex walked by.
“Oh. Cool,” he said. He burst into his room, locked the door, stripped naked, flopped onto his bed and jacked off, thinking about painful things Max Weston’s body could do. He looked up at his ceiling collage of skaters and snowboarders, then closed his eyes.
Alex pumped himself. Max Weston stood glistening and tan, naked except for black leather padded lacrosse gloves. Max was on all fours in the wet grass of an endless field, pale hairless ass pointed at Max. Fog encased them hot like steam.
The lacrosse team lounged naked on bleachers, legs stretched apart, cocks out, casual observers of a ritual.
Max’s gloved fists gripped a lacrosse stick. The leather crinkled, tightening over knuckles. The lacrosse star growled and swung the stick across Alex’s back with all his strength. Netting popped against the skater’s bony spine and shoulder blades.
Alex roared in pain, throwing his head back in agony. A waffle pattern glowed red on his back.
The attackman got on his knees and shoved the head of the lacrosse stick between Alex’s legs, scooping up balls and cock in the netted cup, encasing them. The lacrosse star yanked the stick up, nearly lifting Alex’s rear end off the ground. Alex groaned, balls squeezing against the netting. Max’s gloved hand grabbed the skater’s neck and pulled him up against his tight chest. He fucked Alex, chewed his ear with those gapped teeth, called him shit eater. Alex came.
There was a knock on the door.
“Don’t come in, I’m about to shower,” Alex said, breathing, sucked back to reality where he lay on his back, hair in his face, wiping his chest.
His mother spoke through the door: “I was just going to say, I got an email from your English teacher the other day? He says he’s worried about you? We’re going to talk about that later, okay?”
“Okay leave me alone thank you,” Alex said.
A gray drizzle bleats on the frayed but still thick combover of Former Senator John Edwards. He runs up the twisting red brick path to the front portico of the Chapel Hill, North Carolina mansion he used to know. This was home, now a hostile plantation. His shaky hand hovers over his hair, futilely shielding it from Appalachian moisture. He slips through the twenty-foot high front doors held open by a black man in a tuxedo.
“You fuck,” says a brittle female voice, gravely with the pain of infidelity and breast cancer. Elizabeth Edwards stands on the staircase over the foyer, one palm clasping the ivory railing. She looks down with impending war in her eyes as the silent pallbearer shuts the doors behind John. Her made up face is cracked with rage. She looks like Don Rickles in drag. “You got a lot of nerve coming here.”
A camera crew from ABC World News with Diane Sawyer (the third crew in the house that day) coyly aims their equipment at John. Diane Sawyer slumps in a distant archway, downs a hydrocodone and fervently waves her camera men to move closer to the bristling scene.
“Talk to me,” John pleads, tears straining. “I got no allies. No friends. I need my strong Southern belle. Help me.”
“Don’t stump for me.” Elizabeth throws a 24 ounce tub of Vaseline at him. It hits him in the stomach and he crumples like a bullied child. “You’re going to make a man very lucky,” she says.
John looks at the tub of Vaseline, hair stuck to his wet forehead. “I’m not going to prison. I will fight this. It’s just an indictment. We can win this.” His eyes glow with the gold light of nostalgic promise.
“There’s been no we since you gave that nympho slut bitch public money and a baby.”
John puts his face in his well-moisturized palms and cries, like many nights post-orgasm.
The indictment came a week later and after a months-long, soul-crushing trial where he was made into an example of Democratic bitterness, the broken former senator now shuffles into the holding tank of Mt. Olive supermax correctional facility for male inmates in the winter petrified woods of West Virginia.
John actually does quite well in prison. Things start rough. Despite being 56-years-old, his tween anus wasn’t prepared for new demanding cultures loathsome of his former wealth and power. But soon he finds his voice. The voice he had been searching for since being milquetoast John number two in 2004 or feisty populist Clinton-hater in 2008.
“Okay, if I could just level with the kind folks here,” John says walking around the upper platform of the eating area. He paces the platform with a microphone in one hand, other hand held out, five confident fingers guiding the direction ahead, an echo of countless town hall meetings of yore. “So what we have here are the Neo-Nazi’s want to go with a privatized correctional health care system.” He takes a sip from a bottle of Dasani water, unscrewing and rescrewing the cap. “But what they don’t realize is that our care with the standard public correctional health plans are delivering us the same quality of care with no middle man to stymie the efficiencies of this system.”
A 350-pound white man with a white bandana and a Swastika tattooed on his neck raises his hand.
“Yes, Ebony Burner,” John says pointing with enthusiasm.
“I disagree,” says Ebony. “There’s still a middle man in our current correctional health care system. Every time a spic shanks me with a filed down toothbrush, I have to get a referral from my supervising cell unit before I can undergo any kind of in patient procedure.”
Others in the attentive crowd nod and utter yeahs.
“Okay, I’m not entirely familiar with your specific situation because I’m in a solitary confined unit at this time,” John says, lines on his forehead arching up with affected sympathy. “But I can tell you with all my heart, when I’m President of the prisoner affairs committee, I will look into that issue with some of the officials here. Okay? I’d like to use a personal example from own experience. I am the son of a mill worker and I don’t come from some other fancy prison. I’ve been right here in Mt. Olive with you folks since the beginning, eating the same Nutraloaf down here with you folks, okay?”
John continues to pace and talk, not hearing any response, until he realizes he’s not in the mess hall or on a platform. He’s alone, staring at a mirror in his seven-by-seven cell, bearded man, eyelids drooping, laconic from lack of sleep. The microphone is just a toothbrush. It’s been six years. He’s finally going home this week, a broken changed man. His hair is long, gray and tied into a pony tail. His face has lost its youthful glow and now looks like the Beaver Cleaver on meth.
Alf, his big Latino cellmate sneaks his hands up John’s bare back, now crudely tattooed with playing cards, roses, crying skulls, and a photorealistic portrait of Andrew Young with a bullet hole in his forehead.
John melts into the Latino’s sweat slick embrace. “Papi I don’t know what to do.”
“You gotta get revenge,” Alf says into John’s ear. “You gotta aim for the top again, know what I’m saying?”
“I can’t. It’s 2016. No one remembers me. Five months left before the election. I can’t run for president.”
“I believe in you Johnny boy.” Alf kisses John’s neck. The former senator stares into the cum stained mirror at his reflection and the tattooed Latino licking him. John pulls up an imaginary tie and practices his affirmative thumb salute. Alf says, “You gotta take what you’ve learned in here and apply it out there. You gotta stab someone. Ain’t no one want that Alaskan bitch or that hair-plugged botoxed white freak.”
“You’re right Papi. I can do it.” John stands straight and tall. His body is muscular, ravaged with scars from countless fights and inked like a cholo in Chino. “I can still be president. I am going to make my comeback.”
*cue absurd montage of cholo pony tailed John Edwards campaigning in supermarkets, debating, and ultimately stabbing Sarah Palin and prison-raping Joe Biden to victory*
(I’m really bored.)
Bob’s finger tickles the glass of his iPhone. He stands proudly in the center of his living room in his near-foreclosure KB Home mansion.
“This sure is something. I can read the Wall Street Journal or look at maps. There’s even an app where I can blow into it like a flute. Look guys.” He puts his lips around the USB port at the bottom of the phone.
Bob’s wife Jane turns up the volume on the 50-inch LED flatscreen showing American Idol. “Dear, it’s the start of Hollywood week and I don’t want to DVR it.”
“Yeah dad, shut up about it,” says Bob’s son, Alex. ”You’re like the last person to get an iPhone.” The punkish high school senior thumbs a text to a friend on his own iPhone, then slouches on the couch and clutches his Macbook closer, fingers roaring across the keys.
“Don’t be a moody faggot with me,” Bob says, poking his large round glasses up higher on his nose. “Excuse me if I’m not used to the wonders of the future yet.” He perks up. “Hey, maybe you can show me some neat iPhone apps later.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Alex says.
“Leave him alone,” Jane says.
Bob looks around the vast living room. His wife munches away on potato chips. Alex types. Simon Cowell insults someone on TV. Bob shoves the iPhone into the front pocket of his collared light blue shirt. He walks into the musty three car garage and masturbates over a recycling bin.
Later that night, Bob stays up in the den, his thumb sliding through pages and pages of free apps to download on his iPhone. He spots Grindr, knowing full well what it is from his late night jaunts through gay porn sites. His heart pounds. He pokes the yellow icon with a demonic mask and installs it in a flash. He sets up his profile, but doesn’t take a photo. Ten seconds later a text comes in:
hi wow your super close gotta pic?
The sender’s profile says 40 feet away.
Bob answers this is crazy you must be a neighbor. He walks into the kitchen. 30 feet away.
no pic? tell me what you look like
Bob types new to this but I’m 49, glasses gray hair, lots of body hair, slightly chubby. 7 in very horny. Bob moves down the hallway. 15 feet away.
ooh daddy stud me too my cock is dripping
what about you? Bob types.
hairless twink youve always wanted to fuck
The distance drops to 5 feet away. Bob’s brow furrows as he walks through the hallway. He stops. His erection strains under his khaki pants. He opens the door closest to him.
“Hello?” says a voice in the dark bedroom.
Bob turns on the light to see his son Alex, pale and slim, lying in bed in his black boxer briefs. Father and son hold their iPhones.
complete story featured in Beautiful Boys, Cleis Press, Nov 2010
Jason poked around his phone with his thumb. “Uri, I just uploaded that first pic to Facebook and tagged you.”
“Rich, show Jason your tattoos,” Uri said. “Rich has these awesome tattoos.”
Rich rolled up the left sleeve of his hoodie showing off his steel blue feathers, silver python and yellow skull.
“Awesome, I have a tattoo too!” Jason spun around and lifted the back of shirt. Black scripted letters right above his ass crack spelled IXOYE. “I just got it. It’s Greek for Jesus.”
“You’re religious?” Rich asked.
“Hell yeah. Jesus is my inspiration for everything.” Jason aimed his iPhone at Rich’s arm. “You should do porn. You have such a look. Uri could help you, little photo bug that he is. He took all my modeling shots.”
“Um, no,” Rich said. “That doesn’t interest me at all.”
“Jason is actually a porn star,” Uri said.
“I’ve only done like three movies,” Jason said, nonchalantly flexing his biceps over his head. He stepped off the curb backwards into the street.
“He’s being modest,” Uri said. “One of the movies he’s in won a GayVN.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Rich said.
“It’s like the Oscars for porn.”
“It helps pay for nursing school,” Jason said. “And it’s so nice to get flown out of Lubbock on weekends to film. But after two more semesters, I’m done with it.”
“Tired of feeling like an object?” Rich asked.
“Why would I feel like an object?”
