My girlfriend is getting her PhD in American Studies, but her real subject is how structures of oppression harness sexual energies for profit and to maintain and reproduce the hegemonic control over our surplus libidinal value. She told me this at the party near campus where we met, right after introducing herself as “Elizabeth, call me Liz.” We fucked on the first date. Now Liz shows me a weird picture, it looks like a very low-res image of some kid. I look closer, it’s Davy Jones from The Monkees, and even closer, I see that the picture was actually produced on an old typewriter — ms and ps and rs arranged ever-so-carefully to create the lights and darks of the singer’s hair, bangs, cheeks and lips. This image is the subject of her thesis.

I shrug. “Uh . . . of course not.”

“No it isn’t, because young girls are a boiling rage of hormones, just like guys. So the same corporations that create bands like The Monkees to teach girls how to consume, the same people who sell them the teenybopper magazines, they start putting instructions in every issue — ‘Type a Davy of your very own’ — and why?”

I’m looking at her throat as she talks. It seems to contract and glisten with a little sweat when she gets intellectual. “Why?”

“To teach them how to type, of course! All that libidinal energy is sublimated and poured into vocational training. After a few years, these girls are young women, ready to work and dripping wet every time they sit down to take a memo.” Liz slides up onto the corner of her desk and crosses her legs. Her pencil skirt looks a bit like something a secretary from the ‘60s would wear. “A whole generation of girls trained to salivate and cream for minimum wage…”

“And trained to accept a little grab-ass from the boss too, right?”

“Right.” She leans in closely. I grab a handful of thigh, and we’re off. Two minutes later her skirt is hoisted up around her hips (rough going, I smacked her ass a few times to get the wiggle right), her back arched over the desk and her little wrists clamped together by one hand. She grunts like a man as we fuck, which is a little disconcerting so I slap her bullet-bra tits with my free hand, then bite her cheek lightly to get more feminine whimpering out of her. She calls me ‘Sir’ and I come quickly enough for her to smooth out her blouse and get back to her research before my lunch hour is even over.

•

My girlfriend is the intellectual; my job at KPBG is pretty simple. I read the wires and add interesting-seeming stories, international, national, and local, to our local news program’s Web site. I also upload the video for one story a day, you know, for all the people who find it easier to watch thirty seconds of news on the Web instead of watching thirty minutes of news on TV. War stuff usually, these days. If not for my education, I’d never have landed such a sweet gig. My third-grade education that is; everything after that was pretty much just gravy.

Also gravy, I get the news before you do. I get satellite feeds and surreptitious email forwards from journalists all over the world. Liz loves it. Whenever I call her from work she asks “Is the Pope dead?” I got Liz the Paris Hilton sex tape (not the two-minute version with ninety seconds of her crawling across the bed to get ready for her close-up, but the good one) and bring home every infomercial that turns sex into products for her. Her fave is World Wide Health and Beauty Discoveries (for Nad’s, the Australian hair-removal product that is inexplicably marketed to women instead of men), but I prefer anything featuring International Fitness Instructor of the year Mandy Milrea.

She finds a ButtMaster at the Goodwill (“ThighMaster LBX!” she insists) and has me videotape her using it in the nude. She likes it when I shout “Faster, faster!” in a vaguely European accent. She says she replays the footage while working on her literature review. It encourages her, even though she has to take lots breaks to fuck herself with the sleek purple vibrator she keeps by her bed, right out in the open like a clock radio.

•

My girlfriend has me going to the gym attached to her condominium complex because, honestly, she’s much hotter than I am. I’m balding, have a spare tire, and I work at the local TV station. In the basement. Pasty doesn’t begin to describe it. We don’t talk about it much, but the gap between our physical theory and practice is pretty clear to me. The first time Liz took me to one of the dinner parties her advisor is always throwing, she grabbed my arm, brushed a lock of my hair behind my ear and asked her friends, “This is Todd. Isn’t he a cute thing?” to the sound of crickets and tumbleweeds. So she asked me two days later to come work out with her, and I do, three times a week for a few weeks now.

I’m doing curls on one of the machines, and am half out of breath already. She’s on the rowing machine, wearing a little green Lycra number and complaining about her dad at length without even a huff.

“And then he said, ‘Elizabeth, when you enrolled, you ensured me that you’d be studying American literature, not hardcore porno.’ And I told him, ‘Daddy, porno is the American lit of the twenty-first century. Is there really, fundamentally, any difference between how Hemingway and Ron Jeremy perform hegemonic masculinities?’”

She turns to look at me and asks, “Do your parents ever try to pull stuff like that about your life?”

“Uh . . . no,” I say. “My father worked in a factory, he wasn’t a professor like yours.” I did another rep and had to pull hard to do it. “He did this for a living, working a stamper. Man, he got paid three hundred bucks a week to do this, and got health insurance to boot.” I let the weights down, exhale too hard (Liz frowns at me), then do another rep. “Meanwhile, I’m paying three hundred bucks a month to do the same thing.”

“Yeah, but you’re getting healthier,” Liz says.

“Uh-huh.” Another rep. “I lose two pounds of weight in sweat to this workout bench every time we come down here but sure don’t feel any healthier for it. You might as well plant me in some auto parts plant, so I can feel useful.”

She smiles. “I probably shouldn’t discuss my dissertation with you anymore.”

Liz says she likes the way I smell after we work out, when I don’t shower. It makes her feel like an animal, she says. At home I take a thick collar and wrap it around her neck, then slide two fingers through the D-ring and pull to the bed. I tie her ankles together with a towel and pull her legs up and bend her double, to tie the other end of the towel to the D-ring, bringing her cunt and her round ass conveniently into position.

“That’s the way I like my little bitch,” I tell her (I always add the word little; she says it makes the verbal abuse more affectionate), “three of her fuckholes all in a row.” I push two fingers in her mouth, and she tongues and sucks on them like twin cocks. I smack her ass, then massage her little hole with a thumb. I smell her getting wet, and swat her pussy lips with the flat of my hand, then reach between her legs and tug on her pubes till she cries out.

The sex goes pretty well, since Liz is light and easy to drag around the bed. I fuck her mouth like it was a wet little cunt, then spin her around on the bed, and both her pussy and ass, pulling out and trading holes whenever she seems ready to come. She grabs at my arms sometimes but can’t wrap her legs around me given that her feet are tied right under her chin. Finally when I have her so sweaty that even the smells of her post-gym shower are gone, having been replaced with the scent of her bittersweet juice I fuck her hard, my balls slapping against the flesh of her ass.

We’re close now and she says, “Withdraw, withdraw, please Sir, withdraw!” I nearly lose it right there (the D/S mood, the erection, my ability to not just crack up). It just sounds so clinical, like an Englishman at a bank. It’s like a principle for her — every act has to end with a money shot — instead of what I want it to be, a hunger, a demand. I want her to love the way my come feels on her face, hot for only a moment, then cool and clammy. Humiliating. I lean down with all my weight and bite her cheek lightly, then growl in her ear,

“What, what do you want me to do, you stupid little cunt bitch?”

“Withdraw!”

I slide my hand under her shin and twist her left nipple hard, pulling it till it turns white, “Try again, slut!”

“Pull out . . . come all over my face . . . your slut’s face . . . please please . . .”

That request I can fulfill without feeling utterly ridiculous, so I do. Then she sucks me clean, slurping my half-wilted dick like a pacifier till I get hard again.

My girlfriend likes to intellectualize, postcoitus. It was great at first; it beats cuddling and pretending to have something to say other than “I do too” when some girl goes on about how much she loves the connection between two people, how soothing it is to hear my breathing, the whole bit. But one day I fear she’ll reach down to the floor and come up with her laptop to show me a PowerPoint slide presentation on the body as text and the psychodramatics of differance. Yes, with an a. I ease my arm out from under her soaked back and tell her that I’m going to make a sandwich as she talks about sadomasochism and how it works to constitute the materiality of bodies in the service of consolidation to the heterosexual imperative and then she stops when I’m halfway to the kitchen and calls out to me, “What kind of lunch meats do you have?”

It’s 3 a.m. This is one of many reasons why I prefer the term “cold cuts” to “lunch meats.” “Just turkey,” I say, “well, a little bologna too.”

“Oh, I’ll have a bologna on white. Cut off the crusts!”

I’m making her after-sex ritual sandwiches now. Christ. The floor is cold on my feet.

•

When the pictures first come in, I think I’m looking at porn. What else can a pyramid pile of asses be? They’re strangely disembodied, so then I think that they’re corpses, ones piled up like cordwood. I got these before you did, remember, so I had no context at first. The short-haired chick pointing to the cocks of the chained Iraqis? My jpg didn’t have pixilation around their crotches. Their limp little cocks were dark, dusky gray, one had a half hard-on, and I felt for him. The private’s smile looks like she practiced it watching movies. Mel Gibson. Hell, it looks like the smirk I use in bars to get cute bartenders to serve me — it used to work too before the male pattern baldness and all.

There are others, they trickle in over the course of the hour. Some you’ve seen: the one with the guy chained to the bunk, a pair of panties stretched over his face. They look like some soccer mom’s panties. The image with the dogs. The private again, dragging a naked guy by leash and collar. I wonder if she was so eager to taunt the men because she looks a bit like a dyke. How else to show the other troops that you’re down with the cock? Prisoners kneeling in front of others, their bagged faces shoved into some stranger’s crotch.

But there were others you didn’t see. The kid being raped. Not the fake porn shot with the woman kneeling in front of camouflage cocks, I mean a twelve-year-old kid, wrapped as tightly in a ball as he can be, his spindly arms hiding his face, while someone grabs his ankles and tries to squeeze his dick between the child’s brown ass cheeks. Off to the side, some other soldier gawks like a hillbilly. We didn’t air that one on the news; and the word on that came down from higher than you think.

I call Liz.

“Is the Pope dead?”

“No news so good,” I say. “I’m sending you some stuff you got to see right now.”

I forward her the pics while she waits on the phone. We don’t say much as she scrambles for her laptop. It takes only a few seconds; then she says, “Wow. Wow, this is it. This is going to be a whole chapter in my book.”

The pics keep coming, and I drag them to my email and send them to her; I don’t even bother looking too closely at what I’m sending to her, but I see heads held in toilets by thick black boots, men smeared in shit and chained to one another, something that looks like a cow’s head being posed over a soldier’s crotch.

“Wow, wow.” That’s all she can say. For once she’s almost speechless. Then she starts:

“These are amazing. They really get to the heart of my theory: imperialism and the regulation of sexuality, the conjoining of whiteness and moral superiority allowing an anarchic performative hypermasculine sexuality . . . even the girl is really butch, or at least a trannyboi or something, eh? Forget discursive relationships and how they construct masculinities and femininities, these people actually have imperial legislation written on their own bodies!”

“Liz, but what do you . . . I mean . . .”

“Jesus, is that a cow’s head?”

“How do these photos make you, you know, feel?” I ask her.

“These are some of the most intriguing images I’ve ever seen. Are they going to be public domain?” She’s not giddy or anything. All business, really.

I hang up on her then. I stop opening the files — they’re still pouring in from a few of the regular sources that like to pass the gory shit around — and drag all but the few pics cleared for publication from my desktop to the trash in the corner of my computer screen. I don’t care what of my stuff I’ve left at Liz’s house. She doesn’t call back anyway.

Nick Mamatas is the author of the recently released Lovecraftian Beat road novel Move Under Ground (Night Shade Books) and regular features for Razor and the Village Voice. His essays and short fiction were collected in 3000 MPH In Every Direction At Once by Prime Books in 2003. Nick just moved to Berkeley, California after a lifetime in New York City. http://www.kynn.com/wwnkd/

Gavin checked the corridor one last time, and, satisfied that it was clear, slipped inside the bedroom. It would never do if Hugh caught him — Hugh had a strong sense of privacy, to the point of preferring to go to Gavin's place rather than his own. But since he'd given Gavin a key, and agreed to meet here tonight . . .

All very severe. Just as bad as everything Hugh had worn so far when calling on him of an evening. The man was a delight in bed, but had no idea of underwear as a turn-on rather than as something to keep warm with. He’d hoped Hugh might have something a bit more entertaining tucked away, but no, it was all the same dark, severe stuff. The high proportion of silk to cotton was all very well, but couldn’t it be silk for the sake of silk, rather than because it was warm and comfortable?

That wasn’t silk.

He scrabbled it out from under the pile of socks. Given what it was, it had probably been hidden under there deliberately. Black again, but this time leather. He sniffed at it. Clean, but definitely used leather. Leather with a slight overlay of Hugh.

Very nice. He tried to picture Hugh wearing it, and nothing else. Even nicer. Why hadn’t Hugh worn it with him? Embarrassed? Maybe he was; after all, the idea of buttoned-up Hugh wearing something like this was a bit . . . well, a bit of a shock. Two black leather triangles held together by a strategically placed metal ring and a couple of buckled straps, one-size-fits-all. Not really the sort of thing anyone expected Hugh to wear. Of course, most people didn’t notice that reserved, quiet Hugh even had a sex drive — Gavin had bagged him by the simple expedient of being the first in their group to notice that he did.

Just how one-size-fits-all was this thing, anyway?

The idea wouldn’t go away. There was something very appealing about the idea of wearing leather that had last held Hugh in an intimate clasp. He’d only come in here to rummage around for something to have waiting for Hugh, but this wasn’t what he’d expected to find. Hugh as a secret leather fetishist was quite a turn-on. Maybe the silk wasn’t just for warmth and comfort.

It was no good, he couldn’t resist. He fiddled with the straps, letting them out until they seemed about the right fit, stripped quickly, and pulled it on. Not quite right on the straps, so he let them out a little bit more. That seemed to fit around the waist, but it was still a bit tight around the front. He went over to the mirror so that he could see what he was doing. His cock was poking out of the top of the triangle, and his balls were peeking around the sides. No wonder he wasn’t comfortable. He tried adjusting things.

One ball in, and the other popped out completely. Maybe it was still too tight. He loosened the straps a little more, and carefully tucked his balls in, one in each hand so that one didn’t push the other out. The leather slipped down, and his cock waved merrily from the top. Damn. Tighten the straps a little, some fumbling to get all three bits under control, cock in and thumbs on it to keep it down, fingers spread to tuck his balls in. There. That looked rather nice. For about two seconds, and then he was bursting out all over again. How did Hugh manage this? He himself might be on the well-built side, but Hugh wasn’t exactly underendowed given their relative body sizes.

“You’re supposed to put it on before you reach maximum size.”

He jumped, which wasn’t really the wisest thing to do when he had one hand tucked inside a recalcitrant piece of leather. “Hugh! I wasn’t expecting you to get home this early.”

“Obviously. Why were you looking through my underwear?”

He could feel himself flushing. Ridiculous, really, what was wrong with wanting your new lover to try a little harder in the sexy underwear department? “It’s not that I don’t appreciate you, it’s just that,” how could he put this, “well, I like sexy underwear. I thought you might have something more interesting that I could get you to wear.”

Hugh grinned sardonically. “And you thought you’d try it on for size.”

Well, yes, he could see it from Hugh’s point of view. “I was curious.”

Hugh looked him up and down. “It seems to suit you.”

Now what was that supposed to mean?

Hugh walked over to him, and deftly tucked him in.

“How did you manage that?” Lots of practice?

“As I said, you’re supposed to put it on before reaching maximum size.” Hugh ran a hand over the leather. “You seem to have wilted slightly.”

“Keep that up and that won’t be a problem.”

“Oh good.” Hugh squeezed gently. “I think I’d like to see you wearing it properly.”

“Hugh,” he wondered how to broach a somewhat delicate subject, “how long have you had this?”

“Longer than I’ve had you.”

“Why did you have it?”

Hugh smiled secretively, but gave no other answer.

He made to undo one of the buckles, but was stopped by Hugh holding his wrist. “I said I want to see you wearing it properly.” Hugh’s other hand was on the leather, a firm caress, cradling his cock and balls. He was starting to swell again, and not just because of the touch. He thrust forward against Hugh’s hand. Hugh squeezed him through the supple leather, and he thrust again. There was a thrill to standing here wearing nothing but a ridiculous scrap of leather, while his fully-clothed lover brought him to readiness. One hand over his cock, the other now tracing around his nipples.

Hugh let go and stepped back. “Much better.”

He looked in the mirror. Hard swell of cock against leather, but this time confined, the leather tight against him, squeezing him. Too long and it would be painful, but for now it was erotic, both to feel and to see.

Hugh stood behind him, put both hands on his buttocks, massaging them through the leather. “Yes, you look very nice. Better than I do.”

The mental image of Hugh standing in front of this mirror, looking at himself, nearly proved the undoing of the leather knickers.

The hands on his arse were working inwards now, and then he felt a sharp chill. The metal ring, pressed against his bare flesh. Then something else, something much warmer, Hugh’s finger.

He looked at Hugh in the mirror. They hadn’t done this yet, they’d been too busy experimenting with other ways of fitting their bodies together. Hugh said nothing aloud, he could ignore it if he wanted. But the question was there in Hugh’s eyes.

Did he want to do this?

Yes.

He pushed back, and the tip of Hugh’s finger slid inside him. Hugh smiled at him, then kissed the back of his neck. Hands running up his back, caressing his shoulders, and then Hugh said, “Make me ready.”

He turned around, dropped to his knees. He pushed up Hugh’s jumper so that he could reach the fastening of his trousers, made his way inside, and drew out Hugh’s cock. Not that Hugh looked as if he needed much work to make him ready. Cock full and heavy, resting plumply in his hand. He kissed the tip, then bent to his task, licking and sucking. Not to make Hugh come, not this time, but to make him hard and wet, wet enough to slip smoothly inside him. He trembled slightly at the thought, and heard Hugh gasp.

Like that, do you? He leaned forward, taking as much as possible, and sucked hard, then slid off. Hugh moaned, hands twisting in Gavin’s hair. He pulled Hugh’s trousers down a little, enough that he could nuzzle lower down, flicking his tongue over Hugh’s balls.

“Enough, Gavin!” Hugh’s voice was ragged.

He obeyed, sitting back on his heels and looking up at Hugh.

“Good. Stay there.”

This was definitely turning interesting. He watched as Hugh efficiently stripped, enjoying the view of the compact body that felt so good against his own. Then Hugh went to a drawer, pulled out a small tube. It looked to be full.

Have you been keeping that for me?

Hugh turned back to him. “Kneel on the bed.” Definitely a command, but the tone gentle. He obeyed, placing himself with his arse facing Hugh.

“Have you done this before?” Hugh asked.

He briefly debated giving Hugh a thrill by saying no, but decided that Hugh would be annoyed, or hurt, to discover later that it was a lie. “Yes. But not often.”

“Then we will need this.”

He wasn’t so certain about that, but if he insisted on trying without, and failed, Hugh would definitely be annoyed. He kept quiet, and waited. A wet finger at his hole, easing in. Nice touch there, Hugh had had the courtesy to warm the lube first. Inside, and deeper in, spreading the wetness within him.

“Is that enough, or do you want more?”

He was out of practice, and Hugh was well built, but the idea of being stretched by Hugh’s cock . . . “I’ll be fine.”

“Then turn over.”

He did so, surprised. He’d thought Hugh was heading into something a bit rougher, but apparently Hugh intended to take advantage of the bed being at a comfortable height for one man standing next to it and another lying on it. He looked up at Hugh’s face. Hugh was not looking down at his, but somewhere further down his body. And clearly liking what he saw. One hand over the bulge in the leather. One word. “Mine.”

“Yours,” he agreed.

“You come when I tell you that you can.”

“Yes.” So there was something to the leather, after all.

Hand trailing over his cock, down to his thigh. Hugh’s other hand on the other thigh, both sliding around underneath to give support. “I want you at the edge of the bed.”

He shuffled forward so that he was right on the edge, then lifted his legs, settling them over Hugh’s shoulders for support. He felt exposed and vulnerable, and he didn’t give a damn. Not when Hugh looked exposed and vulnerable, emotion playing over his face. Gentlest top I ever saw.

Hugh caressed him, looking into his eyes now. They held still for a few seconds, and then Hugh slid one hand off Gavin, and onto his own cock, guiding it as he thrust forward.

It was tight, but he looked up at Hugh, watching as Hugh caught the edge of his lip with a tooth, concentrating. A slight twinge, and then in, he was slowly filled up, pressure within and without. Hugh right up against him, checking his reaction, and then pulling out, only to push in again, blissful movement inside him. The leather restraint was a delightful torment, squeezing him hard, dragging against him slightly as Hugh moved, cold metal ring rapidly warming as it was pushed against him. The sharp contrast between cold hard metal and warm hard Hugh thrilled him inside.

Faster, and harder, and he wanted to come now, excited as much by the sight as the feel of Hugh, and then remembering that the leather he was wearing had first been worn by Hugh, and it was keeping him from coming and he wanted to come.

He only realised that he was trying to slip his hand inside the leather when Hugh pulled it out. “Wait for permission.”

And of course, that only made him want it even harder.

No gentleness in Hugh now, thrusting deep, face wild. Then Hugh stopped, held still, before reaching a hand down to Gavin’s hip. Movement, scraping against his skin, and then he realised what was happening, Hugh was undoing a buckle. None too soon, he wanted it desperately now. Blessed release of pressure just as Hugh commanded, “Come,” and he did come, grabbing Hugh’s hand, holding tightly as he rode the waves of pleasure. Thinking somewhere in the middle of it all that now the leather would smell of both of them, and how the hell did Hugh clean it anyway?

•

Some time later, he realised that he felt empty inside. Hugh had pulled out, and was now undoing the other buckle — with shaking fingers, Gavin was pleased to note. His legs were still over Hugh’s shoulders. He tried to ease them down, realised he couldn’t — he was shaking as well.

Hugh left the buckle alone. “Let me do it.”

Between them, they managed to get disentangled. He turned around to lie full length on the bed, and Hugh crawled on top of him, kneeling over him to tackle the buckle. The leather fell away. Hugh moved to one side. “Spread your legs.”

“Thought I’d already done that.” He grinned, and Hugh grinned back. Then he obliged, and Hugh obliged him by pulling out the leather. It was an interesting sensation, dragged out from under his backside. Then Hugh dropped it unceremoniously over the side of the bed, and lay down.

He decided it was his turn to be cuddled. They’d been fairly even-handed until now in the actual sex, but somehow he’d always ended up holding Hugh afterwards. This time he was going to be the one held in a comforting embrace. He pillowed his head on Hugh’s shoulder, and draped an arm across his chest. To his surprise, Hugh didn’t object, merely said, “Lift your head for a second.”

He did so, and Hugh slid an arm under his neck. As he settled down again, Hugh slid the arm around his shoulders, holding him. It was very pleasant. He said so.

Hugh said nothing in reply, merely lifted the other hand to stroke his head. Curiouser and curiouser.

They dozed for a while, enjoying the afterglow. Eventually Hugh nudged him. “I’m cold.”

As usual . . . “Then get the duvet.”

Harder nudge. “I can’t until you get off me.”

Oh well, it had been too good to last . . . He let go of Hugh, and said, “We really need to get you one with about twice the filling on one side of the bed as on the other.”

“Tomorrow.”

No complaints about invasion of Hugh’s personal space? They were definitely doing better.

Hugh sat up, and dragged up the covers. Then Hugh lay down again, and put an arm around him.

Still cuddling him. Well, if Hugh was in that good a mood, take advantage of it. “Why did you have those leather knickers?”

Sleepy smile in response. “Why did you try them on?”

“I liked the idea of you having worn them before me.”

“Mmm.”

He thought about that. “You said you’d had them longer than you’d had me.”

“Mmm.”

“You got them for me, even before you had me?”

“I got them because I thought I wouldn’t have you.”

That was certainly a roundabout way of saying whatever it was that Hugh was saying. He stroked Hugh’s face. “Do you find me that intimidating?”

Hugh looked down. “Never thought you’d let me . . .”

So much for his ability to read people. It had never occurred to him that that might be why Hugh hadn’t suggested fucking. Poor little sod had simply assumed that he’d end up on the bottom. “Hugh, I happen to like letting someone else take charge in bed.” He watched Hugh’s face. “You haven’t much experience with leather, have you?”

Hugh still didn’t look at him, but there was a small quirk of his mouth. “Only in my imagination.”

“Obviously a very vivid imagination.”

“Just how far off was it?”

“How the hell would I know? Underwear’s my fetish.”

Hugh laughed out loud, and finally looked him in the eye. “And what about that not being on the bottom very often, if you like someone else taking charge?”

“Well, there’s being on the bottom, and then there’s being the bottom.” He took hold of Hugh’s hand, wrapped it around his cock. “For some reason, I find that partners take one look at that, and want to tie me down so that they can make merciless use of it.”

Hugh squeezed, and licked his lips. “I can’t imagine why. Perhaps I should try it to find out.”

He grabbed Hugh around the waist, and rolled on his back, so that Hugh was lying on top of him. “Perhaps you should. But will you please wear something sexy?”

Hugh grinned wickedly at him. “You didn’t go all the way to the back of my sock drawer, did you? Let me up.”

He did so, and watched as Hugh sashayed his way over to the drawer in question. One sultry look over his shoulder, and, “It wasn’t just leatherwear in that shop.”

No, it wasn’t. Silk again, but this time heavy white satin. Elasticated, so that a man could slip a hand, or a cock, inside. And a small bolt of cloth. “I thought I could get some more made, but there’s enough here for ties instead,” Hugh said as he came back to the bed.

Gavin ran a hand over the latest sample of silk. Oh yes, much more to his taste. “So where are we putting the eyebolts we’re buying tomorrow? Your place or mine?”

“Both.”

Jules Jones is a materials scientist, whose publishing credentials include such gems as European Union research reports. Thrilling though these might be to at least three readers, Jules believes that variety is the spice of life. Writing erotica provides an adequate amount of variety. It’s better not to mix the two styles of writing, though — it's very embarrassing when your manager points out that the file you were working on during the lunch hour has found its way into the project folder . . . http://www.julesjones.com

“Are we taping?” she asked, pulling down the sheets of the bed and crawling on top of it, naked.

Oh my, I thought, running my eyes up and down her tanned skin. My gaze raced back up her long legs and ended in the triangle of her pubic hair. I had to force my eyes away from nearly-hidden pink stripe of her labia as I continued my tour up her body. I continued up to her tight stomach with the oval mole, her small (“too small,” she’d say; “just right,” I’d say) breasts with their stiffening nipples. Then I took in her big hazel eyes and ached to touch her long brown hair spread out in a fan on my pillow.

I turned away from Christine, spread out on my bed like a centerfold, and in the process knocked the side of my hard penis against the dresser. I’d forgotten that I was naked too. Well, almost forgotten — it’s physically impossible for a guy to truly forget he’s naked. I gave her a sheepish smile as I positioned the camera and punched “Record.” The red light flickered on.

“We’re taping,” I mouthed to her off-camera, grinning like a kid.

Holding my breath, I crawled onto the bed and found myself at her left breast, trying not to think about the camera behind me as I licked and nibbled. I tasted the tiniest bit of salt on her nipple, my tongue circling the light brown aureole surrounding it like a tiny bulls-eye. Her hand touched my head as she moaned.

“You first,” she whispered, rolling away from me and positioning me on my back. With a glance at the camera her eyes narrowed the tiniest bit, and then she kissed the top of my penis.

Oh my. Oh my. I stared at the cascade of Christine’s curly brown hair as her head slowly rose and fell with me in her mouth, and I bit down the moans that wanted to escape my own mouth. I didn’t want to look like an idiot on tape, but good God this felt like heaven. Somehow she knew just where to tease and tickle me with her tongue, right at the tip where I was most sensitive, but she did it in such a way that after a few seconds I wanted to scream for more. At that point, as if she were psychic, she’d take me in her mouth and suck. And the whole process would start all over again. I could tell my eyes were rolling back in my head, and I knew I was grinning like a fool.

My girlfriend of just over six months, the girl I’d met in a smoky bar after three beers and about thirty eardrum-bruising dance songs, peeked up at me, her long hair in her face, and smiled.

“You like that?” she whispered.

“Um-hmmm,” I said in a broken voice.

“Good,” she said, turning to wink at the camera. Then she wrapped her lips around me again. Her head bobbed up and down faster, and in less than thirty seconds — too fast, too soon! — I came. I was only able to bite down a scream by balling up the bedsheets in my hands and thinking about baseball.

“Glad you liked that,” Christine said, moving next to me, the touch of her skin on mine almost painful after my orgasm. She kissed me and I could taste myself in her mouth. I was shaking, and I wanted to turn off that damn video camera and hold her in my arms as I drifted off to a blissful sleep.

“My turn now,” she said, turning so she was facing the camera. She reached under the pillow for the condom she’d stashed there earlier and began tearing at the wrapper. Her breasts poked up as she stuck out her belly the slightest bit, like a little kid concentrating on a difficult task. I was still in shock; she’d never given me a blow job before. Then she was next to me again, rubbing her pubic hair against me. I could feel her moisture down there, against my hip and thigh.

“Feel up to it?” she whispered in my ear.

Without waiting for an answer, she ran a hand down for the limp length of my penis. Pushing against me with her pelvis, she rubbed her nipples against my chest and gave me a long, salty kiss. He tongue slid across my teeth, and her hand slid down my miraculously recovering penis and she rested her long fingers on my scrotum. She gave it a squeeze, and just like that, I was hard.

Working fast now, her face a model of concentration and deviousness, Christine rolled the condom she had hidden in her other hand down my penis and then slid herself on top of it. She was wet, dropping down onto me with perfect friction.

As she rocked up and down, she kept her gaze on me. I didn’t dare look away. How in God’s name had I gotten so lucky?

My right hand slid up the smooth skin of her stomach, creeping up onto her breast, while my left slid through her pubic hair to find the moist softness it hid. I wanted her to come the way she’d made me come, and I did my bumbling best to find her clitoris and massage it. I always felt too rough, too impatient, every time I touched her there, but that day in front of the camera, judging from the quickening moans of Christine rocking up and down on top of me, I was doing something right.

And then, after barely five minutes of the most intense afternoon of my life, a tiny throbbing touched the base of my penis, and I suddenly had to focus to stay hard. Looking up at my girlfriend’s lithe, naked body working on top of me, her bottom lip caught in her top teeth as the sighed softly in a faster and faster tempo, keeping it up should’ve been an easy task. But I felt spent after Christine’s unbelievable blowjob.

Then I remembered: the camera! If we were going to watch this tape again, I really didn’t want to see some half-assed attempt at what could have been the steamiest sex ever.

Make it good, champ, I told myself as Christine began to rock faster.

“Oh God!” I moaned. “Oh yeah, baby.”

Christine’s breast slid from my hand as she arched her back. Her stomach drew in tight, and her chest was nearly parallel with the ceiling. I put both hands on her bottom and squeezed, closing my eyes and focusing all my energies on coming again. The whole time I was moaning and groaning, trying to keep pace with Christine. I could tell that I had about thirty seconds to get caught up. When her moans turned to high-pitched gasps, I knew it was hopeless for me to be a repeat performer.

So I decided to fake it.

“Oh God,” I moaned. “Oh, Christine!”

Rocking my hips up and down, pushing my barely-hard penis into her as fast as possible without slipping out and revealing myself as an imposter.

And then it was done. Christine gasped out my name, held perfectly still for a long moment as her hands tightened into fists. She was still leaning back when I moaned louder and thrust three, four, five times, almost shouting as if in unbearable ecstasy, and then I fell back onto the bed as if spent. Christine quivered once, and then fell forward on top of me with a dazed smile.

Now to cover my fakery. Get rid of the evidence.

I slid my hand down between us, and with my fingers holding the top of the condom, I slid easily out of her. Trying to be as discreet as possible — I frigging hated wearing the things — I peeled the condom off my soft penis. The slick rubbery material stuck to both my fingers and my dry, reddened penis.

At the worst possible time, Christine gave a final satisfied groan and slid next to me on the bed. She took a look at the wrinkled condom in my hand.

“Did you—” she began. Her voice was a perfect mix of awe and doubt. “Twice? You’re amazing.”

“Um,” I said. “Uh,” I added.

I rolled to the side of the bed and tried to toss the condom onto the floor, but she was too quick. She caught me. With her breasts pressing into my back, Christine turned my hand over to look at the condom. Then she rolled me over onto my back.

“Sweetie,” she said, looking at my pristine, shriveled penis. Usually I was slick with goo after sliding off a used condom. “Did you fake it?”

“Um . . . uh,” I tried again. What else could I say? I was busted.

Her mouth hung open. I’d known Christine for over half a year, and we’d been having sex for more than half of those months, but this was a new twist. What would she say? How would she react? Was this it, already?

“You know,” she said at last, touching my worn-out pecker, “you didn’t have to do that, buster.”

She bent closer and kissed me. On the forehead. My heart dropped.

I am such a frigging idiot, I thought.

Then she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me hard on the lips. When we came up for air, she said, “But I love you, you big goof.”

“I just thought that you’d, well . . .” I searched for the best way to explain this to her.

“Hush,” she said. “Just do me a favor, okay? Two favors, actually.”

“Sure,” I said, kissing her nose, cheeks, ears, and mouth. “Anything.”

“First, don’t ever fake anything with me again. And second,” she said, lightly pinching the tip of my soft penis, hard enough to sting, “turn off that damn video camera.”

Michael’s short story collection Gunning for the Buddha comes out from Prime Books in September of this year, and his stories have been published in Asimov’s, Interzone, Gothic.net, Writers of the Future, Strange Horizons, The Raleigh News & Observer, and other fine venues. Right now he’s working on a non-erotic novel about, of all things, baseball. He lives with his lovely wife Elizabeth in Raleigh, NC, and they don’t have a video camera. Yet. http://www.michaeljasper.net/

“It’s all ridiculously Freudian,” Papa Bear said, slamming his cup down onto the Sunday New York Times in such an alarming way that cappuccino slopped out onto the headlines. Papa was quite enamored of their new cappuccino machine, which Baby, who was a trial lawyer in Miami these days, had sent for their anniversary. Papa was positive none of their friends had an Italian model of comparable quality. “I mean,” he continued grumpily, “this one’s too big, that one’s too small. Ridiculous, I tell you.”

Mama smiled at her mate. He might be a crank on this one subject, but the bear did know how to give a proper spanking. “Papa was quite penis-centric this morning too, wasn’t he, Goldie?” she asked smoothly.

“Ma’am?” the girl stuttered, the dish towel quivering almost imperceptibly in her hand.

Mama suppressed an evil smile. She too would be taking the paddle to the girl at some point today for misbehavior real or imagined, and the little slut knew it. She always recognized the glint in Mama’s eyes that meant she was in for a . . . difficult . . . day.

“All I’m saying is,” Papa grumbled, “all I’m saying is, we’ve been slandered all these years with these ludicrous stories and I’m the only one in this family who seems to care.”

Mama thought his fine figure of moral outrage was somewhat undercut by the milk foam on his muzzle. “What makes you think anyone believes any of it, darling? It certainly hasn’t affected Baby’s career.” She looked back at Goldie. Maybe instead of the paddle, she’d use the thick strap. It had been ages since she’d worked the girl with that, but she still remembered her pitiful mewls and whimpers from last time, the way she’d begged mercy as Mama cracked the leather down again and again and again.

“My coffee’s getting cold,” she said, though it wasn’t. The girl instantaneously exchanged the dishcloth for the coffee pot and pattered across the room. Papa might like those six-inch locking heels he kept her in, but Mama thought they slowed her down unconscionably. She put a paw on Goldie’s burning butt cheek as she bent prettily to pour. “I want my coffee kept as hot as your bottom, you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl said miserably.

Mama’s eyes sparkled. Maybe the switch. Maybe she’d send the girl out into the forest to cut a few switches.

Papa had opened the paper, but he wasn’t reading it, and if he wasn’t going to read it, Mama wished he’d at least pass her the Arts section. “Baby was just a child then,” Papa argued. “Of course no one attaches any responsibility to her. But I was a laughing stock at my club. A laughing stock!”

Goldie was terrified of the switch and totally humiliated by having to cut her own. The first time Papa had sent her to do it, she’d tried to run away and hide in the woods. They’d sniffed her right out, of course, with their superior bear noses, and then taught her just how naughty that behavior was. She’d screamed so long and so loudly she’d lost her voice. Ah, me, Mama thought, those were fun days.

“Porridge, can you imagine? Maybe, just maybe, I’d be eating steel-cut Irish oats and Devonshire cream instead of my usual bagel and Nova, but porridge?”

The problem with the switch was that if she sent Goldie to cut two or three, Papa would surely want to join in, surely want to break at least one over the girl’s squirming, blistered ass. “Dearest, you know no one in your club really believed you ate porridge,” Mama murmured. “You drive a Lexus, for goodness’ sake.” And even if Mama were gracious and let Papa have a turn, he’d end up hot and bothered, and the girl, face swollen with tears, would soon be gagging and choking on that big bear cock again. Well, Mama meant to be hot and bothered too, and she could think of better uses for Papa’s penis.

Speaking of which, she couldn’t even remember the last time they let Goldie have an orgasm, yet the girl didn’t seem all that distressed every time Papa said no yet again. That could only mean one thing.

“Darling, you need to stop getting so worked up over ancient history.” She slipped the editorial section from beneath Papa’s cappuccino mug, though she didn’t intend to really read it either. “But I will remind you that you were the one who wanted to advertise for a slave over the Internet. It wasn’t the best of your ideas, my love.” All these years and Mama had never reproached him for it, but really, it was time to face facts. It was time for Papa to just let this go.

The girl had to be masturbating on the sly. Mama pictured her grinding against the sheets of the “just right” bed, sticking those little fingers into her greedy cunt. Well, that was certainly a very strapable offense. And not just across her ass. Ass, thighs front and back, and then right down on her nasty little clit.

Papa raised his napkin to his mouth, finally wiping away the milk residue. “I don’t see why you say that.”

“Goodness, dear, she was a newbie. She hung around in chat rooms, for heaven’s sake.” So. It was definitely going to be the strap. The only problem was, where on earth had she put it after that last session? The punishment paddle hung on its hook on the kitchen wall so that Goldie had to look at it multiple times every day, but both she and Papa were hopeless about keeping the rest of the equipment in one place, and Goldie knew better than to touch any of it. “Her little chatroom cronies heard that we weren’t allowing her a safeword or any limits, and then they saw the webcam shots of her after you disciplined her that first time—”

Was it in the china cupboard with the ball gag? Maybe she ought to gag her today, not let her get away with all that whimpering and begging. Ha, and screaming. If Mama whipped her cunt, there’d be screaming.

“Raw hamburger!” Papa sputtered. Maybe, Mama thought, it hadn’t been the best of all possible ideas to give him something else to be outraged over. “Do you remember that? They said her ass looked like raw hamburger. None of those fakes had ever given or taken a real whipping in their lives! I’d have liked to show them raw hamburger!”

Mama glanced over her shoulder at Goldie again. The girl was attempting to make herself as inconspicuous as possible as she put away the dishes. How cute. Not that it was going to do her any good. Honestly, it was time to calm Papa and get down to more enjoyable pastimes.

“I’ve thought for years that that’s where all those ridiculous stories began, my darling. They were all intent on portraying Goldie as some sort of abused innocent, and it snowballed from there. It’s nothing to get yourself so upset about. Who in their right mind ever believed Internet gossip?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“And it’s all water under the proverbial bridge, anyway. No one remembers any of it.”

“Well, maybe you’re right . . .”

“Why don’t you go for a little walk, steady your nerves, my sweetest,” Mama suggested in a soothing voice. “I need to ‘talk’ to Goldie anyway.”

Papa, she noted, had heard the quotation marks around “talk” as had the girl. She’d gone white beneath that impossible mop of blonde hair, and any hint of agitation on Papa’s face had been replaced with an altogether different expression. “You’re sure you don’t need me to stay around here?” he asked.

“No, darling. You take a nice walk. It’s good for your heart. You know your doctor is always after you to get more healthy exercise.” Mama fluttered her eyes coyly. “And then when you come back, perhaps you and I can, uh, lie down for a bit while Goldie fixes dinner.”

Papa pushed away his cup and folded his newspaper. Obviously, the crossword could wait. “The strap’s at the bottom of the linen chest, in case you’re looking for it, Pookie.”

Mama walked him to the door, stroking the fur on his arm enticingly and letting him nibble at her ear. “You forget all about Freud and porridge and rumors, dearest, and have yourself a lovely stroll. Why don’t you come back in, say, forty-five minutes? I’ll be ready for a . . .nap . . . just about then.”

As soon as the door clicked closed, she pivoted around to the girl. “You heard your master,” she said sharply. “Fetch the strap from the linen chest immediately. And perhaps on your way there you can explain to me just why you think you can touch yourself in secret and get away with it.”

The girl’s pallor was immediately replaced with a deep flush, and Mama smiled, eyes gleaming with pleasure and cruelty. So, she’d been absolutely right. It was shaping up to be a most excellent Sunday. Perhaps she’d overstated her case to Papa just a bit. Advertising for a slave on the Internet had worked out just fine. The linen chest’s lid creaked as Goldie opened it, and Mama smiled even more. Just fine indeed.

Who needed to waste a thought on porridge?

A. J. Horlick is a health care professional and writer who has published erotica, horror, fantasy, and miscellaneous dark fiction in various places. When not taking long walks on the beach, knitting badly, or arguing with strangers on the Internet, she usually can be found attempting to teach the American public the difference between “your” and “you’re.” It's a losing battle.