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The Golden Age of Gay Fiction
By Multiple Authors edited by Drewey Wayne Gunn

It was the first great explosion of gay writing in history. These books were about gay characters. They were written mostly by gay writers. Above all, they were for gay readers. And, as this entertaining chronicle of the emergence of gay literary pride makes clear, it was a revolution that occurred several years before Stonewall!

Their characters were mostly out or struggling to get out. The books were definitely out — out on the revolving paperback bookracks in grocery stores, dime stores, drugstores, magazine agencies, and transportation terminals across the nation for youths and senior citizens, in the cities and the rural areas alike, to find and to devour.

Here 19 writers take you on a tour of this Golden Age of Gay Fiction — roughly the period between the first Kinsey Report and the first collection of Tales of the City — paying attention to touchstone novels from the period but, even more, highlighting works of fiction that have been left unjustly to gather dust on literary shelves.

Written by authors, scholars, collectors, and one of the publishers, their essays will inform you. They will sometimes amuse you. They will take you into literary corridors you only suspected were there. And the some 200 illustrations, chosen for their historical as well as their artistic interest, provide a visual record of why this was the golden age.

It is guaranteed that you will emerge from reading this book with a long list of good reads to request from your favorite booksellers!

Through the centuries, lives and loves have been lost to the shadows.  Stevie Woods brings redemption and a new love in DEATH’S DESIRE; Jardonn Smith has a frisky ghost showing two men the pleasures of love in GREEN RIVER; and Charlie Cochrane’s tale of future love is predicted by a ghost in THE SHADE ON A FINE DAY. In these three stories spanning from 18th century England to the Post-Depression Ozarks, love shines through the shadows.

*********************

Chapter One

1785

Hugh leaned out of the carriage window and looked up the drive to the large house on the rise. It was quite an eyeful, a big sprawling house that had obviously been added to over the generations. Surprisingly, the mismatch of styles created a whole that was warm and inviting.

It had been three years since he had last seen his Simmercy relatives, though that had been in London before his cousin-in-law, William had inherited the Hall. He had never been to their country estate before and, though he sometimes felt out of place with the rather stuffy William, his wife Alicia had always been most welcoming to Hugh and his mother. He did want to see their son, Charles again; if only to discover if his inappropriate reaction to his young cousin was still in evidence. He had convinced himself he was over it, but that was when he was nearly a hundred miles away, and there was no immediate possibility of seeing the man.

The driver pulled the carriage to a halt in front of the wide stone steps and Hugh opened the door before the footman could do so. As he stepped down from the carriage a happy sounding voice called his name.

“Hugh! It’s been too long,” Alicia said as she hurried down the steps.

Hugh smiled at his mother’s cousin, Alicia, but his eye was caught by Charles moving more slowly as he followed his mother. At twenty-one, Charles was three years younger than Hugh, yet somehow Hugh felt much older. Charles was still slim but Hugh could not fail to notice the wide shoulders and the strong thighs. He had filled out in all the right places.

“Cousin Alicia,” Hugh said, and Alicia gripped his shoulders, giving him a quick peck on the cheek before moving aside to allow Charles to approach. Hugh smiled as he stretched out to shake Charles’ hand. “It’s good to see you, Charles. You look…” He had been about to say wonderful, but quickly changed it to, “Well.”

“I am. It is good to see you again too.” Charles smiled.

“I’m so pleased that your mother finally persuaded you to come,” Alicia said. “I asked her to twist your arm if she had to.”

Hugh felt the heat suffuse his face. “I was not being difficult in not coming sooner, I just had…”

“No, no. No excuses, Hugh. You had your reasons, I may not understand what they were, but I’m just happy that this time you came. We have missed you. Haven’t we, Charles?”

“Yes,” Charles said, but Hugh could have wished for more enthusiasm.

“Come, we’ll have some tea while your luggage is taken to your room, and then Charles will show you around.”

* * * *

Hugh had been relieved to discover that William, Charles’ father, was not going to be in attendance after all. He had been called back to London on business the day before. William Simmercy had a supercilious air that had always intimidated Hugh, even though his mother had told him that Cousin William was not at all as snobbish as he appeared. Hugh could not deny that it was just as likely to be his own inferiority complex at work. His own father’s pedigree could not compare with the Simmercy’s.

Charles was following his mother’s instruction to show Hugh the house and as he moved along the narrow corridor with Charles, Hugh did his best to relax and enjoy being with the man, pleased that Charles now seemed more at ease in his company. It was the first time they had been alone since his arrival, and Hugh was trying to regain the camaraderie they had shared the last time they had been together.

Simmercy Hall was full of history, both the contents of the building and the lives of the generations who had lived within its walls. There was pride in Charles’ voice as he spoke of how the original building had been awarded to Philip d’Simmercy in 1486 by the then new King Henry VII, for his bravery in the Battle of Bosworth Field.

“Father is already talking about holding a party next year to celebrate the family’s three hundred years in the Hall.”

“It is quite an achievement,” Hugh agreed. “Your family has been lucky to have such a settled history.”

“Settled?” Charles laughed. “Oh, you have no idea of the number of scandals in my family. Adultery and murder are not even the most outrageous.”

“Pardon! Murder?”

Charles was clearly excited now and he tugged at Hugh’s sleeve. “Come, my friend, I’ll tell you the most salacious story, but do not let mother know I told you, she is scandalized that I even know all the details.”

He laughed again, chivvying Hugh back along the corridor towards the room he was using. Two doors down from Hugh’s room Charles threw open a pair of double doors. As they had bypassed the doors earlier, Hugh had assumed it must be William and Alicia’s room, its location in the centre of the Hall suggesting it was the master bedroom.

“No one has used this room in a hundred and fifty years,” Charles said as he stepped inside. “They say it is haunted,” he added in a purposefully affected voice, making Hugh roll his eyes.

The room was dark and dusty. Charles moved swiftly to the two tall sets of windows and pulled back the drawn curtains allowing light to flood the room, the dust mites seeming to multiply even in the weak rays of the autumn sun. It was easy to see though how, with care, the room could look magnificent. There was a thick rug in the centre of the room surrounded by darkly stained wood flooring, which was echoed on the lower half of the panelled walls. The upper walls were covered with tapestries and paintings. The furniture was of thick oak and the curtains of the four poster bed matched the design of the rug and the window curtains.

Hugh was drawn to the magnificent bed and was surprised to find only the bare mattress. His hand slowly moved across the dusty material and it was only as the dust rose beneath his fingers that he realized what he was doing. He stepped back sharply, a shiver running through him which he put down to his own odd behaviour. He lifted his eyes and found Charles watching him closely, a slight smile on his full lips.

“You said it was haunted?” Hugh queried, not about to admit the strange feeling he’d had when he had touched the bed.

“I don’t know the exact year, but it was somewhere around a hundred and fifty years ago, or so the story goes. Lady Maude Simmercy found her husband in flagrante delicto with his manservant.”

“His manservant?”

“Yes, his manservant,” Charles repeated with a gleam in his eye. “She brought her three brothers to the Hall and they confronted the husband. It is said he didn’t even try to deny his ungodly act. The manservant was dragged in and killed before the husband’s eyes – and then they killed him.”

As Charles was speaking, Hugh had a strange feeling he was being watched but Charles’ attention was on the bed.

“It is said it was here she found him, in bed with the servant, but I’m not even sure I believe that anyway.”

“You mean you do not believe a man would indulge in such an unholy act?” Hugh asked quietly.

“Lord, no. I am not such a prude that I don’t believe that goes on, but not with one’s servant surely. There must be…”

He was interrupted by a cough followed by a footman saying, “I am sorry to interrupt Master Charles but your lady mother requests you attend her immediately.”

Charles sighed with frustration but simply said, “I will be right there, Norton. Will you wait here for me,” he asked Hugh, grinning as he added, “or back in your room if you prefer?”

For some reason even Hugh did not understand, he did not want to leave the room just yet. “I’ll wait here for you. I want to hear the rest of the story.”

“Good,” Charles said and left.

Hugh turned back to the bed, looking stark in its unmade form. “Did you risk it all just to be with him?” he whispered. “Did it not matter to you that he was a servant?” He laughed hollowly. “Or was it just that he was a convenient body and you needed…”

“I did need, but I needed Thomas, he was everything to me. Your words speak of understanding.”

The words were spoken close to his ear, but it was a voice Hugh had never heard before. Deep and husky. An icy chill washed over him. But when he spun around there was no one there.

“Charles?” he called hesitatingly. “Was that you, playing a trick on me?”

The door suddenly blew shut. But there was no window open. What was happening? Hugh shuddered. Lord, I wish now I had left with Charles!

“No, it was not Charles, it was I.” As the words drifted to him, a form began to take shape by the door. A man a little older than he was, taller and heavier, clothed in very out-dated doublet and hose, the white lace of his shirt almost shining in contrast to his dark doublet.

Terrified, backing away, Hugh gasped. “What in Heaven’s name!” It couldn’t be real, it couldn’t!

“No, I am not granted that mercy. I sometimes wonder if this is just another version of Hell. Do not be afraid, I mean you no harm. Allow me to introduce myself, Sir Adam Simmercy.” The figure bowed, extending his right arm in a sweeping arc. “It is a rare gift to find someone who can not only hear me but see me. It has been… let me think, seventy-five years I believe, since it last occurred. Your name, if you please, sir?”

Hugh stared at the figure. It was hard to believe it was real and yet it did feel as if he was speaking to a normal person. A living person, not a ghost, and yet he had no doubt that this… this was an apparition. Taking a breath to calm his racing heart and attempt to steady his nerves, he replied, “I am Hugh Preston, Charles’ cousin twice removed.”

“Ah, Charles’ cousin twice removed. I am delighted to meet you, Hugh. And who is Charles?”

“Oh, I thought you would know. Charles Simmercy, your descendant, I assume.”

Adam laughed heartily. It seemed very odd to imagine a ghost could laugh like that.

“No, my wife never carried any child of mine. After my… removal, she married my cousin, my heir. It was always the title she was more interested in than me, and Cecil had always admired her. Suited them both admirably, I imagine.”

“Still, how is it that you did not know he was… of the family? You must have seen him.”

“Not really. I am trapped in the house but I do not manifest often, it is too hard to watch those living, loving and enjoying life when I can have none of it. I spend most of my time here, where it is very rare that anyone comes.”

“Why me?” Hugh suddenly asked. The more normal the conversation became the more lost Hugh was feeling.

“That is something I cannot answer. Certain people can sense me, or sense something when they enter this room. But to see me, and hear me? Rare people it would seem, because it has only happened three times since I died.” Adam stepped closer and Hugh shivered as it became more apparent then that he could see the door through Adam’s form. “Rare indeed,” Adam continued, “because you have not run screaming from the room, or called to Heaven for protection from the demon, as did the last person who saw me. You have the strength of heart to stand there and converse with me.”

“I think it is more that I am too afraid to move,” Hugh said quietly. But privately he acknowledged there was some truth in what Adam claimed. He was nervous of the ghost, confused by his own reaction, and intrigued by both the man’s history and his own need to understand. Yet he felt no real fear of the spectre.

Adam laughed again and Hugh could not deny the man’s laugh was intoxicating. As strange as it seemed, his laugh was so full of life.

“There is no tremor in your voice, no fear in your stance. No, my young Hugh, I do not believe you are truly afraid of me. Puzzled I grant, but not afraid. And for that I thank you, for I mean you no harm. It might be that you can be of help to me.”

Hugh frowned, “I don’t understand.”

“No, but then you don’t know my story. You drew me here soon enough that I heard a little of what that fool, Charles, told you and he does not know the half of it. Will you let me tell you all?”

Hugh knew in that instant he had to know everything, but at that moment he heard voices and knew that Charles was returning.

“I would, but not now, he is returning. I cannot be found talking to thin air, for I do not believe he would see you.”

“No, he would not. Can you come back later, tonight?”

“Yes.” Hugh said firmly.

As he stepped into the room, Charles said, “I am sorry I left you alone for so long, especially in this place.”

“It was no hardship, I had a good look around.” As he spoke, Hugh saw Adam’s form dissipate as if it had never been, and he heard, as if whispered on the wind, “Midnight.”

Charles was already speaking, “Mother has been trying to get me to allow her to invite Cecily Hampton and her parents over for dinner tonight, and I told her we should allow you to settle in quietly first.” Charles glanced around before continuing, “Truth is, she and Lady Helen are trying to engineer a betrothal between Cecily and I, which is the last thing I want. Goodness, I used to chase the girl around the garden, and I can never see her as anything but a dirty child.” Charles shrugged. “Anyhow, I have no wish to marry – not yet anyhow.”

“No, I well understand that feeling. I am older than you and though I don’t have the pressure of your family lineage, still my mother would like to have grandchildren. It is not easy.” Hugh couldn’t help his sidelong glance at Charles, who caught his eye and smiled.

“We have to stand together – bachelors together!” Charles raised a hand in salute and Hugh laughed.

“Together forever.” Hugh grinned back at him, wishing it could really be like that. Three years apart, and already Hugh knew nothing had changed for him. He wanted Charles now as much as he had three years earlier.

Raised in a strict religion that forbids association with foreigners as well as love between men, Arieh Sef’ea cannot imagine a worse fate than to be sold as a love-slave to a Keshen soldier. Both men must learn that bodies may be purchased, but hearts must be won.

***************************************

Chapter One

The sun beat down on the dusty city square, drawing up beads of sweat on the flesh of the men and women shifting uncomfortably in their chains. They were waiting to be slicked with the golden oil that would make their skin gleam attractively, showing more clearly the contours of their bodies and muscles as they were paraded before the crowd.

Arieh Sef’ea, chains heavy around his wrists and ankles, burned with more than the afternoon heat. Hatred, anger, embarrassment and terror squirmed in his belly, making him glad he hadn’t had the appetite for the meager breakfast the slavers had provided that morning. He had offered his portion to the slave beside him, a quiet girl from the western desert province of E’ea who did nothing but cry softly from morning to night, but the blue eyed barbarian across from her had stolen it instead. The girl hadn’t seemed to notice.

The slave caravan had been large enough before Arieh was added to it, and in the three days he’d been traveling with them, they had picked up several more slaves about his age, some younger and several older. There were a few exotic, light skinned girls who had joined them at the last stop. Arieh had understood enough of the slavers’ rough tongue to know they were prisoners from the war in Agul to the north, captured by soldiers and sold to the caravans after a thorough sampling. Others, like himself, were native sons and daughters taken as payment for exorbitant taxes their parents couldn’t afford.

Arieh’s sister Rahel, pretty and newly betrothed, had nearly been one of those payments herself. As the soldiers were dragging her away, Arieh had come tearing around the corner of the house, alarmed by the sounds of shouting and pleading. He had been instantly spotted by the soldiers who traveled with the tax collectors as guards. Arieh had skidded to a stop as their kentari, the highest ranking soldier among them, caught sight of him. Cold grey eyes locked onto his face with a calculating light.

“Leave the girl,” the kentari had said and jabbed a rough finger in Arieh’s direction. “Abheel-takhan likes this type.” The man had lumbered up to him and squeezed Arieh’s jaw in his calloused hand, tilting his face up and turning it side to side, studying him. It had been all Arieh could do to keep from hitting the man; survival instincts were the only thing holding him back. “Young, pretty, smooth as a girl. He’ll be worth more to us.”

“No!” Sefar, Arieh’s father, had lunged forward, wailing. “He’s my son! You can’t take my son!”

“Silence, old man.” The kentari had knocked Sefar backwards with the hand that was not holding Arieh’s face. Arieh had trembled again with the effort of restraining his rage. “You have other sons.” Arieh had tried hard not to think about Simen and Dan, neither older than ten years, hiding in the house. “This one is ours.”

The last Arieh had seen of his home was his mother, shocked and weeping, his father tearing his rough-cloth tunic in mourning, and his sister Rahel looking horribly, guiltily relieved.

Arieh sighed and told himself not to think about it. It was useless. He’d been thinking about it all day, and all his energy was being eaten up by anger.

The tallest of the blonde Agullic girls, standing a few feet away from him with the other women who were to be sold, said something to him in her soft native tongue, looking concerned.

“I’m sorry,” Arieh stammered in Keshen, the common language of the melting pot of cultures that made up the country of Keshe. “I don’t understand.”

She frowned and he thought that would be the end of things—she probably knew as much of his language as he did of hers. He had already looked away from her when she said haltingly, “You? Okay?”

Arieh blinked, both in surprise at her use of Keshen and in astonishment at the question. I was supposed to be emancipated from my parents and apprenticed to a carpenter this year, but instead I was sold into slavery in place of my younger sister. Sure, I’m just fine, thanks for asking.

But she looked so earnest and worried that he just nodded his head and said, “Yes. I’m okay.” His bitterness wasn’t directed at her.

In truth, he was as far from okay as he could imagine. They had painted his eyes like a desert E’ean, oiled his hair until it gleamed ebony in the sunlight, stripped him of the tunic he’d been wearing when they took him, painted his body a gleaming bronze, then shoved him, naked, in a group of other young men similarly painted.

All the men and boys standing near him that he could see were handsome, and several pretty, painted girls stood a little distance away. The other slaves, unpainted and plain, were in a different group. Arieh wondered that they would separate slaves by looks. It seemed impractical. But then, what did he know? Riineans didn’t keep slaves. None of them could afford it.

Just then, there was a commotion some distance in front of him and Arieh looked up, eyes darting nervously around the throng until he caught sight of the slavers walking down the line, evaluating each slave. When they paused in front of him, the desire to kick at their shins or spit in their faces swelled in him, but his mouth was dry as the dusty ground his feet seemed bound to. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. He wished he could cause their deaths just by his thoughts and longed for the power the heroes of old were said to have. If magic had not deserted Riinea, they would never have been beaten by the Keshen army. Arieh’s family would not be poor farmers and Arieh would not be a slave. If.

The traders spoke to each other in their own language, a harsh tongue made up of biting, hissing sounds and rolling syllables. Arieh understood very little of it, but he knew they were arguing about him. Suddenly, as quickly as a desert wind changing direction, they began shouting at each other in Keshen and Arieh flinched in surprise.

“Do you not always keep your most precious treasures in the innermost chamber of your house?” one of them exclaimed, waving his arms about. “He should be sold last, as a prize jewel!”

Abheel-takhar, an old man with a coarse, pointy silver beard and kohl-lined eyes who seemed to be the head of the caravan, put up a many-ringed hand to silence him.

“Do you serve your best wine at a feast after the guests are already drunk and tasteless?” Abheel-takhar countered in a deeply accented voice. “No, you bring out the best dishes while they are still greedy with hunger, not when they are full and slovenly and will make a waste of it.” His hand hovered above Arieh’s head, not touching but close enough that Arieh thought he could feel the weight of all the rings the man wore pressing down into his hair. “He will go on early, while our guests are still hungry and will pay the price he is worth… or more.”

Arieh could hear murmurs nearby and noticed that many in the crowd were looking over to where the traders were, their attention drawn by the commotion. He realized then that it had all been a ploy; Abheel-takhar was advertising his wares before the bidding began and Arieh was the one on display.

Title	SS Mann Hunt
Author	William Maltese
ISBN#	978-1-60820-060-3 (ebook)
Release Date	June 2009
Cover Artist	Deana C. Jamroz
Paperback:	174 pages
Available At:	MlrBooks (ebook)

FATHER. FIEND? SCIENTIST. BUTCHER? PATRIOT. NAZI?

Sebastian S. Mann, prominent member of post-WWII U.S. rocket development, has gone missing with other expedition members supposedly caving in South America. Having done so just days before revelations that he may have been responsible for the deaths of over two-hundred thousand gays, Jews, gypsies, and Romanian freedom fighters.

Years later, the male heirs of three missing members of Mann’s lost expedition meet up in deep Brazilian jungle to explore evidence finally turned up of their fathers’ possibly last campsite.

Brad Lexly and Kurt Mann, childhood friends and lovers, rekindle their previous passionate relationship but know its success, beyond the isolating jungle environment, depends upon an acceptable explanation for Sebastian Mann’s disappearance. More dangerous people than they, though, seek answers, too, and also provide definite possibilities for this expedition ending up just as missing as the one gone before it.

********************************

Chapter One

Concern dilates my blue eyes as I glimpse snag-like treetops perilously close. Absentmindedly, I run my fingers through the unruly strands of my short-cropped, sweat-saturated blond hair. I swallow hard, and my mind flashes visions of horrendous disaster; no matter Jim Kenner has already proven his worth at the controls of this small single-engine plane. My stomach churns, giving rise to the nausea I’ve barely controlled throughout most of this wild roller-coaster-like ride through the turbulence percolating upward from the horizon-to-horizon South American jungle, and from the up-thrusts of ragged stone amongst all the greenery below us.

“Jim’s landings here are always a bit hairy,” Kurt Mann confesses, nervously chewing his lower lip. His violet eyes, purple against the mahogany tan of his face, are dark with concern, and the deep dimple in his right cheek isn’t punched there by amusement. Anxiously, he runs his large and well-formed fingers through his thatch-short curly black hair and, in doing so, contributes to the tousle of interlocking strands.

Within the suffocating cramped and super-heated confinement of the small plane, I can still see much of the boy I remember within the man Kurt has become.

“There!” Kurt points through the bug-splattered windscreen. The clearing, thus identified amidst all those crags and flora, isn’t reassuring. It looks too small for its intended purpose. If I were in a helicopter, or in any other aircraft capable of a vertical descent, I just might, give odds for a successful set down. Unfortunately, I spot Kurt’s white knuckles instead.

“Jim hasn’t skewered me on these treetops, or creamed me on these cliffs, yet,” Kurt encourages, and he releases his death grip on his seat long enough to give me a playful punch to one biceps.

His brief and boyish body contact is spontaneous consolation from one nervous flier to someone … moi … who gives all outward appearance of being yet another. It is as spontaneous as our sex in Septiaola last night.

My mother would all-around disapprove, and not because I’m anywhere close to being a mama’s boy. The specter of my mother’s disapproval, all the while with me, was given birth the moment I even half-jokingly considered joining this expedition. Mom has already lost a husband, not only to this same jungle but to the father of this very same Kurt Mann, and she insists she won’t survive losing me, her only son, in a similar manner.

Nevertheless, here I am, driven by my own demons and, as my mother sees it, consorting with the enemy. Though, until I better dissect the ramifications of Kurt and his boner even momentary back in my life (and vice versa), it’s imperative I don’t take too seriously any physicality between us.

The plane banks sharply, and the continuing precariousness of the landing-in-progress makes me wonder, and not for the first time, if my mother isn’t right. Have Jim, Kurt and I deluded ourselves into believing we’re going to make any kind of difference here, so many years after the disastrous fact?

Jim’s blond, tanned, green-eyed, and coolly confident demeanor at the controls should reassure me of, at least, a safe touchdown; the plane’s by-now familiarly erratic engine noises should do the same. However, like a drowning man, I occupy myself with segments from my past: my childhood in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Sebastian, Elsa, and Kurt Mann next door; Sebastian, Kurt, my father and I, in the caves of Mesa Juanita; my father mailing postcards from cave explorations in France, Colorado, New Guinea, Tahiti, and finally, lastly, tragically, Brazil. Flashes of my more immediate past include last night’s sex with Kurt in Septiaola.

Obviously, Kurt and I figured, from the get-go, to renew our sexual relationship. Why else bring a gross of condoms, each, into Septiaola, prepared to lug them every step of the way? Certainly, I never seriously contemplated fucking some local Indian, although that was always a viable alternative.

It was the “when” of Kurt and my sex that kept me guessing. So much mental baggage loaded on board our lives, since our last romps in the hay, I envisioned painful detours wherein we tried to talk “this” thorough, or “that” over, before we actually felt comfortable enough at least to … if not get back to where we’d left off … indulge some hot and heavy breathing and exchange of body fluids in prelude to reality rearing its ugly head. The odds very much against our having any kind of happy-ever-after ending.

Little did I imagine, though, that we, in that deteriorating hotel in Septiaola, would so simply and naturally, no-fuss quickly, jump-start our relationship. Bypassing all possibility of our getting bogged down in psycho-babble by shuffling such “stuff” to one side as if it didn’t exist, or if it did exist as if neither of us had a clue.

We dropped Jim off at his room and shut him safely away inside. We identified Kurt’s assigned door as the next nearest, opened it, entered through it. Not even waiting for an invite, I slammed the door shut behind us. We proceeded blindly, with animal-in-rut haste, insensitivity and fury, to tear off each other’s clothes and plunge into each other’s sensuous nakedness with no other purpose than fucking and sucking our brains out for as long and as often as we could before morning.

Conversation focused entirely on the sexual or sensual: “God, you’re handsome!” … “God, your cock is bigger than I remember!” … “Let me wrap my mouth around that sausage!” … “Get down on your hands and knees and let me see that puckered asshole!” … “Jesus, what a studly butt!” … “Oh, hot damn, your asshole is tight. But then, I remember it always was just this tight, just this snug, just this fucking lovely … lovely … lovely!”

He came at me, missionary fashion, after I’d fucked him dog-style and blasted enough of my cummy deluge to scare Noah into building another Ark.

My legs lifted and parted. They parenthesized his torso, from his handsome face to his monstrously thick dick, including his well-delineated chest and stomach muscles, his body hair on chest, belly, and around his knotted navel. His balls, fuzzy-scrotum contained, impressively hung the base of his stiff dick.

The back of my knees locked his shoulders. His weight accordianed my legs, and he came down so close that I could lick his lips and did. His mouth was salty, more so as he touched it firmly to mine, opened, put his tongue to my tongue, put his cockhead to my small-puckered anus.

We weren’t into slow and easy fucks. He speared my asshole no more nor less forcefully than I’d poked his when I’d driven my nine-plus inches up his rectum with a force that sent him to his forearms on the dirty rug.

His dick in me, from its head to its base, the forceful shove rammed his hard belly into my uplifted butt, and my back slid the floor.

I groaned long and loud into his mouth. He took full advantage to probe his tongue even deeper. It was easy to imagine the flick of his tongue making contact with the head of his cock, the latter powerfully fed through my deep-fucked body to meet it.

His chest hair tickled my chest. His belly hair tickled my belly. His cock tickled my prostate.

My penis, never soft since the beginning, went even harder. I reached for it, fisted it, let it fuck my hand. I enjoyed the steeliness of it, the steeliness of Kurt’s erection as it proceeded into its rhythmic out and in … out and in … each bumping into, over, and against, to milk my sensitive prostate of viscous goo that all too quickly oozed the pouted mouth of my hand-pumped prick. My fingers grew sticky with my preseminal lubricant. The friction of my beating hand whipped my leakage into a frothy egg-white consistency that frosted the whole of my dick. I burned, inside and out. My body sweated an attractive gloss, all velvety.

A rill of perspiration ran the length of Kurt’s pleasure-striated neck. Beads of wet clung to and among the whorls of hair matting his chest and belly. There were loud sounds each time his sopped stomach whacked my cock-accepting ass.

“Fucking … sexy … stud!” he said, his breath hot, wet, sweet, upon my face.

“Fuck me harder, bastard!” I commanded. “Fuck me deeper!” As if it were humanly possible for him to fuck any harder or deeper or faster, or …

The momentum of the screw continued to move us along the floor. We left a seeming slug trail along the cheap carpet.

“I’m going to hump you until you squeal!” he said, his dick once again rammed inside me to his compacting balls. A torque of his hips, and his pestle-in-mortar boner pirouetted against my prostate.

I squealed. Long and hard. I begged for more of the same.

He gave me more of the same. He gave me variations thereof. He gave me more than I could have dreamed possible, proof-positive that he, like I, had come a long way, by way of accumulating sexual expertise, since our first naïve fumblings so many years before.

“I come!” he said and slotted his thick prick one final time deep … deep … deep.

His eyes went wide and then squeezed to little slits. Every last muscle within his exquisitely sculptured body went taut. His cock pulsed a staccato drumbeat against the Saran-wrapping walls of my anus.

His spunk let go, even as my sperm squirted my latest mess onto my belly, onto my chest, onto my neck, onto my face.

The lowering of wing flaps sends vibrations through the plane and through us, and I’m jarred back to the here and now. I prefer the escape of reverie. Our steep descent is into dangerous trees whose serrated edges extend in open invitation to impaling. Jagged, knifelike hunks of rock accompany with similar invitations, and I taste the danger.

“I loathe airplanes, especially small ones, particularly this one,” Kurt says.

I’m reading his lips: the squealing, squeaking competition from straining metal makes normal conversation impossible. I do find his confession charming, if not at all calming.

A battering-ram branch comes so close to one window that I jerk back in fear of it coming through. I will myself to become part of the cracked and weathered cushions of my seat. I’m further jolted by landing gear that touches and then trips over rough ground. I manage a silent prayer and complete it as a wall of rock and shrubbery rears directly in front of us. At the moment before impact, the plane tilts nose-downward and converts the last of its momentum into a surprisingly graceful half-pirouette. I’m left breathless and with a dull headache

“Well, if we’ve the Jell-O out of our legs, shall we disembark?” Jim cheerfully suggests after the plane becomes silent. He’s in an obviously good mood, the least affected of us. He isn’t transplanted from Phoenix, where I now live, or from Portland, like Kurt; instead, he was born and raised here in Brazil, and he’s acclimatized.

If I expect a reprieve from the heat and the humidity I endure in the aircraft, I’m disappointed upon stepping outside. Mugginess greets me with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The impact takes away what little breath I have left. At the same time, I smell a musty, rancid earthiness that’s more reminiscent of dying vegetation than freshly plowed fields. The complete trapping of sunlight by bordering strands of towering trees and by rocky crags only magnifies the overall sepulchral effect.

My first impression is one of something out there: a thousand-beady-eyed enemy whose attention is focused entirely on me. At the same time, the already narrow perimeter of the clearing seems to close in: warrior plants on the march to refill the momentary gap in their ranks as quickly as air jealously rushes to fill a vacuum, or as totally as darkness greedily swallows any hint of light after a Kansas sunset.

I literally shiver, despite the surrounding, engulfing heat.

“What?” Kurt asks intuitively from close behind; I suspect his empathy is a holdover from our shared youth.

“Remember when I got stuck in that crawlway in the Mesa Juanita caves?” I reference something we long ago shared.

“Of course,” Kurt mildly chides. “Possible flash floods from unexpected squalls in the desert; rangers bellowing for us to get the hell out or chance drowning like proverbial rats.”

“I was scared shitless,” I remind.

“We all were,” Kurt is unwilling to grant me a monopoly on the emotion.

“Cold, pain, wet, fear,” I reiterate. “Mainly the fear. A mile below ground, a girdle of solid stone anchoring me to the spot, and I never once imagined the walls and ceilings were closing in. All the caves I’ve been in since, all the tight spaces I’ve maneuvered, and I’ve never known an abnormal dread of confinement … until now.”

This bracketing of shadow-filled trees jails me. So what did I expect? A picnic? My mother warned me, not only of Kurt but also of the Amazon. In Mom’s opinion, neither is a fit companion for man or beast.

“The claustrophobia will pass,” Kurt promises and smiles encouragement and sympathy. It’s a pleasant smile that further deepens the attractive dimple always evident in his right cheek, and it crinkles the laugh lines at the corners of his clear violet eyes. “You want to know my first impression of this place?” His smile converts to a self-mocking one. “Some thing, or somebody, out there watching me.”

The invisible hair along my arms begins to stand on end. I want to ask Kurt if his initial paranoia has passed, tell him my first impression is exactly the same, but we’re interrupted.

“Ah, here they come!” Jim says. He has just secured the plane with block and tackle. He points toward two young Indians, each in Khaki shorts and shirt, who materialize from the underbrush and head in our direction.

The encampment is off the runway, reached by a short path through towering trees whose continuing undefined menace enhances my sense of ill-being.

The main tent is straight out of The Arabian Nights. It’s a white conglomeration of canvas with three graceful arches that branch off from a large central dome. “Man by the name of James Rommel designs and manufactures these in Israel,” Jim says. “They look great, are easily set up, and are functional to boot.”

The interior is spacious, the atrium a communal area, while the three smaller offshoots act as sleeping quarters. “Unfortunately,” Jim reminds, during our short tour, “we’ve only a short time to enjoy these amenities before Captain Fortuna-Mata checks in with our final go-ahead from the Brazilian government. After that, it’s the great outdoors and hammocks hung from trees. You are still up to it, Brad?” Thankfully, it doesn’t sound like a dig. What it does sound like is an honest query from a man who figures I, city boy that I am, know my own capabilities; Jim willing to take my word for it.

“Ask me again later,” I parry tiredly. After what I’ve gone through to get this far, I just want to enjoy the luxurious accommodations that, at least for the moment, shield me from jungle heat, jungle oppressiveness, and jungle eyes.

“A drink?” Jim suggests. “After which I’ll lead the stampede to our bathing facilities.”

Kurt collapses in one camp chair, I in another.

“Unfortunately, it’s a very limited bar,” Jim apologizes. “Gin and tonic; gin or tonic.”

I find it inexplicably difficult to focus for long on what Jim says or does with Kurt around. Growing up, Kurt had been important in my life, and Jim is a new acquaintance. Now Kurt and I are going through the uncertainties of resuming a one-time relationship that went beyond friendship. Not that Jim hasn’t always been part of the total picture that brings us all together in the Amazon for this hook-up. Jim’s father, Daniel Kenner, was the initial impetus behind the first ill-fated Kenner-Mann-Lexly expedition, and Jim is the one to suggest this one of the heirs apparent. As the sons of the three missing men, we’re undeniably interested in fitting together the pieces, old and new, that accompany the mysterious disappearances of our fathers. Almost everyone else has lost interest or is dead, except for the reporters who wrote the brief flurry of news articles to accompany the recent discovery of the ill-fated first expedition’s assumed-final campsite, all of these years later.

My mother has little, good or bad, to say about Jim Kenner or about Jim’s father. That’s because my mother knows neither. Daniel Kenner left Brazil only infrequently. Although, he had been on hand for the opening of the Nitches Cave Complex in southeastern France, and he’d met and befriended Sebastian Mann while conducting an exploratory survey of the deTwip Cave Complex in New Zealand. That was all before the Manns met us Lexlys by becoming our neighbors in Santa Fe; before Sebastian Mann converted my father and me to cave exploration, or, as those in the know call it, “to spelunking”.

Although Jim is Daniel Kenner’s son, I would have guessed him of Teutonic heritage, Kurt of Brazilian, not the vice-versa reality. Jim’s blond hair is only a few shades darker than mine. Its deep leftward-sweeping bangs keep it perpetually hanging boyishly over his green eyes. Jim’s tan is the kind most blonds, in general, and I, in particular, would die for. There isn’t a peeling strip of dead skin, a burn spot, or even a splotch of unsightly heat rash; I, if I follow true to form, will progress from lobster pinks to variegated reds, culminating in an unflattering peel. Jim’s hands are as callused as expected on someone who spends long hours examining his extensive coffee and cacao holdings. Kurt chairs several space-technology conglomerates, and his hands are just beginning to heal and harden as a result of his recent time spent in helping to clear the jungle airstrip. I became acutely aware of Kurt’s new calluses during our previous night of hot and heavy sex.

My attention, back on Kurt, is met by Kurt’s smile in response. “Excuse my staring,” I apologize. “I’m afraid I’m daydreaming.”

“I was wondering if I’d sprouted a horrendous wart on the end of my nose,” Kurt says with a good-natured grin. While I find him amusing, charming, and thoroughly attractive, I have to be extremely careful of my emotions for all the reasons my mother would all too willingly list for me.

“Whatever ails any of us can be cured by a nice, leisurely skinny-dip,” Jim diagnoses after he’s drained the last of his drink.

I locate a fresh change of clothing in my pack that has been brought from the plane by one of the two young Indians who’d been there to greet us. Jim is ready with towels.

The stream isn’t all that far from camp, although I’d never have guessed, what with its extreme screening by thick greenery. Once reached, the running water holds out enticing invitation for welcome relief from the sticky heat by offering several deep pools, one at the base of each in a series of separate cascades.

“Piranha?” I ask, although already answered by the swiftness with which Jim strips to his tanned, muscled skin and to his large uncircumcised cock.

“Too many high leaps required from downstream for them to get this far,” Jim says and pauses long enough to use both palms to squeegee rills of sweat from his impressive torso. His pectorals are square, pretty much hairless, and mirror one another across his ravine-like cleavage. His belly is a stereotypical washboarding. “Thank God, they’re not salmon.”

Despite Jim’s admittedly Greco-Roman perfection, I can handle that, just as I’ve handled, on more than one occasion, showering with well-muscled jocks in any number of shower-room situations, never having been embarrassed by sprouting even the semblance of an I-like-men boner. There is, however, something about Kurt’s turn-on strip, revealing his chest and belly fanned with attractive whorls of blue-black hair, that makes my cock swell, even before he drops his underpants to reveal his cock still far bigger than I remember from my teenager days of experimentation with it.

“Going down!” Jim informs. It sounds disturbingly sexual to my ears, but it only notifies he positions himself on the first available stone slide that provides swiftest access to the pool a few feet below.

No denying I’m relieved when Kurt quickly follows Jim, thereby leaving me momentarily to gather my senses and try to get my threatening-to-run-rampant libido under better control. Even though, some things Jim has said throughout the course of the day leads me to suspect he not only knows of Kurt and my attraction for one another but also knows we’ve already acted upon it.

“Shy Brad, are you going to join us?” Kurt calls, after a minute. His voice, above the sounds of cascading water, gives my cock additional incentive to bulk up even more. If I wait for my dick to go completely soft, I’ll never join them.

“Coming down!” I announce, brought up short by sudden movement among a bit of greenery near the summit of the high elevation that rises on the far side of the stream.

My blue eyes dilate to discern the blacker black within black that better defines the contents of one particular shadow. Is it merely the way one tall bush combines with those of others to provide the semblance of a man?

My reflexes swirl me into a quick about-face, the result of sudden suspicions I’ve been set up for a surprise attack from the rear.

There’s no denying the man who stands there, even if his short black hair and flawless olive-skin complexion make him look more boy than man.

“I startled you,” he understates in beautifully articulated English.

“Yes.” With a hurried glance over my shoulder, I check the cliff top and sense that whomever was there – if anyone … is there no longer. I turn back to the possibly closer threat who says:

“I’m expected, no?” His slight build and short stature add to the illusion of youth.

How can he figure himself expected out here in the middle of nowhere?

“Captain Garcia Fortuna-Mata,” he introduces. Has he actually clicked his heels? Yes. Heels on the pair of scuffed English riding boots that are but part of a uniform that comes complete with the gold captain collar insignias that add credence to his being who he says.

“Yes,” I say, my mind blessedly coming out of its mad tumble. “You’re the local government representative.” My identification of him is verified by my vague recollection that Jim mentioned just such a captain being due.

“Exactly,” he confirms. He reaches for my towel and extends it in my direction.

I take what he offers and use it to hide my not-quite erection (closing the barn door after the horse is gone). I shake the captain’s hand with my free hand.

“I’m Brad Lexly,” I say, hopeful that, what with the ongoing distractions, the still swollen state of my dick doesn’t make the captain disconcerted.

“I know you’re Brad Lexly,” the captain says. Of course he knows. It’s his business to know. Then again, not even he’s privy to everything, because he asks: “Is there something the matter, Brad Lexly? Aside from the fact that you shouldn’t be overly embarrassed by the state of your cock; this jungle heat keeps my prick in constant erection.”

What do I say to that? I quickly run through my possibilities. As a city boy plopped down, quite literally, in the middle of a jungle, I have no real basis of comparison by which to tell whether or not anything I experience … including my swollen cock … is more than a result of alien territory.

My gut-instincts tells me I’d detected someone in the shadow, across the stream, as real as Captain Fortuna-Mata on this side.

“Yes, I’m afraid there might be something,” I reluctantly admit. The captain, like Kurt, has a dimple even when he doesn’t smile. “Something quite aside from the partial erection of my dick.”

The Battle of Hadrianopolis, 378 AD, Roman legions versus Gothic warriors — ancient historian Ammianus called it the worst defeat in Roman history since Cannae. Theologian Rufinus said it was the beginning of evils for the Roman Empire then and thereafter.

Fifteen thousand Romans, two-thirds of the Eastern Empire Legionary forces, lay dead or dying on a Thracian plain, but for four men on opposite sides of the battlefied, no conflicts of cultures, religions or territorial boundaries could keep them apart. Nor could the mighty river that separated their homelands — The Danube. Despite all obstacles, these men will find their way to conquer the Danube Divide.

*******************************

Perspective

It is a stench like no other: the foul odors of the battlefield, the end of it, the dead and the dying. Sights and sounds are equally gut-wrenching, but unlike the smells, they don’t stay with a man. It is the stench that permeates his being forever, constantly returning to haunt him, rekindled by the most common of unrelated aromas-meats raw or cooked, fruits fresh or rotten, flowering plants pleasant or pungent-all are channeled from his nose to his brain, reminding him of what he saw, what he heard, and what he did.

The scope of this battlefield is unimaginable. Fifteen thousand Romans lay dead or dying. Had the sun not set, another five thousand would have joined them. Only darkness prevented their Goth combatants from slaughtering those few who did escape.

Under a twilight sky shrouded in fire smoke, the aftermath and its smells and sounds create nightmares. Some of the cavalry horses continue their struggle to stand, with hooves and legs severed, with arrows imbedded in their flanks, gashes from swords and spears penetrating deep into their breasts. And in their struggles they mercilessly, and mercifully, kick and crush the men laying all around them, the dying. Screeches of animals are equaled in volume by the gasping groans and pitiful pleadings of humans begging for medical assistance or death, but powerless to bring about either. It is the Germanics, the victors, who will end their misery, if and when they choose to do so.

In the heat of an August afternoon, in the clouds of dust, in the smoke of grassfire on a Thracian battlefield, in the stench of a foreboding future for Rome itself, the Battle of Hadrianopolis, 378 AD, sent shockwaves throughout the Empire East and West, along with a clear message-the Empire’s superiority was no more. No borders safe, no city a refuge.

“Good grief, Theo! Who wrote this?”

“Who do you think?”

“Drusus.”

“Right you are, Gregoric. Looks like he has finally started his memoirs.”

“He’s so dramatic. And the smells. Always talking about the smells.”

“Yes, well, it is one of the few things he remembers correctly. Guess where he’s gone.”

“Into the city? Selling our crops?”

“Right again, Gregoric.”

“You better go see if you can talk some sense into him, Theo. He’ll be in the agora making speeches. Telling of long-forgotten battles nobody cares about.”

“Yes, and the merchants will be threatening to have him arrested for disrupting their business.”

“Just like last year. Poor Drusus. He’s old, tired, and confused. He should come and join us.”

“He will join us when he’s damned good and ready, Gregoric.”

“I know, Theo. I am sorry. Go speak to him. Try and convince him to come home, while I prepare the readers for our story.”

“Ah, good idea, Gregoric! Tell it from the barbarian point of view.”

“Yes, we will. Historians usually make us the villains, which is not necessarily the case.”

“Better try to limit the big story best we can, though. Tell more about us and less about everybody else.”

“Agreed, Theo. Romans and Germanics as background, but we are the story. Now, go, before Drusus gets beaten to a bloody pulp.”

Greetings from Ephesus, the once-glorious city on the eastern shores of the Aegean Sea. From time to time we are allowed (by powers we are forbidden to name) a visit to the villa three miles south of the city where Theo and I once lived-when we were of the flesh. Drusus lives here still, just an old man all alone in a house perched on a cliff one hundred feet above the beach. Make no mistake, we are sent here to protect Drusus from himself. He has lived too long and gets further confused if I try speaking to him, but usually he understands Theo.

Drusus takes his annual walk to Ephesus trying to sell crops no longer planted in fields no longer cultivated. The shipping agents are gone. The harbor itself is useless, filled with silt from the Cayster River. Ocean-going ships can no longer enter, but Drusus forgets.

Theo and I lived a good, full life, a span of more than seventy years. We are Germanics, paternal cousins, Theo four years younger than I. Theo is the son of Erenfried; I am of Magneric. We are nephews of their brother, Alberic, tribal leader of Tervingi Goths, and it was our ancestors who, sadly, ransacked Ephesus in 262 AD and burned the glorious temple of the goddess Artemis, whose temple was two times larger than the Parthenon in Athens. Emperor Constantine rebuilt Ephesus sixty-some-odd years later, but the Artemis temple ruins were left to rot. Poor Artemis, no longer the deity of choice!

A few years after the temple’s destruction, the original owners of our estate built this house. Some materials salvaged from the Artemis temple were used in its construction. From the west-side windows and porticoes of the house, we can see the Aegean and its rolling shimmer, smell its saline freshness. Many a glorious sunset did I watch from my portico, and at times I imagined I could see all the way to Thessalia. I couldn’t, of course, but I dreamed it because of a man who came from there. He is my part of the story. Theo is responsible for Drusus.

Titus Drusus Latinius is a Roman citizen, born in Macedonia to a military father, a Roman patrician killed in battle before Drusus reached the age of two. When eighteen years old, Drusus joined the Roman legions. Theo found him laying on the battlefield of which Drusus wrote. The scene was just as he described it. Gut-wrenching, even for us, the victors, Gothic tribes of Tervingi, Greuthingi and Alans, along with our temporary allies, the Huns. Our tale does not begin in a field near Hadrianopolis, but Drusus’s part in it does, so that is where Theo will start, if he ever…

“Oh, good, there you are. Is he coming?”

“Yes, Gregoric, but he will take his time. A three-mile walk, and you know how Drusus loves to meander along the shoreline.”

“Water brings him pleasant memories, Theo.”

“Me, too. Are we set?”

“Yes. Tell them how you met your handsome young Roman soldier.”