Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction
232
Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction
232Paperback
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781627780056 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Start Publishing LLC |
| Publication date: | 01/07/2014 |
| Pages: | 232 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
R.D. Cochrane has published short stories and two novels: Coventry Christmas and Coventry Wedding. Together, they've co-published several novels including The Deal, It Had To Be You, When You Don't See Me, I'm Your Man, and Someone Like You. Both live in Houston, TX.Timothy J. Lambert is a prolific writer whose stories have appeared in Best Gay Love Stories and The Mammoth Book of New Gay Erotica. He also selected and introduced Best Gay Erotica 2007.
Read an Excerpt
How good a party can it possibly be at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon?” “It’s an L.A. party. You’ll see,” Andy responded. They were talking car to car, Andy of course having a car phone, too. Why didn’t everyone?
“The only reason I would even dream of going,” Vic admitted, “is that hot guy from New York who works for Long Meadow Records. He left a message at the hotel saying he’d be there. For him it’s a work assignment.”
“What guy? Is he cute?” Andy asked. “You think I’d go all this way for a schmuck?” “Speaking of schmucks...” “Haven’t seen his.” “Possibly you will today, since I expect this soiree will quickly
devolve into an O-R-G-Y.” “At four in the afternoon? Tea and crumpets time?” “It’s a Hollywood Hills party, Vic. Wake up!”
150 new kid in town: 1977
felice picano 151
“You ‘expect?’—or you plan to incite?—an orgy?”
“Don’t have to. The L______ brothers will be there.” Naming actors Vic had heard of—well, two of them. “All three will be present,” Andy went on. “One L______ brother among good-looking gay men is a certifiable orgy flint. Three of them? It might get out of hand.”
“Good thing I wore clean underwear,” Vic murmured then realized in an orgy it wouldn’t stay on long. Maybe he should ink his name onto the back label when he disrobed, like parents did for their kindergartners’ gloves and hats?
“It’s not that far now,” Andy insisted. “Only to Mount Olympus.”
“Isn’t that Northern Greece?”
“Try southern Laurel Canyon. Is that you in the pale-blue Caddy limo?”
“Why? Where are you?”
“Directly ahead. In the Sixty-three charcoal Lincoln Conti- nental.”
“You mean the one that looks like the Kennedy assassination vehicle?”
“La même exactement! Okay, that is you. I can see your lip gloss reflected in my mirror.”
“Liar!” “Twat! Have your driver follow me.” Andy hung up. “Meade, follow this guy ahead of us. The dark gray job,” Vic
specified. “He’ll take us right to the house we’re going to.” The phone rang again two minutes later: it was Vic’s pal
Gilbert in Manhattan. As required, since Gilbert was his best friend, Vic reported
the nearly sexual incident with the super good-looking room service waiter at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“The waiter was probably just surprised by your openness,”
Gilbert opined. “He might be available. Be ready for him.” “Ready? What do I do if he says yes? Tip him when he arrives
at five and comes at five-fifteen?” “Depends how big his tip is!” Gilbert chortled. “Never mind:
a fifty. Unless he reciprocates. Then at least a C-note.” “Gilbert, you see it now, don’t you? It’s all in some kind of perverted inverse ratio. The more disastrous the film business angle I’m involved in becomes, the more sex I seem to get out
here.” “Inverse ratio? Oh you mean like, ‘the angle of the dangle is
equal to the heat of the meat?’” “I go into any bar here on Santa Monica Bee and they’re
lined up, these amazing pretty boys in a row. Each of them ripe for the plucking by guess who? At this moment Andy is taking me to a Mount Olympus party he assures me will be a stupen- dous, star-studded orgy.”
“You’re never coming back, are you?” Gilbert asked.
“Last night before I’m to see Perfect Paul, fourth night in a row, there’s this dinner party that Ed, the executive producer, is giving in his humongous, half-timbered castle somewhere in the Hills above the Sunset Strip. My driver is off for the latter part of the night, so I have them call a taxi to take me back to the hotel. Who shows up? Some twenty-four-year-old unemployed actor. Muscled. Darkly handsome. Green eyes. Thick, chestnut hair that falls like it’s been ironed. Ratty surfer T-shirt that looks glued on with perspiration and jizz. Ditto for the ripped surfer shorts. Shorts and flip-flops, for chrissake, Gil! At night! Left nothing to the imagination.”
“And we know that as an author you’ve got a great imagina- tion. But...you’re about to see Perfect Paul?” Gilbert reminded him.
“Exactly, so I’m shut-mouth quiet until we’re two streets from
152 new kid in town: 1977
felice picano 153
the hotel on Sunset when Googie suddenly pulls over to the curb, stops, turns around and says could he ask me a question.”
“No!”
“Honest to Grace Jones truth, Gilberto. So I say, ask away. Seems that a nice-looking, middle-aged fellow the night before gave Surfer-Dude Taxi-man a Cuban cigar as a tip and said he’d been thinking about what that cigar would look like in the driv- er’s mouth the entire ride home.”
“Shut! Up!”
“The Surfing Cabbie says he stripped off the cellophane and put the Cubano cigar in his mouth for the guy, who tipped him and got out.”
“Uh-huh?” Even clever Gilbert couldn’t see where this was going.
“So the cab driver gets all philosophical and asks, ‘What do you think that was really about?’”
“You mean,” Gilbert asked, “because Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?”
“Looking at this guy, Gillo, and how he was more and mostly less dressed, Freud does not at all apply. I was bored and a little ’stunada from dinner’s fourteen wines and I said the first thing that came into my mind. Which was, ‘Your fare wanted you to blow him.’”
“You didn’t!” Gil’s voice rose two octaves. “I was bored. I was high. What would you think?” “I’d think it! I wouldn’t say it.” “Well, I said it. ‘Really?’ Driver Googie asks, not at all
offended. I said ‘Really!’ and then for verisimilitude, I added, ‘Your fare probably was holding some other twenties in his hand, like this.’ I splayed out my hand with three of them, one for the ride and two others.”
“Oy! The writer and his verisimilitude,” Gilbert groaned.
“And the Surfer-Dude says, ‘He was holding them out. Just like that!’”
Table of Contents
vii Introduction • Timothy J. Lambert 1 Hello Aloha • Tony Calvert
17 How to Be Single at a Wedding • David Puterbaugh
28 Three Things I Pray • Trebor Healey 46 On These Sheets • Steven Reigns 50 Victoria • Erik Orrantia 66 Nude Beach • Paul Lisicky
71 Tea • Jeffrey Ricker
84 A Royal Mess • Taylor McGrath
100 Struck • ’Nathan Burgoine
122 Touch Me in the Morning • Greg Herren
133 Foundations • Timothy Forry
149 New Kid in Town: 1977 • Felice Picano
163 The Green Sweater • Mark G. Harris
174 Rochester Summers • Craig Cotter
185 Bothered, Bewildered • Rob Williams
190 Meditation • Timothy J. Lambert
198 Symposium • Andrew Holleran
215 Afterword • R. D. Cochrane