December 2024

Here’s my contribution to FLASH DANCES, the new collection of short (and very short) prose and poetry from Paradise Press, the publishing  arm of London’s Gay Authors Workshop

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Not Gay, Actually

by

David Godolphin

(WARNING: very Adult Content)

 

Dennis wasn’t gay but he liked having sex with men. It started at high school where boys experimented with each other as well as with girls. Dennis had his first girlfriend at fourteen, but he didn’t have full-on sex (‘penetration’ – as the teachers called it in Aids-Awareness classes) until his third girlfriend, Juliette, when he was fifteen and a half. ‘You’re my Romeo,’ Juliette told him, but he wasn’t: she dumped him after five months for a nineteen-year-old waiter from a local Italian restaurant who was Spanish and marginally more qualified to be her Romeo.

Dennis had sex with men in public lavatories and lay-bys on the county’s A-roads. It was mostly wanking and blowjobs – no ‘penetration’ – with Dennis always the receiver rather than the donor of oral sex. He was told he was well-hung and with his fly unzipped he was always quickly snapped up by men on the prowl.

One overweight middle-aged man in the woods beyond a lay-by expressed admiration for Dennis’s bum: ‘Very pert’, he said; ‘like a pair of peaches in a hammock’. Dennis didn’t understand how somebody’s backside could be pert or peachy, but seemingly it was a blessing to have one that was. Already on his knees, the fat man made Dennis turn round and started licking his crack, which was gross but thrilling. He kept an eye out for this man’s car, a BMW, on his drives around the county, and it was on their third encounter that Dennis learned that what this man liked to do was called ‘rimming’. The man told him a joke about a posh punter who offered a prostitute an extra fee to rim him and then farted in her face. When the tart called him a ‘filthy bastard’ the punter said: ‘Young lady, I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue up my arse’.

‘You can rim me if you like,’ said the man who told Dennis this joke.

‘No thanks, mate,’ Dennis replied. ‘I’m not gay, actually.’

‘Oh, honey, I think you are,’ the man said. ‘Actually. We’re all poofters here.’ Dennis avoided him after this meeting, although he sometimes saw his car in lay-bys and wondered if his tongue was up somebody else’s crack.

Dennis married Raquel, a petite brunette, when they were both nineteen and the first of their three children was on the way. Dennis had been a keen fisherman since boyhood; Raquel accompanied him on fishing trips, happy to read a paperback romance beside a river or a lake. Between spells of maternity leave she worked in various local shops. Dennis rose two rungs up the career ladder in the council offices.

He cruised the toilets and lay-bys more frequently as the years passed. After four pregnancies – there was a miscarriage between their second and third child – Raquel was not quite as petite and elasticity had moved from her vagina to her breasts.  Dennis also suspected that his bum might no longer be pert or peachy; nobody else tried to rim him.

The age of Aids gave way to the age of the internet. Aids was still there, of course, but people weren’t dying from it. With the internet came gay websites and chat-rooms. Online and on his smartphone Dennis used a false name and a photograph of a great-uncle who’d died in his twenties during the D-Day landings in France and bore a superficial resemblance to ‘Dirk’, as Dennis was known in this global community.

‘Dirk, 26, bi-curious,’ is how he advertised himself, although he was twenty-eight the first time he posted this byline and he continued using it into his thirties. Through the internet he learned about cruising locations further afield and gay saunas in various cities. Fishing trips provided a useful smokescreen, now that his family longer accompanied him to lakes and rivers: the kids became quickly bored, which made their mother irritable.

One summer they went to a holiday camp on the Sussex coast; the children were teenagers now, lazy and impossible to please. Raquel read a Danielle Steel under a sunshade while the kids hung out with other surly teens. Dennis drove off with his fishing gear and visited a sauna in Brighton. In the steam-room he was cruised by a man younger and prettier than the men he usually met in lay-bys and toilets. Dennis suddenly – and disturbingly – discovered that he knew how somebody’s bum could be pert, even peachy.

‘Hi,’ the young man said with a megawatt smile, ‘I’m Dirk. From Amsterdam.’

Dennis abandoned his alias in front of a genuine Dirk. ‘I’m Dennis,’ he admitted. ‘From Ashford. That’s in Kent.’

‘I came on Eurostar to Ashford,’ the young man informed him. ‘And from there on the diesel train to Brighton. Yesterday.’

In the course of the next forty-five minutes, on a scuzzy mattress in one of the cubicles, Dennis’s inhibitions – his limitations – went the way of his alias. Dirk from Amsterdam was the first man Dennis kissed, the first he performed oral sex on and the first whom he rimmed – hesitantly at first but then with a degree of relish.

That evening’s entertainment at the holiday camp was a Neil Diamond tribute act. Neil Diamond was Raquel’s number-one favourite singer. The tribute looked and sounded nothing like him. Raquel drank too many piña coladas and raised a subject that she had long kept simmering below the surface.

‘There’s another woman, isn’t there?’ she said, loud enough to be heard by several nearby tables. ‘These fishing trips – you don’t go fishing. You’re seeing some fancy woman.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said Dennis, surprising Raquel and their neighbours – and himself. ‘I’m gay, actually. I’m a poofter.’

You can buy FLASH DANCES from Amazon: Buy FLASH DANCES

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Here’s a  very short story which I entered – unsuccessfully – for a couple of ‘Flash Fiction’ competitions. WENDY when I first wrote it has become ALICE to create the jokey title. It is included in the Paradise Press anthology A Boxful of Ideas (not easy to find – we’re having production issues at Paradise Press). In the version adapted for the US market she becomes SUEANN.

The cover girl is my American friend Yolanda: isn’t she gorgeous? And don’t get any naughty ideas: she’s a model, not a swinger!

 

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ALICE SWINGS (UK version)

by David Gee

Alice had read about swingers in books and magazines. A boy she’d dated in high school had showed her a movie – a mainstream movie, not porno – about wife-swapping. She wondered what it would be like to be a swinger, but married to a devout Jehovah’s Witness there wasn’t much likelihood of it happening; Mike wouldn’t want to swap her for anything except maybe a snazzier Harley Davison. Next to God her husband loved his motorcycle more than anything – more than her, she sometimes felt – so it was kind of appropriate that when God called Michael home He sent a twenty-ton truck to knock him off his cherished old Harley.

After two months of wondering where her life was meant to go, Alice sold the house and rented a small third-floor studio flat in a London suburb. Within a month she met Ronald in the local corner-shop. Ron drove a delivery van; he wasn’t a churchgoer; he had two ex-wives.

And he was a swinger. He took Alice to a party in the penthouse of one of Dockland’s newest high-rises. Their hosts were a super-smooth litigator with a top law firm and his glamour-puss wife who wrote the society page in a fashion magazine. They served quality wines and a finger buffet. The background music was current West End show tunes. Ronald took Alice upstairs to a modishly decorated bedroom with twin king-size beds; the sheets were the finest Egyptian cotton. Ron and Alice watched two other couples on the beds and then let the other couples watch them. Alice left the party feeling like a schoolgirl who’s got away with something fairly naughty.

Next time the party was in a first-floor apartment above an Indian take-away nowhere near the river. Their hosts were a fireman and his wife who worked on the check-out in Asda. They served beer and packet snacks. The hi-fi was playing yesteryear country hits. Their spare bedroom was not stylish; the bed was a scuffed mattress with no base and no sheets. Ronald watched while two other men took care of Alice and another woman. Then Alice watched while Ron took care of the other woman and the two men took turns taking care of Ron. The woman wanted to take care of Alice, but Alice said she wasn’t ready for this.  She left the party feeling she’d participated in something close to what the ancient Greeks and Romans were said to have done. Sodom and Gomorrah also came to her mind with a guilty flashback to her previous life with Michael.

‘Do all the swingers do that?’ she asked Ronald in the van, driving home. ‘The gay stuff, the dykey stuff.’

‘A lot of them do,’ he said.

‘Which do you prefer?’

‘I like all of it,’ Ron said.

‘It’s not what I was expecting,’ said Alice.

‘What did you expect?’

‘Not that.’

Alice stopped seeing Ronald. She gave notice to her landlord and moved back to the country. She started going to church again and soon met a nice widower. His wife had died in a car crash and he’d given up driving. Alice didn’t mind doing the driving in her little Toyota. She always drove – and now lived – within safe limits.

 

 

 

We’re having production issues at Paradise Press, so A BOXFUL OF IDEAS may be hard to buy. Try e-bay!

 

 

 

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SueAnn goes swinging (US)

SueAnn had read about swingers in books and magazines. A boy she’d dated in high school had showed her a movie – a mainstream movie, not porno – about wife-swapping. She wondered what it would be like to be a swinger, but married to a devout Southern Baptist there wasn’t much likelihood of it happening; Mike wouldn’t want to swap her for anything except maybe a snazzier Harley Davison. Next to God her husband loved his motorcycle more than anything – more than her, she sometimes felt – so it was kind of appropriate that when God called Michael home He sent a twenty-ton truck to knock him off his cherished old Harley.

After two months of wondering where her life was meant to go, SueAnn sold the house and rented a small third-floor walk-up in the city. Within a month she met Herb in the local 7-11. Herb drove a pick-up; he wasn’t a churchgoer; he had three ex-wives.

And he was a swinger. He took SueAnn to a party in the duplex penthouse of one of the city’s newest high-rises. Their hosts were a super-smooth litigator with a top law firm and his glamor-puss wife who did a social page in the city newspaper. They served quality wines and a finger buffet. The background music was current Broadway show tunes. Herb took SueAnn upstairs to a modishly decorated guestroom with twin king-size beds; the sheets were the finest Egyptian cotton. Herb and SueAnn watched two other couples on the beds and then let the other couples watch them. SueAnn left the party feeling like a schoolgirl who’s gotten away with something pretty naughty.

Next time the party was in a first-floor walk-up above a Mexican take-out. Their hosts were a fireman and his wife who stacked shelves in Walmart. They served beer and packet snacks. The hifi was playing yesteryear country hits. Their guestroom was not stylish; the bed was a scuffed mattress with no base and no sheets. Herb watched while two other men took care of SueAnn and another woman. Then SueAnn watched while Herb took care of the other woman and the two men took turns taking care of Herb. The woman wanted to take care of SueAnn, but SueAnn said she wasn’t ready for this.  She left the party feeling she’d participated in something close to what the ancient Greeks and Romans were said to have done. Sodom and Gomorrah also came to her mind with a guilty flashback to her previous life with Michael.

“Do all the swingers do that?” she asked Herb in the pick-up, driving home. “The gay stuff, the dykey stuff.”

“A lot of them do,” he said.

“Which do you prefer?”

“I like all of it,” Herb said.

“It’s not what I was expecting,” said SueAnn.

“What did you expect?”

“Not that.”

SueAnn stopped seeing Herb. She gave notice to her landlord and moved back to the country. She started going to church again and soon met a nice widower. His wife had died in a car crash and he’d given up driving. SueAnn didn’t mind doing the driving in her little Toyota. She always drove – and now lived – within safe limits.

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