Best Gay Erotica 2012

TRANSLATIONS Roscoe Hudson

I hadn’t been in Mannheim forty-eight hours and I was already being screamed at. The passengers on the Strassenbahn looked up from their books, newspapers and grocery lists and stared at me while I fumbled through my pockets and backpack for my Fahrkarte, the tiny ticket stub that proved I wasn’t a fare jumper. The Fahrkartenkontrolluer, a hunky man dressed in a navy-blue train conductor’s uniform adorned with shiny gold buttons and a matching blue cap, glowered at me, his gunmetal eyes vacant and intractable like those of a hawk. He stood in front of me rigid and silent with his lips tightly pursed in a thin line as he breathed through his nose. His pale white cheeks flared.

“Keine Fahrten fus freies!” he demanded.

“I just had it. It’s here somewhere.”

“Die Strassenbahn ist nur fur zahlende Passagiere.”

The Fahrtenkontrolluer sighed and turned his head from side to side until he heard his neck crack. His slightly bent Roman nose and chiseled square jaw gave him a classic Teutonic profile. He scanned the faces of the other passengers while I turned my pockets inside out.

My passport and directions to Hans Krieger’s apartment were the only items in the pocket of my blazer. Aside from a couple of euros and the wrapper from a pastry I ate for breakfast, the pockets of my jeans were empty. I wiped sweat from my forehead and continued searching. I had been warned by friends and a few colleagues at the university where I taught that Germans prized efficiency, strictly adhered to rules and had little tolerance for those who made excuses for violating them. Ticketless passengers on public transportation suffered severe penalties.

The transit system in Germany was like nothing we had in Chicago. German rails were immaculate and ran on time. Back home a person couldn’t access the El without paying first. Here one could casually board the tram and ride for free without anyone knowing. The driver didn’t ask for a fare or check tickets. That was the job of a special group of law enforcement who hopped on and off the Strassenbahn and asked for tickets with the same diligence as militiamen patrolling the border between the United States and Mexico demanding verifiable proof of citizenship. I had purchased my ticket just after I left the bakery, and spotting the tram approaching a couple of blocks away, sprinted to the stop. The officer boarded two stops after I got on. Burly and broad, his uniform clung to him like second skin and left little to the imagination. His biceps, deltoids and quadriceps, massive and round, seemed ready to burst out of his clothes with each movement he made. His face was frozen in a scowl that enhanced his authoritative, ultramasculine allure. I felt I was being berated by a Tom of Finland drawing and imagined him shouting at me while dressed only in lace-up Jobmaster boots and a metal cock ring. My hard-on bulged in my jeans the entire time he was yelling at me; I placed my backpack in my lap so neither he nor the other passengers could see. I rifled through my bag while the fantasy played out in my mind.

“Ich verliere die Geduld. Zeigen Si emir Ihre Karte.”

“I can’t understand you. I bought a ticket. Just give me a minute to find it.”

“Alle Passagiere mussen eine Karte kaufen oder eine Geld-strafe zahlen!”

I started emptying the contents of my backpack onto the seat next to me: my diary, an English-German dictionary, a gay German travel guide and two novels by Dixon Weatherby, the reclusive expatriate black gay author I had come to Germany in hopes of interviewing for my new book. The bag also contained lots of protein bar wrappers and various receipts, but no tram ticket.

“Stellen Sie Ihre Karte her oder gehen Sie herzlich die Stras-senbaun aus.”

“Look man, I’m not a fare jumper. I just got here. Let me check my backpack again.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. Silence settled over the idling tram. The longer the search for my ticket took the smaller I felt. My horny fantasy faded and my penis became flaccid. It was eight o’clock on a drowsy gray October morning, and the irate German officer barking at me had reached his limit. His eyes widened and a large vein appeared in his throat like a lightning bolt shocking the sky.

“In Deutschland you will speak Deutsch!” he roared.

Sweat trickled down my back. “It’s in here. I’ll find it.”

“Produce your ticket now, sir!”

“I will if you give me a chance.”

“Your passport, sir.”

I gave him my passport and after he checked it he whipped out a pad holstered on his belt, scribbled on it, tore off a page and stuffed it into my palm. “You owe the city of Mannheim five hundred Euros. You will please pay by month’s end.”

He bounded off the tram and walked along the crowded sidewalk, taking long confident strides with his back straight and his chin high. Drenched in sweat and trembling, I kept my eyes on his tree trunk thighs and beefy bodybuilder’s ass until the Strassenbahn turned a corner and he was out of sight.

One of my colleagues in the English department was born and raised in Berlin. When I told him I was going to spend a few weeks in Mannheim trying to persuade Dixon Weatherby to share his life story with me, rather than express doubts that I would ever be able to connect with the stubbornly reclusive writer, he laughed and said, “Mannheim? Don’t blink, you’ll miss it.” He was right. The city has a population of over three-hundred thousand, and though many of its imposing granite and limestone Baroque buildings predate the seventeenth century, even the gay travel guide I toted in my backpack had little to recommend in the city. The only two places for gays to hang out were a bar called Connexion and a bathhouse.

After my unsuccessful first attempt to arrange a meeting with Dixon Weatherby, I went back to my cramped studio apartment near the Luisenpark, wrote in my diary and listened to Rosetta Stone, but I couldn’t concentrate. Attempting to study German only made me think of the officer on the tram and how the situation both demeaned and aroused me. Though the officer’s caustic behavior enraged me, I couldn’t deny how turned on I was by him. If ever a body was made for fucking, it was his. I fantasized about him stomping into the studio and pinning me down on the bed, his massive body slamming against me while his long, fat dick drilled my asshole. I took the travel-sized bottle of lube from beside my bed, slicked up my palm and let my hand do what the officer couldn’t. I tugged and squeezed all nine hard inches of my cock, mixing my precome with the lube so my dick would be slicker. The more I fantasized about the officer cursing me out in German while he raped my ass from behind, the more furiously I stroked my hard-on, tightening my hand, twisting and flicking my dick from root to tip. My butt bounced on the sweat-soaked sheets. I imagined the officer rolling me onto my back and plunging every stiff inch of his love muscle into my quivering ass while I locked my thighs around him tightly and held on to his oversized shoulders. My hips bounced off the mattress, my balls jumped toward my pelvis, and a fountain of come shot into the air, glazing my stomach. Released, I fell into a nap, waking just as twilight was darkening to night. I dined on schnitzel at a small restaurant around the corner, then walked to Connexion.

What the travel guide described as a bar was actually an upscale coffee shop that also served beer and other alcoholic beverages. Furnished as it was with polished mahogany tables and chairs and high stools at the bar, I was more likely to meet a grad student studying Hegel than the brick-house muscle daddies I had hoped to find there. Around fifteen men, most of them beanpoles in skinny jeans and polo shirts, sat around smoking and drinking lager. When I, the only black man in the place, walked in, they abandoned their conversations and watched me as I picked up a bar magazine from a rack by the door and took a seat the bar. A pulsating remix of Lady Gaga songs played through the speakers and the murmur of casual conversation gradually increased.

The bartender, a scrawny sweet-faced guy with twinkling eyes and a gauge in each ear, gave me a quick nod. I ordered a lager, a Konig; he set a foamy pilsner glass in front of me. I took one sip and scrunched up my face.

The bartender chuckled. “You don’t like this beer?”

I was grateful he spoke English. “It’s not my favorite.” I wiped my mouth with the side of my hand.

A husky voice from behind said, “You should try a radler. It’s sweeter.”

I turned and came face-to-face with the Fahrkartenkontrolluer from that morning. He was wearing a red muscle T-shirt, snug jeans that showed off his meaty thighs and butt, white and red Pumas and a leather wristband. His shiny blond hair was short and wavy. Since our interaction earlier that day, he had grown a five o’clock shadow. Even in casual clothes he appeared menacing, as likely to crack my windpipe as give me a firm handshake.

“A radler?” I asked with a sneer, still nursing my anger from the incident on the tram. “Is that another lager?”

“Lager with Sprite.” He looked past me to the bartender and said, “Bilden Sie es zwei,” before sitting on the stool beside me and propping his elbows on the bar, flexing football-sized biceps.

The bartender mixed the radlers and set them in front of us on green felt pads.

As I reached for my glass, the officer gently put his hand on my wrist. “We must have a toast first.” He lifted his glass. “Willkommen nach Deutschland.”

“Danke,” I said, grudgingly and took a sip. He was right, the radler was sweet.

“Good?” the bartender asked.

I nodded and the bartender waited on a customer at the other end of the bar.

I thought about ignoring the officer and moving, but I didn’t want him to know how irritated I was. Since he had already paid for my drink abandoning him would have been rude, and in spite of our earlier confrontation I was still fiercely attracted to him. He was the hottest man in the bar by far; my dick started to get hard imagining what he packed in those tight jeans.

“So what do you do when you aren’t harassing foreigners on the tram?”

He chuckled. I was glad to see he had a sense of humor. “I don’t think I was harassing you. I had a job to do; you violated the rules.”

I tried to be nice but I could feel anger bubbling within me. “I wasn’t lying. I bought a ticket.”

“And where was that phantom ticket, my friend? Hmm? I never saw it.”

He was a smug bastard. But the image of him naked in boots and a cock ring formed in my mind again.

“I am Rolf,” he said.

“Vaughn.”

His hand was thick and strong, not like my slim, artistic hand, which he squeezed tightly, establishing himself as the alpha male. Rolf was being congenial now: the muscles in his face softened and his eyes had lost their steely gaze. He behaved like two completely different men—a burly asshole in the morning and a flirtatious muscle stud at night.

He gulped his radler then asked, “What has brought you to Mannheim, Vaughn? Military work?”

“I’m a professor in the U.S., and I came here to locate an expatriate writer. I was on my way to see his former editor when you gave me that undeserved ticket.”

“What does this man write?” he asked before he took another drink.

“Fiction. He published three novels back in the 1980s.”

Rolf chuckled and wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “I’m sorry. I don’t see much point in making up stories.”

His laugh faded quickly after he looked at my face.

“I apologize if I have offended you.”

“We just can’t seem to get off to a good start, can we?” I sipped my radler and thought about going back to my apartment.

Rolf scratched his scruffy chin. “He must be a very important writer if you are leaving your work at university.”

“Dixon Weatherby. He’s a black gay writer. Not as famous as James Baldwin but just as influential.”

“I am sure you will find him. There are many gay black men in Deutschland, though none quite as handsome as you.” He winked at me and took another drink.

The bar had become crowded and noisy. Rolf patted me on the back and said, “Finish your drink. We will take a walk.” The timbre of his voice lowered under the weight of furtive plans I could only guess at. He squeezed my thigh, and the tiny lines around his eyes arched.

A few minutes later Rolf and I were strolling down the dark streets of Mannheim. I zipped up my jacket and walked with my hands deep in my pockets. Rolf’s bullet-sized nipples grew erect beneath his tight shirt. We made our way along the dark avenues past closed flower shops, cafés, produce stands and Apothekes. The facades of the Gothic buildings looked like ogres grimacing in their sleep. We passed the apartment building where I stayed and Rolf pointed out places of interest that I should see, but I hardly heard him. My attention was focused on his bodybuilder’s physique. He was a walking stack of hefty, robust muscle, and as we walked down the sidewalk an occasional passerby gave him an incredulous wide-eyed stare—and his crotch was just as humpy as the rest of him. I imagined a flaccid cock the size of a bratwurst coiled inside of those jeans, straining against the rough, unyielding denim, eager for my plump moist lips and wide mouth.

Rolf faced me. The devilish gleam in his eyes was unmistakable. “You are enjoying Deutschland?”

“So far. Except for that ticket.”

Rolf smirked. “Yes, that ticket. Perhaps you would prefer I speak only English?”

“Your English is excellent, not like my German.”

“You will learn. I spent time in America as a boy. And my last boyfriend was American. From Atlanta.”

“What was he like?”

“He was in the military. He was closeted. It was not a good situation.”

“Was he black?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering.”

“You think all German men like black men?”

“I’ve heard lots of stories.”

Rolf chuckled, staring at the ground while we continued to walk. “You Americans are all the same. You denounce stereotypes yet when you come to Deutschland all you want is to visit concentration camps and guzzle beer.” He exhaled a long breath then said, “Yes, he was black.”

“So you like black men, huh?”

His eyes lit up and he gave me a playful smack on the ass. We came to a flight of stairs in a hatch located between two buildings. A sign above the stairs read WC. Rolf said he had to pee. I followed him down the stairs, hoping to get a glimpse of his dick. The dimly lit restroom looked large enough to accommodate a dozen men but Rolf and I were the only ones there. The restroom’s spaciousness could be attributed to its lack of urinals; men relieved themselves on a decaying concrete wall, below a slim metal cistern affixed about seven feet from the ground. Water trickled from tiny holes in the cistern and down the wall into a two-inch reservoir where the wall met the floor, periodically flushing the piss into the sewer. Three grimy toilet stalls were located to the left of the wall. The whole place stunk of piss, shit and come.

Rolf and I approached the wall like gunslingers in the Old West, each eyeing the other warily to see not only who would make the first move but who packed the biggest piece. We unzipped, and our cocks flopped out—his uncut and thick as a cucumber; mine cut and semihard. Our piss streams—his amber, mine golden—pattered as they made contact with the wall. He looked over at my cock, raised an eyebrow and nodded approvingly. “Very nice.”

“Yours, too.” I breathed a little faster and licked my bottom lip. “Real thick.”

Once the last drops of pee piddled out of our piss slits, Rolf’s face enflamed, coming to life with lust. My cock pointed heavenward and I stroked it. He started tugging on his fat cock too, forcefully yanking the thick foreskin back and forth over the wide bullet head of his dick. When it was fully hard his prick was nearly as long as his forearm. Aside from being the largest cock I had ever seen, it looked as menacing and dangerous as Rolf did. I stopped jerking my own hard dick and stood transfixed by Rolf’s manhood. My mouth watered as I thought about the sloppy blow job I hankered to give him, but I felt phantom pains in my rectum when I imagined his cock pounding my hole. As threatening as Rolf appeared, I knew his cock was capable of more violence than both of his powerful hands. It was a cock designed to dole out punishments—more like a truncheon than a phallus—yet sheer pleasure, I reasoned, existed on the other side of that violence.

Rolf stared me down and curled his upper lip. “Suck me.”

My knees crashed on the damp asphalt and I widened my mouth to accommodate Rolf’s stiff member. I grasped his shaft as I laved his dick, taking in only the head at first. Though his penis was hard as steel, the skin was soft and smooth, free of any marks or scars. Light blond hairs covered his balls. I cupped them in my free hand; they were orbicular, full and heavy, more like the testicles of livestock than those of a man. Rolf raised his shirt over his head and behind his neck, exposing the globes of his shoulders, his hairy broad chest and flat, hard abdominal muscles. Blue-green veins crossed the landscape of his torso like rivers drawn on a map.

“You like my big cock?” he growled.

Rolf’s metallic accent made my anus pucker. I stroked his dick from midshaft up to the head, squeezing it just enough to allow his precome to ooze out and pool on my tongue.

He rubbed his stubby nipples while I sucked him off. The squelching sound from my mouth competed with the incessant trickling of water out of the cistern. Rolf slowly began to thrust his dick in and out of my mouth before he grunted something to himself in German: “Saugen Sie mich gutes.” Liberated by the sound of his native language echoing off the crumbling walls, Rolf put both hands on my head, as if grasping a basketball, and rammed his dick into my mouth as far as it could go. I gasped and gagged, fearing I would throw up. Instead, I relaxed the muscles of my throat and inhaled deeply. I glanced up and saw the wrathful face of the man who had ticketed me earlier that day. Rolf had become the brute again, the barbarian, mercilessly fucking my gaping wet mouth no matter what injury it caused me. My jaw ached and my lips became numb. I was powerless, kneeling at the altar of his pleasure.

Rolf’s hips swayed. He planted his left palm on top of my head and with his right hand tweaked one of his nipples. I gripped his ass, squeezing and pushing it as he forced himself in and out of my mouth. Beads of his sweat drizzled on me as he chugged like a steam engine, pumping into my mouth all the way to my tonsils. A frothy mix of saliva and precome lubricated his cock, slid down my chin and puddled on the floor.

“Sie mochten meinen Samen essen? Huh, baby? You eat hot German come, yes?”

Before I even thought of answering, he crammed my mouth with cock again. My body quaked as I stroked my own lead dick and anticipated Rolf’s gloppy load. He grunted and puffed as his thrusts quickened. Then his glutes clenched, he lifted himself on his toes and a deluge of briny come filled my mouth. I kept sucking his dick, determined to draw every drop of semen out of him. I breathed in the must saturating his pubic hair, the fetid restroom, the sharp odor of my own sweat. I jerked my cock until the skin chafed and the head turned red. I rolled Rolf’s come in my mouth, savoring its salty flavor, its viscid texture, yet I still couldn’t come. My lust was immured within me, trapped behind impenetrable layers of organs, bones and flesh.

Seeming to sense my difficulty, Rolf bent over and pinched my nipples hard then whispered, “Come for your man, baby. Ich wunsche Sie ejakulieren.”

They were the words my body had been waiting for, the tongue of the Fatherland, the language I couldn’t access yet longed to dwell within; the language that, to me, held the sleek, dark aura of a pair of steel-toed boots plodding on pavement, commanding, indifferent, inviolable. It was Daddy’s slap across the face and his loving embrace, his admonishment and his approval. Thunder in the night, a rain-soaked forest at dawn.

Rolf’s thick cock muffled my groans as I bucked and splattered the asphalt with bolts of come. When I jerked out the last remaining shots I looked behind Rolf and saw three men standing near the stairs watching us with their hands on their dicks, picking up where I left off.

The next day I decided to visit Hans Krieger again, hoping I would catch him in his office and persuade him to put me in touch with Dixon Weatherby. Weatherby’s novels had served as the genesis of my dissertation several years before. My plan was to draw on his work and that of Baldwin and other black gay writers for a book on black gay aesthetics in literature. His fiction focused on black gay men who unabashedly pursued their sexual desires with men of all races. They were stories of love and lust, race and identity, that unfolded in such varied settings as backwoods speakeasies in the deep South and posh hotels in the center of majestic European cities. I had already completed much of my work on the book, but I needed Weatherby’s insights, the story behind the story, and I wanted to get them while the eighty-five-year-old author was still alive and in good health.

Just after breakfast, with my backpack over my shoulder and a hot cup of coffee in hand, once again I raced to the Stras-senbaun just in time to catch it before it took off. I sipped my coffee and flipped through pages of Dixon Weatherby’s first novel when I heard a gruff voice ask, “Mag ich Ihre Farkarte?”

Rolf stood before me in his uniform, clean shaven, stone faced and humorless. The gold buttons on his blazer shined like tiny suns against his blue uniform.

I looked him up and down, and unable to mask the salacious delight I felt, gave my crotch a conspicuous tug. “Hey. You get home all right last night?”

“Ihre Farkarte, bitte.” He raised his voice and translated in a sanctimonious tone: “Your ticket, please.”

The tram slowed to a stop. Passengers disembarked and vanished among the network of aged stone buildings; new passengers boarded, looking just as washed out and colorless as the sky. Rolf stood out like a blot on a canvas. He frowned, locked his arms over his barrel chest and glared at me, his eyes as gray as Mannheim’s persistently gloomy weather.

Every good feeling I had slid off my face. I hung my head for a moment, not sure if I wanted to get off the train or throw my hot coffee in Rolf’s face. “I should have known,” I grumbled under my breath before I reached into my backpack and took out my ticket.

He took a quick look and handed the ticket back to me. “This is expired.”

“Say what?” My voice was weighed down with exasperation. “It can’t be. I just bought it.”

Rolf thrust the ticket in front of my face. Just as he said, it bore yesterday’s date in faded red print: the ticket I couldn’t find, the emblem of the miscommunication that brought us together.

“You require a new ticket, Sir.”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Rolf?”

“Die Strassenbahn ist nur fur zahlende Passagiere.”

I crossed my arms and leaned back in my seat, defiant as a child. “Well, I guess I don’t have a fucking ticket.”

He snatched his pad off his belt and scribbled, pressing so hard I could hear the pen traversing the page from edge to edge. He ripped off the ticket and handed it to me then hopped off the tram at the next stop.

In my apartment later than night I searched the Internet for the name and telephone number of someone in the Mannheim transit office I could file a complaint with. In spite of my attraction to him I thought Rolf should be censured in some way. In addition to getting a second fine on the tram, I was unable to persuade Hans Krieger to put me in contact with Dixon Weatherby. I sat in his ornate living room for over an hour while Krieger, a foppish seventy-year-old with a gray toupee, served me tea and crustless sandwiches as he passed lecherous glances over my body. When he sensed that I wouldn’t be going to bed with him he told me the possibility of meeting Weatherby was out of the question and that I should give up my quest and return to America. On my way home from Herr Krieger’s apartment I got caught in a cold rainstorm and ended up soaked. I arrived at my studio seething, fully prepared to pack my suitcases and catch the next available flight to Chicago. But first I wanted to exact revenge on Rolf.

I took off my wet clothes, put on T-shirt, boxers and socks, and sat on the edge of my bed assaulting the keys of my laptop as I thought about Rolf and his duplicity. I searched for words and phrases in my English-German dictionary while I typed a long angry email to the director of the transportation department, exposing Rolf as an egomaniac who preyed on Americans. In the midst of my cyber-screed, I heard pounding on my front door. I got up and looked through the peephole to see Rolf, still dressed in his uniform, standing in the hall. He stared back at me. I flung open the door.

“Gutenabend, Vaughn.”

“If you’re not here to apologize, Rolf, you need to go.”

“Gutenabend is ‘good evening’ in German. Gutenabend.”

“Look, whatever kind of games you’re playing I’m not interested.”

“Let me in.”

“You need to go.”

He stared at me hard and lowered his voice. “You can see I’m cold and wet from the rain. I’d like to talk to you. Let me in.”

Once I let him pass and closed the door he stood in the center of my apartment and with his back turned to me began to take off his hat and jacket. After he pitched them into a corner he yanked his long-sleeved, light blue shirt out of his trousers, unbuttoned it and tossed it on the pile. The wide span of his nude back enlivened my cold-shrunken penis. I didn’t want him to turn around and see my tumescent cock poking through my boxers, and I didn’t want him in my apartment either. I fought with my own body; it ignored me.

“Rolf, you need to leave.”

“Stoppen Sie zu sprechen und horen Sie. Be quiet.”

“Having a big dick and a hot body doesn’t mean you can fuck around with me. Are you on steroids or something?”

“I can fuck you when I like.”

Still facing away from me, he removed his trousers, black briefs and socks and stood completely naked in middle of the apartment. My eyes traveled up and down his gladiator’s physique: a plump, ample ass; hamstrings like sides of beef; bulbous calves that rested atop slim ankles. When he turned and faced me his dick was hard. Precome already jeweled the tip.

“Sie saugen.”

Rolf’s body took up most of the space in my small studio. The precome on his cock began to drip to the hardwood floor.

I hunched my shoulders and tried to conceal my erection with my hands.

“Come suck my cock.”

“Look, Rolf, last night was great, and I still think you’re hot, but you can’t…”

Rolf’s handsome, determined face suddenly metamorphosed into the manic expression of a madman. The color drained from his face and deep lines etched into his skin making sharp, dramatic contours beneath his cheekbones and on the sides of his mouth. He lowered his eyelids and clenched his jaw. The muscles of my back tightened and tingled and I braced myself against the front door as Rolf stomped toward me. “Saugen Sie es! Stop talking and suck!” He grasped the back of my neck and forced me to the floor. His large hard cock filled my mouth. When I tried to resist he smacked the back of my head and pushed his dick in harder. A rank yet slightly sweet odor—a mix of precum, soap, urine, perspiration and the day’s labor—saturated Rolf’s genitals and soft pubic hair.

I sucked and jerked his billy-club cock with gusto, abandoning all of my rational thoughts, even those of revenge. Rolf stepped back and planted one foot on the edge of my bed. I got down on my hands and knees. Rolf grasped his penis at the base and began to shove it down my throat.

“Pretty cocksucker,” he moaned. “Honey-brown ass.”

I arched my back and stuck my ass out. Two hard smacks stung my buttcheeks before I heard my boxers rip, then the sound of Rolf hawking. A gob of hot spit splashed my anus; another gob followed. His thick hands and pudgy fingers kneaded and probed my eager rump while my ministrations on his engorged cock kept him groaning and mumbling to himself in German.

He stood up straight and demanded, “Stehen Sie auf und verbiegen Sie vorbei. Bend over on the bed.”

I had my knees on the edge of the bed and my ass in the air instantly, offering Rolf my ass as if it was a bejeweled chalice filled with wine and he was a Roman solider about to go into battle. He slapped my humps a couple more times before he dipped his face between my quivering cheeks and lapped my hole with his tongue. His strong fingers dug into my fleshy mounds as he licked and flicked, slurped and slapped, grabbed and groped. My ass was his playground and he was as happy as a boy at recess.

He took off my socks, put both hands on the back of my T-shirt and ripped it from my torso. I wiggled my ass in front of him like a bitch in heat. “Get the lube,” I said. “Beside the—Aaaaggghhh!”

“My ass, my way.”

“Goddamn! Wait… I’m not ready….” The language I couldn’t access yet longed to dwell within.

“Süßer, fester Esel!”

Rolf mounted me and hopped on the bed, planting a foot on either side of my knees, and holding on to my trapezius muscle so I couldn’t break free. He wasted no time thrusting into my ass, filling my cavity with the full measure of his cock, shifting my body to accommodate his pleasure. Tears streaked my face and I couldn’t suppress the shrieks and wails that erupted from deep within me. No man had ever fucked me so hard with so little lubrication. No man had ever fucked me with such a big dick and such a lack of impunity.

Rolf pushed my upper body to the mattress and hoisted my ass higher, then hunkered down over me and held me in a full nelson. As his rhythmic thrusting quickened, his furry chest felt like a large Brillo pad scouring my back. His thighs, just as hairy and thick, collapsed on mine. The stabbing in my anus eventually gave way to pleasure and my agonizing shrieks and wails became mmms and ahhs of ecstasy.

Rolf panted in my ear. “You get fucked good, baby.”

“Wear my ass out.”

“Füllen Sie es auf, huh?”

“Yeah, baby, fill my ass up.” Black gay men who unabashedly pursued their sexual desires with men of all races.

“Fuck you like a dog. Uggghhh… Tight ass…!”

He rolled me on my back. My asshole had dried up, so he took the lube from the side of the bed, squirted nearly half the bottle into me then submerged his long brawny dick in the river of my asscrack. I held my legs back as far as I could as he began to pummel my asshole, his penis moving like a drill boring and busting the earth for oil. I held on to his round hard ass while his enormous body undulated over mine. He kissed my lips while he continued to fuck me. Sheets of Rolf’s sweat soaked my body and soon a lake of sweat and lube formed in the sheets beneath us.

“You like big white dick?” He grunted and swirled his hips.

“In German.” I licked his lips. “Sprechen Sie auf Deutsch.” In Deutschland you will speak Deutsch!

Rolf acknowledged me with a half smile. His hot breaths puffed in my face before his mouth closed over mine and his tongue coiled around my tongue.

“Sie wünschen Geschlecht die ganze Nacht?” Rolf asked.

“Fuck me all night, baby.” The emblem of the miscommunication that brought us together.

“Feste ass.”

The bed squeaked, scooted and rocked: the sound of bridled horses galloping across the German countryside: work boots tromping and scuffing wood floors.

Rolf’s mouth hung open and he shut his eyes tight, crying out, “Aaaaahhhh! Aaaaahhhh!” Copious amounts of semen flooded my asshole and spilled onto the bed. He kept thrusting into me well after he came; a squishing-squelching sound chorused with the staccato thumping of the bed. He raised his upper body and told me to jerk off. “Ich wunsche Sie ejakulieren.” His spit on my dick and told me to use it for lube.

I yanked my dick while Rolf’s cock kept stretching me out. He grasped my ankles and splayed my legs wide. I looked at his broad torso shiny with sweat and imagined Apollo driving his sun chariot across the morning sky; Hadrian, clad in armor and a centurion helmet, marching off to war, his blood-red cape billowing behind him; Hercules slaying the Hydra.

I groaned and a geyser of come exploded from me. My nut-busting orgasm felt as if it lasted for several minutes, and when I had squeezed out the last drop of cum Rolf lay down beside me. He kissed my temple and wrapped his arm around me. We slept.

The Strassenbahn glides through the rain-swept streets of Mannheim during morning rush hour. Though the skies remain overcast and gray, now and again the sun announces itself, not unlike a mischievous child sneaking out of bed to dance and play after his parents have confined him to his room. The citizens of Mannheim are still bundled in their heavy clothes, still stubbornly adherent to their own routines and resigned to the rough unpleasantness of the season.

I take a seat near the door and place my backpack squarely on my lap. I am rereading Dixon Weatherby’s first novel. It concerns Eugene MacArthur, a black gay man from Mississippi who narrowly escapes a lynching in 1947 and moves with his female cousin to New York City where he falls in love with an Italian-American mason named Giancarlo. It is an engrossing novel, and I read it now with the same wonder and zeal as when I first read it in my freshman year of college. The book enthralls me so much that I do not notice the Fahrkartenkontrolluer standing before me, waiting patiently for my ticket. His looks are handsome in a way that is devastating. His physique is undeniably gorgeous; it is a body not developed naturally but forged over years of discipline and a strict diet and exercise regimen—an archetype of masculine power and strength. I hand him my ticket. He examines it and, satisfied that I paid my fare, returns the ticket to me. “Good book?” he inquires.

“Ja,” I say.

“What is it about?”

“Ein Mann, der sich befreit.”

The officer nods. He appears intrigued. His gray eyes look directly into mine and for a moment we let the world fall away, existing outside the limits and order of language. We are two men with the same wants and desires, the same need for recognition, respect and comfort. We are not our nations, our languages or the stereotypes that have the power to confine and condemn.

The officer’s voice slightly quivers when he asks, “Could we meet for a coffee later today? At Connexion?”

I smile and nod.

“I’d like to learn more about your book. Perhaps you will bring it with you?”

I answer, “Ich hole Ihnen eine autographierte Kopie. Ich bin auf meiner Weise, den Autor zu treffen.”

“Ah, so you know the author? Yes, I would very much like an autographed book. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“At five o’clock?”

I nod and return to my book.

As the officer prepares to disembark the tram he turns to me and says, “You speak German quite well.” Once he steps off the tram he lifts his hand in a gesture of farewell and maintains eye contact with me until the tram is out of sight.