The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica

Worth More Than a Thousand Words ^{Lawrence Schimel}

I have never been good at keeping a diary. It presupposes an audience, supposedly one’s self, but I have never been comfortable with the idea. I am afraid someone will find it, and read it, and I will have bared my soul to a stranger, or worse, someone I’m close to. I am afraid because I have done this to others. Friends of mine. My sister. I have always been a voyeur.

Reading someone’s diary is the thrill of the forbidden. The knot of worry in the stomach, the fear of being discovered. When I was younger, I read porn that way. I didn’t need to. My grandfather kept stacks of porn magazines on top of the toilet in the bathroom of his apartment; I could have read them at leisure, in that small locked room, poring over the pictures. But I would go to a bookstore and sneak porn magazines from the rack, hiding them inside a copy of something innocuous like Cats Magazine. I would walk back to the middle of the store and stand in an empty section to flip through the pictorials. I hardly even looked at the pictures, glancing down for a second and taking a mental photograph, my heart racing as I quickly glanced back up to make sure no one was coming down the aisle where I stood, to make sure no one ever saw what I was doing. As soon as someone came near, or if I even thought they would, I closed the magazine and moved from Gardening to Humour, to wherever there wasn’t anyone else.

My heart pounds the same way when I read someone’s diary, even if there’s no chance of my being discovered – they’re away for the weekend and I have the only key to the apartment, whatever. It is forbidden, and I feel there is someone watching me as I reach for the slim, clothbound book that’s hidden beneath the bed. I flip through the pages, scanning for any mention of myself, or anything else that catches my eye. I look for moments where the handwriting changes, clues to highly emotional scenes. I’m like a vampire, thirsting not for blood, but vicarious emotion. Thirsting furtively, at night, when no one else is around, lest I be discovered.

I am always careful to replace the diary exactly as I found it. If it were my own, I would notice if it had been moved, even if anything around it had been moved. I guess that’s why I’ve never been able to keep a diary before. I’m too paranoid. Afraid of exposing myself. I’ve broken the trust of too many friends who left me alone in their rooms while they went to class or work, while they went on vacation for a week, trusting me to water their plants. Trusting me not to read their diary.

So I know someone else will read this. I can’t help being aware of you. I feel as if I’m writing for you, not for myself. But I have something I want to write down, need to write down, so I don’t lose it. So I don’t forget. I know you’re reading over my shoulder, so I’m going to fill in the background for you. After all, who knows what will happen? Fifteen, twenty years from now, the stranger who finds this book again, buried in an attic at the bottom of a box of books, might be myself. And my heart will begin pounding as I realize it is a diary, and I open it and read all the details I’d long since forgotten.

There are some who consider thirteen an unlucky number. Not I. But I’ve got reason; I have a lover thirteen years older than myself.

Not unlucky, but still witchy. She’s definitely a witchy-woman. Enchanting seductress. It’s almost impossible not to be drawn in by her. When we go out together I watch it happen to the men around her. And I, I was drawn in, as well, although it’s harder for me to know what happened, trapped in her glamour.

I’ve wondered sometimes if it was a potion she made, something she wore. She’s an aromatherapist, always using subtle essences of plants to influence mood. Lavender. Ginger. Scents I’ve never been able to identify. Her home is suffused with a rich aroma of comfort and warmth, an amnesiac to anxiety.

Yet each time a man is ensnared by her spell she is taken by surprise. It is perhaps that very aspect which is so appealing: she does not wield her sexuality like a weapon or tool, but is so familiar with it, so intimate, that it sits upon her as an integral part of her being, as simply as the features of her face. If you saw her, you would understand what I meant. If you saw her, you would be drawn in by her spell.

While she may not understand the effect she has, she is now aware of it. We met at a poetry reading in Boston, and exchanged business cards. Later that week, a story showed up in my mail, a piece entitled, “Desire”. It was our first flirtation. I know not to assume that a first person narrator is the author, but I could not help noticing similarities, how men seemed drawn to the protagonist like moths to a porchlight on a summer’s evening. The writing was infused with that same sensuality which surrounds her presence. Though the story wasn’t full of explicit sex, it played a strong role, tantalizingly alluded to or glimpsed. And the writing itself was lush, like a flurry of caresses moving up one’s thigh and across belly and chest.

A writer myself, I appreciated the sumptuousness of her prose. I was also very turned on by it. Words have always held strong sway over me. Perhaps she’d sensed this about me, and thus chose to make her first move in print. Subtly, yet relentlessly, working my weakness.

Perhaps because she understood this power words held over me, I was able to persuade her to let me read an erotic fantasy she had written for another lover of hers. Showering after the first night we spent together, I’d found her aromatherapy jars in the medicine cabinet. Later, I asked her if she ever used them in lovemaking. She said she had, and also mentioned this fantasy she had written. The moment she realized what she had confessed she said, “I can’t believe I just told you that.”

I begged her to let me read it.

I was curious. I wondered who he was, what he looked like, why she had chosen to write something for him. I wondered what it would reveal about her, her own desires, her fantasies.

And the idea of reading something meant for someone else thrilled me. I’ve always been a voyeur. In college, I would lie atop the window seat for hours, warmth on my stomach from the radiator underneath as I stared across the courtyard. I could never see much – the buildings were too far apart – but what I saw was never really the issue. It was the looking. Often I would spend an entire night staring at the yellow squares of light across the way, waiting for the brief shadows to cross their frame, unaware of how time was passing, lost in the act of watching.

Reading a fantasy for someone else held the same appeal. Already I could feel myself begin to grow hard with anticipation.

She relented. I’m still not sure why. She’d never shown it to anyone but the man it was written for. But for some reason I convinced her to let me read it. Maybe because she had realized how powerful words were to me, and wanted to help me change, to grow.

I remember almost everything I read. It’s as if I had a photographic memory, which I don’t, since I only remember words. But eventually I will forget, or not be able to remember exactly. I’m sure that already I must have changed things, remembering what I would have found more erotic rather than what she actually wrote.

He was an actor who starred in horror films. Naturally, he lived in LA, across the country from her. Most of their relationship therefore took place in words, on the page or the phone. Once, it took place like this:

Writing it down, I found myself aroused again. Often, I paused and put down my pen, rereading the passage I just wrote as I took off my shirt and ran my hands across my chest and back, along the line of hair that runs down my chest. With my left hand, I undid my jeans and stroked myself through my underwear as I wrote. Slipping my hand underneath the brim, I avoided my cock, teasing myself, running my hand along the inside of my thigh and letting the backs of my fingers tickle my balls. And as I write this now I hold my balls in my hand, gently squeezing and rolling them, pressing deeply against the muscle underneath, the root of my cock, so hard. Enough of writing for now—

The afternoon I first read that piece stays firm in my mind. We woke at two in the afternoon. The house was quiet. Outside, the neighbours could be heard in the yard, as could the trills of birds in the dogwood which bloomed outside her bedroom. It felt like a lazy Sunday afternoon in spring as we revelled in the indolence of rising so late. Laura had called in sick earlier that morning, at dawn, when we decided finally to go to sleep.

The night had been spent in touch, a revelry of physical sensation. I’d had no idea what to expect, when she’d offered to put me up for the night after a poetry reading in New York. I’d figured it was likely I’d wind up on a couch in her living room. Instead she’d given me a massage, by candlelight, on her bed, since my back was sore from lying on floor cushions at the reading. I had injured my wrist, which was in a splint, and thus could only lean on one arm during the entire performance, cradling my injured hand in my lap.

She rubbed scented oils into the muscles, a soothing sensation I had never before experienced. The combination of smells, from the oils and candles, the lighting, the lingering sensation of her fingers along my back – it just seemed natural as we were lying next to each other, to reach out and pet her stomach over the satin of her chemise. Though my hand was in a splint, the fingers were still free and danced across the fabric, thrilling the skin beneath with the light friction. Later, our clothes off, we rubbed our bodies together simply for the exhilarating sensation of skin moving against skin. Crouching over her like a wildcat, I ran my torso over her body, pressing down on her breasts to knead them gently with my own, dragging my body down across her belly, her waist, her legs, then back again. I dropped my head down to let my hair, which I’d been growing out for more than a year now, dangle lightly against her skin.

That night was touch for its own sake. We explored each other’s bodies until dawn, kissed once, briefly, and slept. We stayed in bed until mid-afternoon. At last, I got up and showered, where I found the oils in her medicine cabinet. Wrapped in a towel, I went back into the bedroom and asked her about them, thus discovering the erotica she’d written for Paul. She made tea while I read the piece, understandably nervous about being in the same room with me as I was reading, and soon returned to the bedroom with two steaming mugs.

“Tea?” she asked innocently, ignoring the fact that I’d been reading.

“Come here,” I said, getting to my feet. I let my towel fall to the floor around my feet. I was very excited from her story; my erection throbbed, flushed with blood. I took the mugs from her hands and placed them on the nightstand, enfolding her in my arms. We kissed, and I drew her back onto the bed with me, running my hands along her back through the fabric of her robe. The neck of the robe hung wide, and I nuzzled her skin, running my tongue up to her chin, then back down to slide between her breasts. We rolled over, and she opened the belt of her robe, pulling the dark red fabric back slowly as if she were peeling an artichoke. I wanted to devour her. I leaned over her, bracing myself on my hands, when suddenly my right wrist gave out in a searing wrench of pain. I did not have the splint on, and the pressure of supporting myself had been too much. I bit back a cry, and collapsed on the bed next to her, cradling my injured hand under me, against my chest.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m not up to this, it seems.”

“Shhh,” she said, rolling me over and sliding on top of me. “I don’t want you to do anything that will cause you pain.” She took my injured hand in hers and gently kissed it. She licked the palm, then ran her tongue down to my wrist, and slowly along my arm. When she reached my shoulder, she moved across to my nipple, teasing it with circles of her tongue and gentle bites. But she quickly slid backwards, dragging her body along mine as she kissed down my chest and stomach. The loose folds of the robe billowed about her like a butterfly’s wings. Her breath was warm, exhilarating, as she explored my pubic area, rubbing her face against my hard cock as she tickled around my balls with her tongue. At last, her tongue met my shaft – a quick lick, a tentative probe. With her hands, she lifted my cock until it was perpendicular from my body, and slowly lowered her mouth over it, surrounding it, but not touching, not yet, only her warm breath. She held for a moment, and I burned with anticipation. Then her lips closed, and suddenly her tongue pressed against the length of my shaft, sliding up and down.

My breathing grew heavy as she drew her lips along the length of my shaft, teasing my balls with one hand as the other grasped the base of my cock and squeezed gently. I was so excited that it did not take long before her touch pushed me into orgasm. “I’m so close,” I warned her, holding back to prolong the blissful sensation, and give her a chance to pull back if she did not want me to come in her mouth. She kept her lips firmly clamped, her head bobbing up and down furiously, and I could not hold back any longer. I let out a cry, which slowly faded into a sigh as I recovered from my orgasm. My lips and hands were tingling with bliss, and I held them against her body, whispering, once I got my voice, “Look what you do to me.”

“How do your hands feel?” she asked, concerned.

“In ecstasy,” I answered, with a smile. They tingled with pleasure.

Laura smiled as well. “I’ve found a new form of therapy for them, then. Something your doctor would never think to prescribe.”

“They should make you a practising physician,” I said, hugging her close to me and kissing her. My fingertips reflexively began to caress her thigh, but she stopped me.

“I don’t want you to do anything that will injure your wrists. Just lay there and enjoy yourself.”

I was frustrated with my body’s betrayal of me, but succumbed to the bliss it was currently feeling. I lay in the afterglow, feeling incredibly self-indulgent, and enjoying it. The phone rang. I tilted my head to look at her and smiled as she turned to looked back. Neither of us wanted to get up to answer it. After the fourth ring, the answering machine picked up. It was her lawyer, saying that at last he’d submitted the final papers for her divorce, and that soon, hopefully, everything would clear.

I’d known she had been married, but had not realized the divorce was not finalized. Suddenly a gulf loomed large between us as I thought of where she was in her life with regards to where I stood in mine. But curiously, despite the vast differences in our lives, the closeness between us as we lay entwined, her hand gently squeezing my leg, my fingers still caressing despite her protests, did not dissolve.

“Ah, adultery,” I said with a grin as I turned onto my side to look at her.

“A new experience?” she asked, also with a smile. I hesitated, and knew she was suddenly wondering, having noticed. But she did not ask. “Don’t worry,” she continued, “we’ve been separated for over a year now.”

I deliberated whether to tell her, wondering what would happen to our relationship once she knew. “It’s not new,” I say. “For the past two years, up until September when he moved back with his wife in Syracuse, I’ve been seeing Brian Coney.”

I waited for a response, hardly daring to breathe, unsure whether to expect outrage, incredulity, or calm acceptance. She smiled, and after a moment said, “Well, at last I get to sleep with him, if only vicariously through you!”

I smiled, pleased that she was so accepting. I knew that I could share how special that relationship had been to me. “Only you and he have ever made me feel an orgasm like that,” I said. “Make me tingle. Too often it’s just an ejaculation.” I looked at her, and said, “Thank you.”

She ran her hands across my chest and said, “I’m glad. You deserve it.”

I chuckled and asked her, “Remember when Jo Ann said I looked like a young Brian Coney at the reading in Boston? Right before you said he was so sexy that you couldn’t talk in his presence? Oh, how I was biting my tongue!”

She was curious about everything, then, asking questions about him, and my relationships with men in general. The questions were never accusatory, rather pure curiosity. I believe the notion may have even excited her, especially when I spoke of Brian. She did not ask me which I preferred, making love to a man or a woman, but rather what I thought were the best things one could do with either sex, and what I enjoyed most from each.

I spoke of finally learning to receive pleasure with Brian, of how before I had simply been going through the motions of sex, with either men or women, without enjoying it. How sometimes a need for physical intimacy will well up inside me until it’s unbearable. How I need to touch and be touched, the feel of skin and skin. How sometimes I have to go through other things I don’t want, or enjoy, to get those. When it builds up inside me like that, I almost don’t have a choice. And there’s almost always a man who wants to get me into bed, and I go with him, for the brief moments of foreplay – before he has my pants off, and his own, his large erection pressing against me – and afterwards, as we lie together, our bodies touching.

I think what I like most is lying in a lover’s arms afterwards. I can never fall asleep like that – I’m too sensitized to the feel of warm skin against my own – but I relish it for as long as I can. But one has to go through sex to get there. Even if I don’t enjoy the sex along the way, I’ll go through with it, for that luxurious sensation afterwards.

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been avoiding writing about the event which made me need to write this account. It’s so much easier to wallow in the background, spewing forth endless, easy details. There’s no emotional stake involved. Even talking about sex is easy, although revealing my desires and fantasies starts to get slightly uncomfortable. That’s why I just realized, as I was writing the above, how much I’d been avoiding the issue.

Enough of cold feet.

Laura is a portrait photographer, by profession, and we began taking photos of me, to try and reveal my inner self. I’ve never been terribly aware of what I look like, and a comment to this effect made Laura decide on this project. I readily agreed. I was curious what she could show me. I’d produced a body of work as a writer that was much more familiar to me than my own body.

I hadn’t been photographed in a long time, and was very nervous as we began. For one thing, I truly had no idea what I looked like now. Until I had begun to grow my hair out a year ago, my image had not changed in the last seven, eight years. I’d shown Laura two photographs of me, one taken when I was thirteen, the other at twenty, and both looked identical. Now, with shoulder-length hair, and the start of a beard, I had no idea who I was. I’d still been using those photographs of my younger self as my mental image of myself. It’s how I’d always defined myself. That’s how I imagined I looked to other people, since I had no other way of seeing myself. Laura was going to show me who I was now.

The first session went awfully. I’d taken the train out to her place after work Friday, and after a quick dinner, we went upstairs to her home studio, on the second floor of the house. I was so tense that it made Laura nervous as well, and seeing that she was now nervous only made me more so. It fed on itself in a vicious cycle, until the air was thick with uncomfortable frustration, and we finally called it quits. We went downstairs, leaving the studio set up in hopes that tomorrow we’d manage a better session. We made love that night, tension dissolving as slow caresses gave way to deeper passion.

Waking the next morning, I felt contented as a cat as I stretched in her bed as she moved around me. “I wish you’d been this comfortable last night,” Laura remarked.

“You should run get your camera,” I teased. “Or rather, you can walk. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes, you are, dear,” she said, tugging me upright and kissing me on the lips. She dropped a white terry-cloth robe in my lap. I smiled as I noticed the Hilton insignia embroidered onto it, and wondered if it had been stolen after a tempestuous weekend with one of her previous lovers, like something from the story she’d let me read. I put the robe on and followed her upstairs.

She positioned me in front of a large free-standing oval mirror in her studio, and stood behind me. Reaching around my waist, she undid the sash of my robe, letting it fall open. “I want you to look at yourself, touch yourself, until you know what it feels like from the inside,” she said. “Until there are no boundaries between the you in the mirror, and the you inside here.” She tapped her knuckles against my chest, and squeezed me gently from behind. Then, taking my hand in her own, she began guiding my fingers across my chest, pushing the robe from my shoulders until it fell to the floor. She released my hand and stepped back as I continued exploring, running my fingers over my arms and torso. I watched myself in the mirror, studying my body as my hands passed over each area. I felt the double sensation of touch, in my fingers and skin, not trying to analyse but simply feeling it.

I explored every inch of myself, running my hands along the muscles of my neck, even exploring my scalp, the fingers running through my own long hair as they felt their way along the curves of my skull. I ran my hands down my chest and back, onto my legs, crouching down to reach all the way to my feet. I stood again, my hands always in motion, exploring new areas – my thighs, my buttocks. I caught sight of Laura in the mirror, noticing that both she and the camera were watching me. I smiled, and did not stop my exploration. I grew hard, reveling in the multiple voyeurism: looking at myself in the mirror, looking at Laura looking at me. I could tell she was turned on by our voyeurisms as well, and began tantalizing her, staring into her eyes through the lens as I moved my hands over my body, grabbing my erection with one hand as the other circled a nipple or explored elsewhere.

And suddenly, I turned and looked at her over my shoulder, directly, no longer through the mirror. The camera clicked, the shutter winking open and shut like the lips of her labia moving apart and together again in fast motion. She put the camera down and I went to her, almost giddy with desire. We kissed fiercely. I undid the sash of her robe, and she shrugged out of it so quickly, like from one of those tales sailors tell of seals who shed their skins and become women. As her hands explored all the areas where my own had just been, I thrilled at the difference in the feelings. I remembered the mirror and looked up, to see my hands running up and down her back. I snorted with amusement, and pointed to the mirror. Laura turned towards it, and in that moment I leaned down to kiss her neck, her breasts, the entire time watching myself perform these actions in the mirror.

I took the café chair she used for portraits and positioned it in front of the mirror. I sat down on it and held my arms for Laura to come to me. She eased my knees apart with her hips and kissed her way down my neck, her breasts surrounding my erection. She licked my nipples, sucked on them, then began to drop lower, towards my cock. I stopped her, pulling her to her feet. “I want to be inside you,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment, and I could sense what was going on inside her mind, her wondering, marvelling. I ran my fingers over her nipples, pinching them slightly, and desire overrode any lingering concerns she held. I pulled her towards me and she climbed onto the chair with me, slowly lowering herself onto me. I moaned as I slid into her, watching in the mirror as she rocked her hips backwards and forwards. I threw my head back, reveling in the sensation, and no longer cared about the mirror or watching us. I no longer needed it. I could feel my entire body from the inside, knew it exactly, perfectly. I wrapped my arms around her waist, and stood from the chair, slowly lowering us to the carpet. I kissed her fiercely, and then, supporting myself on my elbows since my wrist would give out, began rocking my hips, pushing deeper into her. She moaned with pleasure, her fingers grasping my shoulders tightly. I began to build speed, exploring deeper inside her with each thrust, reaching for those spots which would thrill her most. I was quickly hurtling towards orgasm, but held back, an almost painful sensation as each thrust brought me closer and closer. And finally, just when I could not restrain myself any longer, she arched her back and cried out as we pushed over the edge into orgasm at the same time. We laughed, kissed once, and collapsed in each other’s arms, spent.

It’s somewhat ironic that now, after she’s pushed me from defining myself by words to showing me what I truly look like, I am writing about it. But in a way, it’s exactly what I should do. It shows how I have grown so far. My body of work was much more familiar to me than my own body. Now, having explored my body by sight, by touch, to the point where I truly know it, from the inside, the only thing remaining was to explore it once again, in words, to make the two bodies one.