Desiring Faggotry

“Baxter’s Boy”, my story printed in the new anthology, The Big Book of Orgasms, was a long time coming. I’ve written elsewhere about how this piece is connected to my development as a smut writer, and is set in a very specific moment in my dykey college town, when trans men were coming out in droves and queer communities began to shift. The editor, Rachel Kramer Bussel, recently called it “a wonderful take on gender and desire.”

That is particularly apropos because “Baxter’s Boy” also has deep origins in my own genders and desires. I think owning and claiming your desires is a powerful thing to do; it is a central aspect of my sex positive politic. It’s also a huge turn-on for me: when someone owns their desires, is embodied in them and names them clearly, it is one of the hottest things in the world. One of the things I love about so many of the faggots I’ve known is how much they boldly and bluntly owned and claimed their desires.

I’ve been hot for faggotry for as long as I can recall actually owning my own desires, beginning around 20 years ago. Not just individual queer men, though I definitely have been hot for many. But for faggotry as sexual culture, fag archetypes, queer men’s sexual geography and expression. As my gender has ebbed and flowed, that desire has remained constant.

This aspect of my own desire has been a broad theme in my published smut. I have created many genderqueer and trans men characters who ached for faggotry, who reveled in being recognized, cruised and desired as queer men, who wanted to suck cock in alleys and bathrooms, wanted Daddy to bring them home from the bars, wanted to be seen as the faggots they knew they were inside. Here are a few snippets from some of those stories:

• “That’s why I chose this alley. Fag friends have cruised by with me, shown me where to go, described protocol. Told me story after story about being on their knees, or getting sucked off, or (if it’s especially late and fairly empty) bending over against the dumpster and getting fucked until they are so weak they can barely make it home. It’s like you know the same stories. You’re standing there against the wall, strategically placed to watch for danger. You’re a cocksucker’s dream, every inch the leather Daddy of my fantasies.” –“Alley Obsession”, printed in Got a Minute?: Sixty Second Erotica

• “As your boy, I was able to tap a deep faggotry that had been denied realization by a trick of biology. There was no disruption in it for you. You fully celebrated my raunchy queer sexuality. I could sink into it with you, hold none of it back, know you would meet my faggotry with your own.”—“A Lesson About Gender”, printed in Pleasure Bound: True Bondage Stories

• “Daddy made me feel proud to be a faggot. That affirmation of self threaded through everything. He knew about my fantasies, the way I ached to cruise for public sex but was scared that no one would touch me. He made me jack off as I described being forced to my knees in an alley, being bent over the sink in a public bathroom, kneeling to service cock after cock at a gloryhole.”—“Missing Daddy”, printed in Best Gay Erotica 2013

• “I watch him carefully as I free my cock. His eyes widen. Is that fear? Excitement? Both, I decide, stroking my cock as I watch him. He is scared—what if it isn’t how he wanted? Or worse, what if it is? What if he really is a cocksucking fagboy who gets on his knees for strangers in alleys?” –“Nervous Boy”, printed in Love at First Sting: Sexy Tales of Erotic Restraint

I came out into a cis gay men’s community, as a bisexual dyke. (I was genderfluid back then, but not out to myself about it.) My desires for many of the faggots in my life were not spoken, most of the time. We watched gay porn, they talked about their tricks and their lovers openly. We played spin the bottle and the boys tried out kissing each other. I had one former lover who became one of my closest friends, and shared the details of his queer sexual life, including a lot of details about how cruising and public sex work in cis gay culture. I learned sex positivity from these young faggots, as they continually affirmed their embodied desire with each other, and I began to build my own. I spent a long time yearning quietly. It felt impossible to be met in this desire.

Until about 15 years ago, when I got my hands on Carol Queen’s The Leather Daddy and the Femme. It was the first erotica I had ever read with a genderfluid character that got it on with cis gay men as a femme as well as a boy. This was the closest I had seen to any reflection of one of my core desires in an erotic text. Like Randy/Miranda in Carol Queen’s book, I didn’t just want to be desired as a boy, but as a femme too, without losing recognition as a fag. Because I wasn’t the kind of trans* that was just one of those things, and I wanted to be known, witnessed and desired in the fullness of all my genders. And I dreamed of a leather daddy I could submit to as all of myself.

I spent a long time writing about that need to be known, witnessed and desired as a fag boy, and in multiple genders. Many of my stories reflect that, including the ones I quoted above. But when I think about the origins of my own deep yearning for faggotry, I am taken back to the bisexual femme dyke I used to be, who thought her desire might never be met. She is who I wrote this story for.

“Baxter’s Boy” centers a high femme dyke who aches to play with queer boys. It focuses on her desire for Baxter, a gay FTM top, the first trans guy who came out as a faggot in her dykey college town. It is about her fantasies of bottoming to him and his boy, sparked by a long term crush and one particular New Year’s Eve kiss. Here is an excerpt that includes that kiss, along with a bit of pain play: 

“When it hit midnight, I found myself next to Baxter somehow. He reached toward me, and gently touched my neck, watching my eyes as I trembled. Seconds later his hand was fisted in my hair, his tongue thrusting into my mouth, the other hand cupping my ass as he dipped me low. I opened to him, putting everything into that moment, all my submission, all my desire. He gently placed me back on my feet and smiled into my eyes, lightly chuckling. “I like to keep them guessing,” he said, indicating the crowd of shocked spectators. I smiled, heart pounding, and watched him walk back to his boy, his strut clearly showing he had done what he had come to do, and was proud of himself. He backed Robert into the wall and began to devour him.

I hadn’t seen him since. I spotted Robert watching me bottom a couple weeks later, as I fell in love with the rawhide cane.  I’m not a masochist, but there are some toys that reach into me. That kind of pain is a joy to submit to, in its relentless invasion.  I loved that cane so much I ached to kiss it afterwards.  When I opened my eyes to beg for that privilege, Robert was gone.

I went home that night with Robert and Baxter in my head, a fresh set of cane marks on my thighs. I lay in bed playing with the marks, taking off my combat boots and grinding the soles into them. I imagined Robert’s eyes watching me, Baxter’s boots on my sore thighs. I wanted them both so much. Wanted them inside my head, filling up all my holes, giving me pain. Wanted to be between them, a conduit for their pleasure in each other.”

“Baxter’s Boy” has just been printed in The Big Book of Orgasms, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. As part of its launch, I will be reading and signing books, along with a number of other authors, at the Polk Street Good Vibrations in San Francisco this Wednesday 11/6 at 630pm.

This blog post is an official part of the BBOO virtual book tour, and as such I can offer a giveaway. Click here for the chance to win a free copy of The Big Book of Orgasms. (note: this giveaway has now ended)

cross posted from livejournal and tumblr