I Fail at Flirting

I’m not the best at flirting.

Apparently, clients and visitors flirt with me all the time at my day job — but the only reason I know this is because my co-workers tell me after the fact. Well, I’m not totally obtuse; I did pick up on the flirting when an older gay couple said they should invite me over for drinks (with a suggestive eyebrow waggle), shortly after I told them I get drunk quick.

Years ago, when I was still figuring myself out, my friend at the time (who later became my husband) and I were pulling up at a coffee shop to hang out and have coffee.

He looked at the place, let out a frustrated sigh, then looked at me and said, “I want to be alone with you.”

I took a look at the coffee shop and pointed toward the windows at the back of building. “There are couches in the back corner,” I said. “That’s pretty private.”

He looked at the place again, let out another frustrated sigh, then said, “It’s not alone enough.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to figure out exactly what he was getting at. I was kind of disappointed because I really liked that coffeeshop.

“I want to be alone… so I can kiss you,” he finally said.

It took me too long to catch on. “Oh… oh!” Then I turned the car back on, shifted into drive, and took us somewhere more private.

So with my lack of awareness of flirting, it’s understandable that the characters in my books generally don’t flirt too much. (If they do flirt, it’s more of the obvious kind — like that couple at my day job that wants to get me drunk.)

Here’s a little sample of the closest thing I have to flirting, from Dominating the Freshman, which I co-wrote with Dominic Leblanc:

***

It’s like a dance. I’ve been through this many times; I make a subtle gesture of interest, he reciprocates, and we move closer.

The gym is nearly empty, save for him and I and some guy doing leg presses. The twink — my partner in this mating dance — eyes me as he walks across the room to the water fountain. After his drink, he looks at me again and water glistens on his pouty, cock-sucking lips. Before he looks away again, I pick up a pair of free weights, my biceps bulging as I carry them to a spot in front of the mirror.

I eye up my figure as I approach the mirror, ensuring I’m giving the twink a good view. My arms glisten with sweat and my tank is plastered to my tight body. My hairy legs look strong in the tight shorts I’m wearing. I shift my gaze to him, watching his reflection, and I catch him staring at me, slack-jawed. He blushes, but doesn’t avert his eyes.

Emboldened, he wanders over my way, trying to make it look casual despite both of us knowing exactly what’s going on and where this is leading. He picks a couple weights off the rack and takes a bench a couple over from where I’m standing.

With his closeness, I get a much better look at him — he’s a twink, yes, but he has some jock muscle to him. He’s shorter than me, skinnier, and has to be nineteen, at most. While his frame might be small, his dick certainly isn’t. The tenting in the front of his shorts tells me he’s hard and he’s big. But it’s not necessarily his cock I want.

“What are you working on?” I ask, as I start doing bicep curls. I keep my voice low, so that only he could hear. I glance at the reflection of the other guy, the one at the leg press — he’s taking a break and doing something on his phone, totally oblivious to the impending homosexual action on this side of the room.

He bites his lower lip, looking like he’s almost overwhelmed that I’m actually talking to him, then says, “Just going to do a few rows.”

Then he leans over the bench and props one knee on it, straightening his back to be parallel with the padded surface … leaving his perfectly round ass curved and ready for me. I want so much to pull down those shorts and lick all the salty sweat from his crack. If that guy wasn’t dawdling by the leg press and would just get the fuck out of here, I might actually follow through with it.

I put my free weights on the floor and saunter over to him, admiring every inch of his body as I get closer. “Need someone to, uh, spot you?”

“That’d be nice,” he says. “And make sure my form is correct.”

He starts doing his rows, lifting the weight in his left fist, while using his right hand to brace himself on the bench. I come up beside him, standing beside his head, my crotch at height of his mouth, and I place a hand on his back. His body is sweaty and hot, but I can feel energy thrumming through him — the libido and lust of young men, I’m sure — and it only serves to turn me on even more. I push my hand further down his back, conscious that the other man is still in the room with us, and gently pushed my fingers under the back of his shorts. I find the band of his underwear, and then bare flesh — he’s wearing a jockstrap.

I clear my throat, steadying myself. I’ve never wanted a boy as badly as I want this one. Even with clothes on, his body is perfect.

By now my cock is thick and hard, standing prominent in my gym shorts. He turns to face me, those gorgeous, pouty lips only a breath away from kissing my shaft. “Thanks,” he says, his attention focussed on my bulge.

The loud clang of the other guy finishing a set of leg presses — the guy I wish would just disappear — breaks the tension of the moment. I feel like our slow dance toward wild sex was set back several steps. We need to get out of here.

I watch as the boy turns around and does rows with his other arm. As he turns, though, he brushes his body against mine — his shoulder rubs against my cock — and it sends a shiver through me. This boy wants me as bad as I want him.

I glance in the mirror at the other guy. He’s on his phone again, doing fuck knows what, while he takes a break between sets. I’d seen this guy here before and I seem to remember that he always did a long workout — I’d come and go and he’d still be working on his routine. Today, he had gotten here shortly after me, which means he’ll likely be working out for a while longer.

“That’s quite a workout,” I say, returning my attention to the twink. “You want to hit the showers?”

He smiles and stands up. “I think it’s about quitting time. A shower might do me good … help me relax.”

(Apologies to fellow Grippers for being a day late. Our Canadian long weekend screwed up my internal calendar.)

Cameron D. James is a writer of gay smut. Find out more at camerondjames.com. His upcoming publication is the (surprisingly smut-free) gay YA romance, Gay Love And Other Fairy Tales, under his YA pen name, Dylan James.

Summit Meetings

by Jean Roberta

Here are some definitions of “flirt,” according to the on-line Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

1) To behave amorously without serious intent, e.g. He flirts with every attractive woman he sees.
2) To come close to reaching or experiencing something, e.g. They were flirting with disaster.

Skimming through the stories in my “Documents” on my home computer, I noticed that clear examples of flirting are hard to find, possibly because I’m well aware of that last definition. Too much of what seems like harmless (i.e. non-sexual) flirting to one person can look like a serious invitation to another. When I was just old enough to date, my father warned me that girls can “get themselves” raped by “leading guys on,” which sounded to me like flirting.

I was tempted to avoid speaking to any man I hadn’t known for years, lest guys read too much into expressions like “How are you?”

The answer might well be, “Horny, as usual. And since you asked, you have to do something about it.”

As a long-term volunteer on the local sexual assault line, I’ve heard too many stories of conversations that quickly led to physical assault by an angry man who told a woman she was “asking for it.”

On the other hand, I’ve written many dialogue scenes that could be described as negotiation, which seems to me to be more serious than flirting, even if the conversation sounds deceptively casual. I actually wish more people would bargain honestly with each other for the kind of relationships they want, even though some personal negotiations could go on for days, like the kind union-management meetings in locked rooms from which spokespeople from both sides emerge looking haggard, and the media reports that “no agreement was reached.”

The following is from my shockingly heterosexual story, “The Trickle-Down Effect” (currently in an erotic anthology with a breast-feeding theme, The Milk Round, from Xcite Press in the UK).



Dee is on maternity leave from her job after having her first baby. She lives with Brian, the baby’s father, who wants to marry her. Despite what her mother taught her, she doesn’t think marriage should be every woman’s goal.

Without disturbing the baby, he managed to hold my chin so that he could kiss me.

“Honey,” he told me, “we need to talk about why you don’t want to get married.”

“We need something to eat,” I answered. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “But we’re also going to talk.” I envied the baby, who had no idea what was going on between her parents, as far as I knew. But then, I thought, even babies are probably more complicated than we think.

I pulled on a bathrobe, and we all went to the kitchen, where I busied myself making toast and scrambled eggs. Brian helped, finding every excuse to touch me. When I needed both hands free, he gently pulled the baby out of my arms.

“Mamas and papas are usually married to each other,” he pointed out.

“Marriages end in divorce,” I responded.

“Not all of them! Fuck, Dee. Anyway, relationships end too, but not ours.”

“Point for me,” I told him. “If a thing isn’t broken, it doesn’t need to be fixed.”

“Are you afraid of what could happen to us?” His voice sounded unbearably gentle.

I considered his question for a minute. “Yes, honey. Aren’t you?”

“Yeah, okay, I’m scared. I’ll admit it. I know you don’t want to be trapped in the house, and I’m afraid you’ll blame me for throwing a monkey wrench in your career. I’m afraid I’ll come home one day and you’ll be gone with Shannon, and I’ll have to fight you in court just to see either of you again. That would drive me crazy, Dee. I mean really.”

I saw his point, and I felt like holding him and kissing away his fear. I even wanted to sing him a lullaby to convince him that I wasn’t planning to leave him for the sake of one stupid job. Jobs can be replaced.

I offered him toast instead. “Brian, I’m not planning to leave you. I love you.” This was a word we rarely used, since we both agreed that there are better ways of expressing love. Expression,* as I knew, could take different forms. “I don’t think we should make it legal just because we have a child. I don’t want us to fall into a rut. I don’t want you to start taking me for granted.”
---------------------------------------------
*Earlier, Dee “expressed” her milk by squeezing it out and storing it while the baby was sleeping.
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Eventually, Dee agrees to marry Brian, which she likens to jumping off a cliff with him without knowing whether they will land in refreshing water or a pile of rocks. She warns him that if he doesn’t keep his promises, she will demand everything she can get in the divorce. He accepts her terms.

******

Negotiations in lesbian relationships often take a very different form, or at least they did when same-sex marriage wasn’t legally possible in any country. (Note that Gertrude Stein famously asked Alice B. Toklas to be her “wife” in a metaphorical sense in the early 20th century.) Closeted lesbians have traditionally referred to their Significant Others as “friends,” and the boundaries between actual friendships between women (which might be flirtatious and/or emotionally intimate), hookups, friendships-with-benefits, and the kind of Passionate Love Affairs that drive the plots of operas have always been slippery.



In my story, “Naming It” (in Best Lesbian Erotica 2015, edited by series editor Kathleen Warnock and guest-editor Laura Antoniou, from Cleis Press in the US), Tam is comforting her old friend Deirdre the morning after a messy scene in the local lesbian bar. Deirdre was planning to move in with her girlfriend, a notorious flirt named Paulie Diddle, then discovered Paulie getting too close to a new acquaintance in a cubicle in the women’s washroom.

Tears welled up in Deirdre’s eyes. “Jesus, Tam, do you think I’m a complete fool?”

This was clearly a time for diplomacy, but it was also a good time to seize the moment. Tam gathered Deirdre into her arms and rocked her. “Honey,” she said into the fine, wavy, honey-colored hair that grazed Deirdre’s shoulders. “Paulie’s the fool, not you. She’s the one who lost out.”

To Tam’s delight, Deirdre didn’t slither away, as she usually did. “Thank you,” she said, nestled against Tam’s collarbone. “For not saying you told me so. I know you thought I should go slow, and I didn’t. I wanted a home and a serious relationship, you know? We’re not kids any more.”

While Tam was still gathering her thoughts, Deirdre shifted her position so she could look her old friend in the eyes. “Did you call me honey?”

Tam saw her dark eyes and strong features reflected in the troubled grey pools of Deirdre’s. “I did, and I could call you other things too: sweet thing, baby, angel-face.”

Something rippled through Deirdre’s supple body. “Always joking, that’s you,” she said. “That’s why we could never really be an item, even though you’re my best friend. Sometimes I wish--.”

Deirdre’s phone rang for the sixth time that morning. She glanced at it, saw the name “Paula Diddle” once again, and made a visible effort to ignore the sound.

“Good girl,” said Tam. She tightened her embrace and kissed Deirdre on the lips before she could pull away.

“Ummph,” said Deirdre. Tam held her close and slipped the tip of her tongue between Deirdre’s lips.

Deirdre broke the kiss. “What the fuck, Tam?” she asked. Tam knew how Deirdre sounded when she was really angry, and this question had a different tone. She was curious, even intrigued.

“What do you think, baby?” responded Tam the seducer. “Let’s try it.”

“You’re my friend, Tam,” explained Deirdre as though explaining the incest taboo. “Who will I turn to if you let me down?”
------------------------------------------

In her current state of distress, Deirdre lets herself be seduced, but then tells Tam that this event was a fluke, a lapse from the status quo of their relationship. Deirdre says they should agree to stay apart for a month, but Tam negotiates this period down to one week. They agree to meet in a popular coffee shop for a summit meeting on a particular date.

Over cappuccinos, the friends discuss the terms of their new relationship, which Tam calls a “love that was meant to be.” Deirdre considers it a reckless experiment because if Tam is promoted to the role of Lover, Deirdre will have no emotional backup in the form of a best friend. Nonetheless, she admits that she has loved Tam for years, and she agrees to name the connection between them for what it is.

So now the negotiations in this post have probably gone on for too long, but they have led to hard-won agreements. I love it when that happens.
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Her Kiss: A Post About Death, by Giselle Renarde

There's no place on earth
You're likely to miss
Her kiss

I can't remember if I've talked about Kiss of the Spider Woman before. I suspect I have. The musical soundtrack found its way into my life just in time to greet my burgeoning sexuality. Chita Rivera's performance in the title role helped to establish a connection between sex and death, because that's what she is, that Spider Woman. She's Sexy Death.

In the 90s, I developed a real fascination with Kiss of the Spider Woman in all its incarnations. I borrowed the LP from the library and taped it onto cassette so I could listen to it in my bedroom as I went to sleep. I read the play by Manuel Puig. I watched the movie, which features William Hurt and Raul Julia. For me, this piece established a connection between queerness and the Femme Fatale, both of which I began to identify with as a teen.

My family's been flirting with the Spider Woman a little too much this week.

No, it's been more than flirtation.

Someone's been kissed.

On Monday, my grandmother had an appointment with a very frank doctor who advised her that it's time to start looking at end-of-life care. I'd been to visit my grandma on Saturday. She's got multiple infections again, the same ones she had when she spent all those weeks in hospital early this year. The antibiotics are making her quite ill, but beyond that she's having problems with... everything, really, at this point.

On Tuesday, my mother called me. Her voice was trembling. She said, "I've got some sad news to tell you."

I knew exactly what she was going to say. What else could it be?

"Your cousin died."

Not my grandmother. Not my 87-year-old grandmother. My cousin, who was in his early thirties.

He died of a drug overdose.

Now, here's where things get complicated, for me, for my grieving process: I can't tell you how many nights I've spent researching elder abuse resources because of this cousin. Perhaps I ought not speak ill of the dead, and I beg his soul's forgiveness if I'm mistaken, but it's my belief that this young man was an abuser in many senses of the word. He lived with his parents, both of whom are over the age of 65, and the way I overheard him speaking to them on multiple occasions... the threat of violence in his voice...

I spent my young life in a household plagued by domestic violence. I spent another decade working in a shelter for women and children escaping precisely that violence. You do develop a sixth sense, an ability to pick out abusers, and I believe, right down to the core of my being, that my cousin was one.

Not that my aunt or uncle would ever suggest such a thing. They do admit he's stolen from them. Aside from that, it's stiff upper lip all the way.

Except that my cousin's sister (who also happens to be my cousin) has moved house recently, and she asked us all to please not tell her brother where she lived.

When I received news of this young man's death, I felt much the same way I did when I found out my father had died: free. In this case, the freedom was vicarious. When there's someone in your life who poses a threat--especially when that threat is both imminent and physical--there is an element of release and relief to their death. They can't hurt you anymore, except inside your own mind.

And I suspect my aunt, my uncle and their daughter will be suffering in the extreme, inside their minds, for the weeks and months and probably years to come. They will feel guilt. The will feel culpability. They will feel responsible for what happened.

The grieving process is so much more straightforward when you simply loved the person. Of course, that's a pretty utopian view of any relationship. Is there anyone in the world you only love? You have no points of contention with? Probably not.

But in a situation like this, man, grieving is a mess.

Today my aunt and uncle paid a visit to my grandmother. They went over to inform her that their son had died, and the circumstance of his death. My mother was adamant that my grandma shouldn't be left alone after receiving the news, so two of my aunts stayed with her until bedtime, and the nurses at the retirement home will be checking in on her throughout the night.

My mom was concerned my grandma would try to kill herself. And while my grandmother does seem incredibly enamoured of that Spider Woman, I doubt very much she'd try. I don't think she's physically capable of killing herself, at this stage. To that, my mother said, "What if she's been stockpiling pills? You never know what she's capable of!"

I think the more likely scenario would be what happened in my uncle's family. A few years ago, my uncle's brother died. He was not an old man, maybe in his 50s? He died and, three days later, their mother died too. She didn't kill herself. She just... stopped being alive. It's what you hear about with elderly couples. One dies of an illness and the other dies of a broken heart. That's what happened to my uncle's mother when her son passed.

Will a grandson's death be the thing that stops my grandmother's heart beating? I wouldn't be at all surprised.

But I'll leave you with a story my aunt told me after my grandfather died. My aunt went over to my grandmother's house to help her get ready for the little visitation type thing we had for him. When she walked into my grandmother's bedroom, my aunt found my grandmother sitting on the bed, weeping. We don't cry in my family, so that was a big deal.

My aunt went over and put an arm around my grandma and said, "I know. You miss Daddy."

My grandma gave my aunt the most confounded look. Her husband and abuser of almost 60 years had just died. What she said was: "I'm finally free."

Flirt and Consequences - #Flirting #BDSM #FlashFiction

By Lisabet Sarai

“Can I help you?”

My cheeks burn. He’s caught me, transfixed by the rope coils and shiny turnbuckles, hungry as a kid at a candy display.

“Um—no, thanks. I was just thinking...”

“About possible applications for our products?” He grins, eyes alight with mischief as he unfurls a thrilling length of scarlet cord. “Want a demo?”

He’s working-class burly, his rolled denim sleeves baring tanned, hairy forearms, Home Plus apron inappropriately domestic. Booted feet, big hands.

“I’m an expert,” he continues. “With our products.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Rising to his challenge, I straighten my spine and elevate my bra-less tits. His gaze flicks down. He licks his lips. My nipples ache.

“Maybe you need some clamps, too? For your project?”

“I might.”

“We also have a wide selection of dowels—in many sizes.” His massive fists clench and his nostrils flare.

I’m smoldering now. I love this game. It’s my move.

“Sarah!” Master rounds the corner, juggling electrical supplies. He grasps the situation in a single glance. “Teasing again? You know that’s twenty strokes with the cane.”

There’s a bulge under that apron. “Can I help you?”

Master smirks. “Sure. Why not?”