Inside Men's Shorts

Inside Men’s Shorts

(An Anthology of Gay Themed Flash Fiction)

(117 Stories)

By

Christopher Jackson-Ash

ISBN 978-0-9875979-5-3

Published By Christopher John Allen

© 2013 CJA 

Introduction

Flash fiction is short short stories, generally up to 1000 words but often limited to 300 words. Drabbles are a specific form of flash fiction which are exactly 100 words. The challenge to the writer is to tell a great story in so few words. They are great writing exercises because they teach how to cut out all unnecessary words.

This is a collection of gay themed flash fiction, written as a weekly writing challenge for an internet writing group that I used to be a member of. We were given a prompt and had to write a quick flash fic based on whatever the prompt inspired. You can just dip in anywhere for a writing snack. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad, some are tragic and some are erotic. You will find several themes in my writing that recur frequently.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All characters portrayed herein are fictional; except for one. See if you can spot it.

Warning – this book contains adult content and references to sexual contact between consenting male adults.

Please visit the following web sites.

Author site – www.ChristopherJackson-Ash.com

Fantasy web site – www.FirstWorld.info

Children’s web site – www.TrickyTristan.com

Rocket Man

It was the incident in the showers that led to Pete’s new nickname – Rocket Man. Up until then, since kindy, we’d called him Rabbit. Not very subtle in either case, I know but we were only fifteen and the literary talent of the whole class would hardly have amounted to Shakespeare’s toenail clippings.

Most of us had survived the embarrassments of puberty with the best parts of our modesty intact. We were all aware of the perils of sudden uncontrollable erections and had developed the necessary defence mechanisms to hide them. When it gets you in the showers right after footy practice though, there’s no hiding place.

With a bit more subtlety we might have called him Police Man – is that a truncheon you’ve got in your pocket? – or Fire Man – he always carries a long hose. Given more time, I suppose we could have come up with Bat Man – he’s got his own boy wonder. But Elton John was in the charts and amidst all of the laughing and teasing the name stuck.

I often wondered whether the other guys were as awestruck as I was by the sight of it. It really did look like he had a Saturn V between his legs, set off by the flames of his ginger pubes. It made my own erection look puny in comparison. Scotch Eddie said that even his dad’s donkey’s wasn’t as big, which earned him the new nickname ‘Jockey’ instead of ‘Eggie’.

Pete left soon after that and the memory of the one glimpse of his erect manhood faded from my memory. Only the occasional playing of the Elton John track at parties would bring it back into focus. The song had a strange effect on me. It made a normal heterosexual male want to suck cock.

Almost twenty years later, my wife gave me an album for my 34th birthday. It was a tribute album to Elton John and Bernie Taupin called ‘Two Rooms’. Kate Bush turned me on, but not in the way I expected. All I could think about for days was that huge phallus and my desire to suck it. My wife was upset that I didn’t listen to the album more, but she would have been much more upset if I had done, because I would not have been able to resist those urges. I buried my desires for the good of my marriage.

It’s been forty years since I saw Pete’s rocket. All would have been well if my damn wife had not started listening to that golden oldies radio station.

429 words

Heroes

I heard the sickening crunch as his ribs broke and punctured his lung. Only a weak whimper and blood were coming out of his mouth now. My father’s steel-toe-capped work boots made formidable weapons when fuelled by his homophobic hate. The boy’s face was contorted in pain. He wasn’t much older than me, perhaps eighteen. He had been slim, blond and beautiful. For a brief second his eyes opened and they made contact with mine. They were pale blue and begged me for help. Before I could respond, my father’s foot caught him in the jaw, splitting his face open and scattering his once perfect teeth across the alleyway. His eyes didn’t open again. I went behind some bins and heaved. My father pulled me to my feet. The anger still burned in his eyes. Let’s get out of here. That faggot won’t sell his arse around here again. Disgusting pervert! He spat a huge gob into the boy’s fractured face as he dragged me away. I was half cut – my father had taken me on a rare bonding session to introduce me to beer. He had only gone into the alley to piss. The encounter with the boy was pure chance. Can’t hold your liquor, hey boy? He laughed as if the last few minutes had never happened.

My father was my hero.

I knew better than to argue with dad when he was full of whiskey. We walked home in silence. I made my excuses, went to my room, hid myself in the dark under the blankets and rolled into a ball. It didn’t matter whether I closed my own eyes or not. All I could see were those begging blue eyes beseeching me for help.

Sometime during that long night, I slept, drowning in my guilt. My dreams were a technicolour movie of my life flashing across my mind. An only son, I knew I carried all of the hopes and dreams of my parents. Marriage and grandchildren were already on my mother’s agenda.  My own early childhood was idyllic, though my father was seldom present. When he was home, I hero worshipped him and rarely left his side. When he was away, I would sit in his armchair and cuddle the cushion that smelled of him. I must have been about six when my mother sat me down and spoke seriously. There was a war somewhere overseas and my father had been posted. She hugged me a lot more after that and sometimes when I came home from school, I would find her crying. She blamed the onions.

He was away for a year and when he came home, I didn’t recognise him. He looked the same but he behaved like a different person. There were no more ball games or hide and seek in the garden. Everything I did annoyed him. He never laid a hand on me, but his words hurt me more than smacks ever could. They said he was a hero and he had the medals to prove it. He never spoke of it.

During the early years of high school, I was bullied, being small for my age and late in developing. I was hopeless at sport and enjoyed more artistic pursuits. Very few of the boys were my friends; I felt most at home with some of the girls. One particular student made my life hell. He was big and strong and enjoyed hurting me. He took my lunch money and made me do embarrassing things. If I resisted, he flushed my head in the toilet. I thought about running away and stole some tablets with a plan to kill myself. My mother realised something was wrong and dragged it out of me. Once I started talking, it was like water rushing out of a fractured dam wall.

The bully’s father was big and strong too and my father is not a big man. Nevertheless, he went round there and whipped his arse. No one messed with me after that. My hero had returned.

****

In the morning, my head ached and I couldn’t face breakfast. My father was still in bed. The radio news reported the boy’s murder. Those were the days before DNA evidence. I found a plastic bag for the blood-stained shoes and left the house.

At the end of the street there was a builders’ skip next to the telephone box. The decision was mine. My mind was clear. I called the police.

747 words

Leap Year

He felt the depression beginning to build from Australia Day. He didn’t celebrate it anymore. He hadn’t celebrated it before; only when he was with Tom. It hadn’t been a celebration as such, just a special barbecue for the two of them, a bottle of sparkling wine, and an afternoon in their air-conditioned bedroom. Tom brought out his Australian flag duvet cover and they made love on the Southern Cross rather than under it – that was reserved for their Easter camping trip.

He found the duvet cover at the bottom of the hall cupboard and slept with it on his bed. It just made him feel lonelier. Tom’s photo smiled at him from the bedside table. He had cleared away everything of Tom’s, to try to forget, but had kept this one memento. It was an old photo, eight years old now. It showed the two of them together, their faces so alive and bright with happiness. On 29th February 2004 Tom had asked for his hand in marriage. It hadn’t mattered that Australia didn’t recognise such unions. They would find somewhere in the world that did. He couldn’t put into words how much he loved Tom. He hadn’t believed it was possible to feel so much love for another human being. He had never understood why so many felt that it was evil.

He stared at the photo, trying to re-conjure the feelings of that day. He hardly recognised himself. The last eight years had ravaged him. Not the last eight years, he thought, only the last four. How cruel was fate that his best and worst of days had fallen on the same date. On 29 February 2008, Tom had popped out to buy a bottle of bubbly for their first ‘anniversary’ celebration. The driver hadn’t stopped; apparently he had been high on drugs. He had been worrying about the steak being overcooked when the police had knocked on the door. Tom had died in the ambulance on the way to hospital.

The 29th February 2012 should have been their second anniversary. Tom had said that having a day that only came around every four years would keep their relationship fresh. Instead, it would be the first anniversary of his death. He had something special planned. He would drive to The Gap

384 words

Kiss and Tell

There has been a lot of talk in the media in Melbourne about when the first gay AFL player will come out. Mad Monday is the Monday after the season ends – at different times depending on where you are in the ladder.

It was the day after Mad Monday. The drunken craziness was behind us. The memory of the season that had promised so much but delivered so little could not be obliterated by even the deepest alcoholic stupor. I had avoided too much consumption, so the memory of the one point loss that tipped us out of the final eight was still too fresh. I took a walk along the beach and sat on a bench, head in hands and deep in melancholia. I had missed the easiest of goals after the siren. We should have been playing in the elimination final next weekend.

Hey, can I have your autograph? The silky voice roused me from my reverie. A young man had sat down at the other end of the bench. He smiled at me with perfect white teeth surrounded by plump kissable lips. His blue eyes sparkled like jewels set in a handsome smooth face. His medium cut blond hair formed an ideal frame for his angelic features. Despite my depression, my cock twitched in my pants.

Of course, I replied, ‘What would you like me to sign?"

He peeled off a tight white tee-shirt to expose his lightly tanned smooth chest. The blond hairs in his armpits proved he was a real blond. He sidled down the seat until our legs were touching. The electricity flowed between us. His scent was in my nostrils, driving me to the far edge of horniness. Just sign on my belly, he said sweetly. I focussed on his flat stomach and tiny belly button. My eyes traced the thin trail of blond hair that descended into his jeans. The band of his briefs was visible, white with one of our sponsors’ logos printed in red. There was also a bulge in his jeans that promised so much.

I swallowed hard, barely able to speak. Do you have a pen, I’m afraid I don’t have one, I said inanely.

Just use your finger and pretend, he purred.

It was like a million volts passed between us as I touched his body. It must have fried my brain because the rest of the afternoon is a blur. I remember heading back to his place; the taste of his kisses; how he wanted to align me just so on the bed before he positioned himself over me and let me eat his cute little butt; how he insisted he be on top as he slid my rock hard cock into his tight hole; how he moved us around on the bed just before I screamed and emptied myself inside him, doggy style. I didn’t even know his name only that he had an English accent. I don’t understand why I didn’t get his number.

I looked for him in the same place on Wednesday and Thursday without success and on Thursday afternoon went back to his apartment. A young couple there claimed to know nothing of him. I began to wonder if I had imagined the whole thing. On Friday morning, I knew, with a deeply sickening feeling, that I hadn’t. The newspaper that would normally be full of the first week of finals was instead full of me.

‘He Couldn’t Score on Saturday But He Had no Trouble on Tuesday’ the sub headline mocked beneath ‘The AFL Player & the Gay Escort’. They hadn’t named me, but the photos with the pixelated face were clearly from my Tuesday afternoon romp. I issued a stern ‘No comment!’ to the first six media calls and then turned my phone off. I would take to ground to ride out the storm.

The anonymous publication of the entire sex tape on X-Tube put the scuppers on that. My trophy girlfriend publicly dumped me on talk radio. I should have been angry but it suddenly felt like a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders. I organised exclusive interviews with the local newspaper that hadn’t outed me and with the ABC.

‘Proud to be Gay’ the headline read.

711 words

The Telephone Call

I have read many stories about mistresses. I have worried with them about breaking up a marriage and then hoped that one day I might. I have empathised with them about the long lonely nights, desperate for a call just to hear his voice. I have celebrated with them the sweet but all too brief times when I have held my married lover in my arms. I have shared with them the feeling of intense love at the height of our passion. Yes, I have thought a lot about mistresses.

I was watching the on-going story about trapped Chilean miners. One man’s wife and his mistress had both turned up at the rescue. I hoped that the man would live to have to deal with his problem on the surface. My heart went out to the mistress and I applauded her bravery.

David had missed our usual Friday evening ‘appointment’. It wasn’t that unusual: business or family commitments often got in the way. He usually managed to call or text, though. I wasn’t allowed to contact him. There would be no tell-tale messages left on his telephone for his wife to find. I wondered how the Chilean wife would react and whether David’s wife would throw him out if only she knew his dark terrible secret.

The telephone rang and raised me from my reverie. I muted the TV and answered. The voice was female and not one that I recognised.

Hello, it’s Karen Roberts here, there was a brief pause and my stomach lurched as the name sunk in, David’s wife. My heart skipped a beat and I was too shocked to reply. Are you there?

Yes; sorry; I’m here.

I know that we haven’t met, but I feel like I know you because David often spoke about you.

Visions of our fuck sessions flitted through my mind. He did?

Yes. I used to think your Friday night bridge sessions were the highlight of his week. I don’t like cards myself.

I was still very much at a loss for words. I see. Is there something wrong? David missed our, I was going to say session and had to pause while I thought of something else, game on Friday.

She either didn’t notice the pause or ignored it. I’m afraid that David was involved in a car accident on Friday morning. The voice went very quiet and I thought that I heard a sob. He didn’t make it. I’m sorry; there won’t be any more games of bridge.

Time seemed to stop and the shock and horror gripped my heart with a squeeze that I thought would kill me. My stomach lurched so that I was almost physically sick. I tried to control myself. I didn’t know what to say. The