I'd always wondered if I was gay, but I'd never had the nerves to find out. I didn't know any gay people, and where I grew up most people were homophobic, so I never had a chance to experiment. I'd tried getting with girls but something always felt empty about it, like I was just going through the motions. But every time I slept with someone I couldn't help but imagine what it was like to be on the bottom, or on my knees...

When Travis got home his mom was putting dinner on the table. Aunt Beatrice had improved enough that she could leave her bed and sit at the table with them. She and his mom talked and didn’t seem to notice that Travis was quieter than usual. When he’d finished eating he hurried upstairs. He had strange feelings in his groin. He locked the door to his room and pulled down his shorts. His dick was almost hard. He touched it...

Winterset, Iowa is a small town thirty seven miles southwest of Des Moines. Mary Ann McCree was born and grew up there. After graduating from high school she took a secretarial course so that she could learn shorthand. Her typing was excellent, and she felt with the addition of shorthand she could find a job easily. The soldiers had returned from the war and businesses were expanding rapidly. Mary Ann had an older sister...

When I met my wife, I fell in love immediately. I loved the way she looked, the way she thought, her character. I felt her parents had done a great job of raising her. We dated, I met her folks, with whom I got along with very well, we got engaged and within a year we were married. Everything was perfect…for about a year, and then I came to feel there was no magic. I know this sounds shallow, but that’s the only way I can...

Curtis Cigarette wasn’t his real name, of course. He’d been christened Curtis Christoff but in his late teenage years he was always asking anyone, “Got a cigarette?” At one point someone said “Uh-oh, here comes Curtis Cigarette,” and the name stuck. Curtis was a stoner who over time had tried almost every drug but always came back to weed. I don’t know if you can be a weed addict, but you sure can be a “getting high” addi...

  My grandmother had some definite ideas on the naming of her babies. I guess she thought the name she hung on them would somehow make her wishes come true. She gave them all names that meant handsome or beautiful. She started with Bella, who is my Mom. My oldest uncle is named Cullen, then came Uncle Nordin followed by Aunt Callista. Their baby brother was tagged, Beau. Why Grandma didn’t give them names that meant smart...

  There was only one town on this, one of the smaller islands in the northernmost reaches of Puget Sound, hard by the Canadian border. There were no beaches on this side of the island and the town sat above the huge rocks on which the waves crashed below. The town had one store and a small restaurant to serve the fewer than five hundred people who lived on the island year round, most of whom lived in the town. Inland ther...

  When Elena was seven years old her mom and dad said they had a big surprise for her: She was going to have a little sister. They didn’t sense it, but Elena wasn’t thrilled with this news. She didn’t want a little sister. She knew a little sister wasn’t the same as a new baby doll. She knew it meant she would no longer be the princess, her mama’s twinkling star, her daddy’s little lollypop. And so after interminable mont...

September in Southern California is often the hottest month of the year, easily outstripping July and August. The sky can be devoid of clouds with the start of the rainy season still a couple of months in the future. The heat will be dry, any wind coming off the Mojave Desert. When Ralph Winchester was born in Meridian, Idaho his mother and father called him “Ralphie”. When his two-year-old brother repeated his name it ca...

Emma Luca was a middle-aged woman with a sixteen-year-old son and a bad need for a husband, or so she felt. She wanted security for herself and, of course, for her son. She was determined to find a man who could provide what she needed, even if it meant fucking an old man who could still get it up. With time, she was sure she had found the right man, and he wasn’t all that bad. He was a small wiry man who was partially ba...

Life in Paris for the past four years had been horrendous under the Nazi occupation. Guy LaSalle and his family had managed to scrape by and remain one of the families the Germans had not prosecuted. However, between the walls of the house they occupied, a small personal war raged on. At twenty-six Guy was the oldest of the families four children and was expected to marry and carry forth the family name. Even though he ha...

  When we’re young we do some really stupid things that we regret for many of our adult years. When I say “we” I’m talking about myself, of course. I don’t like to think that I was a bully, but I’m sure that’s the exact word people would use. In my defense, I can say I never physically attacked any of the boys my “gang” harassed, but that’s a lame excuse. In fact, I’m as ashamed to admit I was one of the wannabe thugs tha...

Natives of the west coast usually have a right to be smug about their weather. The climate is mild with snow usually falling only in the mountains, the unbearable heat confined to the deserts, an ocean breeze caressing the coast, and little change among the seasons. But Mother Nature can be capricious. Santa Ana winds can spread devasting wildfires, cold fronts can swoop down from Canada, and Pacific storms can bring rain...

Kamil and Karim had been blessed many times over. They were tall and handsome with fit, well-formed bodies. Kamil, who was twenty-four and a student at the university, had a beautiful girlfriend who he planned to marry upon graduation. Karim was three years younger and was working in his father’s shop until he entered the university the next year. He had never had a serious girlfriend, but with his good looks, he had many...