When his dick slid into Joey’s ass Gabriel though he might come before he had even thrust all the way in. He was running his fingers along Joey’s balls, taking Joey’s cock in his hand and jerking it like it was his own while he pumped his prick into the ass that was every bit as sweet and hot and tight as he had hoped. He looked down at the blond boy lying under him, the blond, sunburned Anglo who held his wrist tight and whispered “Fuck me hard, hard, hard,” to him in Spanish as he moved his ass against Gabriel’s cock.

When Gabriel came the intensity made him cry out. He turned his head and bit into the flesh of Joey’s calf pressed against his shoulder. He thrust one more time into Joey’s sweet ass as he jerked the boy off, pulling hard on his cock and rubbing his balls until Joey spurted onto his chest with a gasp and a chorus of “Sí, sí, sí.”

Joey’s breathing was regular and deep as he slept against Gabriel’s chest. In the dream Gabriel was back in Tijuana. His mother had made tamales and the corn and green chilis were sweet and thick in his mouth. Later he and Joey would ride up past Santa Rosa, the carnations hardy, barely wilted from their hours in the sun. Later Gabriel and Joey would stop for something to eat, make a few dollars in the men’s room of a hash house fifty miles outside Fresno. Gabriel would watch as Joey got on his knees and rubbed at the man’s balls while he sucked his cock. Gabriel watched Joey watching him as he let the man suck his thick, Mexican dick and asked him how he kept it in his pants, it was so big.

Back in the truck, with the hot breeze blowing through, ruffling their hair and cooling the backs of their necks, they had looked at the road, then at each other. They had stopped one more time. Pulled into a thicket of bougainvillea, the heady perfume swirling over them as they stood outside the truck, pressed up against each other, kissing hard and wet, their tongues running over each other’s lips, into each other’s mouths. They were hot and hard, their cocks aching against each other, but they didn’t touch this time, didn’t come, got back in the truck with the ache in their balls, the throbbing of their cocks, heading back home.

In Fresno Joey would explain about the flat tire on the shortcut that had left him stranded for hours and Gabriel would tell his brothers that he had felt sick from the heat and had left the orchard, gone home and then out again, told them he would explain to the foreman tomorrow.

Gabriel took his blanket out into the yard and lay down on the spiky grass, looking up into the dark night, the lacy outline of the stars. He was tired and spent, he ached for sleep. He remembered Joey under him in the truck, remembered Joey asleep on his chest for the siestina. Now he closed his eyes, his left hand thrust deep into the pocket of his shorts, and fingered the soft petals of a carnation the color of sunset.

Missionary Road

Neil Plakcy

By the end of my first month as a freshman at the University of Hawaii, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. I was lonely and a thousand miles from home. The island I’d thought would be an exotic paradise turned out to be misty and rainy, full of people who didn’t look or talk like me, and who didn’t even notice I existed. If the handsome, sexy boyfriend I’d dreamed of meeting in college was somewhere on the Manoa campus, he certainly wasn’t looking for me.

I tried to fit in. I took a month-long freshman seminar called Introduction to Hawaii, where we learned about Hawaii’s earliest history, how the missionaries had brought their repressed ideas about sex to the happy islanders, about whaling and pineapples and Pearl Harbor. But everyone else in the class seemed to know it all already, making me feel even more that I’d made the wrong decision about where to go to school.

My parents died when I was just beginning to apply to colleges. They were on their way to a medical association dinner in Chicago when they drove through a railroad crossing where the signals were malfunctioning, and their car was hit by a train. Within the space of a few weeks, the railroad made a generous settlement, and I was suddenly a very rich only child. I decided I wanted to leave Chicago, where the winters were cold and the summers sometimes colder, and go to college someplace warm, where cute boys would have their shirts off all year round.

UH seemed to fit that bill. I had good grades and didn’t need financial aid, and I’m sure I fit some kind of diversity package—skinny white mainland boys aren’t too common around here. Right away, I could see I didn’t fit in. My roommate is a Hawaiian guy from the Big Island; he speaks a funny mix of English, Hawaiian, and Chinese, and I can’t understand him or his friends half the time. He’s straight, too, which was a big disappointment.

It’s not like I wrote on my application, “Horny gay virgin seeks sexy teen to initiate him into the ways of man-love,” but still, I was hoping to get a gay roommate, or at least make some gay friends. But I’ve been too scared to go to the coffee hour at the LGBTQ student center, or the welcome back to campus dance. I don’t know why—it’s not like I was worried about disapproval from my family, since I don’t have any, or my friends, since I don’t have any of those here, either. I guess I was most scared of not fitting in there, either, because then I knew I’d really be screwed.

So it was a Saturday night, and I was feeling really lonely and horny. My roommate and his buddies had all gone out to a party somewhere, and I was finally disgusted with myself for sitting alone in my room when I could be out getting a life. I took the bus down into Waikiki, figuring at least I would walk up and down Kalakaua Avenue and watch other people having fun.

Palm trees decorated with white lights swayed in a light breeze. The moon was nearly full, but I couldn’t see any stars. The sidewalks were crowded with tourists in matching his-and-hers aloha shirts, hustlers handing out flyers for heritage jewelry, and kids my age, all in groups. It made me feel even more alone. I must have walked past the International Marketplace at least three times when this guy came up to me and said, “You look lonely.”

I was electrified. It was like he’d looked deep into my soul to see how totally isolated I felt. He was cute, too, an Asian guy around my age, skinny like me, wearing a navy blue tank top and black nylon running shorts, with black flip-flops. “Yeah, I guess I am,” I said, sighing.

“Maybe we can hang out together, be friends,” he said. He hooked his arm through mine and started walking me down the street. “What’s your name?”

“Kevin. What’s yours?”

“I’m Tui.” He pronounced it twee, like something a bird would say, and it took me a while to figure out how to spell it. He kept up a light banter, chatting away happily, finding out that I was a student, where I was from, how long I’d been in Honolulu.

I was so happy—the happiest I’d been since long before my mom and dad died. The loud Hawaiian music spilling out of stores and the cars revving engines on Kalakaua seemed to be in sync with my heart, which was racing like a runner-up at the Indy 500, and I had a boner trapped against my thigh by the folds of my boxers.

We walked a couple of blocks together and then he stopped. “You want to come to a hotel room with me? I make you feel real good.”

I couldn’t believe my luck. I’d met a really cute guy, and it was clear he liked me, too. And all in less than an hour!

“Yeah, sure, cool,” I said, my mouth dry.

“You have cash?” he asked. “Pay for hotel room?”

I didn’t have much with me, but I had an ATM card. He knew exactly where we could find a machine. “I can only get $500 at once,” I said. “Is that going to be enough?” I had no idea how much a hotel room on Waikiki would cost, but I was sure it wasn’t cheap.