underthemattress2:

undietales:

What stories should I tell?

Over the course of the two years+ that I’ve been running this blog, I’ve asked myself that question a lot. Should I tell the stories that I think will be most popular? Should I tell the stories that I wish to hear myself and maybe in doing so inspire others to tell them as well? Should I give voice to my darkest, most secret impulses and make a spectacle of them?

In my writing, as in life, I’ve endeavored to throw a bunch of shit to the wall and see what sticks.

Now, here’s where things get awfully personal, so feel free to skip to the end if the sappy stuff annoys you; I’ll understand—other people’s emotions can be so much.

I’ve never been the most clever writer in the room, or the most schooled in the history of the written word, or the most technically proficient. This isn’t a pity party, it’s fact. I’ve been lucky to study writing with people whose work still astounds me. But I’m me and I’m driven to tell the stories that I want to tell, the stories that are just a little different than the others. If I have a strength, then that’s it.

Experimentation is my lifeblood and this blog has been an experiment on top of an experiment. Writing sex stories was already risky and full of pitfalls, so I went further and started this blog to see how a little caption-driven page full of weird stories often with fetishistic undertones (overtones?) could live in the hyper-sexed deep end of the Tumblr landscape. The reactions consistently surprised me, humbled me, and sometimes gave me a wicked hard-on.

I didn’t know I’d encounter talented souls making stories so searing hot and well-written and unexpectedly beautiful or brutal or tender or just fucking smart. Again, super humbled over here. I didn’t know I’d find readers so loyal and jazzed about the next story that they had to message me as soon as they’d read it. Side-note: you guys are literally the best.

Yet, I’m stepping away, because the question is still: What stories should I tell?

As much as I love writing for this blog in some ways it’s a crutch, too. It’s the place where I go when other ideas won’t manifest, or facing edits on another project seems too daunting. It’s time to paddle out, lose sight of the shoreline, and see what trouble I can get into. Ultimately, I want to tell bigger stories. I want to expand and grow and write about intimacy in ways beyond the expected. I want to push myself and make a fool of myself by trying to stand beside those other writers—the brilliant, the clever, and the bold.

So I’m closing down Undie Tales and moving on to next thing.

A bummer, maybe, but I have the feeling you’ll survive.

So that leaves just a few more things: I had a ton of stuff planned for this blog finally hitting 3,000 followers and I’m not going to be able to get to all of them, but I’ll knock out some of them and post them here. The blog will also stay here as a testament to my strange tastes and odd writing choices.

Thank you, by the way, for reading this note and everything that came before it. It’s been a hell of ride. Thank you.

-Ben

(tl;dr I’m out, fuckers! But not before I drop a couple more pieces. Don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s me. 😘)

Goddammit – first Bill Drake, now this. I’ll lament the loss of Benji’s singular voice and style in this arena… but I’ll damn sure be looking forward to it elsewhere.

Thanks for making me smile, thanks for making me go *unf*, and thanks for making me want to be a better writer too. Most of all, thanks for the work, my friend!

Signal-boosting this, and what I said on the other blog. Benji’s one of the truly outstanding writers who inspire me, and who I’m glad I got to know via this crazy outlet. This place, and the stroke-story genre, won’t be the same without his hot, thoughtful, beautifully crafted pieces. 

undietales:

I started a project years ago trying to capture the feeling of different American cities that I’ve spent time in. This was the first. 

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The sun is coming down, but the heat isn’t. The thermometers have capped at some unreal degree and the dogs can’t close their mouths. There’s a dark brown man playing a drum solo on an empty paint tub with his whole body. He ignores the sweat dripping into his eyes and the muscles straining against his skin. It’s like he’s trying to play himself free of himself.

You head to the best Thai place on Washington Avenue and drink a Thai iced coffee. The condensed milk swirling through the drink must have been squeezed from some holy teat. The food is good, too, but the red peppers bring the heat even closer; it cradles you like a head-sick lover, cooing hot breath in hot words that make no sense but entice and arouse nonetheless.

You decide to pack it in, get a drink. The bar is full of people with colorful tattoos, a carnival of dyed skins. They wear frayed denim cutoffs and little hats. They drink craft beers with wry names and pick at french fries fried in American oil. The waitress says her name is Shell and you believe her. She smiles in a sad, lost way.

The dark is never that dark in the summer. Neon jumps up from the jukebox and people’s bodies glow with a queer inner light. Suddenly there’s a DJ. Suddenly there’s a disco vocalist cooing velvet about how the DJ saved her life. So people start getting up and kicking off their shoes. Some girl you’ve never seen before takes your hand and pulls you onto the floor. You start dancing, moving together as inevitable as bodies can sometimes be. You’re laughing, the song splits—another—you’re still dancing, then you’re breathless and you say something into your dance partner’s ear. She laughs, flicks her hair. You step back to the bar and get another drink.

Someone touches your arm. Gentle, but firm. The hand lingers. It belongs to a handsome smile which belongs to a man with dark eyes and last weekend’s five o’clock shadow. He saw you dancing, likes the way you move, he says this in an accent that’s as sultry and hard to pin down as the city itself. You smile back and toast to summer. A good toast he says and drinks.

There’s mischief in his eyes, something that tugs and insists on another drink. It’s five drinks later when you stumble out of the bar, your arm around his neck and the both of you laughing deeply in the heat. You stop at a Chinese takeout and eat chicken wings that are too hot to touch with a sauce that’s almost too sweet to eat. The two of you get into a cab and head up to his place.

You lay with your head against the door and gaze out the window as things flash by: tail lights, storefronts, parks, stoops, headlights, couples, dogs, empty liquor bottles, oak trees. The swirl of it seems nearly as drunk as you are.

You get to his place and you get out (or fall out) of the cab. He takes you up the stairs and you enter a dark apartment that smells like the apartment of any anonymous city dweller. You find the bedroom.

He becomes a dynamo of kisses. His mouth is on you in a hundred places it seems and your clothes melt away as the two of you crash down to his mattress laid across the floor. The only light in the room is coming from the streetlights outside and they cast a diffuse and noirish pall. His lips are perfectly shaped, a sensual mouth with just a hint of red. His pink tongue slips out and teases yours as the both of you kiss. He reaches over and pulls down your briefs. Your hardness springs out and tastes the open air for a moment before he devours it. He sucks it lovingly, reverently. He puts pressure on the head and eases his way down the shaft as you moan half-formed words into the almost dark.

You look down and watch him. There are shafts of light coming through the blinds and they cut across his skin. He looks like he was drawn into this scene, too perfect to be real. You stroke his short, curly hair. He slips his clothes off without taking you out of his mouth, but the feeling stirring in your balls forces you to slip your hips away from him. It’s too soon. He grins, understands.

He leans over the bed and presents a bottle of lube. The good stuff. You smile and he smiles. You push him down gently and he moves with you as you climb up to your knees. A truck stops outside: it blasts an old, romantic song that was written before you were born as you wet your fingers and slip them inside this man, this stranger, who wants you so badly. His back arches up from the bed as you first penetrate him. His nipples are hard and his body is as warm as the night.

He’s begging without speaking, pulling at your hips, grinding his hole against your fingers, tensing and tensing against your fingers, pushing back against your fingers. You find a condom, pull it on carefully and then—with that out of the way—you no longer have to be careful. You fuck him the way you can only fuck a stranger: it’s rough and tender, you are so fucking hard and he wants it so bad. He shuts his eyes tight and claws at the bed, he spits phrases at you in a language that is too alien from your own to discern meaning, but you know what he means.

You flip him onto his stomach and you fuck him harder. You slam deeper and he moans a steady unbroken noise for minutes on end. The love song outside stops and starts again. The light from outside catches on the beads of sweat gathering in the small of his back. You growl something unintelligible, but you are both beyond words. He pushes back a final time. You thrust forward. Both of you cum simultaneously, chests heaving, voices carrying down to the street.