Aroused

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Authors: Sean Wolfe

Books by Sean Wolfe
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Aroused
 
Also stories in these anthologies:
 
Masters of Midnight
 
Man of My Dreams
 
Midnight Thirsts
 
 
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
Aroused
Tales of Erotica
SEAN WOLFE
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Some people believe you have one soul mate and one true love in your lifetime. I used to be one of those believers. But not anymore. Because I have been very blessed in my life.
The first true love of my life, and the guy who made me believe in the existence of soul mates, was Gustavo Paredes. He taught me the difference between love and sex, and taught me how to really love another person and allow myself to be loved. He taught me the value of growing up and of commitment and of being true to myself. He was my partner and my life for thirteen years. Gustavo Paredes-Wolfe passed away in 2003. Gustavito—Te extraño y te quiero mucho. Siempre vas estar en mi Corazón.
And just when you think life sucks the big one and you'll never really love again ... that your life will be filled with cheap and meaningless and anonymous sexual encounters ... wait, that doesn't sound all that bad. Seriously, though. After two and a half years of being alone, the Universe was kind enough to grant me love again. True love and another soul mate. Everything about Kyle Martinez and I meeting and falling in love should have failed miserably. But it didn't. Instead, we fell madly in love very quickly and have grown closer with each passing day. Kyle is now teaching me the value of enjoying life, of holding on to my youth without letting go of the hard lessons I've learned throughout my life, and of sharing my life completely with another man, and allowing him to share his with me. Kyle, thank you for supporting me so wholeheartedly, for being proud of me, and for pushing me when I needed to be pushed. I love you and look forward every day to spending the rest of my life with you.
This book is dedicated to the two men who have made me the man I am today, and whom I will always love with every ounce of my being:
Kyle Martinez
 
Gustavo Paredes-Wolfe
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Austin Foxxe, former editor in chief of
Men
and
Freshmen
magazines, for believing in me and publishing my first erotic stories.
 
Thank you to the guys in my writers group: Matt Kailey, Jerry Wheeler, Jack Bumgardner, and Peter Clark. Your insights and constructive criticism of my work are invaluable and have helped make me a better writer.
 
Thank you to my angel on earth, Jane Nichols, for believing in me and supporting my dream, even if she can't bring herself to read any of my erotica.
 
And special thanks to my editor, John Scognamiglio. You never give up on me, and are always willing to go the extra mile. Thank you for giving me my start in publishing, and for giving me the creative liberties you have. You totally
rock
!!
Introduction
Most of us in the United States, with the possible exception of those of us fortunate enough to be from California or Florida or South Texas (on which the verdict is still out), are familiar with the “changing of the seasons.” We generally have three months of winter, three months of spring, three months of summer and three months of fall or autumn (give or take a week or two with any season due to Mother Nature's sense of humor.)
Being from San Francisco, I didn't quite grasp this concept of seasons. In San Francisco it was always cold and foggy in the mornings, sunny and comfortably warm in the afternoon, and cool and crisp at night. That was my idea of seasons. That's just the way it was, and I liked it. Then I moved to Denver, and was shocked ... shocked I tell you, to find myself thrust into real seasons that were as different as night and day, yet as predictable as Miss Texas being a top 5 finalist in the Miss America pageant. Fall came and leaves fell and everything turned gray and ugly. Winter came and it snowed and it was cold and wet and most inconvenient. That's just the way it was, and I didn't like it. But then spring came, the flowers bloomed, it warmed up, and I smiled again. When summer showed up and all the boys strolled around the park shirtless and in thirty different styles and colors of Daisy Dukes ... well, all was right with the world again. And I liked it.
As I was pondering a theme for this book of erotic stories, I couldn't help but think about the seasons and how they apply to us as people, and especially as gay men. As we grow older, we go through a “changing of the seasons” of our lives and of our souls. What makes us happy in summer is not the same thing that makes us tingle with excitement in winter. It really happens in every aspect of our lives, but for the purposes of this book, I will be applying it to our sexuality as gay men, and how our perspectives of love and sex and sexuality and eroticism change as we experience our personal changing of the seasons.
We grow, we change, we see things differently as our library of life experiences expands and we grow as humans. For gay men this process is usually particularly difficult. As a community we are taught from a very early age (relative to our coming out as gay men) that youth and beauty and a carefree and fun attitude are all-important. That's great for us as we float through our gay youth. But as we grow older, it becomes more difficult to reconcile those deeply-seeded beliefs with what we feel as we mature. It's almost a whole new coming-out experience. The changing of the seasons.
The purpose of this book (other than the obvious, because this
is
an erotica collection, after all) is to celebrate all of the seasons of our lives. To learn the joys and understand the meanings of sex, sexuality, love, and eroticism within each of our seasons.
In this book, each season is represented by a specific age range and set of values within the gay male community. None of us are stupid enough to believe that
all
gay men place these values with their respective “seasons” (or age ranges). But we can't pretend to be naïve enough to believe that this system is not prevalent in our community, either. In this collection, there are four short stories for each season. As you read through the stories, try to recognize yourself. Are you currently in this season, or do you remember what it was like to have been there? If you're in spring or summer (not the temporal season), and you're reading a story in fall or winter ... can you imagine yourself thinking what these characters are thinking, acting like the characters are acting, and feeling the things they are feeling? If you're in the later seasons of life, do you find yourself longing for your younger days of exploration and uncertainty, or are you comfortable with the experiences you've had and the wealth of knowledge you possess, and the level of sexuality and eroticism you are currently experiencing?
In the middle of the book, to break up the monotony, is a novella, a longer story that follows two men through all four seasons of their lives. It deals with coming out, with lust and first love, with struggling with the meaning and demands of commitment, with infidelity and arguments, with finding common ground, and with realizing that true love is powerful enough to conquer all of the bad stuff life and society throw our way.
One thing to keep in mind as you're reading, is that the seasons of our lives—our sexual journey—by no means have to follow (and very seldom do) the temporal seasons of the calendar year. Your sexual awakening and coming out (represented by spring, in this book) might happen in the middle of January. Try to think outside the box and view these seasons as the significant times of our lives and our sexuality and our coming into ourselves ... and not having anything to do with the months “typically” associated with them.
My hope is that you read all of the stories, and that you recognize yourself in a few of them. But more than that, I hope you will realize that we all have something very special to bring to the table of life, regardless of our age or background. By sharing and learning from and teaching one another, we grow as a community ... and more importantly, as human beings.
We celebrate Gay Pride every summer with lavish parades and rallies and endless parties and orgies and other fun and exciting debauchery. Don't get me wrong ... I love that. I came out at San Francisco's Gay Pride, and haven't missed a single one since then, regardless of the city I've been in at the time. But real gay pride can only be realized when we are proud of ourselves as good and decent human beings, and the endless possibilities of who we can become. When we embrace ourselves in every one of our incarnations and stages of life, then we are whole and complete and happy gay men.
Celebrate the “changing of our seasons.”

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