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A recent request reminded me that I've been meaning to post a link to this. It never occurred to me to write erotica before I met Mary Anne, but she made it sound easy and fun; at some point, when I realized I had something to say, I wrote a story. (Um, that is, J. Hartman wrote a story. For convenience and ease of phrasing, I will refer to J. Hartman as "I" in this narrative.) To avoid the hard work of coming up with a structure of my own, I borrowed one from Thurber (who, I suspect, has been spinning in his grave ever since, poor guy). I attempted to sell it to an online erotica magazine that Mary Anne had just sold to, but a week after I submitted it to them they went on a hiatus that eventually became permanent. So, with no idea what else to do with it, I sent it to Clean Sheets for consideration for their material-by-staff month. (I had been a proofreader there for a while.)

Much to my delight, the story was accepted and published.

Later, it was duly submitted to one of the Best Gay Erotica types of anthologies, but didn't, alas, make it in.

Even later, Susannah and Brian chose the story for the Clean Sheets reprint anthology From Porn to Poetry. I happily granted reprint permission, but I didn't realize until some time later that everything in that anthology had been removed from the CS archives to promote sales of the printed book. A valid approach; I just hadn't expected it. So I asked Susannah and Brian if they'd mind if I posted the story on my own site, and they said that would be fine but asked that I include a link to CS.

I put the story up a couple months ago, but then I chickened out and didn't provide any links to it.

So here, available on my site for the first time, is "The Secret Life of Humphrey Milquer." Not remotely work-safe, unless you work someplace that's cool about this sort of thing.

Oh, and there's sexually explicit content there, so if you don't like such stuff or aren't supposed to be reading it, maybe you'd be best off not following the link. (Is that enough of a disclaimer to avoid legal trouble, or do I need to say something more?)

I'm tempted to edit it—there are a couple of less-than-felicitous phrasings here and there. But I think I'll leave it alone.