Brave New Worlds

"
    And I heard it. I heard the music. I just walked out onto the platform, reeling with the sound, the mass of voices inside my head, and I didn't need any blankets. O Happy Day! When Jesus wash! And Los Angeles might be gone, and Detroit and Miami, a lot of things might be gone, but that Sunday night music was still kicking shit, and if there wasn't a God, there was always other people, and they surprised you. Maybe I'd been fooled by history too. I said goodbye to the cameras as I passed them. Goodbye Alice. Goodbye Hortensia. See ya, Scarlet. Butch, I'm sorry about the name.
    They were making funny noises. The cameras were weeping.
    I walked on toward the open gate.
    For America

Pervert
    by Charles Coleman Finlay

    Charles Coleman Finlay is the author of the novels The Prodigal Troll , The Patriot Witch , A Spell for the Revolution , and The Demon Redcoat . Finlay's short fiction—most of which appears in his collection, Wild Things —has been published in several magazines, such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , Strange Horizons , and Black Gate , and in anthologies, including The Best of All Flesh and my own By Blood We Live , The Way of the Wizard , and The Living Dead 2 . He has twice been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has also been nominated for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Sidewise Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award.

    Sexuality is more than just bodily urges; it's more than who you ask on a date. Sexuality permeates almost every aspect of the lives we lead, and our cultural experiences will influence our sexual choices. We dream of love at first sight, but find that society not only influences who we will see, but the kind of love we are allowed to fall into.

    This next tale is the story of a man torn between the passion within him and the strictures of a society very different from our own. In his world, religion and biology have colluded to make people with his sexual urges not only uncommon, but unacceptable. Duty and temptation catch him in a Gordian knot even the most hardened dominatrix would find too binding.

    This story was a finalist in the 2005 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards for its thoughtful discussion of sexuality and how society regulates our sex lives. Here is all the passion of sex, the melancholy of unexpressed love—and the bitterness of a life lived in perversion.

    T here are two kinds of people in the world, homosexuals and hydrosexuals. And then there are perverts like me. So far as I know, there is not a word, not even a bit of slang, to describe my particular depravity. But then I have never spoken of it to anyone, nor written of it before now, and we do not invent words for the things we dare not speak or write.
    Everyone knows I am different, though. They can tell.
    Jamin and Zel stroll through the corridor of the apartment building where we all live. I can tell it's them coming because I leave my door cracked open to show everyone I have nothing to hide. Zel's distant voice caroms off the walls, fluctuating in pitch with the peaks and rhythms of the stories he tells; Jamin's subdued, distinctive laugh barks out at regular intervals. For thirty or forty seconds before they arrive, I hear their approach, and dread it. They are my best friends.
    I sit in the exact center of the cerulean blue sofa, arms resting on its bell-shaped back, palms damp against the silky fabric. The voice of Noh Sis, last year's most popular singer, warbles from the stereo speakers, making a dirge of joy amid the interweaving of sitar and clarinets. Closing my eyes, I count the notes and half-notes by measure, now the sorrowful tone in the end-rhyme of love , Zel's exclamation, a series of mournful sitar chords, Jamin's laugh.
    And the tap at the door.
    I lift my head as if surprised to see them, smile as if happy. "Hey!"
    Zel throws wide his arms in an extravagant gesture of greeting, and says with dead seriousness, "Arise! Arise like the evening star and brighten the way into night for us!"
    Jamin grins, nods at me. "Hello. "
    They are both tall, and handsome, and completely at ease in themselves. Jamin is balding, so he shaves his head; he has quiet, wolfish features, and always wears plain, businesslike clothes, immaculately tailored and pressed. Zel is the shaggy, adorable puppy, all awkward limbs and endless energy.
    I wipe my hands on my thighs, arise, and embrace them in turn with only a dry quick kiss on the cheek. "Where are you going?"
    " We," Zel