Introduction
I was recently reminded of the existence of a cursed assignment from about five years ago, something I had banished from memory. My friends Brian Asman and Patrick C. Harrison III rounded up indie lit’s biggest degenerates and asked us each to write a piece for a “literary porn anthology,” for which we were to take a work of classic literature and smut-ify it. I agreed, for reasons now unknown to me, and selected Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
If you’re unfamiliar (first of all, shame on you), the novel follows the unhappy experiences of Jake Barnes, a WWI veteran with a war injury that has rendered him impotent. He is in love with the Lady Brett Ashley; she loves him back, in a way, but their romance is doomed because she’s basically the biggest ho you ever did see, and Jake is not equipped to give her what she needs. No one is, really. She’s insatiable. Not slut shaming, just calling it how it is.
Anyway, there’s a section toward the end in which Jake and his friends attend a bullfight, and it’s rendered with passionate, elevated prose that can only be described as…erotically tinged.
Perfect fodder, I thought, for this sordid publishing venture.
And now, all this time later, I’m making it your problem.
I have rescued this execrable document from the archives of forgotten fiction for your reading displeasure. Should you be so inclined, there’s more where this came from, as the original anthology can still be purchased here: Boinking Bizarro on Amazon.
Enjoy.
And I’m sorry.
— Chandler Morrison, Los Angeles, April 2025
My Cock Also Rises
People are always asking me about my junk.
Their inquiries are sometimes jeering, more than a little cruel. Other times they’re timid, embarrassed. Mostly they’re blithely, unabashedly forthright.
“Does it look gross?” they’ll ask, their eyes shamelessly dipping toward my crotch.
“So, it doesn’t work at all?”
“Did you lose the pillar or the stones? Or both? Neither?”
“Can I see it?”
“Do you have to sit down when you urinate?”
These questions come from friend and foe alike, and—with greater frequency—from complete strangers. How everyone—in the world, it would seem—came to know of my pitiful war injury is beyond me. I’ve never been secretive about it, nor do I advertise it with any sort of abandon. I wear the tragedy not so much on my sleeve, but in my heart. I suppose in some ways, perhaps, that makes it painfully apparent.
In any case, their questions don’t bother me. How could they, when the true struggle comes from the very object of their curiosity? To live each day subjected to the common toils of man without the opportunity for man’s basest release—the anguish is eternal. God Himself is justified in the endless torment of His subjects only because they can hide briefly from Him in the arms of each other.
I do not have that hiding place. I am a shell-less snail, unprotected from the elements. By forever softening my dick, God has abandoned me in the cruelest way He knows how.
“God,” Brett says, startling me from my reverie as if she’d been alongside me within it. “I don’t know why I do this to myself.”
We’re on the bed in my hot hotel room, sweating and naked and unsatisfied, always unsatisfied. The Lady Brett Ashley, ever the embodiment of her title with her regal curves and the affected lilt of her voice, sits astride me like a diffident queen in repose. The sunlight seeping through the open window frames her short golden hair in an ironic halo.
“I don’t know either,” I say, averting my gaze, looking at everything but her. Anything but her.
She groans and grinds against my useless dick. Her hands burrow into my hair, and then she sighs and rolls off me. She takes my cigarettes from the nightstand and lights one, sitting up against the headboard, not looking at me. Not looking at my ruined cock.
As my eyes dart around the room, they fall on the paper sack in the corner. The sack contained an impulsive purchase from several afternoons ago, when I’d stumbled into a novelty shop, drunk and confused after the bullfight. I’ve thought little about what happened—did anything happen?—as I’d stood sipping Pernod with Brett and Robert Cohn and Mike Campbell while the matador engaged in his majestic, violent ritual with the grunting beast. I’d been very tight—we’d all been tight—and surely whatever I’d thought had happened was my absinthe-stoked imagination. Surely, indeed, but not so surely as to keep me from making that strange purchase afterward, with the intent of procuring a prostitute and then…trying something.
Yes, that had been the intent, but a sounder mind had prevailed as the Pernod wore off and exhaustion set in, and I’d largely forgotten about it until now.
“Jake?” Brett asks, and I feel her regarding me with something like suspicion. I look over at her. She’s gazing at me through the haze of smoke, her chin slightly upturned and her cigarette hand tilted elegantly at the wrist. “You’re thinking about something.”
“I’m always thinking. Everyone’s always thinking.”
She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean, darling. There’s something on your mind. Something you want to bring up. Something you’re…” She trails off. “I can’t tell, exactly. Something you’re…afraid of, I think.”
I look back at the paper sack, thinking about the bull.
The bull.
Yes, something had happened that day. I can blame it on the absinthe, or call it a delusion invoked by the sun or the heat, but I’d be lying to myself. It had been the bull. Something about its sleek and shining fur, the taut swell of its muscles. The animal rage in its fevered eyes. Something had…something had caused a…
A stirring.
A stiffening.
“Jake?” Brett asks again, more urgently. “Darling, talk to me.”
I sigh and sit up, reaching over and taking her cigarette. I take a drag , staring at it contemplatively as it burns between my fingertips before I hand it back to her. “Do you love me?” I ask.
“Oh, God, Jake, let’s not do this again. You know I love you, but there’s Mike to think about. I love him, too. And now there’s this thing with Romero, whom I also love, and you see, of course, there’s the thing about your dick. Namely, it does not work.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But...” My eyes drift once more to the paper sack, and Brett’s gaze follows.
“Jake, no, don’t tell me you went and bought more of those witch doctor potions. You remember how much blood there was last time. And that business with the leeches…” She shudders.
“No,” I say. “It’s nothing like that. Not this time.” I think of the bull, can almost feel its hot breath on my neck, and now I shudder. “This time I want to try something different.” I get out of bed and walk over to the sack, picking it up and holding it to my chest, almost protectively. The paper crinkles.
“Jake,” Brett says softly, crushing out her cigarette and leaning forward. “What’s in the bag?”
There had been so much power in the bull’s movements. So much strength and determination, so much sheer will. And the horns. God, the horns. The sensuous slope of their curves, those deadly ivory points.
“I have something for you,” I say, my voice trembling. “We’ve tried a lot of things. We’ve tried so many things, but we haven’t tried this.” With unsure steps, I advance to the bed and take the item out of the sack, presenting it to Brett like an offering. I suppose, in a way, it is.
“I…I’m not sure I understand,” says Brett, narrowing her eyes at the item. She takes it with visible trepidation, turning it over in her hands, holding it at a distance from her body as though it might bite her. “You want me to…what? Put this on?”
I try to speak, but my mouth is dry and my throat is locked up, so all I can do is nod.
“And you think that will…what, Jake? You think that will get you hard?”
I shrug and then, sheepish, nod again. Licking my lips and clearing my throat, I say, “It might not…it might not be enough to just wear it. You might have to…well, um, you might have to act.”
Sighing and chewing her lower lip, she puts on the headband with visible reluctance. Standing, she walks over to mirror on the bureau and examines her reflection, running her hands over the crude plastic horns curving out from her head.
I put my hand on my cock and begin to stroke.
Turning back to me, Brett looks at my groin and raises an eyebrow. “Is it…is it working?”
“Not yet. I told you. You have to…act.”
“Act like…what?”
Impatient, I say, “Maybe, um, get down on all fours. You know. Like a…like a bull.” I continue to stroke, but my cock is still flaccid.
“God, Jake, this is too weird,” she says. But, bless her, she complies. She gets on her hands and knees on the shag carpet.
“Shit,” I say, a little breathless. “I think something is happening.” Indeed, my dick feels…meaty in a way it hasn’t in a long time. Not hard, but definitely…thicker.
Brett looks up at me and seems to recognize something in my face. Something changes in her, and she embraces the role with new alacrity. She snorts and shakes her head—a nice touch, and I say, “Yeah, that’s good, just like that.” She snorts again and grinds her palm on the carpet, simulating an impending charge.
A miracle is happening. The sky is opening up. All the doctors were wrong.
I’m getting an erection.
“Okay, now come over here and fuck me like the…um, like the bull I am,” Brett says, bobbing her head and rolling her hips.
“No,” I say. “Say it like a bull would say it.”
“Like a…how would a bull say it? Bulls can’t talk.”
“I don’t know, like, deepen your voice, or something. Kind of…grunt it, you know?”
“Um…grrr,” Brett growls. In a throaty voice, she says, “Come over here and FUCK ME.”
I feel my cock begin to soften slightly. “That sounded more like a bear,” I tell her, exasperated. “It has to be a bull.”
“GRRRR. COME…OVER…HERE…AND…FUCK…ME.”
“That was definitely a gorilla voice. Why are you growling? Bulls don’t growl.”
Looking up at me, tilting her head, she says, “Do gorillas growl? I don’t think they do.”
I think about this for a moment. “Good point. It wasn’t a gorilla. It was more like a…like a dinosaur.”
“Well, whatever, just hurry up and get on with it before you lose it.”
I’m stroking furiously now, desperate not to let the half-cocked erection wither. Sweat is beading on my back and at my temples, and I’m certain it’s a losing battle when, like something out of a dream, Brett emits a long, droning, “MOOOOOOO,” and I’m back in the game.
Positioning myself behind her, I place my palm on the sweat-slickened small of her back and angle my dick toward her vagina, which, I’m sorry, I can only describe as gaping. Big, pink, and wet, with damp tufts of curly black hair sprouting around its edges—a woman’s sex has never been so unappealing as Brett’s is in this moment. It’s like a festering wound. But I’m still semi-hard, and goddammit, I’m committed. I shut my eyes, trying to focus on the memory of the hulking, ferocious bull, and I’m mere centimeters away from sliding home when it hits me.
The smell.
Nay, the stench.
The ripe, musty odor of Brett’s cunt wafts up and assails my sinuses, promptly pulling me from my bovine fantasy. The bull’s aphrodisiacal aroma of hate and fear and manure had been so different from the clammy, all-too-human scent with which I am currently, tragically confronted.
And just like that, my mystical erection is gone.
I fall back into a sitting position, gasping and defeated, my wilted cock sticking to my perspiring thigh. Brett looks over her shoulder at me, her horns slightly askance on her head, and says, “MOOOOOO. WHAT ARE YOOOOOOU DOOOOOING?”
“I lost it,” I say, averting my gaze from hers. “I had it. For a second, I really had it. But now it’s gone.”
Brett sighs and takes the horns off, sitting down against the foot of the bed and looking at me with big, sad eyes. “Well, darling, maybe it will come back.”
I snort—like a human, not like a bull. “Yes,” I say. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
* * *
Later, after Brett has left to meet up with Romero, I leave the hotel to wander the empty, lamplit streets, smoking a cigarette and taking occasional pulls from a beer I don’t remember buying. I’m a little tight and my gait is shuffling and unsteady. I’m not sure where I’m going. I haven’t been sure where I’ve been going ever since the war. Ever since the injury.
I’m trying not to think about Brett and Romero, not really paying attention to where I’m walking, when I find myself in front of the holding pens behind the bullfighting arena. The occupant of the pen closest to me is lying in the back of its stall, obscured by shadow. The silhouette of its huge, angular bulk is just visible from where I’m standing. The outline of its shoulders rises and fall with each lazy, whooshing breath. I flick away my cigarette and set my beer in the dirt, stepping closer to the bars and peering into the darkness.
“Um…psst,” I hiss, feeling only slightly ridiculous. “Are you up?” The bull stirs—and, by God, it’s not the only thing that stirs. Two yellow eyes blink at me from the shadows. It grunts—a truly erotic sound if there ever was one—and it raises itself onto its feet, lumbering into the dim light cast by the overhead lanterns.
Standing there, face to face with the object of my desire, separated only by a metal gate which I, with my opposable thumbs, could so easily unlatch—I am breathless, overwhelmed. Its shrewd, angry eyes are almost even with mine, which stand wide in unblinking wonder. Flies flit in looping patterns around the bull’s gently flicking ears. A clear, viscous sludge drips from the flaring nostrils of its pierced nose.
My burgeoning erection strains against the fabric of my pants.
All I can think is: I want more than anything for this animal to suck my cock.
The bull licks its dripping snout with a surprisingly long and narrow tongue. It levels its gaze at me, and then—like some holy gift from a God I’ve never known to be at all benevolent—it speaks.
“WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, BIG BOY?”
It doesn’t sound like a bear.
It doesn’t sound like a gorilla, or a dinosaur.
It doesn’t sound anything like Lady Brett Ashley.
It sounds like hope, a prayer, deliverance.
I unlatch the gate with one hand, unfastening my pants with the other.
My cock rises, firm and proud and unashamed. Diamonds don’t get this hard.
“Show me,” I say, and it does.