Almost Every Man's Dream (Bryan Hinojosa, Lafayette, LA)

There is an island in the South Pacific called Mau’lai’i that lies about fifty knots southeast of the five Finger Islands in Micronesia.  It had remained a secret to the rest of the world for over three centuries, completely cut off, because the only people who knew about it, other than its inhabitants and the natives of the Finger Islands. And they kept it a secret because they feared that the white man would conquer it and ruin it if he ever found out about it, which is exactly what happened. 

At any given time on Mau’lai’i, there are about seven hundred women and maybe one or two men.  Whenever a male is born on the island, it is immediately cast into the sea, as an offering.  The women grow up, knowing only other women, until they are deemed strong enough to give birth, when they are then taken to one of the stud males on the island to be inseminated.  Men serve only this function and are completely provided for. 

            Not just any man can become a drone for the Mau’lai’ians, though.  In order to promote strong women, only the worthiest of foreign men are allowed to become studs.   In order to become a breeder, one had to make the three-day journey by boat from the Finger Islands to Mau’lai’i, over rough seas and craggy reefs.  Then, as soon as any man steps on the beach, he's immediately challenged to hand-to-hand combat by one of the native women.  If he can make her submit, he becomes a stud.  If he is submitted, he is slaughtered as a sacrifice.

            The Mau’lai’ians spend most of their free time in dancing, mock-fighting and love-making.  Their dances, frantic and uninhibited, were rumored to be able to hypnotize any man.  They were skilled grapplers, and their fighting style was said to be one of the most brutal forms of martial arts on earth.  Their beauty, dreamt about by every man on the Finger Islands, was said to be unrivaled.  Even though few men survived the trip to the island and fewer still won the fight, there was a continuous stream of young men who heaved off in their canoes, destined to either be dashed upon the reefs, physically deposed by a siren, or, if they were deemed worthy, enter into a blissful life of nonstop humping.

            I knew all this before I ever arrived.  While working on my master's degree in Anthropology, I became friends with a man named Poree-Poo, a math major from the Finger Islands.  Everyday he would tell me stories of Mau’lai’i, or legends as I saw them.  He constantly spoke of going back and attempting the challenge, knowing that his determination and training ensured his success.  Personally, I thought he was crazy.

            When Poree-Poo's father showed up to visit in the spring, I asked him about Mau’lai’i, at which point he promptly pummeled his son, which was no easy task, and told him never to speak of it to any person again.  I was amazed.  Was all of it true? I couldn't believe that such a place existed on earth.  An island like this is every anthropologist's dream.

            Shortly after, I asked Poree-Poo if he would be my guide to Mau'lai'i; he agreed immediately, saying it was destiny.  After his divorce was finalized, we set out.

            Initially, I was concerned for my safety.  I didn't want to die for this.  I was going to study, as a scholar, an academic, not to fiddle around with the natives.  Poree-Poo and I talked, and we came up with a plan.  With any luck, I would be the first non-Pacific Islander to ever set foot on Mau'lai'i.  Then I would study the culture, publish a career-defining book, and return to much acclaim in the academic community.  It was a brilliant plan.

            When we arrived on the fourth Finger Island, Ringo as I call it, Poree-Poo's family met us with curses and threats.  The islanders were not pleased that Poree-Poo had spoken about Mau’lai’i to an outsider and we had to embark that night, for fear of attack.  We snuck down to the beach after dark and stole a canoe.  I was forced to leave most of my belongings, but I was still able to bring along my massive key chain, with its flashlight, bottle-opener, emergency condom, and lucky rabbit's foot, all of which seemed pretty useless, but still somehow reassuring.              

            The boat ride was horrid.  Our small canoe was tossed about on massive waves.  We were buffeted by driving winds.  Sharks shadowed our boat, lest one of us should fall.  When we encountered the reef on the third day, we were forced to land the craft, get out, and carry the boat over the living wall to the lagoon.  Our feet were shredded by the end of it.   On Poree-Poo's suggestion, we waited in the boat for a night and allowed ourselves to rest and heal after the trepidatious trek.

            On the dawn of the next day, we set out for the beach.  A group of native women, seeing us in the lagoon, gathered and awaited our arrival.  When we landed, Poree-Poo leapt out and immediately assumed a fighting stance. I, dressed in drag, giving my best rendition of a nonthreatening native woman, waited in the canoe.

            When Poree-Poo first arrived in America on scholarship, one of the first things he did was learn how to fight.  At first, he just picked fights with local roughs, often getting beaten, but always learning.  Then, when he had income, he studied Karate, and later Judo.  He had had eight years of martial arts training by the time we left for Mau’lai’i. He was a match for most men.

            Poree-Poo stood there in the surf, ready for combat, as a native woman strolled up to him, grinning wickedly.   He swung at her; she ducked out of the way, dodging the blow, with obvious ease.  She grabbed his arm, yanked him off balance, and pounced on his back, wrapping him up.   Poree-Poo flailed, helpless.  The assailer grasped his head in her muscular arms, pivoted her entire torso around, and twisted her hapless victim's neck in a way God never intended. It made a horrid snapping sound.  He gurgled, dropped, lifeless.  Before his body hit the ground, his attacker lithely leapt off, landed daintily, and turned to smile that same wicked grin at me. The women approached. Using the few broken phrases that Poree-Poo had taught me on the flight over, I tried to explain the situation.  They failed to understand.

            I jumped out of the boat and fled.  The ladies followed.  They cut me off, ringed me in.  A woman charged.  She leapt, flying at me in some type of dragon-kick.  I screamed, braced myself, and struck out blindly.  She slammed into me, knocking the wind from my lungs, hurling me back.  I lay there in the surf, stunned, for at least half a minute.             

            But, my pursuer left me alone.  The other women left me alone.  I sat up and looked around.  The women were collected around the native who had attacked me.  She was on the ground, holding her face.  She was severely cut, bleeding from her eye. I'm guessing I caught her cornea with my fingernail or something; I don't really know. It was all luck, or a  miracle. After tending to her, a few of the women came over and congratulated me.  I had just become the newest stud of the Mau’lai’ians.

            My days proceeded in this manner for the next several months: I would awaken.  If I were erect, I was ridden.  If I was flaccid, I was fed, washed, and given my stud-drink.  This stud-drink is quite alcoholic, and spiced with a bitter herb native to the island called puerco puerco that, for most of the day, left my member as hard as a graduate-level astrophysics problem.  I was then led around the village, by a collar, to all who were seeking my seed.  I would have to rut with whomever needed my services, and then I was allowed to rest for entirely too short a time before my next customer came a-knocking. 

            The women of Mau’lai’i saw me as a beast of burden, a tool.  Maybe some of the friendlier ones considered me a pet.  But, certainly none of them saw me as the object of true, deep love.  These women loved other women.  Many women.  Cut free from the restraints of heterosexual monogamous relationships, these women lived in a constant state of sisterly love, maternal pampering, and lesbian sex.  The women would dance their sultry dances, grapple for hours, feast, all nude of course, and then collapse into a drunken orgy. I witnessed this. All day and all night long. 

            I would stumble around, drunk as a sailor on shore-leave, being used as a source of DNA and nothing else.  And, as long as I was able, which was most of the time thanks to the puerco puerco drink, I was forced to pound.  I was led up to some gorgeous woman as she presented her oiled and scented nethers, and I was made to pound. And pound and pound and pound and pound.  And pound again.  And pound some more.  

            And make no mistake, these women detested my touch.  They were so frightened of what my penis would do to them.  It often took the coaxing and caressing of other women to keep the more timid ones calm during the rutting session.  So, it was not an odd occurrence for me to be pounding some woman while two or three others rubbed her down, and rubbed themselves on her, in order to keep the process flowing smoothly.  Still other women couldn't stand the insult of being in a situation controlled by a male, so they got on top, often as other women lustily writhed all over me, with complete and total disregard for my personal comfort.

            Sounds great, right?  Almost every man's dream. Unfortunately for me, I am, as they say, as gay as a maiden in June. 

            Have you ever had a dream where you were naked and didn't have your homework or something like that?  Imagine living that way.  It was like the most awkward moments from high school being played over and over and over again.  But this time, there were no excuses or tears or faking a cramp or anything like that.  I—he, I should say, him down there—was always hard.  Always.  And I always had to use him, regardless of what I felt like. I was revolted. Relentlessly.  

            Still, I managed, somehow.  I'd just shut my eyes tight and tried to think of Connery as Bond, Brosnan as Bond, Craig as Bond, Tim McGraw, Usher, Capt. Picard, whomever.  But it was hard to ignore it: that singular feeling, the dank gushiness, the grasping nature of it.  No one could ignore it.  It was quite disconcerting and humiliating, to say the least.

            And I suffered for months. But, one day, I conceived of an idea.  The next morning, I raised a commotion, waking up the entire village with my shrieking, as bloodcurdling as I could manage.  A group of ladies ran into my hut to investigate.

            And then, I unveiled it: my erect penis, wrapped up by my emergency condom.  It was bright neon yellow, and all nubbly. The women, having never ever conceived of such a thing as prophylactics, freaked the fuck out.  I stood up, screaming at them, Cursed!  Cursed!  Death!  Sickness! I approached. They ran. I gulped down a large cup of the stud-drink, and charged.  I chased the terrified ladies around the village for the better part of the morning.  It was glorious.  I felt like a Mongol riding down a flock of Hungarian peasants. 

            Eventually, after I tired, the women grabbed their spears and chased me back to the boat. But not before I was able to grab my prize. I shoved off, paddled with all my might past the reef and promptly passed out.  I woke up in the boat I don't know how many days later, faint and in pain, with a group of Finger Island children staring down at me.  Some of the Fingerlings ran off to find help, and one of them gave me some water. A man came up, looked at me, parched, burnt, nude, clenching my fist, and with a bright yellow condom still draped about my dangler, and he just shook his head.  I smiled at him, and tightened my grip, holding in my hand a number of seeds from the puerco puerco plant.

            All of this happened over a decade ago, and, as a former anthropologist, it pains me, fills me with deep regret, to think of the complete and total annihilation of the Mai'lai'ian culture, which was largely my fault. But, as the billionaire founder and CEO of VitaBev, producer of Stud-Drink, which is currently the third-most imbibed beverage on the planet, I usually sleep well at night.