I locked the library door and turned off all but the security lights. The rest of the library’s staff had gone home and the library itself would be closed until Monday. That left me alone with the building all to myself. No one would even know I was there.
Returning to my office, I retrieved the key to the rare books room in the library basement. One of the privileges of being the Public Services Librarian was control of that key. Really, there wasn’t much of extreme value in there but someone apparently thought some degree of security was needed.
I descended the stairs in semi-darkness, counting on my intimate knowledge of them to avoid stumbles. At the bottom, I switched on the basement lights. There were no windows down there so there was minimal risk of the light being seen from outside. Tense with excitement and anticipation, I unlocked the door to the rare books room. Once inside, I quickly switched on the lights and shut the door behind me. Feeling more relaxed and secure, I walked straight over to the cabinet holding the Turcotte collection.
The papers of notoriously decadent poet and artist Paul Turcotte had come into the library’s possession a few years earlier. Turcotte had been openly and flamboyantly gay in an age when fewer gay men were “out” and his work reflected that. He was infamous for his hedonism, enjoying endless parties and a string of lovers, mostly young men. Rumours abounded of orgies and other wild sexual activities. Even darker ones spoke of ritual sex and consorting with strange, perhaps supernatural, creatures. Those rumours were less credible, at least to me, for obvious reasons.
The artist had gone missing in 1990 and had never been found. Family had eventually come out of the woodwork and managed to get him declared dead on various bits of evidence. Once they realized there wasn’t much money to be made, they had sold what they could and then donated the rest to the library.
Almost shaking with excitement, I unlocked the cabinet and pulled out the book I sought. It was a large, dark brown, leather-bound volume with no title on it, just some Greek letters vaguely scratched into the leather. This was not the first time I had delved into the collection, but it was the first time I had looked at this particular book. From hints and accounts in Turcotte’s journals and the reports on his disappearance, this strange book should be the manuscript of his unpublished final work. It was possible that no one but me had seen what was inside since Turcotte himself.
The other manuscripts and sketchbooks from the collection that I had perused were filled with erotic poetry and drawings of his lovers, some of them very explicit. One of my favorites was a drawing of two young men, maybe in their twenties, making love. Turcotte had perfectly captured their moment of ecstasy and used it to illustrate an erotic poem on the joys of anal sex. His work was far better and more arousing than any porn I had consumed.
Taking the book over to the desk provided for researchers in the collection, I put it down and opened it. The Book of Pyrogismos was the title, written on the first page in Turcotte’s usual ornate calligraphy. Who was Pyrogismos? It sounded Greek but I had studied a bit of ancient Greek in university and this name didn’t seem quite right. I eagerly flipped the page, expecting to find out about some previously unknown lover of the artist.
The first page of the book was a lengthy bit of poetry, claimed in a note to be a translation from an ancient Greek original. I suspected that was just a conceit on the part of the poet. It described, graphically and at length, a wild gay orgy in the woods involving human men, satyrs, and centaurs. The name Pyrogismos came up several times. I began to get aroused as I read the poem and my mind filled with images of the woodland orgy.
Turning the page, I found myself face to face with one of the most attractive men I had ever seen. He was a satyr with a beautifully muscled body. As one might expect of such a being, his legs were hairy and ended in hooves. The satyr’s face was handsome, if a bit bestial, with a neat little goatee adorning his chin and horns erupting from his forehead.
It was another long, pointy appendage that caught most of my attention, though. A large, beautiful erection rose from between his legs with a big scrotum hanging below. I immediately wished that lovely cock was real; that I could touch and taste it, or even feel it in my ass.
Along the side of the page, a poem sang the praises of satyrs and sex. As I read it, I noted again the name Pyrogismos. Was that the name of the satyr portrayed in the drawing? The poem seemed to imply that there had been intimate relations between the poet and the satyr. Was the satyr’s look based on one of Turcotte’s lovers?
On the following page, I found an image of the same satyr engaged in a very erotic kiss with a young man. At the bottom was a nice sonnet on the beauty of a kiss. My hand strayed to fondle the swelling in my slacks as I savoured the sweet scene of the two men kissing.
It had been too many years since the last time I enjoyed the erotic company of my own sex, a desire I had indulged frequently in my twenties. I had married a woman in the end, who I did love in my way and to whom I had managed to remain faithful for a decade. However, those old desires still simmered beneath the surface.
After examining the picture more closely, I realized that the human male in the drawing was a young Paul Turcotte. I had only ever seen pictures of the artist in middle age just before his disappearance, never in his youth. Even so, from the facial features, I could recognize that this was Paul Turcotte, perhaps in his late teens or twenties. Like the satyr, he was naked and sported an erection. The artist’s cock was not as big as that of his lover, but it was beautifully shaped and proportioned for his body.
Becoming more eager and aroused, I went on to the next page. There was another picture of the satyr, this time with his eyes closed and mouth open in ecstasy. The reason for the ecstasy was obvious. Paul Turcotte was going down on him. There was no poem on this page, unless you can call a chaotic paragraph of unabashedly sexual prose about the joys of fellatio a poem.
“Oh God, this is all so beautiful,” I said aloud.
Undoing my fly, I pulled my cock free. It was almost fully erect, aroused by the scenes I had been perusing and the fantasies they provoked in me. There is nothing like a good book to inflame the erotic imagination and Turcotte’s last book was doing the job extremely well. As I turned the page again with my right hand, my left was wrapped around my stiff prick, slowly rubbing it.
The next page was one of the most stunningly perfect drawings I had ever seen. It was a close-up of the satyr’s cock. The detail was almost photographic with every fold of skin and blemish visible. Below hung the copious bag of flesh that was the man’s scrotum. A short, rather vulgar, ditty about male genitalia adorned one corner of the page.
I licked my lips. The thought of getting close to such a cock, close enough to touch and suck it, excited me.