I have to preface this post by stating that this piece of prose will be very difficult, or at least very inconvenient to track down, but absolutely worthwhile, as is most of Harlan Ellison's work.
The story originally appeared in "Chrysalis" a science fiction anthology released in 1977. I came across it in the November 1977 issue of Heavy Metal Magazine.
The story is delightfully offensive, and poignantly comedic in it's social commentary on sexuality, and social hierarchy. It is also biting in its satire of the "pulp" science fiction medium.
The story begins in a laboratory of "TimeSep Central" a futuristic analog to NASA or another similar government branch for space and time exploration. At TimeSep headquarters, the exciting return of the first man to travel to another "time/universe", was turned to horror when the "temponaut", Enoch Mirren, is found in his capsule, mid-coitus with a "disgusting thing". This "disgusting thing" is firmly attached to the Mirron's, genitals and a series of hilarious schemes to disrupt the sexual embrace is concocted by the TimeSep team. The most amusing being, attaching a team of Percherons to one body, and a team of Clydesdales to another, and pulling in opposite directions to no avail.
To the bewilderment of the Mirren's superior officer he cannot understand why he will not suspend his sexual indeavor. Naturally, TimeSep calls in a gentlemanly expert from Johns Hopkins, who after sequestering himself with the two lovers for three days emerges only to state Mirren has brought back with him from the alternate reality, "the most perfect fuck in the universe". He does reveal that the alien is neither male nor female, and is "equipped to handle anything up to chickens or kangaroos with double vaginas," and the ability to keep and man or woman sexually aroused using a secretion from its genitals. Although this information is mainly useless, the expert happily issues his hefty bill to TimeSep and their officers.
In a possibly satirical take on science fiction, and its propensity to "magically" fix plot points, the TimeSep team, after two months, breaks the sexual hold on Mirren by using a sequence of sound waves to disrupt the alien's energy that allowed him to keep the grip on Mirren. During a strange line of questioning given to Mirren in a sequestered padded cell, you learn that the alien lover has the ability of transportation, and telepathy. It is through these abilities it found Mirren, and for reasons that fluster and irritate Mirren's superiors Mirren began to make love to the alien because it felt like a "good" idea. The questioning is interrupted by an alarm, which is sounded by the escape of Mirren's alien lover. Quickly thousands, and millions of aliens begin appearing and proceeding to make love to every being on earth, until all humans, and animals are participating in unending and eventually deadly act of love making.
Ellison's hilarity reaches its peak as he runs through the variations of encounters. From the top members of the "Presidium of the Central Committee of the Supreme Soviet Socialist Republics", to Queen Elizabeth's guards who find her performing an act that "was nothing regal, imperial, or remotely majestic." Also, the Quaalude popping Truman Capote, who's alien partner became so intoxicated by the dope in his system it, "strained himself into his urethra and hid himself in his prostate", or William Shatner who so desperately bored his first alien partner that he was left alone, only to be taken by another "less discerning" partner who proceeded to mount Shatner, "dislodging his hairpiece".
As another jab toward typical science fiction tropes, our heroic protaganist does not attempt escape until a week after being abandoned in the interrogation room. It is when he is unable to locate any feasible escape from the room that he recalls the "pulp fiction" he read as a kid. He remembered waiting a whole month to see how the heroes would escape from the impossible situations at the end of stories, only to be cheated by the author who simply had the hero escape with no logical explanation. In similar fashion, Mirren magically escapes simply by Ellison simply stating "Later, after he had escaped".
Mirron emerges from his prison to a post-apocalyptic sex-scape, where every living thing other than himself and cockroaches are either dead from the unending sexual embrace of the alien visitors or still in their deadly embrace. You find that through the aliens' telepathic communication, they have 86'ed Mirron for his harsh disruption with his previous partner. Also, it was his partner who was a kind of "scout" for the race to find a planet of sexual partners, and it Mirron's fault that his planet is now defunct of human life. However, the only living things on earth that the creatures still could not stomach for the act of sex is cockroaches.
As he sends his letter in a bottle knowing it is only he and a planet of cockroaches left to inherit the earth, he thinks although it was he who caused the end of the human race, at least "for a little while, in the eyes of the best fuck in the universe, he had been the best fuck in the universe, and there wasn't a cockroach in the world who could claim the same."
Below is the English language publishing history of the story according to Wikipedia:
"...first published in 1977, in the first volume of the Zebra Books anthology series "Chrysalis". It was subsequently reprinted in Ellison's 1980 collection Shatterday,[2] ... Two illustrated versions have been published: one with art by Tom Barber, in Heavy Metal in November 1977;[6] and one with art by Eric White and an adapted script by Faye Perozich, in the Dark Horse Comics-published Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, in August 1995."
