Sunday, December 22, 2013

Sunday Morning Questions: Classy as Shit Edition

Most of my Manhattan adventures (of the clothed sort, that is) tend to take place in Starbucks. I was puzzling out the other day why that was, when I was fixing to type out another account of something odd that happened in a West Village branch of the franchise. What I realized is that I tend to use coffee shops in New York City as a hangout between appointments during cold weather months. In the spring and summer, if I have downtime, I can always relax on a park bench in Union Square Park or somewhere along the High Line; there are plenty of places to park my butt for a couple of hours and watch the people go by.

In winter, though, I don’t want to sit outdoors. So I keep in my head a mental database of the larger, less populated Starbucks branches and other coffee shops near the places I need to go. If I need to get out of the cold for an hour or two, you’ll find me there, wedged in among the students and hipsters and food bloggers, catching up on my email or reading. That’s where I was last week, on a particularly cold Monday night. I’d had dinner with a friend and taken a downtown train to the general vicinity of my meeting. The brisk walk from the station to my destination’s neighborhood did nothing to warm me up, and I was early. So around the corner I went to buy myself a half-hour of warmth and a coffee-adjacent beverage.

The Starbucks I chose was busy. A couple of people stood in line in front of me, so I breathed on my fingers and tried to coax them out of their popsicle-like state. While I was waiting, a gentleman came in from the wintry weather and stood behind me. He was on his phone. Speaking French. In a very deep and masculine voice.

Naturally, I turned around to check him out. He was much shorter than I—everyone is shorter than I. Maybe five-seven. Dark-complexioned. His dark hair was buzzed down nearly to the scalp. His equally dark eyebrows were thick and even, like brushstrokes. And oh my god, was he ever handsome.

Long-time readers know that I don’t usually buy into the nonsense in which guys automatically count themselves out of the running with Oh, that guy’s WAY out of my league!, but holy fuck, this guy was totally out of my league. His was the kind of masculine beauty that makes jaws drop. The fact he was wearing a heavy trench coat and business attire beneath only made him more compelling. I was trying to be casual about checking him out as he continued to parlez with his phone partner, but as he talked, our eyes met. Then the woman behind the register asked to take my order.

Once I was done with the transaction and standing by the pickup counter, I took a deep breath and checked out the guy again. He was staring right at me. While part of my brain was very calm and matter-of-fact about his scrutiny, some high school girl inside my brain was jumping up and down and shrieking in panic. Oh my GOD he’s looking at me! Is he looking at me? Why is he looking at me? Is he? He IS? Oh my GOD!

Yeah, I know. Not my proudest moment. But wait. It gets worse.

So I collected my coffee-adjacent beverage and managed to navigate across the shop without tripping over myself or biting my lip with my braces or any of the other things Jan Brady might have done in such a situation, and found a seat on the cushioned bench that ran along the exterior plate glass. I was wearing a formal moleskin coat and a scarf of a length that makes Tom Baker’s neckwear look skimpy; it took me a while to untangle myself from it. By the time I had my coat open and my scarf untied and my gloves off, the person sitting immediately next to me had finished her coffee and left. Then I heard a very deep voice inflected with an unmistakable Gallic accent saying, “May I be cozy wiz you?”

I looked up, and the French guy was smiling at me. I KNOW. It was like one of the best dreams I’ve ever had, come true in the fading light of day. I looked into those big brown eyes of his, admired the faintest trace of stubble adorning his sculpted cheeks, and said in sultry tones, “Get as cozy as you like.”

Well. That’s what I wanted to say. When I thought of it a couple of minutes later. That’s what I should have said. What I actually said, as my suddenly useless tongue flopped out of my mouth like a particularly juicy St. Bernard’s, was this: “Hhhhnuuuuhh.” Then I moved over.

Oh yeah. It was real classy. He seemed a little startled to be slavered at by a mental defective, but he sat down and immediately pulled out his phone. Then he made another call in French while I moaned softly to myself and beat myself up internally and tried to pretend I had super-hot Frenchmen getting cozy with me all the damned time.

I didn’t say another word until I had to go, about ten minutes later. He and I had spent time checking each other out sideways in the meantime, as he conducted his call. He hung up just as I started collecting the three miles of my scarf. “Are you leaving so soon?” he purred.

I’d kind of planned for this moment. I intended to say something clever. Something witty. Something European. Something that would convey my lusty good sense of humor and my intention to land him flat on his back on the bed of his designer-decorated apartment. So I opened my mouth and “Huhh-huuh-huh!” came splatting out. Then I tittered like a geisha and went running out of the coffee shop with a flaming face.

Classy as shit, that’s what I am.

Considering getting your favorite unpaid blogger a last-minute Christmas gift? You could always get one for me too, while you’re at it!

Let’s get to some questions from readers. I haven’t done this in a while.


You are so full of yourself.

Wow. Ya think? No shit, Sherlock.

I mean, I spend time writing about me, myself and I on a regular basis for total strangers on the internet. How many months of getting a monitor tan while jacking off while reading me did it take for you to come to that brilliant conclusion?

Actually, you know who I find tends to tell someone else—anonymously, of course—that he’s full of himself? Someone whose life is sad and extremely empty, that’s who. Truth.


Is there a sexual experience you've had and, afterward thought, nope don't need to do that again? If so... what was it?

Scat. I would like to make clear I was on the giving end, not the receiving side of that particular fetish. The other fellow was in hog heaven, so to speak; I kept thinking that despite being the dominant partner, how humiliated and vulnerable I felt in that position.

So nope. Never again.


How does someone get to meet the breeder? :)

Proximity is a factor—it helps if you're in the metro NYC area. A willingness to work with me on finding a time and place is key. But hey, if you want to pay for a plane ticket and fly me to you and put me up for a couple of days, I'm game for that too!

I've met, and consequently written about, quite a few of my readers at this point. I think they'll testify that I am real and that I give a guy a very good time.


Have you ever misinterpreted someone's body language as sexual advances?

Oh, absolutely.

I started learning to read people in my early teens, when I was active at cruising spots like my local park and library. The ritual of sexual courtship in those places could be quite stylized, as men would pass each other multiple times, making eye contact and showing preference, through their body language and stance, for their intended mating partner. The strutting, the showing off, and then finally the consummation as the pair would wander off into the woods or down to the toilets, was like an episode of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" that never made it to air.

But there were quite a few times, especially when I was younger, that I misinterpreted a friendly posture, open legs, an inviting smile, or a dangling hand as an invitation, when it probably wasn't. I also learned to read, by the blank stares or puzzlement when I would come close to these guys and they wouldn't understand why, when I was just plain wrong.

Nowadays I'm more apt to misread the kind of body language that's closed down or shut off or turned away as disinterest, when it's really the guy's lack of confidence to make known his desire for me.


If they were filming the story of your life, what would it be called?

Tales from the Slurp Ramp: The Peregrinations of a Sexual Adventurer, starring Bradley Cooper.

Monday, December 16, 2013

My Little Polish Snowman

Ordinarily, when a guy throws enough red flags in my path, I slam on the brakes. I’m sleazy, but I’m not stupid. Tell me about your arrest record, brag about those multiple restraining orders against you, get clingy and declare you’re in love with me and want to relocate after we’ve only exchanged a few sentences . . . I’m out of there.

Now, anyway. It took a lot of dumb decisions in my youth to figure out those super-obvious things. I had to get learn the hard way that ex-cons are often locked up for a reason, had to flop miserably at long-distance dating to realize it’s not for me, and as for the clingy stalkers . . . well, I’m still trying to figure out how to shake those. But I’m getting better. Nothing’s more effective as a learning technique than reaching into that fire and learning first-hand that it burns.

That’s why, twenty years ago, I wasn’t smart enough to avoid people like Jay. When I think about Jay, I picture a short Polish guy with a pencil mustache built like a kid’s snowman. One round ball for his little head, one round ball for his chest, and one big round ball for his belly and legs. I’m definitely being unfair to the guy. He was more muscle than lard. It’s undeniable, however, that he was a squat little ball of a guy, no more than five-foot-three or four, sporting a military brush cut and a pencil baby fuzz mustache on his upper lip.

I met him on AOL, back in the day when AOL was a happening place and if you were doing anything online, you and your 2400-baud modem were there. (That “You’ve got mail!” voice still haunts me.) He sent me a digital photograph of himself in his old Army uniform—which was an unusual thing to send, because this was before every cell phone had its own camera. If you had a cell phone, that is. Most people didn’t. This was a time even before cheap web cams; he’d scanned the shot using some kind of device attached to a dot matrix printer that read the photo line by line and saved it as a pixelated image.

I was pretty impressed at his technical derring-do. Those primitive scanners took hours and hours to produce digital photos. There was very little one could do with one’s computer while it was chugging away . . . save for kick back and listen to the Victrola whilst looking at rotogravures of Teddy Roosevelt. Yes, I am old. You don’t have to tell me. Jay’s photo, in the end, resembled a mass of bleeding grays with a round little snowman in the foreground. It looked like a freshly-printed Victorian engraving left out in the rain.

But I was young, and I was horny, and he didn’t live so far away, so I started seeing him.

Jay was cheating on his partner. They were one of those annoying pairs who, in bars and public gatherings of the gays, would hold hands and talk about how wonderful their love was and how they believed in the sanctity of monogamy and how amazing it had been when they had been handfasted in a meadow by some kind of hippie-dippie minister. Yes, I actually saw the whole nauseating act in public several times, after I started fucking Jay. A friend of mine at the time was big into the gay country line dancing scene. I know, I know—about half of you are asking Why?! It was big in Detroit at the time. No, I don’t know how that happened, either. Anyway, I would accompany my friend to a bar called Diamond Jim’s about once a month so that he could spin around in his shiny cowboy boots to “Achey Breaky Heart” while I checked out the butts on the other guys. It was a win-win for everyone involved, basically.

Eventually Jay and his partner would walk in. Diamond Jim’s was their hangout. Jay would avert his eyes at the sight of me, cling more tightly to his boyfriend’s hand, and lay his head on the boyfriend’s shoulder. They were happy. No, they were a picture of bliss. Contentment was their lot. They only had eyes for each other. Then Monday would roll around and I’d be fucking Jay all over the lovebirds’ nest, giving him the nasty sex he wasn’t getting from the boyfriend and making him squeal like a stuck pig.

(Later on I fucked the boyfriend, too. But that was years after Jay. And it’s a whole ‘nudder story.)

And hoo boy, the sex was naaaaasty. That alone was the reason I kept coming back, over and over, for about three years. I held a dual teaching and administrative position then, and had vague enough duties and little enough supervision that all I had to do on a day with no classes was mutter something along the lines of, “I have to go over to the medical campus for the morning,” and then basically take off a few hours to go fuck someone. I’d drive to Jay’s place in the suburbs, walk in his back door, and find him totally naked save for a harness, ass in the air, his greasy rosebud twitching around and clamping onto the handgrip of a cordless drill. Or I’d find that he’d stripped, blindfolded himself, tied his hands with a length of rope and thrown it around the clothes washer in a way that rendered him effectively helpless.

Sometimes I’d find him on the kitchen floor, round little legs up in the air and face contorted as he forced giant cukes and even eggplants up his hole. A couple of times I discovered him in his dog’s cage, wearing a collar and lapping water out of a bowl. Didn’t matter how I found him. Every single time I made damned sure that he ended up spread-eagled with eight inches of my unwrapped dick shoved in deep. The little fucker loved my dick. He would keep up a running commentary as I speared him with it. “Oh FUCK, that head is SCRAPING MY GUTS!” he’d yell.

For someone who lived in a quiet suburban neighborhood with neighbors not too distant on either side, and for someone who was all wuvey-dovey with his boyfriend at every opportunity, he certainly didn’t make much effort to keep from yelling these things at the top of his lungs. The ceilings would ring with “God DAMN you are BUSTING MY PUSSY WIDE OPEN!” or “Just FUCK your little boy with THAT CUNT SMASHER! FUCK ME, DADDY!” At the time I had already transformed from someone who dabbled at topping to someone who really knew and liked what he was doing. I was flushed with pride at having this little ex-Army guy screaming “JESUS CHRIST you fuck me SO MUCH BETTER THAN MY BOYFRIEND and CHRIST your COCK is SO MUCH BIGGER!” while I nailed him. And I nailed that little fucker everywhere in that house. Floors. Kitchen counters. All the furniture in the living room. The guest bedroom. Their bedroom. After I’d bred him he’d squeeze out the spunk in his ass onto the coffee table or bathroom floor and lick it up, then jack off onto my feet or my loafers and slurp them clean. I had my own little nasty whore bottom who stroked my ego and inflated my dick, and for a while it was good.

Yet I was ignoring the danger signs. Afterward, when my footwear was sparkling and my cock was spent, Jay would start talking. And talking. And talking. The dude never shut up. Mouthy as he was during sex, once he’d lapped up the last drop of cum like a good puppy, he’d start yapping and never shut up. I would have to edge toward the door inch by inch, as politely I waited for him to come to a natural break in the story so that I could make my escape. I know, I was stupid, trying to be polite. It’s lost on some people. Those breaks never fucking came, and I’d find the morning turning into noon turning in the afternoon with the two of us standing there while he battered me with his personal history.

Most of his stories had to do with affronts he endured from business establishments around town who DARED to be RUDE to him. He would launch into an endless story about a waitress in a pancake restaurant to whom he gave a perfectly ‘legitimate’ seven percent tip who tossed a snarl his way when he exited, which made him confront her about her ATTITUDE and then how he DEMANDED THE MANAGER FIRE HER ASS. Or some mechanic at the quick-lube oil change tried to RIP HIM OFF and STEAL STUFF from his GLOVE BOX while he was in the waiting room and you really have to WATCH THOSE MONKEYS OR THEY’LL RIP YOU OFF FOR EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT.

These days, I would’ve listened to one of those stories with narrowed eyes, excused myself, and erased the guy’s number from my phone. Back then, I would pretend to listen, nod, and think, I wonder if he’s got any military gear still? And if so, would he wear it when we boink?

There was one story in particular that he repeated several times about how he used to work at one of the city’s bathhouses for about, oh, two weeks. He had to keep the job from his boyfriend, who wouldn’t have approved of him picking up condoms from men’s changing rooms or mopping the cummy communal floors of the movie room. But that was okay, because they paid him under the table, in cash. But then one day he was walking by the pool and this old fart just reached out and TOUCHED HIM on the ARM. RIGHT THERE. LIKE THAT! He couldn’t BELIEVE he was being DISRESPECTED LIKE THAT so he PUNCHED THE GUY IN THE NOSE and BROKE IT. Well, he was BLEEDING A LOT, anyway. Then, could you BELIEVE IT, the manager of the bathhouse FIRED HIM ON THE SPOT when it was OBVIOUS that HE, a VETERAN, was the one being DISRESPECTED.

I would listen to this familiar tale with deep sympathy for the bathhouse, thinking to myself that yeah, managers usually don’t want their employees socking paying clients in the face and breaking their noses. Especially in a shady establishment in which married men and politicians and teachers and priests and bankers and businessmen were having illicit sex—an establishment that probably didn’t want the police roaming its halls. Right? But I’d keep my mouth shut and think to myself, My dick’s kind of hard. I wonder if I could go again.

I don’t know how I put up with Jay for three years. I wasn’t hard up for fucks; I never have been. It’s just that the sex was so loud and hot, and his ass was so round and sweet, and I loved slamming my little Polish snowman. But then came the day it all ended.

We were fucking in his spare bedroom. It was a fussy chamber dominated by a massive antique four-poster bed. The thing had a tester on the top that was printed with blue flowers and was dripping with lace; there were matching pillowcases trimmed so thickly with the same lace that I don’t know how anyone slept on them without scratching open his face. An old quilt in an antique ivory color covered the bed. Up around the flowery pillows were a number of old dolls of the Madame Alexander variety. We’d fucked here a couple of times and every time I’d entered it, I would think to myself, Damn, this room is faggy.

So were going at it. I had my pants dropped to the floor and my work shirt open. He was naked, his hole turned into a gape by my cock as I rammed in and out of him. I remember he was holding both his heels in the air with one hand, and beating the dusty mattress with the other as I stood at the foot of the bed, slamming in and out like a porn star. “JESUS CHRIST I need you to FUCKING RAPE ME!” he was yelling in his usual style. “MORE LUBE! MORE LUBE! GET IN ME ALL THE WAY DEEP FUCKER! I WANT YOUR DICK COMING OUT OF MY NOSTRILS!”

He reached over his head and retrieved a bottle from between the pillows. I slapped some of the water-based gunk onto my cock. I put more on his hole. He snatched the bottle back.

But he left me with a problem that is the bane of tops everywhere. Namely, the condition known as Slimy Fuck Hand. One of my hands was dry and normal. The one I’d used to slap on the lube was cold, clammy, and glistening with the stuff. Considerate bottoms have a hand towel nearby to combat the affliction. Jay was not a considerate bottom. I had to go back to work, so wiping it on my trousers (if they’d been up high enough, which they weren’t) or shirt wasn’t an option. I could’ve wiped it off on his legs or body, but that didn’t really solve anything. The next time I grabbed him there, I’d have Slimy Fuck Hand all over again.

So I did what I could to get back into the groove again. I reached out and wiped my hand dry on the bed covering. It was thoughtless, I admit. But it was necessary. If someone did the same thing in my home (even though I provide a hand towel), I wouldn’t really give a rip. My blanket is from Target. Chances are that once the boy pulls on his pants and leaves, I’m popping it the wash anyway.

However Jay wasn’t so easy going. He transformed from starving nymphomaniac to shrieking banshee in about zero-point-five seconds. “Jesus Christ was the FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” he started screaming at me, as he rose to his knees. “This is my GRANDMOTHER’S HEIRLOOM QUILT that she made with her VERY OWN HANDS when she was STILL LIVING IN THE HOMELAND YOU FUCKING FUCKWIT.” My jaw dropped as spittle flew from his mouth and his face turned beet red. “You think I can just WASH THAT WITH TIDE?! Don’t you know how VALUABLE IT IS?!”

On and on he went , foaming at the mouth and growing angrier and angrier with me. I thought about the mechanics in the garage, and about the stiffed waitress, and especially about the guy with the broken (or at least bloody) nose, and buttoned my shirt and stuffed it back into my pants. When he paused to take a breath, I finally asked him, for the first time in three years after one of his imaginary outrages, a sensible question. “If it’s so irreplaceable, why the hell are you fucking on it? Put that shit away if you don’t want it to get dirty.” Then, while he was stunned at my backtalk, I turned and walked out of the room, down the hallway, and out the front door.

He followed yelling at the top of his voice. “YEAH YOU BETTER RUN AWAY, LITTLE GIRL. LITTLE GIRL RUNNING AWAY! NEXT TIME I SEE YOU I’M GOING TO SHOW YOU WHAT I THINK OF YOU, YOU FUCKING PUNK!” And other delightful hits from his repertoire.

I never saw Jay again.

Naked, that is. I did see him out in public with the boyfriend, up until the time I moved from Detroit. I know that he came to his senses within the week and wanted to pick up where we’d left off. But he didn’t apologize for flying off the handle at me, and I wasn’t so desperate for his hole that I was willing to overlook the dangerous flaws to which I was no longer oblivious. On AOL I’d tell him no thanks, or just ignore his emails. In public I’d avoid him. He didn’t want to raise his boyfriend’s suspicions, so he wouldn’t push it when he saw me at the bar. Just like that, it was over.

There’s a lot of bottoms needing cock. Hell, forget tops and bottoms. There’s a lot of sex to be had. Your chances of getting some aren’t going to evaporate if you give up partners who are incompatible or unenjoyable or, let’s be frank, who are totally unstable.

Jay might’ve been something of an oddball, but it was from him that I learned a valuable lesson: ditch the crazy and move on to the next available ass. It’s out there waiting.

Friday, December 13, 2013

On Spencer

I can’t evade thoughts of Spencer, this week. It’s been a year and three months since I last saw him mere days before he moved to Europe to finish his education and pursue a career. A year and a half earlier, I’d left him to move to the east coast. But oh, during that long year when I was alone and trying to sell my house to make that move, he and I were inseparable. For the better part of a year he slept in my bed, ate the meals I made just for him. He returned my kisses. When we made love, he surrendered completely.

How can I escape Spencer? His presence lingers still as a tall and broad-shouldered apparition who wanders through my life with proud and graceful steps. I see him sprawled on my sofa, his toes pointed to the ceiling as he practices in the air the nimble legwork he picked up in ballet practice that afternoon. I see the books he gave me on the shelf by my bed, every time I rise in the morning and right before I crawl into the sheets after dark. Every time Spencer watched me dole out dried mackerel flakes to the cats as a treat, he’d wrinkle his nose and exclaim, It smells like a Korean whorehouse in here! I say aloud the same words now, almost nightly, as I divide up a palmful of the stuff.

I still have an old bottle of his lotion beneath my bathroom sink, left over from before the move. There are some days I’ll sit on the edge of the tub, pop the cap, and remember his scent. Just for a moment, though. Then I attempt to stuff the hundred pounds of pain I’ll feel back into the seventy-five-pound container that’s all I have for it, and attempt to ignore the overflow.

Originally I’d intended to write something sexy this week, but my plans went off the tracks over the weekend. I was already having one of those frustrating days when nothing’s absolutely wrong, but everything wasn’t really going my way. If I set something down, it was certain to spill or tumble; if I looked for milk in the fridge, the carton was sure to be empty save for a teaspoon. The clock stopped. All the batteries in every remote conked out. The mail contained nothing but bills. Then I sat down with my laptop, opened up one of my personal pages of social media, and saw that Spencer was getting married and staying in Europe.

I’d suspected it was coming. He was finishing his program this month and hadn’t made any noises about coming home or about what he’d be doing after he was done. Instead, he’d moved into a new apartment with a new roommate. He’d made a couple of vague posts that sounded domestic. I wondered if he was seeing the guy with whom he’d moved in. I didn’t ask, though. I didn’t want to hear the answer.

To find out that he was planning to marry the guy, though, came as a shock. After all the mild disappointments of the day, the news hit me in the midsection like a baseball bat. I sat in my chair for a minute, stunned. Then I had my first, genuine reaction: Well, good for him. I’d managed to run across his announcement just moments after he’d posted it. My congratulations were the first he received.

I hit return. I bathed for a moment in all my memories of Spencer—the nights of lovemaking, the evenings watching television, the long snowy days when we cuddled beneath blankets and talked into the night. I let it all flood over me, losing track of the real world as every sense and sound and relived joy roared past. Then I came to, and numbly thought, Well, that’s that. This time, though, it felt as if I had to pack away two tons of sadness with only the same old seventy-five pound container.

All week I dragged the remnants behind me like Jacob Marley’s chain.

I keep going back to the moment when I found out, and parsing my reaction. I was genuinely glad for him. Spencer is amazing, and talented. I want him to be enormously happy and successful; he deserves to be with someone who understands and wants him and who can take care of him in a way I couldn’t—in a way that doesn’t have an expiration date built into it, anyway. He needs that. I was happy for Spencer first, and mournful for myself second. That’s the absolutely correct order.
Spencer was unexpected joy during a dismal time in my life. He made a dark year not merely bearable, but wonderful. Special. I’ll never stop loving him for the light he brought into my life, or for the laughter and passion we shared in equal amounts.

We were both lost boys when we clung naked to each other. Now he’s been found and taken home. Still, I think neither of us will entirely forget those cold nights made warm by being in each other’s arms. Nor will I ever be rid of his shadow as it tiptoes through my life from time to time, reminding me of the beautiful dancer who once, for a time, was mine.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Friday Open Forum: The Micromanager

Taking a six to eight weeks hiatus from my sex life—rather unwillingly, I might add—does a couple of things to a guy. For one, I was feeling so decidedly unsexy during the whole sick spell that I didn’t so much as masturbate the entire time. (To be honest, I was feeling so poorly that I didn’t even miss it.) After a month and a half-ish of abstinence, when my health roared back, my erection roared with it; I almost needed a bucket and a mop to clean up the load from that first orgasm. Whew.

For another, it gave me a little distance and perspective on some issues I’d been taking for granted, over the last few years. Some of those I’m still thinking about. I’d like to address one of them, though, and get some reader feedback as well.

Every online site that I know (not to imply that I sniff haughtily and turn up my nose at others) has some kind of function that allows a member to control who sees his photo. At the most basic, it allows him to set some photos to public, and some to private. Usually—unless there are explicit instructions on the website detailing that certain types of photos should not be visible to everyone—I leave all my photos open. Anybody can see them. Face, dick, the whole thing. In part I do so because I have a philosophy that I’m not really ashamed of who I am as a person, including my, shall we say, rather vibrant libido.

I think I mentioned that when I first moved to the tri-state area I got a lecture from someone online—I think it was on Manhunt—who was absolutely appalled that I would allow a shot of my erect dick to appear next to my smiling mug. “That’s just not the way we do things here!” he shuddered, in what was the online Manhunt equivalent of fanning himself, reaching for his smelling salts, and groping delicately for a fainting couch.

Fuck that. I think most grown adults are capable of imagining that other adult men not only have dicks of their own, but that sometimes they get erect and need attention. A dick is nothing of which to be ashamed. It’s a body part, like an elbow. I’m not ashamed of my face, of my nose, or of my junk. I’m not ashamed of being a sexual person. Besides, anyone who’s cruising Manhunt or any sex site isn’t there to exchange Christmas cookie recipes or talk about comparative religion. Anyone protesting about seeing a hard penis doth protest too much.

The primary reason I went to all open photos a few years back, though, is because managing that dance of who unlocks first and when and why is just so tiring. One of the guys has to say unlock plz. Then the other has to say u first. Then there’s no u and i dont go 1st!! Sometimes there’s a standoff of epic proportions, a electronic peen-fight of chicken in which the loser has to unlock first and face the possibility of the other guy finding him unattractive . . . and the subsequent empty moment in which he realizes that the guy has blocked him, rejected him, and moved on to someone else. I figure that by letting guys see all of my photos, face, body, and dick alike, they can figure out on their own whether they want to make a further move. I’m spared having to exert my psychic powers and the services of the Delphic oracle to augur when might be the best strategic moment to unlock for the guy.

Here’s the thing I’ve noticed since I began looking around online again, though. I have absolutely no patience for men who micromanage their photos.

You probably know the type. They’re the ones on Manhunt who write long paragraphs in their profiles that in effect say, No offense but I lock my photos every time before I log off, so if you want to see them again, you will have to ask me. On BBRT and Adam4Adam in particular they have an annoying habit of unlocking and then locking again on some kind of accelerated internal time clock that seems to be connected to how quickly they want me to respond.

Yesterday, for example, I was doing some legitimate work in another window of my laptop and tabbed over to my browser, where on A4A a guy had unlocked his photos for me. I looked at his profile. All the photos were locked. A minute later, I got another blinking note that the same guy had unlocked his photos for me. Now, my response time wasn’t sluggardly; I clicked on his profile in less than thirty seconds after I received the email. But there they were, locked again. I know it wasn’t a server error, either, because I wrote the guy the note that read Why do you keep locking your photos immediately after unlocking them? and got back the answer maybe u aren’t looking quick enough.

Fuck that, too. I blocked the guy.

I can speculate endlessly on the reasons guys micromanage their photos—who can see them, who can’t, for how long they allow the photos to be visible. A lot of the men, however, seem really to get off on the notion that guys are begging them to unlock—as if the number of requests they generate through denial is directly proportional to their virility and desirability. And some seem to be genuinely paranoid about what I might do with those photos, which in itself shows a mistrust I find borderline offensive.

Look. Your photos are your photos, on these website. I fully support a guy’s right to set his own pictures to private. I encourage anyone to show online only what he’s comfortable sharing. That’s totally his right, and his business. But I swear to god, when a guy starts toinking around with viewing privileges and letting me see only the one out-of-focus shot of his upper thigh in a murky bathroom in the middle of the night in a February winter when he’s got seven other locked photos of which I might’ve gotten a brief glance before he snapped them shut again . . . well, I’ve discovered in the last couple of weeks that I’ve just lost the patience for that kind of gamesmanship.

So I’m asking those of you guys who are confident to post photos online. What do you think about those who keep a tight rein on unlocking and relocking photos? Or if you’re one of the folk who relock frequently, what’re your reasons for doing so? And if all your photos are open and visible, why haven’t you shared the link with me yet? Sound off in the comments for today’s open forum!

Monday, December 2, 2013

The Lower Level

The apartment building lobby is the plainest of the plain. Beige walls. Beige mailboxes near the doors. Beige carpet leading to beige staircases, everything inoffensive to the eye. No matter. I’m not here for the interior decorating.

I take the stairs to the lower level and follow the hallway to the higher numbers. We’d arranged the tryst the night before, when I told him I’d be dropping the family at the train station early in the morning. I’ll put the key under the mat before I go to bed, he wrote me. How about you just come on in and get into bed with me. When I pull back the plastic mat in front of his door, it’s lying there, metallic and shiny. I slide it into the knob, twist, and feel the lock release. I ease the door open, step inside, and leave the key on the front table.

The living room’s neat and inexpensively furnished. He’s drawn the blinds and curtains tight so that very little light leaks through. The CD tower, the computer desk, the back of the sofa are all silhouettes. Across the carpet I shuffle, past the kitchen and the bathroom and down the short hallway to the end. It’s stuffy in here; he keeps the heat high.

He’s beneath a thick duvet. I can see his close-cropped short hair in the dark, but not much else. He’s still as I stand by the bed and remove my shoes, my socks, my sweater. He’s breathing deeply. Perhaps he’s faking, but it sounds as if he’s fast asleep.

That won’t last long.

I remove my T-shirt. Unbuckle my belt. It makes a faint metallic sound as it and my pants slide to the floor. I step out of my trunks. The only things I’m wearing now are a cock ring and a smirk. He stirs a little when his naked flesh is exposed to air. It’s only a few minutes after seven in the morning. I’m still pretty sure he’s sleeping—or he’s doing a mighty fine job of faking it.

I pause to admire his body. It’s a crapshoot with photos online, you know. Some are old, some are deceptive. Some guys just photograph better than they appear in person, and it’s only afterward that you go back to the pics and see all the things that should’ve been obvious on the first viewing: the clever angle that hides the paunch, the body stretch that hides the hunched shoulders, the bad skin that’s been smoothed by a blur. This guy hasn’t deceived me in the least. His photos showed a lean and athletic Latin man with face stubble trimmed in a Nike swoop across his chin, fit and fine.

And that’s exactly what he is. One of his arms lies by his side while the other clutches the pillow. They’re as muscular as his photos, bulging in a way that makes my cock stir. His ass is a marvel of worked-out roundness. There’s a trace of fur across the cheeks, and a valley of the stuff between them. He has one leg pulled up so that I can almost—almost—see his hole.

I lay down on the white sheets next to him and pull the duvet over our bodies.

It’s warm beneath the heavy textiles. Warmer still when I slide behind him. My cock finds his crack, the hardness of it nuzzling the furry crack. My right arm burrows beneath the pillow as my left surrounds his chest. I pull him close to me. It’s then that he begins to waken—or to do an Oscar-worthy imitation of it. He startles; I see his head jerk to see who’s joined him. Either he recognizes me in the near-dark, or he remembers his promises of the night before, because he settles, then melts into me.

I’m kissing the back of his neck, running the flat of my hand up and over the bristles of his hair. His shoulders are broad; I run my palms over their natural bulk, down his biceps, over the light hair of his forearms. My left hand grabs at his ass, squeezing it, stroking it, grabbing at it. When I pull apart his cheeks, my cock hones in on its target, rubbing against the outermost ring of his hole.

He curses softly, and buries his face in the pillow.

I slide down between his legs. I hear him moan a little bit as my hands pull apart his ass. It’s mine, this ass. He’s giving it to me. He’s pushing it up against my breath, humping the mattress fruitlessly in need and frustration. I know he can feel my hot breath against his skin. I know he can feel my beard against his flesh, prickling when he moves against it. Desire is making him anxious. Even his respiration increases. If I laid my hand on his chest, I’d feel his heart fluttering like a bird.

I pull apart his ass and dive in with my face. His hole tastes good. It’s lightly sweaty from a good night’s sleep, but it’s obviously clean. He reacts as if he’s never had it eaten before. Bucks. Whimpers. Lets loose with a torrent of Spanish I don’t really understand. I don’t need to brush up on my high school foreign language skills, though. I know what he’s telling me by the way he pushes, by the way his hole opens for my tongue. He clutches at his pillow as he would a lover. I manhandle his cheeks. I don’t care if my paws leave prints on that round butt. He can’t complain. He knew, when he left that key beneath his apartment mat on the lower level, that I’d take ownership.

For long minutes I chew at his hole. My lips and teeth draw it out, make it wink at me. His breath is increasingly short and raspy. My own cock is retribution itself, stiff and red and angry. Pre-cum is soaking his sheets. I want to punish him for making me this way, for making me need release in these wet and puffy ass lips. I flip him over so that he’s on his back, then rise between his legs. It’s the first time I’ve seen him face to face. His eyes are dark and round obsidian, glinting in what morning light has infiltrated the bedroom. There’s that little swoop of facial hair, the obscenely handsome face. His chest is hair-free, but lightly freckled. There’s a trail of fur leading down from his navel, though, and he lifts his hairy legs into the air without my having to ask. I stare at him while I spit in my hand and mix it with the lube my dick’s already been pumping out on my own.

He must have been doing the same to me. His eyes finish their dance across my face and body. “God damn,” he whispers at me. “You are a hot daddy.”

“You know what I’m here for, boy,” I whisper back. They’re the first words we’ve uttered to each other.

I can see him gulp and strain to try to look at my dick. I’ve already seized his ankles with my left hand, however, as I’ve guided my cock to his hole. It’s engorged with lust for the guy. It wants to split him wide open.

“You ready?” I ask.

He bites his lip. Nods. Then his head jerks back. He gargles out incomprehensible noises as I slide into that wet, tight hole.

His ass wraps around my meat tightly in a hot embrace. His body shakes. Struggles. Then I pass through his tight inner ring; I can feel it stretch and open around my head.

I pause. When I loom over him and brace myself on the mattress, my face directly over his, he stares up at me with half-closed eyes. “Thank you,” he whispers. He looks almost drugged, but I know that expression well. It’s the expression boys wear when they’re truly in the moment, feeling full and complete and in love with my dick. Hell, I challenge myself to make every man wear that look, every time I fuck.

“You’re welcome, son,” I say softly. Then, as he clings to my arms, I drive the rest of my inches home.