Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Alignments

New York City is a wonderful place to be alone. I know, I know—it’s a place where citizens jostle shoulder to shoulder in the subways and streets, where restaurant patrons should expect to be wedged together at tiny tables like pieces in a tight puzzle. It’s a city of noise and conversation . . . other people’s noises and conversations, that is. Welcome or not, they’re an unceasing white noise to the honking, the roar of the busses and trains, the clatter of construction. It’s a metropolis where you always seem to be swimming against the tide to get anywhere, against a crowd of faces you don’t recognize.

And that’s exactly why I find it ideal to become lost in. In a city this enormous, I’m a tiny singularity. A grain of sand in your bed attracts attention. You can’t escape that. But who distinguishes between the multitudes of grains of sand on a beach?

In New York, no one’s paying attention to me—they’ve got other things on their minds. Jobs, crises, sightseeing attractions, love affairs, worries, woes. Nobody knows my name, knows where I came from, where I’m going. I could appear—and have appeared—in the backgrounds of countless tourist photos in Grand Central or Times Square. Even then, captured and still in mid-stride, I’m not really there. I’m just part of the gray blur.

And yet, New York City is also the kind of place in which I’m always running across people I know, more so than the smaller cities in which I’ve lived before. I’ll be sitting in a coffee shop deep in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, when someone I know from Los Angeles will casually walk in. That guy I met at social party in White Plains will walk past me on the street and say hello. With so many millions of people crammed onto so small an island, the sheer probability is that two of them, familiar with each other, will collide at some point.

That was the case with me, this last week. I’d gotten tickets to a show with a couple of friends. Great seats, in fact. Close enough to the stage to be spat upon by the actors—always a sign of quality. I’d arrived early enough to get my program, take off my coat, check in on Facebook, settle in. I was coming back from a quick run to the bathroom (it’s easier to go before the show, than to try at intermission, trust me) when I resumed my seat, turned around to scan the crowd, and felt a flash of recognition. Someone I knew was sitting near me.

When I wrote in November about my hiatus from both fucking and my blog, I mentioned there was a guy I’d been seeing. One of the big reasons for my officially-declared Boys ‘R’ Stupid Month had been because of this particular gentleman. He was mature—younger than I, but old enough to have grey in his hair. Handsome as hell. Muscular. Successful. Every time we connected he made me feel special. Like I was more than just a fuck to him. He was romantic with me, and made extravagant promises of even more spectacular times together. Then he up and vanished. Didn’t return calls, texts, emails. There comes a point at which didn’t want to be That Guy—you know, the one who keeps sending increasingly forlorn texts out into dead space. So I stopped.

And there he was, my handsome former playmate, sitting not seven feet away. Well, fuck, I thought to myself.

That wasn’t the end of it. I was sitting there, rolling the Playbill in my hands and feeling hunched-over and miserable, when not thirty seconds later I saw someone else stroll down the aisle. He was dressed in a suit. Tall, slender long-haired, beautiful. The kind of man who stands out in any crowd. Heads turned to admire him as he passed.

I knew him, too.

I’ve never discussed this publicly in my blog before, but for about eleven months of 2013 I was seeing someone. And seeing him fairly exclusively, too. Although I wrote about him a few times in a casual way, I never really addressed the fact that I was heavily involved both emotionally and physically with the young man. I kept silent for a couple of reasons. One was that when I was involved with the dancer, Spencer, a few years ago, I eventually came to regret sharing so much of both the joy and the pain of it in the pages of my blog. I loved Spencer. Readers loved Spencer. Readers wanted me to end up with Spencer. When I didn’t ride off with Spencer into the sunset—even though our eventual separation was always a foregone conclusion—a lot of my readers treated me as if I’d done the unforgiveable. The rest of my readers understood, but always seemed to be waiting for me to generate a Spencer replacement to fill that void in my life.

This guy was not a Spencer replacement. We made passionate love several times a week. I was deeply fond of him. Many of my happiest memories of 2013 were of time spent in his company. Of walking down the street, holding his hand. Of lying in bed and attempting to help him with his many problems. I was protective enough at the time, though, that I didn’t want my readers thinking I’d found a replacement for Spencer. I was also wary about sharing too much information about him—or about my feelings—because at the time I was also just coming off a particularly scary incident with a blog reader who was stalking me in my real life. Sharing details just didn’t seem prudent, either from a practical standpoint, or for my emotional well-being. I kept quiet, for the most part.

Then, after many months spent in his company, this beautiful young man moved from a nearby apartment into one that was further away . . . though not out of reach. It might as well have been Siberia, though, the way it turned out. Because basically, after he moved, the affair was over. I never saw him again. I’d text him the way I used to, and get a delayed response. Then fewer responses. Then no responses at all. He didn’t return emails, or phone calls. I felt as if I’d been erased from his life with no warning and no explanation. It hurt me deeply. And I didn’t want to write about my despondence in my blog, either.

But there was this guy, in the flesh for the first time before me since I’d helped him pack his belongings into a U-Haul truck, walking down the carpet of the theater like a male supermodel, oblivious to my presence. He took a seat across the aisle from me, one aisle down. Well, FUCK, I thought to myself.

So I sat there in this massive crowd of people, friends on either side, a former trick immediately behind me, a longer-time lover ten feet to my left. And all I could wonder was what I had done wrong to deserve this weird conjunction of events. I wanted to sink into the ground, actually, and let it swallow me up for good.

But you know what? That black mood didn’t last long. With both guys I’d ended up feeling treated shabbily, but I hadn’t really done anything wrong to either of them. Theoretically, I already knew it; thanks to a quirk of fate or a twist of probability, having them both in proximity to me, like some kind of ominous alignment of stars, nailed home the reality. I hadn’t done anything wrong to them. There was absolutely no reason for me to be ashamed of my behavior. If anyone was to do the slinking down in his seat, it sure as hell wasn’t me.

So I sat up. I uncurled the Playbill out of the tight baton into which I’d made it. I moved my focus from the two unfortunate points behind and beside me, and started chatting to my friends once again. I damn well made sure that neither guy was going to ruin my show. During the intermission, I didn’t hide myself with hunched shoulders. I didn’t avoid turning around. Neither man saw me, as it turned out—or at least, they didn’t let on that they did. I was just part of the background blur. One of the crowd. And that was fine. I had a great evening after all.

I’ve always been convinced that the universe gives us what we need, when it’s appropriate to receive it. Sometimes it’s a reminder of former events gone wrong. Sometimes it’s a wake-up call. Sometimes it’s a person. I’m glad I received, in the handful of last days of 2014, a reminder of past disappointments.

Even more happily, I’m grateful to face the fears they stir and realize once and for all that not only have I moved on—but moved on for the better.

Here’s to 2015, everyone.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

First Date

In my youth I never dated. I never experienced that first blush of embarrassment upon asking a girl (or a boy) out for a movie. I never had to work up the nerve to ask someone out to the junior prom. I never suffered from telephone paralysis trying to summon up courage to utter the words, “I was wondering if you'd maybe like to go out with me sometime. . . ?”

The whole dating thing, from my perspective then, was just a long and unnecessary preamble to getting laid. I could get laid. I got laid. To get laid as a teen all I had to do was bike down to the local park, skulk around the public men’s rooms in the woods, and collect as many loads as I wanted to take. A couple of hours later, I could be back home, satiated, to read a book or play with my Atari 2600 or practice my piano. To get laid, I could get a ride with my parents to the university at which they taught, telling them I had to do ‘research’ in the library for school. Most of my research I'd do in a kneeling position in the tiles of the library or campus center cruise men’s room, but the results verified every scientific theory I every had that men really, really, really liked to blow their loads in the mouth of a twinky blond cocksucker.

In college if I wanted to get laid, all I needed to do was walk to one of the campus’ many cruise areas—the student center restroom, the tiny park next to the tourist bus stop, the dark and isolated men’s rooms in the college library. I had a boyfriend of sorts in college, but we didn't date. We didn't even really eat together at the campus cafeteria. We pretended we didn’t know each other by day, and then fucked and declared undying love for each other in the dark shadows of night where no one else might see us and suspect our deep homosexual passions.

My cynical view of dating was deeply colored, however, by the fact I intended to live single, forever. At the time I considered myself not only unlikely in my lifetime to form any lasting emotional attachments, but unworthy of any such thing. All I have to do is look back in my journals of the time to see my convictions; I repeatedly attempted to convince myself that it would be best to live to an old age without ever declaring my passions to anyone.

I thought it would be kindest, both to my parents and to my friends and extended family, never to let them know I preferred sex with men to the more traditional arrangements they might have expected of me. I’d had sex on the sly for years; I reckoned to myself that I could continue that way for a few decades. Then one day, when I was exceptionally ancient—forty-five, say—I'd give up sex altogether and live the celibate life of a confirmed bachelor. A flat, a cat, and a lonely adulthood until I died with a saint-like smile on my face derived from the satisfaction of knowing I'd never discommoded anyone with my inconvenient lifestyle.

This was, of course, back in the nineteen-seventies and eighties—which might as well have been centuries ago, in terms of how far we've advanced with the rights of the LGBT population since. But I lived in the American South, in a very small, very conservative city. I didn't know a single out adult. I'd only been exposed to gay life as a subculture of secrecy and sneaking and fleeting moments of pleasure with as little emotional connection as possible.

I thought I’d made my peace with all that. I’d settle. I’d make do.

So perhaps it’s not wildly impossible to comprehend why I didn't actually go on an official date with someone until my first year of graduate school. I would have been about twenty-one at the time. I’d moved back in with my parents for a couple of years after college, but I was studying full time and teaching multiple sections of undergraduate entry-level classes. I lived in an apartment in the basement of their house, and had my own entrance. I’d won a scholarship. My grades were A’s, straight across the board. It sounds like I had my shit together. But in fact, I was a nervous and bumbling boob when it came to normal human interaction with anyone, especially men.

I don't remember the guy’s name. I barely remember what he looked like—I have an impression of him being slight of build, balding, bearded, handsome. Older than me by at least twenty-five years. Very attractive. We met—of course—in some kind of cruising place. Probably the second or third floor of the Business Building on campus, which had notoriously seedy men’s rooms that even in 1986 were packed to occupancy from mid-afternoon until the building was closed. After I'd taken care of this particular guy—through one of the glory holes, under the stall, I don't remember—he chased me out of the men’s room and spoke to me at length outside. He'd enjoyed being with me. He wanted to see me again. How about Friday night?

I'd had men chase me out of the tearooms before. They'd enjoyed my holes so much that of course they wanted more. That part didn't scare me. I was used to going home with men and fucking. What surprised me with this guy, though, was that when I met him in a campus parking lot for our date that Saturday night, was that he didn't immediately take me to his place. No, he wanted to get something to eat.

Almost immediately this strange turn of events three me into a tailspin. Eat? Eat dinner the hour of seven-thirty at night? My family usually bolted down its meals at five-thirty. The college cafeteria had closed at seven. I was vaguely aware that restaurants might have been open after the sun set, but certainly no God-fearing red-blooded Amurrican I knew would ever consider eating at that late hour. Not unless they were trying to prove how much more superior they were, like some kind of European or something.

I was also uncomfortable with the venue to which he took me. Eating out to me then meant chain restaurants. My dad loves his chain restaurants. Eating out, to me, involved a big colorful menu with pictures of the food items at somewhere like the Big Boy, where the family sat in an isolated booth and ate food that tasted like food from every other Big Boy anywhere else there might have been a Big Boy.

This guy, though, took me to a cute and tiny place where the menu was printed on a thick, unlaminated stock of paper that contained absolutely no pictures of the entrees whatsoever. There were no booths in the narrow little space. There were only tables lined up in what I naively thought was New York City-style restaurant seating—tight and cramped and intended to accommodate as many folks as possible. (Of course, having lived in New York for a few years now and having eaten quite a lot at its exceedingly cozy establishments, I’m aware that little restaurant in Richmond was airy and spacious in comparison. A New Yorker would look over the shoulder of the three strangers wedged in next to him, seen the actual elbow room between diners, and laughed in derision.)

What was worse was that this guy wanted to talk. During dinner. While I sat there staring at the solitary glass of water that was my meal (I’d already eaten at five-thirty, like a normal person), my date animatedly ate the food he’d ordered in enormous quantities while he peppered me with questions like, “So how long have you known you’d rather be with guys?” Or, “Have you come out to your parents yet?”

In public. Where people might overhear.

In my adolescent imagination, everyone was already gawking at the two of us and carrying on scandalized conversations behind cupped hands. Do you see those two over there? Confirmed homosexuals! You don’t say? Well I never! I think one of them is the son of that college professor! Oh no! What will his parents think? Wasn’t he a good student? Such a shame! Do you think his former Boy Scout leader knows? That kind of thing. They weren’t, of course, but I wasn’t accustomed to being out in public with any of my tricks. If he wanted to ask me questions like that, my reasoning ran, he should have done it in bed, behind closed doors. And maybe in a whisper.

At least a hushed voice, which is not what he used in the restaurant. I hunched over my water, glowered, and wished myself somewhere else. Anywhere else, in fact.

The dinner seemed to last forever. In my imagination, it had about fourteen courses, all of them exquisitely slow. Finally he paid his check, folded the napkin in his lap, and escorted me outside.

“Now,” he announced. “Let me take you to a movie.”

I had to endure dinner with a handsome guy? And then a movie? Oh god. I could’ve died.

We ended up at the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil at the Regency Mall. The theater itself was packed. I kept worrying that someone I knew would see me. And worse, the movie itself didn’t start until well after nine, and I didn’t know how long it was supposed to last. An hour and a half? Two? I spent the entire duration of the film miserable and trying to make mental calculations about what time the film would get out, and how long it would take to drive back across town to the campus where my car was parked, and what time I’d finally get home.

None of my calculations, even the most generous, seemed to indicate I’d make it back before midnight. Because of that, I was miserable. I felt like a sixth-grader staying out well past his curfew. I felt like a criminal.

It was an over-reaction, sure. And a silly one at that. Even though I was legally an adult and didn’t have to ask my parents permission to go out at night or stay out, I’d never actually been out that late before. Ever. If I had night classes I was still home by nine-thirty; I didn’t have that many friends in the area to do things with. My parents had never once known me to go out with anyone. My staying out past midnight was unprecedented. Inconceivable, really. I sat there in the dark theater, flinching whenever my friend would attempt to put his hand on my leg in an inconspicuous way, with a brain fevered by fear. Would my parents yell at me? Could they yell at me, at my age? Would they demand to know why I’d been out much later than I’d told them? Would they ask me with whom? Already I was trying to fabricate excuses and fibs about how I’d spent my evening. I couldn’t pay attention to the movie, in all its excess. I was too fucking miserable.

As I predicted, we didn’t get out until close to midnight. To say I was tense during that trip back to the campus where I was parked would be a massive understatement. I was rigid. In the passenger seat of his car, I had my right foot pressed hard against the floor where the accelerator would’ve been had I been driving, hoping I might somehow psychically influence him to take it a little faster. When finally he pulled up next to my car and turned off the ignition, I was so anxious to get going that I basically shouted, “WELL BYE!”

“I was hoping you might want to go home and spend the night with me,” he protested, rather mildly.

“I can’t,” I said. I was angry, at that point. If he’d wanted me to go home with him, he could’ve done it hours before.

“You don’t want to go home with me?” he asked.

“I can’t,” was all I could say.

He seemed deflated. “But why not?”

For the first time all evening, it hit home what a real ass I was being. “I just can’t,” I told him. Then I got out of his car, got into mine, and raced home like my life depended upon it. It was about twelve-thirty when I slunk into my basement apartment and directly into my bed, where I let the sheets cool my face and my embarrassment.

I felt badly about how I’d treated the guy for days—years—afterward. I mean, I’d been an ungrateful little shit. I’d been sullen, and childish, and had let my own provincialism trump my manners and good sense. I’d let fear cheat me out of an enjoyable evening, and a man who was interested in me as something more than a pair of holes. I felt embarrassed that as adult as I was by the legal definition, I wasn’t adult enough to manage a little civility. I wasn’t adult enough to be able to change the topic, to ask him questions of my own, or even simply to relax and be what I was without worrying about what others might think of me. I’d handled the whole thing badly from beginning to end, and hurt a man’s feelings.

I got an unflattering glimpse of myself in a mirror, and I decided I didn’t like what I saw. I never treated a date like that again. I grew from that night.

The irony of the whole thing, of course, is that the next day when I met my parents with glib lies about how I’d met some of my graduate school friends for dinner and how we’d all spontaneously decided to go see a movie together, it turned out they didn’t really give a crap how late I’d stayed out. They were thrilled that I’d been out socializing. In fact, they’d always thought it a little worrisome about how introverted I’d been since I moved back home. Didn’t I want to go out more often?

I never saw my first date after our abortive evening together. I don’t blame him for avoiding me, frankly. One good thing came out of that evening, though: after such a terrible first experience with dating, the only place to go was up.


A special holiday note to my readers: don't forget you can send me a thank-you gift for Christmas! Or even some holiday email would be awesome.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Secrets

Outside the bedroom window, dark muffles the city. Like a woolen blanket, it settles on the river and renders bridges into vague memories of their former shapes. It hushes the sounds of barking dogs, the scrape of thick-booted soles on the pavement, the distant hum of traffic.

Inside the apartment, the two of us nestle among a few stolen hours. The old radiator rattles and clanks into life. The heat it produces is nearly overwhelming. My boy has left the window open to compensate. Occasionally frigid air, sharp and thin as a blade, slices across out bodies, followed by those diffused, distant sounds from the dark metropolis.

I barely hear them. My focus is on the here and now, on the boy who has slithered his way down my torso to nestle between my legs. Kent’s hands clutch my waistband and toy with the button. “May I?” he asks.

Oh yes. He may.

At my nod he unbuttons the denim. I lift my hips; he tugs the jeans down to mid-thigh. My erection flops onto my stomach with a loud slap. Slowly, lingeringly, he cups his strong hand around my length. His lips part. When he opens his mouth, I feel the warmth from his breath, even more summery than the radiator that’s keeping the room toasty. It's like a furnace blast, his heat.

“Wait,” I tell him at the last possible second.

He looks up at me, his face a bewilderment of emotions. Confusion. Curiosity. The disappointment of a boy denied his favorite toy.

“I want you to memorize this dick tonight,” I tell him. My voice is soft, insistent. I'm dimly aware I sound as if I'm attempting to hypnotize the boy. “Really memorize it. I want you to know this dick better than anyone else’s. Understand?”

His fist keeps my throbbing meat pointed to the ceiling. “Yes, Sir,” he agrees.

I'm pleased not merely at his agreement. I'm pleased because he really listens to me. He likes the instruction. Thrives on it. When I stare into his eyes, he's right there with me, not breaking our gaze, hardly blinking.

For the thousandth time I think to myself how fucking beautiful this kid is. Not matter how much he attempts to slick down his hair, it tousles itself as it dries, then springs into a boyish curliness. Those eyes are as clear and pure as his thoughts and deeds are anything but. He looks wholesome—the kind of boy every guy would be proud to bring home to mom.

And I own his hole. Mine. That beautiful furry pucker is all mine. My dick leaps in his hand at the thought, causing him to hold it a fraction more tightly. “Son,” I tell him. “I want you to know every inch of that dick. Every bulge. Every vein. The way it curves. Every hair at its base.” He nods, absorbing every word. “I want you to know that cock better than any cock you've ever known in your whole life. I want you to know that cock better than any fuck partner you've ever had. Better than your husband’s.” I let that one sink in. “Better than even your own. Understand?”

He’s still totally with me. “That's what I'm here for, Sir,” he agrees. “Your pleasure, Sir. You own me.”

“That’s right. I own you. And your owner wants you to get to work,” I instruct. I lie back against the headboard, linked fingers providing a hammock for the back of my head. And I watch.

Fixated on my eyes, he lowers his head and moves his mouth to my balls. Our stares are still fastened on each other when his tongue darts out, makes itself broad and flat, and begins to lap at my nuts. Fuck. It feels good. He's going nice and slow and taking his time to wet them up. All the time he’s lapping at my tender flesh, he’s watching me, judging my reaction. It's tough to stay stoic under this sweet torture. I grab the pillow from the head of the bed, stuff it under my neck, lay back, and groan. As my eyes close, I see his narrow with satisfaction. He know he's doing his job—doing it right, and doing it with enthusiasm, too.

He opens his mouth. It widens and stretches to accommodate my girth. I feel a flash of warm breath, the tenderness of his lips on my shaft, and then wetness as his tongue and cheeks softly embrace me. My cock becomes his total focus. He breaks his stare with me, though he continues gauging my pleasure with quick glances now and again. Right now his entire universe can be measured in eight slick inches.

This is what I like best about the boy’s blow jobs: he's not fixated on my cock’s head, or so anxious to get to its base that he neglects what's in between. His is the first blow job I've had in ages—years, if I’m being honest—in which I've been able to appreciate his work along every fucking inch. I feel his tongue and lips below the flare of my crown, an inch below, four inches along the shaft. He's not just pleasuring one little spot, or a localized area. He wants the whole thing to feel good.

And it does. My legs are shaking from the intensity of his attention. He's taking my admonition to heart. He's not in a hurry to get me off. The opposite, if anything. Kent is making slow, lingering love to my dick, and relishing every moment of it. He’s not propelling me along to an orgasm. He’s eking out every shiver, every half-laugh, every sharp intake of breath and quick jolt of electric energy up and down my spine. He’s giving me indulgence for its own sake. Everything he does is for my pleasure.

I'm trying to relax, but he's making it impossible. It feels as if my shaft is growing more and more rigid by the microsecond. I alternate between sinking into the soft mattress and heaving slow, grateful breaths, or panting rapidly at the sheer intensity of the tickling, deliberate ministrations of his lips and mouth along my length.

He loves that dick. He loves my dick, because it belongs to me. He's memorizing it, just like I instructed. Every vein. Every bulge. Its gentle curve. His tongue is tracing the shape of my shaft so he can recall it later. He’s making his mouth my home.

There’s a big difference between this kind of treatment and an everyday blow job. I always tell my special men that I want to fuck them so well and fuck them so thoroughly that they will forever regret any dick that's not my own. He seems to have a similar agenda. Any other head I get in the future I'll be comparing to his. Every damn time. And every damn time the other poor sucker is going to come up short.

He’s already discovered secrets about my cock that even I didn’t know. God damn him for being so good.

It’s a long time later that I get my revenge. He’s on his back, legs held wide apart in the air. I’ve crammed a pillow under the small of his back so I can get his butt high and at the perfect angle for wrecking. “Go slow,” he begs. He means it. I’m large. He’s apprehensive. “Please, Sir.”

I smile down at him as my lubed-up head disappears into his glistening flesh. My cock is purple with engorged need; I watch it disappear inch by inch.

“Slow,” he begs. His eyes are half-closed. He’s turned his head to the side. He looks as if he’s falling asleep. The grunt of satisfaction he lets out when I reach the bottom, however, tells me he’s merely lost in the sensations.

“Sssshh,” I whisper to him. “You don’t need me to go slow.” I knew how his hole reacted when I jammed my fingers inside to lube him. I could tell by how he welcomed my shaft inside that he didn’t need any special treatment. This is only our second meeting, and already his ass is conforming itself to the unique shape of my dick. It’s reshaping itself, making itself ready for me and only me.

I’ve discovered secrets about his ass, too.

And he doesn’t know the half of them yet.