A Breeder's Journal

Allan, Part 1

2012-02-01T08:20:00.000-05:00

I tuned into RuPaul’s Drag Race, Monday night, with great anticipation. It’s simultaneously one of the sharpest and silliest programs on television, and I’ve loved it since the first season. My favorite of all the seasons was its third, though, and that’s because it’s the season I watched with Spencer.

When I was on my own for all those months and Spencer had basically taken up residence in my bed, refrigerator, and house, Drag Race night was the evening we most looked forward to. We’d make dinner, make love, and then cuddle up on the sofa to watch our favorite show. During the commercial breaks we’d argue about our favorites (we both loved Raja), and hiss at the villains (Mimi Imfurst!), and pick out our drag names (his would change every week, but mine has always been and will always be Pansy Potts, because I saw them advertised at a garden store once and said, "That would be my perfect drag name.").

Last night I turned on the show, was excited for about the first three minutes, and then I was so overcome with longing for Spencer and those long winter nights that I developed an enormous lump in my throat and had to excuse myself from the room for a few minutes in order to compose myself.

But Drag Race reminds me not only of Spencer, but of another lost boy, Allan, whom I knew many years ago, and with whom by chance I reconnected again years later. It’s Allan that I’d like to talk about in the next couple of entries.

In the Detroit area there were two bathhouses I’d visit. One was newer, but because it had been put into an old auto body shop, it was grungier and grittier. The steam room was large and capacious, but the private rooms seemed like an afterthought, the carpets were always frayed and dirty, and in a good rain, the entire place became wet and marshy underfoot. There was a hot tub, but it always gave the impression of being a bacterial stew . . . when it was working. The staff cleaned the place in a perfunctory manner if at all. On the other hand, it was close to the freeway, it attracted an infinitely more sizable crowd, and the guys generally tended to skew younger.

The other bathhouse was in a much older building. It had taken over a Jewish health club and had a really solid, good facility—an Olympic-sized pool, a tiled in-ground hot tub, a screened outdoor nude tanning deck, massage rooms, a dry sauna in addition to the steam room, and two comfortable-ish movie rooms. Despite its age, and despite the fact that it attracted an older and sparser crowd, I actually liked this facility better for many years. The men were friendlier, the sex was wilder, and the place was infinitely cleaner than its rival. I sponsored many a member there.

In the mid-2000s, though, the club’s owner got into the habit of commandeering the public address system for fifteen minutes to a half-hour at a time so that he could go on what sounded like meth-fueled rants about the local gay and lesbian organizations and how they were full of Nazis and assholes. And the last thing one really needs when one’s trying to sink one’s dick into a hot young buck is some addled, slurring idiot shouting obscenities into a microphone at the top of his voice. You know?

The final straw for me with the older bathhouse was one afternoon when I’d spent several hours there. I’d turned in my bedclothes, checked out my key, and gotten back my lifetime membership card. The clerk had buzzed me out the door, and I’d exited into the foyer. I was heading to the door out and, because my breath needed a minty boost, I’d withdrawn from the back pocket of my jeans a stick of Orbit gum.

Well. I hadn't unwrapped it. I wasn't going to put it into my mouth until I'd reached my car. But you’d have thought that instead of an inch-long sugar-free mojito-flavored chewing gum, I’d pulled out a loaded gun. The clerk and owner started screaming at me at the top of their lungs, through the bullet-proof plexiglass through which one had to check in. Gum was forbidden on the premises! What did I think they were, made out of money? What was my name again? They were going to take my membership and put a black mark on it! No! I was going to come right back in and they were going to give me a scraper and I was going to have to scrape every seat in the movie theater, bed in the rooms, and gum mark off the floor, right then and there!

They were serious. I stared at them in amazement, said, “Fuck you,” and walked out. I never ever went back. I told everyone I knew who was thinking of joining to keep away. (And I recommend you do the same.)

When I first joined that particular bathhouse, it was a few years after it had been more or less gutted in a fire. A cigarette left burning in one of the rooms had cleared out three-quarters of the bathhouse, so that it had no private changing rooms (they’re euphemistically called)—only a vast, dark, warehouse-like area hung with drapes. During the years before the rooms were rebuilt, the big empty space was called ‘tent city’ because the owner had put down a couple of dozen pup tents on the floor for men to fuck in.

I loved the arrangement better than the private rooms that later supplanted them, to be honest. No one could really vanish into a room with a locked door, in that arrangement. All the sex was public, or at least semi-; you could hear everything through the thin material of the pup tents, listen to entire conversations, hear every grunt and thrust and slickness. There was always a chance that you’d be leading a man into a pup tent and get down on your knees and crawl in, only to find some fucker already waiting inside with his legs up, or another couple screwing. Sometimes they’d invite you to stay, anyway.

I met Allan in one of the tents. He was one of those sluts who would spend an entire afternoon on his back on those cement floors, legs in the air, taking dick after dick. We fucked once and enjoyed each other. I recognized him another day by the taste of his kisses—he was addicted to a certain strong mint, between fucks—and the glowing red tip of his cigarette in the dark. I always sought him out after that.

When I first met him right around the century mark, Allan was no more than twenty-five. He was tall, and lean, blue-eyed, and had the blondest natural shock of hair. He was so fair-skinned that as he got fucked, a flush would form first over his face and then would spread down his neck and chest, until all those areas were a bright red. And he had a much-used ass with a natural rosebud from so much fucking.

One of the reasons I liked Allan so much was that he was up for anything. I could take him to one of the public areas and fuck him while men watched, and he’d put on as much of a show as I. He’d arch his back, and groan, and make it look as if I was giving him the fuck of his life. When I was in him, his eyes would be half-closed, but they’d be fully-focused on my own. He’d kiss me passionately, and ride my dick for as long as I cared to give it to him. He’d never get enough.

After a few encounters, he made it clear that I was his special territory. He’d fight off other, lesser bottoms to get to my cock, then work hard to keep my attention focused on him. I’d shoot a load in him, then he’d squat over one of the floor mats, squirt it out of his ass, and lick it up—all for my voyeuristic pleasure. Then, while I’d lean back against the wall and relax, he’d pick another man out of the crowd, put his ass into the air, and take the anonymous fuck while I watched. The minute the guy had dumped a load inside him, Allan would scramble off him, crawl to me, and then slide his cum-filled chute down and over my dick, so I could fuck him in the stranger’s load.

He worked as a waiter nights, I knew, so the only time I saw Allan at the baths was during the day. Every time I saw him, he’d collect loads for me to fuck in. Then when I told him I’d have to be going soon, he’d give me the most determined, aggressive sex I’d had to that point. His hole was on my dick, but from the way he went at it—straddling me, grinding at me and snatching my dick with his cunt, his jaw jutted out and a snarl on his face until he got the load he needed from me—it was more as if he was fucking me than the reverse.

I loved sex with Allan. So when he suggested we save our money and just start fucking at his place, I didn’t hesitate. Hell yes, I wanted to see him. And for a good year, I did.

(To be continued.)

The Pimp

2012-01-30T08:20:00.000-05:00

“Your brother told me you had a big dick,” said the man. My jeans were half-off , the waist clinging to my thighs just above the knee. I had a pair of black trunks on. Their elastic band still clung to my left hip. He’d pulled down the right side, though, exposing my cock. “He was right.”

I was still stiff from the last half-hour, during which we’d wrestled for dominance on his bed. We’d kissed, and pinned down each other’s arms and attacked each other’s necks and lobes and chins with our mouths and tongues. We’d ground our privates against each other until they hurt. I’d been pumping out precum during that entire time. I could feel the cold wet patch against the skin of my leg. “My brother’s not a liar,” I said, by way of not seeming to want to be big-headed and agree with him.

“Fuck,” he said, going down on me. His mouth was full of my dick for several long moments before he came up for air again. “I’m glad he told me to get in touch with you.” He was about to go down on me again, but he paused. “Does he pimp you out like this often?”

One of the things that Mikey will do, from time to time, is to run across some guy online that he thinks of as absolutely perfect for my tastes. After all, who knows me better? There’ve been a few occasions when he’ll simply give me a profile name to look at and leave it at that. But most of the time, he seems to know that I prefer to be the pursued than the pursuer, and he’ll go straight to the guy and extol my virtues. I haven’t had the privilege of actually reading any of these missives, but I kind of imagine they’re a lot like my agent writes when she’s trying to sell one of my works. Fantastic strength! Broad appeal! Available cheap!

I know it’s happened when I get an email out of the blue. Hey, it’ll be titled, or I know this sounds weird. Then the first line will be, Your brother contacted me on here and he said you and I should get together.
Yeah. Mikey pimps me out pretty often.

He has a good eye, too. He’s hooked me up with slutty boys who haven’t yet outgrown their abuse of Axe body spray, and sexy silver foxes who make me weak the knees. He’s hooked me up with piggy bears I’ve found super-attractive, and handsome muscle gods whose attentions made me nervous, but who were so turned on by one brother pimping another that they couldn’t resist giving me a try.

When they contact me, these men, I always feel obligated to apologize first. Oh jeez, I’m sorry, I’ll say. He really shouldn’t do that. He’s just trying to look out for me, especially now that we’re a thousand miles apart. Apologies seem to be unnecessary, really. Most men find it perversely hot, or at least don’t mind that Mikey’s pointed them in my direction.

An agent would take her fifteen percent, of course. When I lived in Michigan, close to Mikey, his cut would be the pleasure of hearing me replay the encounter for him in person, when we were alone and exchanging confidences. If he could, he’d try to get into the guy’s pants himself. This year, though, he has to be content with chatting to me about it online, or remotely, or hearing about it from the guy himself, if I’ve been busy.

This guy was one of the silver foxes—a tall and handsome older guy who lived with his lover in a big house not far from me. He turned out to be a good lovemaker, once I got him to shut up talking about taking down his Christmas decorations and the weather. I fucked him three times and was in an almost-unconscious bliss for a half-hour when he treated me to a back and neck rub. Then I went down on my knees, right before I left, and sucked him off—start to finish, in less than two minutes.

“Holy shit,” he said, staggering back into the wall so hard that his tchotchkes leapt alarmingly on the ornamental shelves behind him. “Your brother didn’t tell me you could do that.”

Apparently I need to get Mikey to write some better agent letters.

Sunday Morning Questions: Subtlety Edition

2012-01-29T08:20:00.000-05:00

I know, subtle, ain't it? My birthday's a week from tomorrow. Don't worry, I'm not hinting for expensive gifts! (Though if you were in that kind of mood, I've got an Amazon wish list you can always browse.) I'm not demanding that a porn star give me the fuck of a lifetime. I'm a low-maintenance kind of guy.

You know what I would like, though? Photos of you all, if you wish to share 'em. Male, female, young, old. I don't care. Just take a pic of your sexy body with a sheet of paper on which you've scrawled a birthday wish. Or take a snapshot of your face and your pretty smile while you're holding up your phone to show me you've typed out a birthday greeting in big bold type. Make a really short movie in which you're yelling happy birthday! at me. Be creative! Email them to the address in my sidebar! Seriously, nothing would make me happier.

I won't share them with anyone. Honest. I will bask in a glow warmer than any of my impending for-mmph-mmph birthday candles could create, though.

Let's get to some questions from formspring.me , shall we? For those of you who made an effort this week and last to come up with some truly unique questions for me, I'm grateful. They were interesting!

Your first time: with a man vs woman. Which was better / more memorable?

My first time with a man was special. It was with someone I knew and adored, and scary though it was, I trusted him enough to guide the situation and not let me come to harm.

My first time with a woman I've written about in my blog. It was supervised by someone I trusted, but involved a couple I didn't know, neither of whom had inviting personalities. I might've gotten the job done, but it was an act more of corruption than of pleasure.

Have you ever eaten anything special or different in an attempt to make your cum taste better?

I have not, though I once had someone try to make me experiment with pineapple juice to see if it made my loads sweeter, as it was suggested it would.

I did used to take zinc supplements to see if it would give my loads more volume, but I found that simply keeping well hydrated did that trick.

And I have consumed beer, which I don't particularly like, in order to make my piss taste different, for some men.

What do you do when you can't sleep?

When I played World of Warcraft, I would get up from bed and work on my fishing. That was such a dull and tranquil experience that I'd be ready to go to sleep in no time.

I no longer play, though. So usually I will get up and either browse web pages, or I'll lie in bed and read on my iPad. I find that if I just do something for an hour other than think about sleeping, I'll fall back to sleep. And if I don't . . . well, it's only a night.

Blindfolded, butt up, door unlocked. Hot, or not? And should the blindfold stay on until you leave?

That's very, very hot to me. If the blindfold stays on, even better. I love that scenario.

Open Relationships, are you a fan or do you disagree with them? Why?

Everyone in a relationship should feel not only the freedom to be able to express himself to his partner, but with his partner to set the course of the relationship. For some couples, that will mean a sexually open relationship. For others, it'll mean monogamy. Both of those—and every variation between—can be good options.

I'm a big fan of people taking control of their own lives and relationships and working with their partners to make life not only agreeable, but fulfilling. No matter what the details happen to be.

If you only had one night in Toronto, (Say, for instance, on a Thursday) where would you go to find a hole or three?

Steamworks. It's clean enough, centrally located, and attracts not only a good number of guys, but a good quality of men as well.

Years ago I would've suggested the Bijou or The Barracks, but sadly, they are long gone. I loved those spots.

How close has lightning ever struck near you? Were you outdoors or in?

I once had lightning strike the electrical transformer behind the garage of my previous house—about thirty feet from where I was inside. It shorted out all the electronics (except for those I'd unplugged because of the storm) and set off the house's alarm system in a way that it couldn't be turned off. Fun.

Whenever you read a profile on A4A or other hook-up sites that says "I'm just looking to make friends," do you ever mentally add "...with my cock/ass"?

Quite a lot. I also look at the ads that say 'I'm not here to hook up!' and mentally add, '...unless I'm horny.'

Do you ever have a hook up turn into a meanful active friendship?

Quite often. When I lived in Michigan, I had active and meaningful friendships (and continuing sexual relationships, in many cases) with several guys whom I originally met for a hookup. My intense relationship with Spencer, which I documented in my journal in the latter part of 2010 and early 2011 and which lasted for the better part of a year, until I moved, began as a hookup.

The longest-lasting relationship of my life started as a one-night stand. I'm pretty adept at making friends with my fucks.

Night in the Park

2012-01-27T08:20:00.000-05:00

By day, Bryan Park was a genteel and respectable place to visit. In April and May, citizens of Richmond would flock to see the masses of azaleas that grew along seventeen acres of road there. The park’s south entrance led a serpentine path through the high banks of color—vivid pinks, obscene purples, whites so vibrant they caught the sun and reflected it like a mirror. The park was alight with color for those two months, then settled for the rest of the summer in the colors of the forest—deep browns, soft greens, dappled shades.

It was the shadiest of the Richmond parks, in the nineteen-seventies and eighties. There were a couple of fields for sports, and the banks of the creek running down a waterfall and into the duck pond were clear, but most of the park was overshadowed by oaks and pines and by the deep forest that protected the sleepy neighborhood of Lakeside from I-95. It was in the shade of those impossibly tall trees that I lost myself in my teen years, along with the shadowy figures of the adult men who’d come hunting for the same thing as I: release.

Cruising there was different in the daytime. From the time the park opened until its official closing at sunset, the park’s users divided themselves roughly in half. In the south entrance came who wanted to use the park for recreation and relaxation, or the rednecks who drove in their pickup trucks with the Confederate flags in the back windows, and the illicit bottles of beer and Jim Beam beneath their seats.

And in the north entrance, at the park’s rear, the men cruising for sex would drive. Up and down the road by the duck pond they’d drive, slowly, carefully, scanning the horizon for possible movement among the trees. Those cruising for the long haul would steer all the way into the woods and park near the restrooms there. Their heads would barely appear over the driver’s side windows, as they slouched down in their seats and peered out at the world around them, waiting and watching.

The park’s two sections were, back then, inaccessible from each other by car. The straight side had its own entrance and exit; the cruising side utilized the same two-way road for both. Someone who parked and walked through a series of barricades might make his way from one to the other, but very few did.

The daytime men made a show of appearing respectable. Earnest, even, in their attempts to appear as if they were using the park for its legitimate intended purpose. They’d stretch their legs and walk around the duck pond, ostentatiously carrying sandwiches their wives and sweethearts had prepared for them in white paper lunch sacks, or bearing bird-watching binoculars around their necks. The men who walked into the sunlight, who got out of their cars, made every attempt to appear as if they belonged.

By night, though, all bets were off.

The park officially closed at sunset. By the time dusk rolled around, the distinctions between the park’s two halves began to bleed. In the lingering heat and humidity of the long summer days, men would open their car doors when the sun had set and begin to walk around. Rednecks savvy to the action going on would cross the barricades. In their hands they’d carry their bottles in brown paper bags. Their breath and their beards would be sour with the stuff. In the picnic shelters they’d sit, or on the rocks near the waterfall, legs spread, the worn denim of their jeans showing the outlines of their tools. The cruisers would leave their cruising mobiles and step into the woods, and watch. The restrooms grew busy with the sound of the swinging doors. Inside, in the stalls, would echo the sounds of slurping, of soft sighs at the insertion of dicks into holes, and the muted commands one man might give another.

There were ways to linger in the park after sunset. The side streets of Lakeside would be lined with empty station wagons and trucks and long town cars. The park officials might have been able to block off the roads, come dark, but the park wasn’t walled or gated; they couldn’t stop anyone simply from walking in.

It was after the park had officially cleared that it would come to life again. From the shadowy woods would emerge figures that had disappeared in there long before the sun had set. Men who’d occupied corners of sheds and small shelters would step out onto the roads again. And somehow they’d all end up in the picnic shelters in the park’s center.

I knew the routine well enough by my mid-teens. I would drive around Lakeside until dark fell, and then navigate around the barricades and straight into Bryan Park, locking my bike on a rack by feel. Even after my near-arrest in the restrooms the summer before, I was bold enough to feel safe in the dark. The night was my blanket, my protection. I knew I could strip off my shirt and leave it in the disused, ornamental stone fireplace at the picnic shelter’s end. I knew I could leave my shorts there too, with my bike key tucked into the zipped pocket. Being naked outdoors wasn’t exactly a novelty for me—I couldn’t even really recall the first time I’d stripped down and run around like a wild Indian, as the saying went back then, at one of my parents’ hippie-dippie gatherings in the nineteen-sixties.

I felt emboldened by the dark, nights in the park, though. This was my element.

The first time I lay on one of the picnic tables beneath the shelter, I felt giddy at the cheek of it. Soon I learned that it was my place. The irregular, splintery surface of the wood dug into my back, night after night. I grew to love it. I almost missed the bite of it, when I’d get fucked on sheets. The men approaching were visible only by their lighted cigarettes, or by the glint of a pair of spectacles in the half-moonlight, or by the sound of their belts unbuckling and their feet shuffling across the concrete as they approached. I’d feel a pair of hands on my legs. Hear the sound of a zipper. Feel the shove of spit-slick dick against my hole.

And then I’d take their fuck, with gratitude.

The rednecks smelled of booze and cigarettes. Their beards would rasp against my face when, against character, they’d lean down to drive their tongues into my mouth. Once they’d done, they’d whip bandanas from their pockets and wipe their cocks clean before scampering back to the trucks they’d parked on the side streets, to pretend they’d been out with their buddies. The married men would hold my legs hard and fuck deep, making their exertions silent as if they were trying to keep it down so their sleeping kids wouldn’t hear. There were the regulars, the older bachelor gentlemen of a certain age and gentility who made a career out of disappointing elderly marriage-minded spinsters during the day and finding their true passion in the park, beneath the trees and the slope of the shelter’s roof.

Sometimes I could identify the men only by the way they flicked their cigarette lighters, or by the feel of their dicks as they shoved and forced themselves into my holes. In other parts of the shelter they would grope for each other, or kneel in corners and suck and swallow. Sometime other men would lie on other table, or bend over for each other. But I had my table, near the door, where reflections of the night would expose me to those hunting nearby. Two hours I’d lie there, three, taking dick after dick.

Once in a while—rarely—the cops would sweep through the park. From our vantage point on the hill, we could see their headlights shining through the trees. There would be a chorus of belt buckles, of shoes scraping across concrete, of men scattering into the woods. I’d collect my clothes and wait behind the shelter, watching the car glide by and continue back out again. They never stopped. There was nothing to stop for. Certainly not the phantoms watching from between the trees.

Then one by one, two by two, the shadows would appear again, and converge on the shelter. The fucking would be more urgent than before, and my sighs and grunts would be lost in the night, among the cicadas, the rustle of leaves, and the distant sound of the highway. Late at night I’d slink home, stinking of cum and still wet from the quick washes I’d give myself in a neighbor’s spigot, where I’d sneak into my room through the basement door and crawl into my bed. Then I’d sleep until ten, and wake up planning to do it all over again.

I learned about abandon in that place. I learned about closing my eyes and trusting not in the way things looked, but in how they felt—how men asserted themselves in the dark, when no one was looking. The timid became bold, the bold became wolves.

We had no bars, no internet, no place to congregate and size each other up. But in the dark, we were a band of brothers with no restrictions between us, and no rules to follow save for those we made ourselves.

Runt

2012-01-25T08:20:00.000-05:00

This kid is hot. He’s a runt—small and skinny. But he’s a beautiful runt. His eyebrows are dark and thick, and give the impression he’s got a long way to go, to grow into them. His hair’s a mess, but only because I’ve been running my hands through it, just to enjoy the sensations of its length flicking across the sensitive webs of my fingers. His features are dark. He’s told me his mother was Brazilian. But his skin is pale and white, almost ghostly in the dark.

When he kisses, he keeps his eyes closed. He looks like he’s dreaming.

We’re in the back of my car. It’s not night, but it’s dark. Pitch black before six in the evening. I’ve been to this parking lot before with the Latin boy in the truck, last autumn. There’s almost no traffic coming in and out of the entrance from the sleepy neighborhood street nearby. That suits my purposes just fine.

I’m driving into his hole. He’s kicked off his pants, but he still has on a pair of thick, woolen socks. His thin legs wave helplessly in the air as I enter his hole. He’s tight, but I can tell from the way his chute opens and cedes to my stiff meat that he’s been used before. “That’s it,” I whisper to him.

He sighs. He’s happy. His legs crook and clasp around my back. His eyes are still closed as he surrenders his mouth to mine. My perch on the back seat is tenuous at best, but I make the best of it, and push in as hard as I can, until he gasps, and opens those big, brown eyes.

When he looks at me, it’s through a haze of lust and sensation. He probably doesn’t even remember my name. I don’t really give a shit. “You like that?” I ask. The words seem obscenely out of place as they break the stillness.

“Yes,” he says. He licks his lips and swallows. “Dude, don’t stop.”

I have no intentions of stopping.

I’ve complained before about Grindr in my area—that app that’s become the ubiquitous hookup tool for gay men with smartphones and GPS has never really worked for me. Once I get into Manhattan, I’m barraged by hookup requests. But out in the ‘burbs, where I live, it’s not of much use. I’ve had more hookups through Instagram, a photo-sharing app, than I have through Grindr. (And it’s not like the arty snapshots I post on Instagram are racy in tone, either.) But this guy contacted me through Grindr only a couple of hours before. He had no photo. He told me he had no place to fuck. And no car. It was the trifecta of loserishness, basically—and then he sent me his photos.

The first was of himself sitting on a sofa, head bowed to show off his thick dark hair. He wore nothing but a red plaid shirt and a pair of tighty-whities. His pale legs were crossed, and made even whiter by the proximity of the flash. Then he sent me a photo of his face. He’s a beautiful boy. So I said yes.

Fucking in the back seat of a car is the compromise we’re making. He doesn’t care. He just wants the cock. My cords are around my ankles, my boots still on. I’ve got my flannel shirt unbuttoned. It hangs around his hips and chest, as he jerks and twitches and pulls every bottom’s trick in the book to get my shaft deeper into his hole. Every once in a while the angle at which I’m hitting him will shift. He’ll grunt with pain. I’ll see it flicker across his face, feel his body flinch. But he doesn’t stop. Even when it hurts, he still wants to be filled. He needs to be used.

The knowledge makes me stab him hard. My dick seems to double in size. “So why can’t you host?” I ask him. “Think how hot this would be in a bed.”

The runt’s head is lolling like a broken doll. With every thrust, it bangs against the door. He’s panting slightly. His little dick, uncut and definitely a bottom’s cock, is oozing a snail’s trail across his hoodie. “I . . . live . . . with . . . people,” he pants out, a little at a time.

Lives with his fucking parents, I’m thinking to myself, but I don’t say anything. It’s not like I really give a crap. All I really care about is keeping the screw going. The car was warm mere minutes before, all the way from where I’d picked him up downtown and on the drive here, but with the motor off, its interior was growing steadily chillier and damper from our heavy breathing. The windows are fogging up, around the bottoms.

“God, you’re so . . . big!” he grunts. He looks like he’s in pain. I like that look on his face. Because no matter how much distress is causing him, he still wants more and more of it. He’s got one hand on the back of the driver’s seat, and the other helplessly clutching a seatbelt. He uses the leverage to lift up his hips and drive them against me, trying to get more dick, more sensation, more pain. His face contorts when I shove my cold fingers up beneath his clothing and twist his nipples. He looks like he needs a bullet to bit, or a wad of leather to shove between his teeth to cope with the pain. He wants it though. Every twist of his hips tells me that, every gasp and labored breath writes that story plain.

To an observer, it might look as if he’s trying to wrestle me off. He’s still trying to get me in deeper, though. His hands shove at me, but it’s so he can position me in a way he can lie more on his back. His skinny hips buck me, but not to shove me away. He’s not in control, though. I am. I drive home and hold it there, sadistically swelling my meat to make him gasp.

Too much. He’s shooting. There’s no warning. One moment he’s trying to cope with my big dick, the next he’s spilling a load all over his sweatshirt. The sensation of his ass contorting around my dick makes me decide it’s time. I’m close. “You want the load?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he says, eyes closed. There’s need in his voice.

“Where do you want it?” I ask. He doesn’t have much of an option. I just want to hear him say the words.

“In my ass,” he whimpers. “Please. Come in me.”

I’m closer still. “If you want this load, tell me who you live with,” I say.

"I—"

"Tell me," I growl.

“With my folks,” he admits. “I still live with my folks.”

The information’s irrelevant by now. I don’t care. All I know is that my dick’s on fire. My load gushes out almost painfully, filling the boy’s ass. He welcomes it with a smile and a half-laugh, as if he can’t believe he got exactly what he wanted. I feel his fingers scrabbling around the outside of his hole, where my dick is slopping him up. “Fuck yes,” he whispers. “Fuck yes.” Then he says the words over and over, in a soft, appreciative sigh. Fuckyesfuckyesfuckyes, until his lips make the words without sound.

The car smells like semen when I drive him home. I feel something on my shoulder. His head rests on me. His beautiful eyes are closed, dreaming again. He’s soft, and seems to weigh no more than a feather.

I let him doze. He stays there almost all the way home.

My Life in Porn

2012-01-23T09:13:00.002-05:00

A couple of months ago I had an offer that I had no choice but to refuse. Oh, it was complimentary at the time, and slightly funny, and it gave me another story to tell at parties. Simply put, I was asked to be in porn.

“That makes twice this lifetime!” I joked with someone online. Later that day, though, I added it up in my head and realized how totally wrong I’d been. I’ve had four offers to appear naked and screwing on camera.

The first was from a handsome fellow who who wanted to make a living traveling around the country, taping random encounters of himself with all sorts of guys, and then editing them together and selling them. I saw one of his tapes and they’re just awful things, production-wise. Grainy, badly-lit, poorly shot. Sure, there’s hot sex going on somewhere in there, but when you’re too busy peering through a murky puddle of shadows to see it, or getting seasick at the hand-held camera, or staring at the guy’s luggage sitting open on the table and wondering why he stuffed his dirty socks with his neatly folded shirts, you’re not really noticing it.

Then a few years ago I was extended an invitation to appear a more professional production, but again I turned it down. Then I had two invitations this year to take roles in what I can only describe as professionally produced niche market porn, shall we say. A niche market of the sort that, were I to appear ever in a reality television show or run for office, would basically guarantee me a long-running front page spot on The Smoking Gun.

I turned them down. Yes, I turned them all down. There’s something immensely flattering about the offers. Who wouldn’t appreciate heroin for the ego like that? I seriously doubt, though, that anyone wants to see my pasty body on their television screens. It’s obvious to anyone who looks at me that I’m not the gym-obsessed, tanned, twinky boy type who usually appears in these productions, or even the hunky muscle daddy type that so many men seem to wish I were.

It’s been a long stretch between the latest offer to display my talents on film and the first time I was asked to star in porn. True story: I was seventeen and still blond. A freshman in my first semester of college. I was six feet and three inches tall and a beanpole who weighed between one hundred and one hundred and five pounds. When I stepped out even into weak sunlight, I turned a deep brown.

I was sitting on a grassy bank, studying, when a man approached me. He sported long, shaggy blond hair that would be fashionable now in some circles, but back then just looked unkempt. His shirt was open to his navel, exposing a chest so dense with hair that it resembled Velcro. When he smiled, his teeth were startlingly white. “Whatcha doing?” he asked me.

“Studying,” I said, trying not to stare down his shirt. He had squatted down in front of me so that we were at face level.

“I was hoping you’d rather be doing something else,” he said. “Like fucking.”

Of course I exerted every ounce of common sense I had at the time before deciding how I should respond to so audacious and blunt a suggestion from a total stranger who might be a psychopath, rapist, or worse.

In other words, I thought about it for about a millisecond and then said, “Okay!” and blithely hopped into his van and went back to his apartment. Hey, what can I say? I've always been a fan of the direct approach.

“Oooo, you’re so tight,” he hissed the moment the door was shut, once he’d stripped me down and jammed his fingers in me. “Have you been fucked before?”

I’d already lost my virginity several hundred times by that point. I probably could have pulled it off again, but for some reason I decided to be honest. “Oh yeah,” I told him. “Lots.”

“Mind if I take some photos, then?” he asked, pulling out a Polaroid. In answer, I just spread my legs, looked lazily at the camera, and then saw a flash and heard a whirr as the instant photo came spooling out. I let him take a lot of photographs of me that day and on the other days I’d meet him. Posed photos, photos of me in action, always nude photos. I just didn’t care. I'd let Earl and his buddies take photographs all the time. (Though I have to admit that today there’s always a certain trepidation when I’m faced with vintage porn snapshots, certain that one day I’m going to see my skinny teen ass appearing somewhere.)

A couple of weeks later, by which time I’d ascertained that the guy’s name was David, he climbed off me, huffing and puffing. “I’ve been showing your photos to a buddy of mine in L.A.,” he said. “He does porn and he’s interested in meeting you.”

I had never even seen a professional porn movie, back in 1981. “Okay,” I said.

“No seriously, look, he’s interested in you.” He opened up the porn drawer by his bed and pulled out some color promotional materials. “See? These are his. Hot guys, huh? You could be one of them.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, not really taking it seriously. I was a freshman and had a stunning career as a B student ahead of me. Besides, my parents would have absolutely killed me if they found out I dropped out of school to do porn.

“No, he’s really interested. You could just go out there for a couple of weeks, that’s all it would take.”

“Nah, I don’t think so,” I kept telling him.

Once when I arrived, David immediately started dialing the phone. “He’s here,” he said to the guy on the end of the line. “Talk to him.”

“This is William Higgins,” a voice announced. “I think my friend David’s told you about me. I make adult entertainment for men.”

The only reason I remembered his name so vividly is because for a moment I thought he called himself “Henry Higgins,” and the thought of Rex Harrison as a porn director just amused me. “Oh yeah,” I said in my most blasé manner.

“He tells me you’re a great fuck.”

“Yeah?” I replied, showing off my Advanced Placement English skills.

“I'm wondering if you'd be a good fit for one of my upcoming films,” said Mr. Higgins.

“Yeah? Well, nah, I don’t think so,” I said. “Thanks though.”

To be fair, I didn't really believe a word David was telling me. I didn't believe there was such a person—and if there were, I didn't believe David knew him, living as he did in the middle of nowhere, Virginia. I thought he'd gotten one of his buddies on the phone pretending to be a director, for some nefarious purpose. For all I know, that could've been the case. But most of all, I didn't believe I was porn-worthy.

I handed the phone back to David, who seemed mightily disappointed in me. He never had me back to his place again, after that day. I used to wonder if he was some sort of porn bounty hunter who lived on commission he earned by shipping boys west.

After a couple of weeks, the only reminder I had that I’d known him was a steady itching sensation below my waist. Baby’s first case of crabs.

I finally saw my first genuine porn film in 1987, when I finally had my own apartment and my own VCR and my own credit card to order one. I forget the title. It was some two-hour extravaganza that takes place mostly in a locker room after the big football game. When the words Directed by William Higgins flashed up on the tube, though, I was impressed—David and his friend had been for real, after all. Whenever I watched the movie after the first time, I stared at all the skinny blond twinks up on the screen and thought to myself, That could’ve been you, kiddo. That could’ve been you.

But I’m awfully glad it wasn’t.

Sunday Morning Questions: Thank-You Edition

2012-01-22T09:07:00.003-05:00

One of the things I've learned from years of public blogging is that its moments of grace are exceedingly rare.

I'm at a stage in my life in which I've done enough self-examination to know myself pretty well. I know I'm not the smartest, or handsomest, or sexiest guy out there—and even more to my dismay, I'm not the kindest, or the most patient, or even the most honorable.

Yet I'm not one of those bloggers who adapts a tough, bad-ass persona to cover up my shortcomings and weaknesses. I often examine them right here, in front of you guys. On a regular basis I bare my lard-white underbelly—the softest and most tender spots exposed for everyone to see. Most people recognize the intent with which I offer these moments of self-reflection for what it is: my gift, so that through me, maybe someone out there might learn something about themselves.

There's always a snake in the internet Eden, however, that wants to strike when it sees someone at his most exposed, however. I've grown accustomed to knowing that when I post something particularly personal, a couple of the snakes will slither out to inject what venom they can into what they see as a weakened victim.

So this week, when I penned the entry called Flood, I found it a particularly vulnerable entry. Perhaps of all my entries, one of the rawest, in the kind of effect it had on me, both at the time and while I was writing it. I posted it with a lot of trepidation, and many second thoughts. I almost rewrote it, to edit out the parts that hit too close to home.

Instead, I made myself post it as an exercise in bravery. And I was astounded by the universal kindness with which my readers received it. Every comment I received, whether on the entry itself or via email or instant message or text, was unwaveringly supportive and sweet. In the down-time after my separation from Chester, after our second meeting (and I mean that in a couple of ways, as I was feeling quite blue and reflective, afterward), I couldn't have asked for a better reception to what was a highly personal and deeply felt entry.

So thank you, readers. Thank you very much indeed.

I showed the last part of that entry to Chester, to apologize for getting too heavy during our lovemaking. This is what he said to me in reply: I remember the moment you said that. I know the feeling. I didn't feel like I had enough arms to wrap you up in and comfort you.

I am a very fortunate man.

Let's get to some questions rounded up from formspring.me.

Can a bottom tell if a top is a shooter or a dribbler? Are the sensations different?

When I was a bottom in my younger years, the only way I could tell whether a guy was a shooter or a dribbler was to let it run out of my hole. Divorced of cues like grunting and heavy breathing and shouts of 'I'm coming!', I could usually have told when a guy was shooting, simply by the way his dick would spasm as he shot. But the size of the load? There's no way I could've told.

I've known some bottoms, however, who are remarkably good at judging the quantity of fluid that's gone into their hole. I think the lesson here is that it's different for some than others. It'd be interesting to hear from dedicated bottoms on the matter.

What would be the skimpiest Halloween costume you would be willing to wear out in public?

It's not the skimpiness issue. I've been naked around people before.

For me it's more an issue of temperature. There's nothing I dislike more than cold. Cold air on my naked skin makes me miserable, and in October, the weather can be dicey. So if it's a cold October night, I'll be the bastard in the dumpy full-body M&M costume, thank you very much.

Put your music player on shuffle. Give me the first 6 songs that pop up.

H & Claire, "Centre of My Heart," BWO, "Last Flight to San Francisco", Kate Bush, "Big Stripey Lie," Moloko, "Be Like You," Mark Ronson, "Missing Words," and Jamiroquai, "Cosmic Girl."

Trust me, it could've been a lot more embarrassing.

Has anyone ever walked in on you having sex?

Not by accident. By invitation, many times.

Ever had piss in your ass?

Nope. But I've certainly delivered it there many a time.

Has anyone ever induced an orgasm in you without directly stimulating your penis? How was it done? Have you ever done this to someone else?

No, but they've come close. I once had an astonishing finger-fucking that brought me so close to the edge of shooting that it only took one slight touch of my hand to bring me off. And much longer ago, I had a top buddy who could fuck me in a way that would make me shoot with just a couple of strokes.

I've made a lot of men shoot without touching through relentless pounding of their prostate. My dick seems to be just the right length for it, and I have a talent of being able to tell not only when I'm hitting it, but how to find it again and again.

Do u manscape? And if you do, how much time a day do you spend on doing it on average?

I trim my pubes and my nuts, perhaps every couple of weeks. Certainly not daily.

Whose the one porn actor you absolutely can't stand to see on camera and why?

There aren't any porn actors I find myself so turned off by on a physical level that I can't watch them—though like everyone, I have certain types that turn me on more than others.

There are some actors whose political views I find repellant that I'm not interested in hunting down their films, however.

What is your favorite kind of candy? Mine is jelly beans.

I like a good Charleston Chew. Frozen.

Flood

2012-01-19T08:20:00.000-05:00

When it slides in, it’s because I push. That impasse where fear and the hole’s muscles conspire pulses, then vanishes. The dick eases in, all at once, disappearing into the lube-slick hole. We both look at each other, wearing identical expressions. Surprise. A trace of amusement. And a whole lot of lust.

“Fuck,” I say, even more astonished than he. I have to drop my head and pick it back up again, I’m so surprised. I repeat, “Fuck!”

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod. Then I have to take a breath. Because this time, for the first time in over a decade, it’s my hole that’s been opened. I’m the one with his butt in the air, looking back over his shoulder. I’m the one who pushed back onto the dick that’s in me now, out of hunger, out of desire. Out of a need to be filled. Not filled. Used. In that split second, the animal in me had overtaken the rational being. I just wanted to be fucked.

Realizing what I’ve done makes me clench down for a moment. Instantly I regret it. “Hold still,” I beg him. “Just . . . hold still for me.”

He lowers himself so that his pecs are against my back. His knees spread my legs. His arms surround me. The only thing between us is a carpet of thick black chest fur. “As long as you need.”

The Friday night before, I’d fucked him for the first time in his life. I’d taken his virginity, savaging it twice. I’d teased him that he was my little cock whore, my slut. My cum bucket. The words had inflamed him, had given him the permission to relax, to loosen up, to ride my dick without inhibition or regret. Afterward, he’d flipped me over and rimmed me royally—and then he’d slipped his dick inside. I’d been equally surprised then that I’d been able to accommodate the man’s dick, which was not much shorter than my own. His thrusting had been too much for me, and I’d been paranoid about my hygiene, since we hadn’t discussed that particular variation in advance. I hadn't prepared for it.

I’d spent all weekend thinking about him, though. The warmth of his cock against my hole. His sweet breath against my neck. The words he told me, as his cock entered me. I’d be sitting in front of the television, with a project in my hands, and all I could think of were Chester’s handsome face, his smooth head shining in the hotel lights, his short frame bulging with muscles, his beefy legs tangled with mine. I’d pause in mid-sentence at home, thinking when I’d shoved my nose into his armpit and inhaled deeply, memorizing his own particular perfume.

Then I’d wake from my daze, try to recall what I’d been saying, and move on.

We’d already made a date to meet again before he had to return home to the midwest. Like a teen girl in a mid-century sitcom I’d fretted all Tuesday morning about my trip into the city to meet him again. I’d showered and put myself through the indignity of an enema (bottoms—again, I appreciate the hard work you do!). I made decisions. Did I want my hair to follow its natural center part, or should I push it to the side? Did I want to wear a hint of cologne? What clothes would show me off best? I’d put on a Nasty Pig jock that one of my readers had sent me as a Christmas gift, then removed it, then put it on again beneath a pair of different underwear.

But there we were now, in his hotel room, where we’d holed up after lunch. I have nowhere to be for hours, and hours. I can end this now, or I can make it last. So I think about it a moment—just for a quick moment. I think about the sensation of him inside me. It doesn’t hurt. He’s now moving back and forth, gently, mere millimeters. It’s not even uncomfortable. I’m afraid to move. I’m half on my stomach, half on my left side, with my right leg drawn slightly up. He’s raising himself, balancing his arms around me.
I breathe. I turn my head. I look at him, his head tilted like a curious bird. It’s been a decade since this last happened to me. More than an entire decade. “Do it,” I tell him, making the decision.

“Yeah?” he asks. “You’re sure?”

“You know this is what bottoms worry we tops do when we’re alone together, don’t you,” I gasp out. I’m stalling, though. We both know it. I nod. It’s okay. “Yeah,” I say. “Fuck me.”

I’m usually so facile with words. I like to be the observer in any situation, but it comes at a cost; to be an observer, one has to be at a very slight remove from the experience. One has to be on the outside, looking in. For this experience, though, there’s no remove. There’s no distancing myself. I’m in the middle of it. I am experience, and I can’t regard myself remotely. I can only feel, and not think.

I’ve no sense of time. I feel like I’m flotsam on the ocean, bobbing and floating in a warm tide. I hear his praises, and respond by arching my back and thrusting backward onto him. I hear him tell me he loves me, and that he loves me doing this special thing for him. When he pounds at me, close to orgasm, the sensations are so amazing that I’m not thinking about hurt any more. We’re as far away from hurt as we can be. I think about the warmth I feel spreading from my hole. I think about the sounds of his raspy breathing, his cursing. I shake as he shoots. I beg him not to pull out.

The second time around he calls me names. He calls me boy. I resent it when he calls me faggot, but I resent even more how automatically my body responds with pleasure at the epithet, opening wide to his invading dick and wanting more of his bad treatment. He pinches my nipples, slaps my ass. He fills me again.

My precum has pooled in the jock. He’s pulled it off, inhaled from it deeply, and stuffed it in my mouth, before shoving himself back in again. My dim eyesight fixes onto the clock-radio by the bed. We’d been at it for over ninety minutes, and I haven’t needed a break, I haven’t asked him to stop. I want it never to end.

The moments are tough to distinguish from one another for a very long time. They’re all sensation, raw and immediate. But there comes a moment late in the game of which I’m not especially proud. It’s when he’s close to his fourth orgasm inside me. I’m actually crying. He’s been thanking me over and over again. I’ve been thanking him. I’m trying to tell him something that seems vital, in that moment—that I knew from time to time I’d craved to be treated the way he was treating me, but that I didn’t know until then what I’d been missing.

“You’re a hot fuck. You don’t know how hot this is for me,” he says. And now he’s crying, too. Two top men, sniveling and sniffing while they fucked. “I just want to make it for you the way you made it for me.”

My mouth is dry. My lips are cracked. My throat is raspy. I want to tell him, as he pounds away at my hole, And I just want to be good for you. But what I say is, “And I just want to be good for something.”

He’s yelling outright, filling the room with the noise of another orgasm. I can barely hear it, though. In my head, I’m replaying that sentence, and listening to the raw admission it contains.

And I’m wondering if in that moment of absolute abandon, I’ve mined my way closer to truth than I ever, ever want to admit.

Cherry

2012-01-17T08:20:00.000-05:00

We have all the lights on in our twenty-first floor hotel room, and the blinds drawn back. It wasn’t our intention to perform naked for anyone lingering late on a Friday night in the high-rise office building opposite. Twilight falls early in Manhattan, though, and in the blazing lights of the hotel room, we’re plainly on display.

The man slumped in his swivel chair at his windowside cubicle a few floors above us, almost exactly opposite, has been watching us make love for over an hour. His legs are spread, his knees pointed in opposite directions. His hand is down the front of his dark business slacks. A floor up, and over to the east, a torso in a white shirt has been appearing at the window from time to time, a pair of binoculars in his hand, pointed in our direction.

We don’t care. My companion is returning from the bathroom, where he’s retrieved a small bottle of lube. He holds it out to me with both hands. His dark eyes are wide and liquid.

“You are so beautiful,” I tell him.

He truly is. Chester is one of those men so handsome and well-formed that I constantly find myself asking that eternal, nagging question, Why is he so attracted to me? He’s short in height, but perfectly proportioned—a muscular chest covered with a carpet of dark fur, a butt that’s round and gym-worked, a stout and dripping hard dick. His head is completely shaved. Beneath my palms and fingertips, it’s cue-ball smooth to the touch. A thick, briskly-trimmed beard adorns his chin, though. I grab it between my thumb and forefinger and pull him to me so that our mouth touch. Dry as the hotel room is, we both moisten each other’s lips with deep and sensual kisses.

“I love you,” he tell me. I’ve given him permission to say those words. There’s no one but the two of us in that moment, in that hotel room. I’ve forgotten about our spectators across the street, about the binoculars, the jerking office clerk, about anyone else who might be watching. He’s trembling as I take the small bottle of lube in my hands. He’s not cold. We’re both perfectly comfortable in that overheated room.

He’s frightened.

We’re standing in front of the window as I turn him around and kneel down behind him. I rub my chin and beard over his buttocks. He gasps at the shock of the bristles at first, and then moans as he accepts the sensations of them raking down his ass. My mouth and nose alone part his cheeks. When he bends over, clutching for the desk chair so that he won’t fall, the dark brown of his hole appears. It’s covered with fur that I slick down with my own spit. I can tell he’s resisting, though. His hands flail helplessly at his sides. He’s trying to stand upright again.

“Hey,” I say, in a soft, low voice. “Listen to me.” His head is hanging down. He stares at me with tear-filled eyes, upside down. “I give you permission to enjoy this,” I tell him. “You don’t have to do anything but enjoy it. Hear me?”

There’s a pause. He nods. “Okay,” he whispers.

On the bed, I rim him for a long time. A half-hour, forty-five minutes, perhaps. I lick. I suck the hole. I bite his ass cheeks. I get my tongue so deep in him that it seems almost part of his body. The entire time, he hugs one hotel pillow and lets out soft and incoherent pleas into another. There are times when he’s crying, actually letting loose tears. I’ve reduced him to utter dependence upon the sensations I’m providing for him: the constant gnawing at his hole. The warmth of my breath and my tongue in his most guarded of places. When I move my hands from his ass to pull at his distended nipples, his hard cock batters the mattress like an angered rapist. When I blow a column of cool air on his wet hole, he howls like a wolf at the moon.

And yes, he’s crying, because no one has done anything like this for him in a long, long time.

He’s a top, you see. He’s forty years old, one of the most handsome and well-built gentlemen it’s been my pleasure to bed, and he’s spent his lifetime topping. Not even once has he had a cock approach his butt, much less invade it.

But he wants mine.

He’s helpless when I roll him on top of me. I could shake him like a rag doll; his head would loll weakly if I did. His butt settles on my rock-hard dick. I’m not surprised when his hips grind against me.

We look at each other. “You have extraordinary eyes,” he tells me. “They’re the color of heather.” I say nothing. My cock stiffens in his crack. I can feel the heat pouring from him, as if someone has stoked a furnace and left open the door. We stare into each other’s eyes, heather and obsidian. “I really love you right now,” he tells me.

“And I love you,” I whisper.

His hands reach for mine. We lace our fingers together for a few moments, doing nothing more than grinding against each other. His eyes drift to my hair, spilling across his pillow. “I can’t believe that I’m being made love to by Lord Byron,” he says.

“I think that translates into This dude really needs a haircut,” I quip.

“No, no.” The way he stares at me, I know he truly means what he’s saying at the moment. “I just can’t believe you like me.”

“Oh, baby,” I whisper. It’s little more than an exhale. His confession is closer to my own thoughts than I dare to admit. “Listen to me. I don’t care if I fuck you tonight. I didn’t come here with an agenda,” I tell him. “I don’t care what goes where. I don’t care if I cum. I wouldn’t care if we did nothing but this all night, so long as you it made you feel good. Okay?”

“Okay,” he whispers back. Then, a moment later, he swallows hard and says, “Let me just feel the tip.”
I open the bottle of lube he’s given me and spread it on his hot, open hole. I put a little more on my dick, and let him raise his hips so that the two meet. His knees are on either side of me, clutching tight my rib cage, and we clasp hands again.

We don’t speak. We don’t say anything at all for a long time. He merely grinds, taking my head in his hole, bit by bit. I refrain from ramming it home, or from making my dick swell. Our hips don’t stop moving, as if we’re caught up in a sensual tango with no musicians.

“I’m sorry this is such an undertaking,” he says at last.

The words make me grin. “Dude,” I tell him. “I don’t think you realize how much of me you actually have in you.”

I make him reach behind and feel. I’m halfway in. The realization is a shock to him. His mouth forms an O; his nostrils flare. His eyebrows crunch together and his eyes grow very wide. And then, suddenly, I feel his muscles give way. He just slides down onto me.

It’s a shock. The sensation of his clenched asshole opening completely and allowing me in, all in one rush, makes me gasp and clutch at him. He seems equally astounded. His eyes open even more widely and fill with tears. Not, I realize, because he’s in pain. Quite the opposite. “Oh shit,” he says, and then repeats the words over and over again until they trail off into incoherence. I ask if he’s okay, if he’s in pain. He nods to the first question, and shakes his head to the other.

Then I notice his dick. It’s leaking precum over my belly. “You’re stone hard,” I say, astonished.

“Don’t touch me,” he whispers. “I might come. I don’t want to come yet.” He begins rocking back and forth on my dick. “I can’t believe it,” he says. “I can’t believe it didn’t hurt at all. I can’t believe. . . .” Whatever he wants to say hangs in the air between us for a long, long time. When finally the words come out, they’re a whisper, like he’s praying. “I can’t believe I like it.”

I make sure he likes it. Tenderly, solicitously, I ask from time to time how his knees are holding out, how his ass feels. He’s lasting longer than many of the so-called bottoms I fuck. The entire time we fuck, one of my hands holds his. The other might roam over his body, or tweak his nipples, or reach behind to feel where my dick meets his stretched and wrecked hole, but the other connects itself to him, grasp to grasp. Our eyes rarely leave the other’s, though from time to time he gives in to the sensations and allows his lids to fall. Out the window, I can see the cubicle dweller still watching across the street. His hands are cupped and pressed against the window, and he’s leaning against them, blocking out the light and other distractions to watch us.

Idly I doubt he knows the enormity of what’s happening here.

When I shoot, it’s at his urging. He asks me to. He goads me on not with the hunger of a bottom, but like a top. I can picture what he’s like astride a boy’s hole, dicking it with a buddy from the Top’s Lounge. “Let it loose,” he commands me. “Juice me.”

The words push me over the edge. Beneath him I shudder and shake. My cock pulses. I’m too overpowered by my own orgasm to read the satisfaction in his eyes. But I do know that mere moments after my cum floods him, he’s splattering his load over my stomach, my chest, my forehead. It flies high and wide, landing on the pillow beside my head. I can tell he’s shocked by the strength of his orgasm. A worry line furrows his forehead for a few moments, deep and seemingly indelible. “Hold still,” I tell him.

He nods, breathing heavily. It’s several quiet moments later when he pulls off me, legs seeming to creak rustily. My cock makes a wet noise as it slides out of him. He’s shocked by that, too. For a moment, his eyes are wide once again. Then he laughs, and collapses on the bed beside me. “That was just what I wanted,” he says, curling next to me. “It was just what I needed. I’m so happy it was you.”

I can’t say anything. He’s given me a gift, by tracking me down and insisting I flip him. Hot as the fuck was—and it was damned hot—it is nothing in comparison to the tenderness and trust he's sharing. It pales in comparison to his passion and his sweetness, and in how willingly he unfolds to share himself at his most vulnerable. I pull him to me, and cradle that smooth head on my chest, while his breathing begins to settle. I stroke his skin, and press my lips to his forehead.

Across the street, where the man had been watching us from his office, the light blinks out.

Sunday Morning Questions: Roundabout Story Edition

2012-01-14T08:20:00.000-05:00

Some of my readers have poked up their heads to ask about the audio recording I promised of one of my entries, late last year. Valid question!

By way of answering it, let me explain a little something about my life right now.

When I moved to the east coast, last summer, I moved into a temporary residence. I packed up my family's three-bedroom, hundred-year-old Craftsman-style home (pardon me while I choke back my sobs) and into a very tiny, very compact apartment with only a portion of the bedrooms and space and at a much high rent than my mortgage used to be.

Something had to give. As a consequence, more than eighty percent of my possessions are still in storage, believe it or not. I have about half of my kitchen equipment unpacked (and if you think it's been fun to have only one cookie sheet for seven months, you're wrong). We have all of our clothes and computer equipment. My piano sits in my dining room. And that's really about all I've got unpacked—the rest is sitting either in boxes in the basement, or in a storage unit across town.

Now, if it's one of the boxes I packed myself, I can generally remember in what size box something is, and how it might be marked. When I really needed a reference book a couple of weeks ago, I knew it was in a medium-sized box labelled Bedroom Books. I ventured into the basement, banged my head on the water pipes, and managed to find it in one go.

If it's a box that the movers packed, though, god knows where it is. They just shoved things into cardboard, wrote Household on it, and called it day. I could go through the several score Household boxes and unwrap every object from the three miles of brown paper they used as padding. I spent an entire day doing that when I discovered they'd individually-wrapped every small jar of spice from my kitchen cupboard, early in the summer, and lost my taste not only for unwrapping things in general, but for Christmas presents as well.

My point—I really do have one!—is that my headphones with the microphone that plugs into my notebook's USB port is packed in some box somewhere. God knows where. Once I figure it out, you'll get that audio recording. I've picked out the essay I'll be reading, and I've had some ideas of how I'll do it. So give me a little more time and you'll get it, I promise.

Let's get to some questions from formspring.me. Thanks to those of you who sent in new questions this week—I always appreciate them.

Are any specific types of questions that you delete or ignore?

Absolutely. I tend not to answer any questions about my family members or my loved ones. I skip over questions I've been asked a million times before or which are of the mundane "what kind of sex do you like" variety.

And I definitely ignore questions that aren't really questions at all, but barely-disguised verbal traps that someone has constructed with the intent of putting me in my place, or pointing out how depraved I am.

What is the most you've ever spent on a meal in a restaurant?

$170 for two—for a dinner and two drinks.

I told my father and he fainted.

Do you think you would enjoy being tricked onto SyFy's Scare Tactics?

Fuck no. I don't like being tricked into anything, I don't like surprises, and I don't like being scared. I can't imagine a more miserable way to spend my time.

When you were a teenage boy had you ever been caught masturbating by your mother or other part of the family? What happened next?

No, I was never caught masturbating.

If I had been, in my household it wouldn't have been a cause for either shock, alarm, or even much notice. Proto-hippies that they were, my parents would have l-o-v-e-d the opportunity to be laid back and cool about it, and would've taken undisguised masturbation as an indication that their parenting techniques were as relaxed and hip and up-to-date as they thought they were.

Naturally, as a stubborn kid, I wasn't going to give them that satisfaction.

How many pillow and blankets do you use when you sleep?

I use one of each, and I sleep in the nude.

I never really heard of anyone using more than one pillow to sleep until I met Spencer last year. I had to round up every pillow in the household to satisfy him, on the many occasions he spent the night.

What does your latest text message from someone else say?

At the time of this question, it was, It's a good thing you made a big batch of those apple bars.

Have you ever used another guys cum as lube to fuck someone?

Often.

Which US city has the hottest guys to fuck?

Atlanta, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., in my experience. Columbus, Ohio is another surprising little pig town, as is Dallas.

L.A. and NYC have a lot of beautiful men, but in L.A. especially, the men seem so worried that they'll miss out on something better if they agree to meet, that they postpone hooking up for hours on end.

Do you only have sex bareback?

I prefer it.

I see you read Big Shoe Diaries -- how much do you wanna bang Colby Keller?

Colby Keller—@colbykeller on Twitter— is one of the top sexiest porn actors it's my pleasure to watch, from time to time. He has a lot of qualities that really make me extremely attracted to him aside from his height and his amazing good looks. He's a talented artist and a good writer, has an admirable intellect, and seems like a genuinely good and pleasant guy.

So yes, he totally makes me want to do dirty things to him.

10 Things You Might Want to Avoid Telling a Sex Blogger

2012-01-12T09:54:00.003-05:00

Or any blogger. Even as a joke. Unless, of course, you actually enjoy being told Fuck you! in a fairly prompt way.

1. You are my seventh-favorite blog!

Because I'm going to want to hunt down and kill the six between myself and the highest spot, of course.

2. The metaphor you used in your blog yesterday didn’t work for me. Also I think you should’ve used ‘sprinkled with cum’ instead of ‘laced with cum’ because ejaculate doesn’t have holes.

Then you know what? When you write your own blog, please feel free to do just that.

3. Too much yadda-yadda-yadda. Get to the action already.

There are hundreds of similar blogs out there. Please feel free to find one that suits you better.

4. I love your blog! There are too many words but I like your picture at the top.

Gee, thanks bunches.

5. Did you ever have a hot and sex encounter where you visited a guy at home and got caught by his wife and she got really upset and stripped off her clothes and forced both of you to lick her feet while she called you nasty faggots and then used dildos on both your asses and made you fuck her husband while she laughed and played with herself? If so, can you write about it?

Thanks for your oddly-specific request. I’ll dig through the memory banks and see if I can recall such a happenstance.

6. Hi I love your blog link to mine at imanastyfratboycumslut.blogspot.com.

No.

7. I used to read your blog all the time, but kind of got out of the habit.

Thanks for telling me. Asshole.

8. You used to write that blog, didn’t you? So what’s been happening? Catch me up in two sentences or less.

You know what a blog is for, right?

9. I’ve read your blog before. What’s the address again?

Most modern browsers have this thing called a ‘bookmark.’ Would you like me to instruct you how to use it?

10. Do you still keep that blog thing?

Gee, thanks for sharing your disinterest. I feel all warm and smooshy inside now.

Architectural Digest

2012-01-11T08:20:00.000-05:00

The apartment building in Stamford is pretty unassuming from the outside. The chalky white stucco exterior has either chipped away on its own through the years to reveal the red brick wall underneath, or else it’s been artistically distressed to make it look as if it has. I can’t tell, either way. I text the number I’ve been given. It’s only a couple of minutes before he emerges from one of the doors in the lowest level, beneath the fragile-looking black iron fire escapes that hang onto the building tenuously, like fallen eyelashes cling to a cheek.

He’s not as young as his photos, I notice with a little dismay, and he’s probably shaved a decade for his online age. It’s the fib that niggles at me, not his looks. He’s a handsome guy. He’s got a strong jawline, and blue eyes for which a movie star would kill. It’s not his age that bugs me, either, though he has to be pushing sixty. He and I are definitely not the exact same age, though, despite what he would have the world think.

He’s wearing a hoodie and a pair of loose and flowing basketball shorts. When I hop out of my car, his mouth spreads into a wide grin. He puts his hand on his narrow hips. I can see from the crown of his head loosely traced in his shorts that he’s wearing no underwear. “I like what I see,” he says, once I’m within earshot.

Those teeth of his are pearly white. I’m almost blinded by their brilliance. “That’s a good greeting,” I tell him, smiling. I offer my hand. We shake. His skin is leathery, but warm.

“Oh, I haven’t greeted you yet,” he chuckles to himself, as he swings open the apartment building door.
It seems a good promise to me.

We walk over cheap linoleum floors and up to the second landing. The difference between the hallway and the apartment’s interior couldn’t be greater. It’s obviously this guy has invested a fortune in upgrading his home. The floors are a shiny hardwood, the furniture polished and gleaming. There’s a collection of expensive crockery in a glass cupboard in the kitchen where we’re standing, and a gleaming countertop of pink stone. An aluminum hood covers the extra-wide six-element professional cooktop; the backsplash is a colorful mural of tomatoes and eggplants and a bowl of pasta. It’s a spread from Architectural Digest.

He’s got hold of my hand again, and gives it a squeeze. “I hope you don’t mind me saying this,” he says, “but you look way way better than your photographs.” At my raised eyebrows and parted lips, he hastily adds, “Not that your pics look bad or anything. You’re just . . . way sexier in person.”

“I’m not going to put up an argument, I tell him.” I pull him close to me. Our lips meet. He’s not a great kisser. He’s one of those men who feels that all he needs to do is press his lips against mine and open his jaw. There’s no spark, no push or pull, no greedy tongue or devouring mouth. I’m not going to be the one to teach him, either.

The kiss is aborted when I hear a click-clack against the floor. An Italian greyhound skitters into the room. Its legs are toothpicks, and its tail vibrates back and forth faster than a hummingbird’s wings.

“Hey there,” I coo, and kneel to greet the man’s pet.

“Let me put her in the bedroom,” he says, scooping up the little dog and making away with her. “She’ll be all into our business if I don’t.” I look around while he’s gone and wonder where he intends for us to fuck, if he’s ceding his pet the bedroom. It seems as if every bit of the apartment is unsuitable for sloppy lovemaking. Surely he’s not intending us to screw on the fine leather sofas of his living room, or for me to throw him down upon the spindly-looking, ornately-carved dining table. The sheer amount of wax alone would make one of us slide off of it. But he’s back, and guiding me from the kitchen by the hand into the living room, past the designer stereo system and the delicate bookcase filled with art and photography books, around the glass-topped coffee table.

He stops there, and lets go of his pants. They fall to the floor and pool around his ankles. “Is this what you wanted?” he asks, displaying his butt.

It’s a handsome ass. Like the rest of his body, it’s nicely muscled. It’s obvious he spends time in the gym, working on it. I nod, and lick my lips. My dick starts to stir when he unbuttons my jeans and lets them fall to my ankles, but he makes no move to remove my shoes or shirt. “Oh yeah,” he breathes, when he’s got my cock in his hand. He kisses the head. “I like it.”

“Suck it, then,” I whisper.

He goes to work. Long, swift strokes, more lips than tongue, no teeth. His eyes cross as he tries to look at the enormous dick he’s sucking, then return to normal as he looks up at me. I nod at him, letting him know he’s doing a good job.

I can’t really move much. He’s placed me between tightly-arranged furniture, so that I have a white leather sofa behind me, grazing my calves. There’s the big coffee table banging against my right shin. He’s crouched down between a leather arm chair, his chest extending over the coffee table’s glass top. I don’t want to flop down, not on the leather, not without his say-so. I stand there and let him do the work.

Then he’s up on his feet, licking his fingers, wetting his hole. He turns around and bends over. That muscular ass parts, exposing the pink hole hidden by the cheeks. My dick is still slick from his spit, but I add to it, and pull his hips back until we’re aligned.

I’m in, slowly, an inch at a time. I can feel that tight ass parting with every pound of pressure I put against it. He’s shaking. His hips are buckling. He’s got his jaw dropped, and a sound is emanating from deep within, wordless, without syllables, but I know every nuance of what he’s telling me. I continue to press in until I’ve reached the bottom of his shaft, and then I push forward a little more. “You’ve got it all, now,” I tell him.

He nods. He knows. Trust me, his body knows exactly how much of my dick it holds inside him.

The fucking is awkward. I can’t really move my feet any further apart than they already are; the table and sofa prevent that. I have visions of him losing his balance and crashing onto the table. His feet are firmly planted on the hardwood floor, though, and my hard wood seems to be keeping him firmly in place. My dick swells from branch to log as I begin to slide in and out of that slick wetness.

I can’t move, but he can. He grinds his hips and fucks himself onto me, tentatively at first, but then with increasing vigor. My hipbones begin rebounding from his thrusts. His hands clutch behind, at first to pull wide his ass cheeks, and then to grapple with my hips, to pull me in deeper, harder. The man’s eyes are closed. He’s lost in a world of sensation, adrift and blindly navigating. He knows the geography well, though. Every one of his thrusts is making me gasp and grunt, even as my shinbone knocks audibly against the table.

He comes first. I don’t even know it’s arriving until he lets out a mighty roar and I look down to see semen spattering the floor. There’s a hefty glob of it swinging from the head of his dick. On one of his thrusts—he doesn’t stop thrusting, not even as his ass is clenching onto my meat for dear life—it swings back and briefly clings to my nuts.

I shoot not long after that. My hands grab at him and hold him still, my dick plunged deep inside. He can’t be comfortable, but he holds the position until the tenseness eases. Then he pulls forward so that I slop out of him.

He’s running to get towels, and is back quickly, dabbing at my dick, rubbing at his own ass. He’s on the floor wiping up his own load, so that it doesn’t leave a mark. Then he’s checking the table, making sure there’s no trace of fluid.

I don’t have much to do to get dressed—just pull up my pants and go, really. “Next time I want to see if I can get two loads out of you,” he tells me.

“Next time,” I tell him, “we’re using the bed.”

Branded, Part 2

2012-01-09T08:20:00.000-05:00

There’s two sides to every story. One of my least-liked phrases. It’s a nice sentiment in theory, I suppose. When it reminds people to look beyond the obvious, to dig a little deeper, it might even be valuable. But it seems to me that people drag out there’s two sides to every story only when they relish the thought of remaining loftily above it all—when they’re cherishing a glamorized view of themselves not as a neutral party, but as the ultimate judge of a situation, to whom everyone must defer. The phrase isn’t usually employed to open up conversation, but to shut it down. In other words, I tend to hear it whenever someone’s already made up his mind and doesn’t give a damn about listening any more.

And of course, sometimes there aren’t two sides to a story. Sometimes there’s what happened, and then there’s a damned lie.

Which is what I heard happening the night before Edvig moved out of our dorm room in the arts house, my sophomore year. Sleep was a pretty precious commodity, my first two years of college. As a freshman, I had the misfortune to be the one geeky kid on a floor of hardcore partiers. The only way I got to sleep at night was staying out studying until two in the morning, most nights, and then using earplugs when I returned to the dorm. Sophomore year wasn’t too much better. I had more friends in the dorm itself, but come on. It was a house for budding artists. They’d practically signed a contract to live their lives at peak drama for all of nineteen eighty-two and three. Not only were there the usual dorm noises keeping me awake past midnight and into the morning’s small hours—the laughter and card games and stereos played too loudly—but we had the impromptu cello performances, the theatrical declamations, the hey gang let’s put on a show in the showers! at three in the morning, the dramatic public breakups between girlfriend and boyfriend, and later in the year, the inevitable suicide attempt.

So there I was in bed, the night before Edvig was scheduled to move out forever, not really able to fall asleep all the way, but drifting between dozing and tossing restlessly. Two doors down, in my friend Scott’s room, a bunch of the arts house kids were having some kind of late-night rap session. I could recognize seven or eight distinct voices. I couldn’t always hear what they were saying, because some of them were softer than others. But I did hear Scott, very distinctly, crying out “He did what?” at one point, accompanied by cries of shock by several of the others there.

It was loud enough to rouse me fully. What really shocked me awake is that I heard Edvig’s moo-cow lowing responding to Scott’s question. He wasn’t speaking loudly or distinctly enough for me to hear from two rooms down, with the door to my room firmly closed. It was pretty clear, though, that he was the center of the conversation’s attention. “He actually did that?” Scott replied. He was a bass in the college chorus, and later had a starring role in the college’s production of Sweeney Todd. He projected well. “He actually did that?!”

I remember sitting bolt upright in bed. I knew they were talking about me. I knew that Edvig was in there spreading some kind of poison about me. But I had no clue of what to do. I must have considered putting on some clothing and walking down the hall to confront them all. I didn’t have the courage for it then, though. (I’m not sure I would now, either.) There was so much conversation going on that I couldn’t really distinguish anything from the babble of noise. At some point, I rose from my bed, crept over to the door, and opened it in the hope of hearing more clearly. I don’t know whether or not they heard me stealthily turn the knob and release the latch, but mere seconds after I cracked my own door, Scott’s door clicked shut.

What followed I recall as a miserable night. Whether or not I got any sleep, I don’t remember. I was taking computer science to fulfill a requirement that year, though, and it was a dull enough class on its own. Deprived of sleep, and fretting myself to death, made it even more of a slog. I managed somehow to make it through that and the rest of the morning, though. When I went back to the dorm, I didn’t get at all to enjoy the novelty of a newly half-empty room. All I did was wait for Scott to come back to the dorm. When he did, toward dinner, I pounced on him.

I told him that I heard Edvig talking the night before, and that I know he was talking about me. I demanded to know what he’d said I’d done. “I’m not going to tell you that,” Scott said, outraged that I’d even asked.

“But he was talking about me,” I protested. “I have a right to know.”

“No, you don’t,” said Scott. I noticed he didn’t deny the topic, though.

“I know he said something awful about me,” I emphasized. “I could tell by the way you reacted. I think I deserve to know what kinds of lies he was telling.”

“Well,” said Scott, turning away. “There are two sides to every story.”

Meaning: he had no intention of asking me about mine. He’d heard someone spin a tale, and it was enough for him. He didn’t care to hear a rebuttal. And this is what I don’t like about that phrase, when it’s usually applied as a non-negotiable aphorism: sometimes it tell s me the speaker doesn’t believe in truth. He only sees points of view, all equally valid. The phrase doesn’t allow for lies, for fabrication, for the self-delusions in which some wrap themselves like thick blankets. There’s just this view, and that view, and the truth is lost somewhere between.

I couldn’t wrangle out of anyone whose voice I’d heard that night what Edvig had told them. They all refused to tell me. I just knew that someone had said something that I couldn’t refute, because no one would tell me what the fuck it was. If such a thing happened to me now, I would’ve confronted Edvig. Or I might’ve gone to the hippie-dippy RAs. But I wasn’t then the person I am now. I was too wrapped up in fear to do anything other than pretend nothing was happening around me.

It was impossible not to notice that people had changed their attitudes toward me. Not my handful of close personal friends outside the dorm. They were the same, though I didn’t share my worries with them. But everyone on my hall clammed up when I’d walk into a room. There were awkward times when I’d be pretending everything was the same and attempt to invite people to dinner or to a campus activity, only to be met with a polite, but cold rebuff. The RAs posted vague notices on the bulletin board about being available for personal conversations, shortly after, which in a paranoid manner I took as referring to conversations about me.

I managed to stagger on for three weeks in this manner, keeping my head up and a smile plastered on my face while inwardly I felt miserable and scared and alone. Then late one night, one of the guys in the dorm knocked on my door and asked to talk. I didn’t know him well. He played clarinet in the college band, though, and had always been pleasant enough. He told me that someone would be arriving within the next week to take Edvig’s place, and that he wondered if I’d mind having him as a roommate instead of the new guy. The clarinet player wasn’t getting along with his roommate (who was a dick, I had to agree), and he viewed the vacancy in my room as a way of escaping a bad situation. I accepted; I’d rather have him than some stranger.

“Oh,” he said, before he left. “I have to ask. I hope you understand. Did you really rape Edvig?”

I felt a flush of rage that was quickly followed by the iciest sensation I’ve ever had in my life. I remember choking out something to the effect that no, I did not rape Edvig, and why would he even ask that question?

“Because that’s the reason he told people he had for moving out,” said the clarinet player. “Okay, bye!” And then with his curiosity sated, he was up and out of there to begin packing.

I have to give that guy credit. Because in all four years of college, out of all the people who heard that rumor, he was only person ever to ask me if it were true. He was the only person ever to ask me about it at all.

If Edvig had actually formally accused me of rape—if he’d been serious, or thought in his demented head that I’d actually raped him—my life in college would’ve been much different. He would have been required to report it to the campus police. There would’ve been an examination, a police report. There would have been evidence presented at a trial, or at least an honor court hearing. He would have had to present concrete evidence against me—and since there couldn’t have been evidence, I would’ve been vindicated.

What he did instead, though, was to plant insidious seeds of doubt in people’s minds. He made the rape unspeakable, save only in whispers. Those whispers spread like wildfire, throughout my college career. Everyone in the arts house knew them. They dogged me through all my theater classes. I knew girls in that department who would wrinkle their lips in disgust when they were forced to acknowledge me; there was one who was so vocal about her detestation about having to remain in the presence of a rapist that she refused to play in a group scene with me in an acting class. She and the teacher exchanged words about it in the hallway, and then the professor returned to the class and, without much comment, removed me from her group.

That really hurt. I wasn’t bold enough to confront the professor after class and ask why I’d been singled out that way, either. I merely joined another group, acted as if I didn’t care, and worked with them instead. It’s tough to erase from my memory the sight of that one girl’s face when she realized she’d have to speak lines with me, though. She had such anger, and moral outrage at even having to be near me.

In the dressing rooms for the plays in which I acted, some guys refused to change costumes in my presence. When I took art classes, students who thought they knew something about me would often during critiques claim that they could see bloodlust in the most serene of my still lives of bananas and a teapot, or a thirst for violence in an abstract. The roommate I had my junior and senior years, removed as he was from the arts, had heard the rumors about me, though he told me in the same breath that he’d dismissed them because I didn’t look the type. There were student servers in the cafeteria who refused to dish up food for me, and kids who’d change their paths to avoid having to pass me.

Whispers are soft, but they can carry so far. I won’t go so far as to say that the scarlet brand I seemed to bear on my forehead absolutely ruined my time in college, because I don’t like thinking of any of the years of my life as ruined beyond repair. I made some good friendships in college—and having them tested by this particular trial ensured that they were really good friendships, too. But throughout the rest of those three years, I felt very much on the periphery. I was falsely accused without ever being granted an opportunity to offer my own defense. It made me pretty miserable, much of the time.

What dismayed me most, in a lot of ways, is how easily people were swayed into believing I was a rapist. I was a tall, painfully skinny kid. I weighed between ninety-eight and a hundred and five pounds, in those days. The stick figure in a kid’s game of hangman weighed more than I. If I’d tried to rape a grown adult then, or a college-aged student, all they would’ve had to do was to blow hard to dislodge me. Plus, before the accusations started corroding everyone’s ears, I was a bright, funny, sunny kid. I was well-liked.

I had a very hard time understanding why anyone could believe those allegations against me. They should’ve been obviously ridiculous.

And yet, apparently they weren’t. People believed the whispers started by Edvig instead. Perhaps they were too juicy not to believe. Perhaps people didn’t think anyone would admit to anything as heinous as being raped, if it weren’t true. Perhaps it’s just that whoever plays the victim card first, and protests the loudest, wins.

Perhaps my problem is that I didn’t protest at all.

As I said, I didn’t have the skills to know what to do in this situation. I’m not sure I’d know what to do now, either. I think I’d do a lot more of it, though. And a lot sooner, before things got so out of hand. When I look back on the situation these days, I still have unresolved anger. I never got to say my piece. I never protested the accusations, never got to say The hell I did. I traveled under a cloud for the better part of three years while people I didn’t even know thought of me as something I wasn’t.

And Edvig. What a fucked-up kid he had to have been, then. I imagine the internal wars he must have had between his impulses and his religion, and think about how far pushed to the edge he must have been to come up with a lie that large, that damaging. Either he was so sheltered and naive that he had no idea how badly a little lie could fuck up someone’s life, or else he was callous and self-protective enough that he didn’t give a damn. Either way, these days, the rush of emotion I feel for him is more sympathy and pity than rage.

So yes, there’s some anger lingering, but you know what? I mostly feel at peace about what happened my sophomore year.

I survived. I learned about endurance from those three years. I learned about how it’s possible to hold one’s head high and keep persevering, even when there doesn’t seem anything for which it’s worth holding out. I learned that it’s possible to make one’s way through any situation while pretending not to give a shit what anyone else thinks. Do that enough times, and eventually one no longer has to pretend. It becomes part of one’s very nature—and being able to recognize when it is and isn’t important to fret about how one appears to others is one of the best and most freeing lessons there is.

Whenever I hear someone use that phrase these days, it always makes me sit up and notice. Two sides to every story, they say.

But how many of us really listen to more than one?

Sunday Morning Questions: Happy 2012 Edition

2012-01-08T10:54:00.001-05:00

Happy new year, readers!

Yes, I know we're an entire week into it already, and that my greeting perhaps would've been better served up fresh last Sunday, but better late than never is my perpetual motto.

I appreciate the patience and good wishes you guys displayed during my holiday hiatus. The holiday week for me is always a mixture of extreme busyness alternated with long, long periods of sitting around doing nothing, and being able to do nothing about it. With family visiting, it's necessary to keep everyone occupied and happy. I just don't get as much opportunity for private time as I'm accustomed, the rest of the year.

It's one of the reasons I'm grateful, with the start of each new calendar year. I get to go back to my old routine.

So again, thank you to my readers for waiting patiently for my return. A lot of you sent me email over the holiday, and I loved getting it! I'm way, way behind in reply to the sheer volume of it, though. I'm going to try to get to it all this week, so that my pending replies folder doesn't reach the gargantuan proportions it did in the months after my move, last summer. So if you haven't received a reply yet, hang on tight. I'm getting to you.

Rather than answer questions from formspring.me this week (though please, if you have questions you'd like to ask anonymous, use the service to do so and you'll see the replies either on the site, or here when I collect them into a Sunday edition), I'd like to address the questions a reader asked me directly, in a comment to one of this week's entries.

Hi Breeder,

I've been reading your blog for a while. It's fantastic! Keep up the great work.

I have so many questions I want to ask. I apologize in advance if some of my questions are already answered here in some of your stories, but I haven't had enough time to read all of them.

Here they go:

I'ver read how you fuck tops. If a top that gets fucked is still a top, and a bottom that fucks, is still a bottom.... and considering you started your sexual life as a big time bottom...how do you define a top and a bottom? and please don't give me the smart-ass answer that for you everybody is a bottom, so your definition is that you're a top and the rest of the world are bottoms :)

A lot of the stories, most of them, involve sex with submissive, low self esteem, want-to-be-controlled bottoms. I understand that's part of the thrill of a certain type of sex. Would you be able to have sex with a partner that was your equal? or the lack of sense of power and entitlement would make it harder for you?

How have you managed to stay DDF and clean during 35 years of "risky" sex? It is a honest question, not a judgment call. I truly want to know the trick. I want to use it!

You are an artist. What kind? Can your art be seen, listened to, read (apart from here), tasted, worn, lived in, all of the above? Where can we experience it?

It seems (and I emphasize it SEEMS), like you spend a lot of time thinking of, setting up and having sex with people other than your wife. You are an artist too. Where do you find time to do all this? Another honest question... also want to know how to use the trick

Guess these are enough questions for now.... until next with more

Love your blog!

Well, reader. Thanks for writing in. I could point out that some of my other readers have time for all my stories, if that puts a little bit of a competitive edge in you, for the future.

Let's take your questions one by one.

1. How do we define top and bottom? It's an interesting question, actually. Sexuality is very fluid for most guys throughout life. There are some men who stumble upon a preferred sexual role very early in their sexual careers—and they stick to it, come hell or high water.

For a lot of us, it's not so predictable. I started as a bottom when I was very young because of a general understanding that it was what boys like me were supposed to do for older men. I wasn't aware that topping was really much of an option for me until my twenties, when I was persuaded to give it a try.

My experience tells me that many guys learn one or two sexual behaviors and are frightened to try more. They might be good at handjobs and blowjobs, but fear of disease prevents them from attempting anal. Or they might be great bottoms and have fears about getting it up and keeping it up as a top, so they never try it. Even I'm guilty of this kind of behavior to a degree. It's been so long for me that I fret about being a lousy bottom, so on those rare occasions the opportunity comes up, I psych myself out of it.

But so many guys stick to one or two behaviors and never explore anything else—and sometimes when they do, they find out what they've been missing, and they change. So just as I changed from bottom to top once I discovered what my dick had been made for, I've known men change from top to bottom, once they began exploring their anal side. We all know straight men who came out relatively late in life, once they overcame their reluctance to have sex with another man. And I've personally mentored gay guys through their first fuck with a women, when they get over the performance fears that have been keeping them from trying it.

Not every discovery's going to bring permanent change. For a night, or even for a specific playmate, a top might become a bottom, or a bottom a top. A gay guy might make love to a woman once, but it doesn't make him straight.

And a top guy might love topping and be really great at it, but there may be times that he really wants to let go and let another man like me take him—a man who won't judge him, or think any the less of him, and who knows that sometimes a top guy just needs to bend over and get taken care of. Because yes, more than anyone else, top guys get judged harshly for flipping. Bottom men get irate when they hear about it. I've had several guys chastise me for one of my online profiles, because I post a photograph of myself sucking cock on it. They feel it takes away from my image as a top man, to see me sucking dick.

Screw that. If a guy calls himself a top, I say let him be a top. Likewise if he's a bottom. It doesn't mean that when a guy's a top, he's unfuckable. He's just expressed a preference for one over the other.

Sexuality's meant to be fluid—whether over one's entire life, or the course of a single encounter. Trying to wrestle it into a dichotomy is very human, but it's also like trying to capture a glorious sunset on canvas using only black paint.

2. A lot of the stories, most of them, involve sex with submissive, low self esteem, want-to-be-controlled bottoms. I understand that's part of the thrill of a certain type of sex. Would you be able to have sex with a partner that was your equal? or the lack of sense of power and entitlement would make it harder for you?

I would take exception with a lot of the adjective phrases here. I would never, ever say that any of my sexual partners described in my entries are anything less than my equal. Nor would I describe my confidence as entitlement.

Submission is indeed a turn-on for many men. They want to be used, to be told what to do, to be forced to do it. What many people who haven't engaged in this sort of play don't realize, however, is how very delicate the balance is, in these situations, and the type of exchanges that make it possible.

A good top realizes, when a bottom submits to him, that the bottom is offering his submission as a tribute. It's an expression of desire and of need, wrapped up in a nice package and presented as a gift. The bottom is exposing some of his most vulnerable self, each time he does so. I'm not talking about his hole—but his trust, his desire, and his need to be with someone who understands exactly what he wants.

A top might get his pleasure from such a man, but he's also got responsibilities: he needs to meet the bottom's expectations. He needs not to overstep the bottom's boundaries. He needs to realize what a remarkable gift the bottom is giving him, when the bottom submits and surrenders himself. Any man who doesn't appreciate all these things isn't a good top. He's just a guy sticking his dick in. And trust me, bottoms can tell the difference.

I would also hate for anyone to have the impression that low self esteem goes hand-in-hand with being submissive. Many of the experienced subs with whom I've played have had excellent self-esteem and confidence. The two are entirely different things.

I do tend to run across many men who do not recognize their beauty, or accept it. And that's a shame. However, I think it merely speaks to how widely spread are the mind-jobs we play on ourselves, convincing ourselves that we're not good enough, or pretty enough, or sexy enough. It has nothing to do with whom I choose as a sexual partner.

3. How have you managed to stay DDF and clean during 35 years of "risky" sex? It is a honest question, not a judgment call. I truly want to know the trick. I want to use it!

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert qualified in giving medical advice, here. My blog is not focused on issues of disease or medicine, so I do not address it here.

Nor will I be giving you any advice save the same advice I give on a regular basis: no matter what type of sex in which you engage, educate yourself thoroughly on the risks and possible consequences. Don't engage in any risks with which you are not one hundred percent comfortable. Know where you draw your lines, and draw them consistently.

Don't allow anyone else to calculate your risks for you, or to decide upon your personal health. Those are decisions you need to make.

4. You are an artist. What kind? Can your art be seen, listened to, read (apart from here), tasted, worn, lived in, all of the above? Where can we experience it?

I share a lot of very personal information with you guys. The reason I am no more specific than stating that I'm an artist is that I don't share everything, and that generic description is as far as I intend to go. You don't really need to know more than that, I think.

I am a professional artist. I get paid to do what I do, and it took me many years of hard work to achieve the status. I am not famous. I am a working artist, and my works have been appreciated by audiences in several countries.

5. It seems (and I emphasize it SEEMS), like you spend a lot of time thinking of, setting up and having sex with people other than your wife. You are an artist too. Where do you find time to do all this? Another honest question... also want to know how to use the trick.

I've answered this question more than any other. There are some incorrect assumptions in your perception.

I don't spend all my time setting up and having sex with people. In my blog I write about maybe one or two new sexual encounters a week. It does not take me the other five days of the week to set these up and make them happen. Even on the weeks I've written about fucking daily, the amount of time it actually takes out of my day is minimal. When I write about it, I have a rule that I don't take any longer to write about the sex than it took actually to have it.

I do not have an office job. Even when I teach, I do not do so full-time. I am a working artist. I can arrange my time as I please, from when I wake up in the morning, how much I work per day, and when I do it. Likewise, I can fit sex into my day as I please.

I find time to have sex because I don't waste time sitting around behind a computer masturbating to porn, or cruising online for endless hours. I get on, I connect, and I make it happen. Or I get on, see that no one's connecting, and I move on to some other activity.

I lead a very full life, I feel. You only get to see one side of it—and it might be easy to assume that it's the only side there is to me.

I would assure you, however, that anyone who assumes that is mistaken.

As far as thinking about sex all the time? Probably guilty. What can I say? I'm male!

That's it for today, folks. If you've got any submissions for the Readers Assets feature, please submit them to me this week so we can get a new installment for the new year!

Branded, Part 1

2012-01-06T08:20:00.000-05:00

I wrote a series of posts a couple of years about being the object of sexual assault, in my early twenties. (They can all be found under the Department of Bad Encounters tag, from the last week of July, 2010.) It was not an easy bunch of entries to write.

What I haven’t written about, I don’t think, was the flip side of that situation, in which I went through three of my college years saddled with a reputation I didn’t deserve. Of the two incidents, this one’s even more uncomfortable for me to write about. At least in my assault, there was guidance afterward to help me deal with as best I could. Not the greatest guidance, to be sure, but at least I knew the steps to take: counseling, reading, mending.

With this earlier low-tide event of my life, I didn’t have a clue of how to deal with what happened. There weren’t any websites or books to navigate one through the aftermath of being branded as a rapist.

The college I attended in Virginia was small and rather compact, although it seemed to take distressingly long to run from my cozy freshman dorm near the college gates to the one class I always seemed to have at eight in the morning at the campus’ far end. Because there weren’t enough dorm rooms to go around, the administration didn’t guarantee housing to every undergraduate. All of us who wanted to live on campus had to queue up every year for the school’s housing lottery, which was a lot like the Shirley Jackson short story “The Lottery” except that almost everyone in the sophomore class got pummeled with heavy masonry at the end.

The next year’s seniors drew the lowest, choicest lottery numbers first. They got to sign up for the best dorms on campus—the ones with air conditioning, or the choice spots near the campus’ center, or the new suite-like apartments that had been built the year before. Aspiring juniors got the second tier of numbers; they overflowed into the hot dorms with poor air circulation, the dorms in the middle of nowhere, or the dorms rumored to be overflowing with roaches. (I know, nice, right?)

Finally those poor sods straggling through the last month of their freshman year got to pick. A few of them got whatever spots at which the juniors had found wanting and turned up their noses, but most either had to find their own accommodations off-campus for the year, or else resign themselves to the trek to the overflow dorms a couple of miles away from the campus’ far edge. Accessing those required either owning a car, loving walking long distances, or scheduling half-hour bus trips up and down a busy tourist road.

These remote dorms were rumored to be absolute hellholes. They weren’t, as I found out my senior year when I moved into one of them. They were peaceful, quiet, and I had my own single, which I loved. But I didn’t know any better at that point, so at the end of my freshman year I began looking for an alternative.

The only sure-fire way to remove oneself from the lottery system altogether and to guarantee oneself campus housing during one’s sophomore year was either to join a fraternity or sorority, or to sign up for what they called ‘special interest housing.’ I hadn’t rushed and didn’t have any interest in doing so. The special interest houses were mostly for the more common foreign languages, and were intended to be immersive environments in which only French or Italian or whatever the language in question was supposed to be. I was half-considering the Spanish House, since I at that point still spoke passable Español if the listener were prepared to excuse me for addressing him exclusively in the present tense, and enjoyed a lot of questions about where the biblioteca might be.

Then I heard that the university, inspired I think by the movie Fame, had decided to start a house for the creative arts. That seemed more like a fit for me. For the life of me, I cannot think for what particular art I declared an expertise—I hadn’t started on my career path yet, or really discovered any talent in that area. I played piano, though, and I acted (badly) in plays and was thinking about declaring theater as my second major, and that was enough for the people putting the house together. My application was accepted, and I drew a great sigh of relief that I’d still be on campus the following year.

Right near the end of my freshman year, the forty kids who’d been accepted into the arts house answered a summons to attend an organizational meeting. We met our RAs for the next year, a married couple who were deemed ideal for the job because they made their own hippie-dippy candles. There was a lot of talk that evening about the first-year goals for the house, and plans for some kind of dorm-wide showcase of resident talents, but the real purpose for the evening was for us to pick our roommates for the following year. It was a simple process. The twenty boys needed to form into pairs for the ten rooms. Same for the twenty girls, they told us. Go.

Well. I didn’t know any of the other boys. I knew one by reputation—he was the biggest asshole in the theater department who’d gotten so much praise after he’d been cast as a new freshman as the lead in Hamlet that I knew for sure that if I got stuck with the fatuous bastard, I’d have to spend the entire semester listening to him declaim Hamlet into the mirror, shirtless, as he carefully examined his pretty face for blemishes. (As it turned out, if I’d thought to add ‘and would get rip-roaring drunk on Saturday nights, climb out the window and stand on the dorm room to yell King Lear to the moon,’ I would’ve been right on the money.) A lot of the other guys intimidated me in one way or another. They were either too handsome—which scared me at the time, as I didn’t want people thinking I was gay for a good-looking roommate—or too popular-looking. A good number of the people seemed to know each other already, and were drifting off into pairs.

I was convinced I’d be stuck with either the gross mouth-breathing guy with the worst case of acne I’d ever seen (or have seen since) or the fatuous actor, when my friend Laverna came over to make a suggestion. Laverna and I had gone through high school together. We hadn’t been close during those four years, but when we’d found ourselves the only freshmen from our high school class at the college, we’d gotten pretty close. She was pledging Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of the national African-American sororities. One of the other guys in the room was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the sorority’s brother fraternity. She didn’t know him, but she assured me that most of the A-Phi-A’s were decent guys, and suggested I ask him to room with me.

So I did. Edvig was the only black guy in the room, and didn’t seem to be overwhelmed with interest from any of the eighteen other white guys trying to pair up. I’d been the only white boy in my high school, so the race thing didn’t mean squat to me; I approached him with Laverna at my side, explained the connection between me and my high school friend, and suggested we be roomies. He agreed. We signed a piece of paper, and I didn’t see him again until the day we moved in together.

It wasn’t the best way to get a roommate, I’m just telling you now. I frankly would’ve been better off with either the actor or the pimpled geek (who ended up rooming together).

Edvig turned out to be . . . weird. That’s what everyone said when they met him. My parents thought he was weird. Everyone on the hall thought he was weird. Even Laverna, after she had a couple of conversations with him, came away and said, “I know it’s my fault he’s your roommate, but he’s a little on the odd side.”

There’s a certain stress doll—I don’t know what it’s called—but it’s basically a oblong shape with rounded edges, tiny eyes, a button nose, and little dish ears on the sides of its head. When you squeeze it hard, the eyes suddenly pop out of the head, the nose distends, and the ears swell up from the pressure. If you were to take one of those toys, dip it in a bucket of coal black paint, and then give it a good squeeze, that’s exactly what Edvig looked like.

He wasn’t attractive. He was all head, and big bulging eyes, and long schnozz, and radar ears. He didn’t walk so much as glide. J. Alexander from Top Model based his mannerisms on Edvig, I’m pretty sure; Edvig was fond of the tilted head, the raised eyebrow, the girl I’m gonna read you up and down look of disdain, and every other cheap and easy indicator that we’d today recognize as the mannerisms that white gay boys stole from African-American women, who’d long before appropriated them from their same-color gay brothers.

And yet he wasn’t gay. That’s what he said, anyway. Edvig could be seen dressed in a suit of cheap and shiny material every Sunday, clutching his Bible and railing against all kinds of sin, including fornication and homosexuality. He belonged to every religious organization on campus except for the Catholic Students Union and Hillel. He walked out of a dorm screening of some French art film—Diva, maybe?—because it had a brief glimpse of boobies.

That was the Edvig everyone knew, anyway. The Edvig I had to deal with behind closed doors was quite different.

Despite his holy roller image, Edvig was indeed gay. He first came onto me the second week of our sophomore year, when I woke up in my really tiny twin cot and discovered him pushing his way into bed with me. I was half-asleep and thoroughly confused and didn’t really realize what the hell was going on until I felt his erection, already wet-tipped and rock hard, poking against my backside. When I leapt up and asked him what the hell he was doing, Edvig burst into tears and told me it was all right if we had man-on-man sex, because he was in love with me.

Well. Flattering as that might’ve been coming from anyone else, the thought of sex with Edvig really grossed me out. I’m fairly ecumenical in my tastes, but at the time, my instinctive reaction to the thought of that particular act made my mouth pucker with distaste as if someone had shoved into it a lemon soaked in bitters.

I was pretty firm about the fact that I didn’t want to sleep with Edvig. I told him that I just wasn’t that way, and it was fine if he was, but it wasn’t going anywhere with me. It was a sorry strategy, but I didn’t really know better. At the time, when all of us gay boys were closeted and didn’t have any encouragement to come out, the strategy of, “I’m really not attracted to you, but thanks,” or even “I don’t think it’s smart for roommates to hook up” weren’t really in my vocabulary.

What followed was a fairly long couple of months of harassment. Between class and piano practice and the theater department I wasn’t in my room much. Partly it was because I dreaded returning to my room after dark. Edvig would be there, waiting for me. Once I was in the room, he’d lie there naked on his bed, where he’d masturbate loudly. He coated his dick with Vaseline so that it made the maximum amount of noise as he glided his hand back and forth over it—and it was a pretty sizable piece of meat, I’ll grant him that. While I tried to read, or sleep, all I’d hear was the slow and sloppy sound of his jacking, punctuated by tiny moans and come-hither whimpers that were supposed to indicate sexual temptation, but which actually sounded more like a dog with a stomachache.

What really added to my distaste of the shameless proceedings—and yes, I know you’re thinking, Say what, there, toilet whore?—was that Edvig smelled bad. He wore a lot of cheap cologne, but it never quite covered the dirty-laundry hamper odor that all undergraduate boys seemed to have in that decade, and it certainly didn’t hide the stink of smegma. Edvig was uncut and I’m guessing didn’t clean his foreskin very well. Whenever he’d masturbate, the rich, earthy smell of his dick cheese would permeate the room. It made my stomach turn.

I didn’t really have a lot of coping strategies at the time. I was young. Homosexuality was a scary subject, then. I’d had a lot of gay sex, but I’d had zero experience in being open about my sexuality. I didn’t know how to cope with other gay guys, except to spread my legs for them. All the people I’d fucked around with in my youth had been sex-crazed adults—not fucked-up youth. The weirdness with Edvig was less sexual than social, despite the masturbation and the clumsy passes. He wanted me to be something for him that I wasn’t, and I didn’t know how to keep saying no. I didn’t want to confront him and demand he stop, in a direct manner. I had no experience in that kind of thing. I honestly didn’t know how.

So I’d ignore him. We didn’t talk. I’d lie there in bed and pretend to snore while secretly I was fuming at the sex noises and the smell. Or I’d try to come back to the dorm room at one or two in the morning in the hope that he’d be asleep—though he’d wake up and start trying to entice me over with his self-ministrations.

I thought I hit on a good approach one night when Edvig started with the Vaseline, when I flounced out of bed, flipped on the lights to full, pulled open the door so hard that it bounced against the wall, then called down the hall, “Hey, anyone want to go for pizza?” I got a vicious schadenfreude from listening to him scramble to put on some clothing before anyone happened to walk by and see him. It was this strategy that seemed to work best. Each time I did it, he’d stop with his freakish attempts at seduction for a few days.

After the third or fourth time, he broke our mutually-determined silence and declared to me that he’d requested a room transfer. Inwardly, I leapt up and down at the news. It was about fucking time I was going to have this freak out of my life. My heart jumped up in the air, kicked its heels, and did a Snoopy dance as he made the announcement, his big saucer eyes mournful.

I should’ve said something conciliatory, maybe, like I’m sorry to hear that. Or, I wish you luck. Instead, I smirked and asked, “So how soon are you going?” On learning it would within two days, I all but skipped out of the door and down the yellow brick road to tell my friends the Wicked Witch was dead.

I shouldn’t have been so gleeful. I’m not sure if it was the cause of what was to come, or even if it was really visible in anything but my memory, but I definitely shouldn’t have smirked.. Because what I didn’t know was exactly how Edvig would take his revenge on me before he left, and how very badly he would mess up the rest of my college years.

Sweet Harmonie

2012-01-05T08:20:00.000-05:00

Edward Harmonie was one of the English department’s stars, when I was working on my master’s degree. His specialty was Shakespeare, and he had a stellar reputation among the other faculty. “Oh, you’ve got to take Harmonie,” I remember my master’s thesis advisor telling me. “He’s superb.”

Even my father, who spent his career teaching at the same university, knew Harmonie from faculty senate meetings. “You can’t graduate without taking Edward Harmonie,” he told me. “He’s a fascinating speaker and a great showman.”

Whenever Harmonie strode into one of the seminar rooms in the Hibbs building, he looked the very model of an old-fashioned British public school teacher, a veritable Mr. Chips in tweed. He wore his more-salt-than-pepper beard trimmed to a devilish point, and affected a pair of reading half-glasses on the tip of his nose. The glasses he employed solely so that he might peer above them—never through—at his students when they interrupted his train of speech with an impertinent question. If it were particularly impertinent, he’d raise one eyebrow and dismiss the offender with a curt word delivered in his distinctive lisp: “We don’t have time for thisssss, do we, classssss?”

Harmonie fancied himself an actor in the classroom. Typically he’d encourage his students to read aloud from the texts we were studying, but his impatience to declaim the passages himself always overtook him. One of our class would always begin by thumping out the iambic pentameter of a line in a dull, lifeless way: “NOW my CHARMS are ALL o'erTHROWN, AND what STRENGTH I HAVE’S mine OWN. . . .”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Mr. Franklin,” Harmonie would say, his face drawn into a rictus of pain. “We do not butcher the Bard. We treat him gently. We caressssss him as we would a lover. When the moment is right, we seize him. Roughly. Then we make him our own. Now my charms are all o’erthrown.” A dramatic sigh, followed by a look off over our heads at the classroom clock, as if it were a setting sun. “And what ssssstrength I have’sssss. . . .” A squeeze of the hands, a lowering of the lids, a resigned bow to the ground. “. . . mine own.”

Week after week we watched Edward Harmonie enact every major character in the Sssssshakespearean pantheon. He declaimed Lady Macbeth with a heady drag queen vibrato and boomed out Falstaff in his best bass. He capered as mischievous Puck and Ariel and enacted love scenes between Viola and Orsino with unbounded, imagined tenderness. After ever long scene, he’d incline his head at us as if thanking us for applause, a my, aren’t I clever? smile playing within the perimeter of his neatly groomed little beard.

Harmonie was a showman, all right, but while he thought of himself as a modern-day Edmund Kean, I always found him a huckster, a greasy P. T. Barnum selling a snake oil version of Shakespeare, an attention-seeking narcissist who thought himself far too grand for his circumstances. It took me a few weeks to realize that in his seminars we did nothing but listen to him declaim the Bard, watching videotapes of plays he’d recorded from PBS, and then listen to him tell us how in college he had done Hamlet better than Olivier, Macbeth better than Jon Finch, and apparently Ophelia better than Marianne Faithfull.

His Shakespearean voice full of hokey tremolos and those sudden, odd juxtapositions of forte and pianissimo favored by the untrained; worse, he was afflicted with that effete, effeminate speaking voice that favored lots of sibilants. It was tough to concentrate on what he was saying when you were thinking to yourself, Exactly how many esses are there in ‘Now isssssss the winter of our disssssssssssscontent’? Harmonie’s Lady Macbeth sounded like a bitchy, evil queen, all right, but one out of The Boys in the Band, not stormy Scotland. His Puck and Ariel were mincing circuit boys, his Viola and Orsino a fag and his hag swapping cross-dressing tips.

Early in the semester, Harmonie threw a wine tasting party for his graduate class at his home. It was a quaint old townhouse on West Cary in one of those pretty Richmond neighborhoods heavy on charm but short on parking. What I remember most about the house is the wood paneling. The stuff was everywhere. The entryway was covered in dark wood paneling. The living room. The dining room. The library. Along all the walls in every dark, wood-covered room were glass-fronted floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with handsome leather-bound books and incunabulae displayed on a wooden stands. The rarities looked like authentic old editions of Bacon and Marlowe, but in the gloom and murk they could’ve been Crackerjack prizes or illustrated sex manuals, for all we could see.

The whole set-up reminded me of a terrible 1960s horror movie in which a bunch of rich students congregate at a civilized, urbane professor’s house for cocktails, only to find that the professor is Satan and they’re all there to be sacrificed to the Dark Forces. Only none of us were rich, and if Harmonie was Satan, Beelzebub surely had a lot in common with Paul Lynde.

My friend Sara worked part-time in the main office; she was heavily pregnant, ready to give birth at any moment, and couldn’t come to the party, she’d called to tell me earlier that night. “But I heard something important. The secretaries said that every semester, Harmonie picks out a student from his classes for his lover. Sometimes they’ll last the year, but usually he’s on to a new one by the next semester.”

“Lord,” I said.

“Maybe it’ll be you!”

“It most certainly will not.” The thought of being in bed with Edward gave me the creeps. He probably had an appropriate Shakespearean quote for every sexual act. People who bring up a literary allusion whenever it’s vaguely relevant irritate me beyond belief—I admit mostly because it’s a skill I wish were in my repertoire. The thought of being annoyed and intimidated simultaneously was too much to bear.

Hubris I had aplenty, though. At twenty-one, I was the youngest in the graduate school by far. I was still painfully skinny. And my only male competition in the seminar filled with women was a middle-aged Kentuckian chain-smoker whose habit of wearing square prescription eyeglasses with dark brown lenses gave him the air of a serial killer. It was going to be me, I was sure. I spent the entire evening trying unsuccessfully not to let Harmonie get me alone.

“You mussssst try this white,” Harmonie would murmur to me throughout that long, long evening as he pressed me into a corner. “It’s divine.”

“I’m not drinking, Dr. Harmonie,” I told him at one point, brandishing the glass of water I was nursing. “Remember?”

“Call me Edward,” he suggested. “I could find you a dessssssert wine if you want something . . . sssssweet.”

“No thank you,” I replied.

“You need to loosen up.”

“I’m plenty loose!”

He cocked his left eyebrow at that, smiled a secret smile, and went to mingle.

As the evening of Dr. Harmonie’s cocktail party ground on, the professor himself kept emerging from his kitchen with new bottles of wine. There were red wines so dark they looked like liquid obsidian, pale blush whines, Rhine wines, California wines, French wines. No one but Dr. Harmonie himself cared what kinds of wines they were, really; it was free booze, and we were all poor graduate students.

I didn’t drink, however. The more inebriated my seminar-mates became, the more uncomfortable I was. Three hours into the party, I judged I’d endured enough of wine breath and the professor’s leers. I made a feeble excuse to Dr. Harmonie about having to get up in the morning. “What a pity!” he boomed in his Falstaff voice. “Our boy must depart! When you depart from me, sssssorrow abides, and happinesssss takes leave!” Then, in a more confidential voice, he added, “I’ve put your coat in the bedroom. Would you like me to ssssshow you where that isss?”

“Ah. . . .”

He leaned in close, his lips still wet with wine. I remember the quote from Twelfth Night as if it was yesterday. “Come, boy, with me. My thoughts are ripe in mischief.”

I must have turned beet red with embarrassment, because he leaned back and laughed. “I’ve made him blush! So young. So very very young. How old are you?” he wanted to know.

My age was a sore point with me. I’d skipped a year of high school, so I was in my first year of graduate school while still barely twenty-one. I looked all of sixteen. Most of the people in that program were in their thirties or forties; I’d lied, when asked by other students, and added a few years to my age.

“Twenty-five,” I lied.

“And yet he has the face of a youth. Look!” he shouted, his voice echoing from the wood-paneled room. “Look at this baby face! So sweet. So young! So innocent. A babe, a child, a shrimp.” He grabbed my cheeks with his free hand, for emphasis, then released them. “Donna, escort this sweet young shepherd to the bedroom for his coat.”

I felt as if I’d had a narrow escape, somehow. Sexually inexperienced I wasn’t, but I lacked the skill of tactfully saying ‘no’ in situations I wanted to flee. Donna was one of the women in my seminar. She was a perfectly enormous woman in her late thirties, as wide as she was short. I can’t say I quite liked Donna. She’d start a classroom discussion with a statement like, “So, do you think Lady Macbeth had big tits or what?”, or “God damn, I just want to kick Hamlet’s scrawny li’l ass for being such a wimp.” All evening during the wine tasting she’d cut short Harmonie’s little discussions about the wine’s province and vintage with jeers of “Who cares where the fuck it’s from? Just fill my glass already!”

I followed Donna up the stairs and into a bedroom with fake Elizabethan timbers across the ceiling. All our coats lay on the bed. While I picked mine out, Donna threw herself onto the mattress, sprawled to the end table on the bed’s other side, opened the drawer and took out a cigarette and a lighter. She flicked the lighter a few times, inhaled, and huffed out a mouthful of smoke before she closed the drawer again. “Oh god, that feels good.” I don’t really recall standing there with my mouth gaping open—if anything, confronted with that kind of weird behavior I would’ve pretended I wasn’t looking and made a quick exit—but Donna acted as if I had been. “Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “Edward doesn’t give a good god-damn if I leave my cigarettes in his drawer. I’m over here so much.”

Again, I didn’t say a word. I think I just stared. “We’ve been seeing each other since the second week of class,” she told me. Then, because she probably thought I was young and still a virgin, she made sure I understood. “Seeing each other.” Her last word was a whisper. “Fucking.”

“Oh,” I finally mustered. “Oh, of course. I thought—” I stopped.

“You thought he was gay?” She took a drag of her cigarette. That was indeed what I was going to say, but I didn’t acknowledge it. “Honey, Edward’s bisexual in impulse, but when he’s in bed with a woman like me, he’s all man.”

I fled the party as quickly as possible.

A bunch of us who’d been at the party that night found reason to linger after one of our other classes, the following Monday. Donna was not among them. We gossiped. Apparently that evening, as the party wound down an hour after I left, she managed to take almost everyone in the class to the bedroom and inform them in one way or another that she and Edward had been having an affair.

The few students who hadn’t gotten the bedroom revelation were shocked. “But I thought he was gay!” they screamed. I repeated what Donna had told me about how he was all man in bed with her, and we all hooted with laughter.

A couple of years ago, by the way, I told my dad this story. He had the same reaction. “I thought Edward was gay!” he almost yelled.

That evening, though, we all compared notes, and I repeated what I’d heard about how Harmonie had an affair with a student every semester, then dumped them for a new one. But why, we all wanted to know, had he chosen Donna? She was loud. She was vulgar. She apparently didn’t even have a passing acquaintance with the word discretion. Hell, she and discretion had never even been in the same phone directory.

Part of my pride smarted, too. I had no desire to be Edward Harmonie’s boy toy for the semester, honestly. It wasn’t that I was fundamentally against student-teacher affairs, as a full two dozen of my undergraduate professors would have attested. I found Harmonie both pretentious and smarmy.

But damn. To be passed over in favor of Donna. That hurt my youthful pride.

Donna got more and more obnoxious throughout the semester. It wasn’t long until she started talking about the affair openly to the rest of us, as if she’d assumed that we’d all gossip about it after her little bedroom confessions the night of the party. If she came into the classroom looking tired, before Harmonie walked in and assumed his Shakespearean stance she be sure to let us all know it was because Edward had been an animal and they’d been at it all night long. If she were happy, we were sure to discover it was because Edward had gifted her with theater tickets or flowers. If she was upset, it was because she’d had to spend a night apart from Edward.

One class, she called him ‘honey’ twice, casually. “Honey, could you repeat that?” “Honey, don’t you think that Prospero. . . .” Now, honey is a general term in Virginia that both genders employ to address anyone from a lover to a spouse to the plumber who’s come to unclog your toilet, but that night we all froze, startled, to hear the word coming from her mouth. We noticed after that night she never used it again, and we speculated that he must have chewed her out with some choice Elizabethan curses.

Toward the end of the semester, Harmonie was unusually late for the seminar one week. We sat in our seats, looking at our watches and debating the academic myth about the hierarchy of minutes to wait for a professor based on their job title. Was it fifteen minutes for a full professor and only ten minutes for an associate? Or was it longer?

“He’s probably tired out from last night,” said Donna. The rest of us rolled our eyes toward heaven and steeled ourselves for another confession of how Harmonie turned into a wild boar when the pair of them were rutting, but we got something surprisingly different. “We stayed up late last night, grading your papers,” she told us. Our final papers, over which we’d labored for weeks. “There were a few good ones in the stack, but man, some of you! I read through some and he’s show me parts and we’d lauuuuuugh!”

You’ve never seen a class so stunned. Most of us were angry. All of us, I think, had that same secret image of Donna and Edward rolling around naked in bed, red sharpies in hand, laughing at our papers. Probably laughing at my paper. Then Harmonie himself breezed in, apologized, and began the usual round of videotape watching and correcting the professional actors’ interpretations.

Most of us, sans Donna, gathered at the local coffee shop afterwards to discuss what needed to be done. Should we complain to the department chair? To the university’s president? Should we approach Harmonie himself? In the end, some of the cooler heads prevailed. We decided we’d wait until we got our papers back; if there was any evidence that they’d been graded by Donna, or that they’d been manhandled or besprinkled with bodily fluids, then as a class we’d go to someone and complain.

Our papers were fine. I got an A, I recall; I’d hit upon the trick earlier in the semester that writing about sex in one of Harmonie’s assignments practically guaranteed one a top grade, no matter how inane the topic. Saucy! read one of the comments he’d left in the margins. How delicious! read another, as if I’d handed in a lost comedy of Oscar Wilde.

We compared grades after class. No one was truly dissatisfied. Even the B students admitted that they’d gotten what they deserved. Any righteous anger we had over the grading in bed incident dissipated, though none of us were entirely happy about it.

I could have told Donna from my own personal experience that she was going to get a B in the class; reports of faculty members who take advantage of a student’s offer to do anything to get an A are greatly exaggerated. (It happens. Just not as often as soft-core porn would have you believe.) I always found the professors with whom I got involved ultra-scrupulous about assigning a final grade I deserved. After a few flings with professors, I could almost pinpoint the date three and a half weeks before a semester’s end on which he would feel compelled to give me the inevitable Now We Have To Discuss Something Very Serious Here About Your Final Grade talk.

Donna, however, didn’t take the B very well. Oh, she understood that it was to avoid favoritism, she told us the last week of class while she inhaled a cigarette at the coffee shop. She wasn’t going to blackmail him into giving her a better grade than she deserved. “But damn,” she said. “You’d think that for putting up with that kinky little bastard and his tiny wee-wee, I’d get a fuckin’ A!”

Harmonie wore an actual cape the last day of the semester. “To my heart I gather the memories we have shared this semester,” he said at the conclusion. His eyes locked with mine. “Parting is ssssssuch sssssssweet sssssorrow,” Then he bowed and flourished the cape so that it sounded like a rippling flag in a high wind. “I thank you all for them.” He left us behind with our teacher evaluations and swept out of the classroom like Sir Walter Raleigh leaving an audience with the Queen, before departing for the New World .

Donna watched him go with narrowed eyes. “Pretentious little fart,” she growled.

Merry Christmas, Lover

2012-01-03T08:20:00.000-05:00

u r a artist, lover?? read the text message I got, shortly before Christmas. My fuckbuddy, the muscular Puerto Rican who works as a furniture mover, texts me several times a day. Usually his notes are brief and perfunctory, expressing a need for my dick deep in his hole, or telling me how much he loves me and needs to see me. For the first time, however, he’s asked me what I did for a living. I tell him.

i am artist 2!! he writes back. i go 2 school 4 art in PR. And, lover I want 2 show u my art.

I tend to get on well with artistic types of all sorts, whether they’re painters or poets or photographers or decorators or hair dressers or dancers. I find myself attracted to temperaments that are passionate and express themselves creatively. I can’t prove it save anecdotally, but I’ve always felt that the lovers I’ve had with deep artistic streaks have often been the most passionate in bed; they commit to sex in the same way they commit to their crafts, with joy and excitement and an often total abandonment to pleasure.

And I’d had nothing but pleasure in my encounter with the mover.

It’s Christmas Eve. I’d been to a church service in the afternoon, and had a long, quiet evening ahead of me. Then I get the text from him. my sister is home cannot host, it reads. It’s followed by another. i have present 4 u tho my love. can u meet?

We arrange that I’ll drive over to his apartment complex, park across the street, meet him there. He’s already waiting when I drive up the steep hill that bears his street address and park the car, being careful to put on the emergency brakes. He’s a gray figure in the dusk, barely visible against the brick wall of the parking garage. He peers through the gathering dark at my black car, then beetles over and lets himself in the passenger side door.

“Lover,” he breathes. I admit to a certain thrill at being address so familiarly, after only one encounter with this built little sparkplug of a man. Then his lips are on mine as the internal car lights fade. His mouth is cold, but tastes sweet, like mint candy. His mittened hands run up and down the front of my leather jacket, then down to the warm spot between my legs. His next words are a barely-whispered sight. “Oh, lover.”

“I’ve missed you, baby,” I tell him, as I stroke his hair.

“I can’t stay for long,” he replies, only now looking around to make sure we’re not being watched. “My sister. . . .”

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s nice just being able to see you.”

“But I want to give you this. I made it for you.” He’s been carrying something in his hand that he’d placed on the car’s floor when he jumped in. I’d vaguely noticed it, but since it was wrapped in a brown paper bag, I assumed it was a bottle of liquor.

And lest I be accused of racial stereotyping, I’d like to point out as hastily as I can, that it was also shaped like a bottle of liquor. He put the package in my hand. “In San Juan, where I grow up, I go to school to be artist,” he told me. “For you, I make this. For you. Just for you. On Christmas Eve.”

For a moment, it’s tough for me to breathe. Any gift is an honor. A gift made especially for me is a fucking thrill. “Gosh,” I say, because it’s my go-to phrase when I’m speechless. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Open,” he says, gesturing to the package. “Happy Christmas, love.”

I grin, and nod, and pull down the brown paper. . . .

. . . and I find myself faced with the ugliest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s like—well, I don’t know how to describe it, exactly. It was as if he’d taken an empty wine bottle, covered it in papier-mâché, and then while it was still sticky and wet, attached desiccated jellybeans in a random fashion all over the exterior.Then he’d painted the entire thing orange. Not a nice rust color, or a warm, homey orange. Hazard orange, or construction cone orange. Around the neck hung a sprig of artificial holly from the dollar store. The exterior is lumpy, and rough, and I can see the impressions of his thumbs on the surface.

“Do you like?” he’s asking. He’s anxious to hear the answer.

“Well . . . wow!” I say. The boner that had been bulging in my pants was slowly deflating. Because honestly, all I could think was, Holy fuck what the hell kind of art school TAUGHT YOU TO DO THAT?

“I am so glad, lover!” he said, almost bouncing up and down in the front seat. “So happy to make you happy.”

I’m trying to resist the urge to look around and see if Ashton Kutcher is going to come out and inform me I’ve been punk’d. “Just the fact you went to so much . . . so much trouble is the sweetest thing in the world,” I tell him, honestly. “Thank you.”

He grabs me again, this time so hard that I have to clutch onto the bottle to keep it from flying. The papier-mâché crackles slightly from the pressure, and leaks orange dust onto my console. He gives me a ferocious kiss that begins warming my groin again. Then, with a peck on the cheek, he’s opening the door again. “You make me too happy,” he tells me. “Merry Christmas, lover.”

Then the door closes, and he’s scurrying back to the warmth of the apartment building. I watch him go, bottle still in my hand.

The orange bottle has occupied a place of honor on the floor of my closet, ever since. But don’t get me wrong. How could I dislike any thing made for me especially, by someone who treats me so nicely? It might look like an orange wart, or a kindergarten teacher’s worst craft-time nightmare. It might flake paint like a Republican congressman flakes dandruff. It might even have a faint stench of vino and it’s possible that the paint has never completely dried.

But in the spirit of Christmas, I love that ugly-ass thing.

Under the Wire: Last-Minute Gripes of 2011

2011-12-31T15:39:00.001-05:00

I like to start each year on a positive, uplifting note. That’s why I thought I’d devote today, the final day of 2011 to a bunch of minor crabbiness that doesn’t deserve more than an oblique mention. And thus we have

The Breeder’s Last-Minute Online Gripes of 2011

1. Hey, 18-year-old kid. Believe it or not, I have a lot of teens hitting me up. A whole lot. More than any other demographic, in fact. So when I log onto a cruising site like Adam4Adam and a boy like you looks at my profile not once, not twice, but four or five times within a ten-minute period, every time I come online, I’m going to assume there’s some interest there.

So when I sent you a smile after the fourth or fifth night you’ve pinged on my track list, it was only because I wanted to say, Hey there, kiddo. I acknowledge that I have noticed you looking at my profile over and over, and if you’d like to talk to me, I’m breaking the ice here.

You could’ve said, Thanks for the smile dude! or, if you didn’t want to take it any further, you could’ve just said nothing.

It was not necessary, however, to write back with Sorry you are WAY TOO OLD! LOL!!!!

Because honestly? I might be old, but you ain’t that cute, you’re definitely a dumbass, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that had been the only smile you’d gotten in 2011.

2. Look here, top men. I’m the last guy on earth to sneer at a little bit of topman bravado. I admit I indulge in it. I also confess that, due to experience, I also have a tendency to assume I can flip just about any guy advertising himself as a top.

My approach, however, really never has included emailing a guy out of the blue and asking, So when do I get to pump my load in your butt? I’ll give you points for the direct approach, and I have to confess that the novelty of it makes me a little bit weak at the knees, but you’d be much more likely to drop the swagger and ask, Hey, guy, any chance that you ever give up your butt?

Unless you’ve really got something to back up that entitlement, I’m unlikely to be swayed.

3. Dear friend (I thought) of mine. Social media is supposed to be fun. Let me repeat. Social media is supposed to be fun. Not an obligation, not a chore, not something that makes you upset and angry.
So when I say to you, in the middle of a conversation about Facebook, Hey, why are we not friends on Facebook?, you are not obligated to add me as a Facebook friend.

I certainly didn’t ask the question to make you feel badly about not having friended me before, so you don’t need to email me and say, Man, I can’t believe I let you guilt me into adding you as a Facebook friend!

Nor, five minutes later, did you have to post on my Facebook wall, I guess you’ve noticed I added you as a Facebook friend—I can’t believe you managed to make me feel bad enough to do it!

And you certainly didn’t have to post on my blog, in less than an hour after that, I’m still shocked that I let you guilt me into adding you as a Facebook friend!

Because you know, frankly, after that triple-whammy, I’m kind of getting a certain impression of how you feel about adding me on Facebook, and it’s not all warm fuzzies. Am I right?

So god damn, if clicking Add Friend on my profile is too much of a fucking imposition on your time and good will and takes away from your several hundred other Facebook friends you’ve never met but whom you added as friends because they have round faces covered with fur, do me a fucking favor and unfriend me already, would you?

4. Ahoy there, guys on Skype! Nice to have your on my friends list. However, could you guys do me a favor and not badger me to do a cam show for you? It’s okay to message me and ask if I can get on cam. I don’t mind it—the first time. But when I say something polite (and I’m always polite . . . the first time) like, I’m sorry, I can’t cam right now, take me at face value, would you?

I don’t like the follow-ups you guys throw at me, which always run like:

Are you sure?
Not even for a quick minute?
Come on, just turn on the camera.
I just want to see you. Are you sure you can’t cam?
Why not?
I’ll turn on my cam if you turn on yours, okay?

Dude. If I can’t cam, I can’t cam. Wheedling doesn't change my circumstances at home. And if you keep nagging me, I’m not going to cam for you. Not ever, after I block your ass.

5. Gentle readers. I understand that a handful of you experience infatuations with me. I mean, can anyone blame you? I’m awesome.

No, seriously. I know that reading a person’s journal entries is an incredibly intimate thing. I know that some of you, upon discovering my blog, sit down and gulp down dozens of entries at a stretch. Being inside someone’s head for that length of time, and at the intensity level that usually accompanies sex, can sometimes create a connection that seems . . . I don’t know. Confidential. Romantic, even.
Crushes have been formed on a lot less.

You have to keep in mind, though, that while you know a lot about me, or at least about one aspect of my life, I don’t know as much about you. Chances are that you don’t have a sex journal you update on a regular basis, or any kind of journal at all. That’s fine.

Here’s the thing I’ve noticed in the past year, though. When a man catches up on my entries and is past all that information overload and only has a few entries a week to keep up with, that infatuation vanishes pretty quickly. I wish it weren’t true, but over and over again, experience proves that it is.

So yeah, I’ve had guys hot to meet me while they’re plowing through past entries, who, as soon as they’re done, vanish before I’ve had a chance to return the plowing. I’ve had guys write and announce their massive crushes on me at the conclusion of their extensive catch-up, who never reply when I write back and ask to know more about them. It’s a little disconcerting, receiving these little notes of passion and devotion and never getting to a point of actual conversation with a guy.

So be patient. Pace yourselves. The best way to get to know me is certainly through my blog entries. But let me enjoy the process of learning about you, too, before you abandon me for the next big thing. Otherwise, in the wake of your rush by, I’m just the fool standing by the roadside, murmuring “Huh? Whuh?” as you yell out your speeding car’s window at me.

Bless us, every one!

2011-12-25T09:16:00.003-05:00

I'd like to wish all my readers who celebrate the holiday, a very Merry Christmas. May the day be filled with the stuff of happy memories.

Sunday Morning Questions: Courage Edition

2011-12-18T09:24:00.001-05:00

It has been brought to my attention that I neglected to include a link to Beardos, Indies, and Baddies last week. Whoops. Sorry, Seph.

I had a conversation this week with an older gentleman—older than I, anyway, as he's in his fifties—on the eve of his first sexual experience with a guy. He'd built his life according to the blueprints he thought was supposed to follow Married young, to a high school sweetheart. Respectable job. Two children. A position in his church. He'd been starving for a man-on-man encounter all his life. Watched gay porn like crazy. Masturbated with dildos.

Finally he'd decided to take the step of meeting up with a total stranger to whom he'd been chatting on the internet, rent a hotel room together, and take care of business. He was writing me to ask questions about how he should prepare, and what to expect.

I know that some of my readers are impatient with this guy already. I understand that. When one lives with a certain degree of honesty, or has taken the risks and suffered the consequences and the fallout, it's easy to brand others as cowards. It's simple to point a finger and insist that others tread the same path you have, or risk your censure.

And as I spoke to this gentleman—I use the word in its most complimentary sense, as he was a true gentleman—I realized how extremely fortunate a life I've had. I've always had a clear view of my sexuality and the determination to do with it what I wanted. I've always set my own metaphorical destinations, and felt free to jump track when I wasn't heading where I wanted.

Talking to someone for whom making his own choice was new made me much more grateful for what I've had, all along. This was a guy who was giddy with happiness because his wife had been away the night before and he was able to experience the novelty of sleeping in the nude. Except for a period in college in which I donned briefs at night to spare my roommates, I've slept in the nude since I was out of diapers. But I went to bed that night appreciating the freedom I've enjoyed all those years, a little more.

For the record, I think anyone making a stand about his or her sexuality and choosing to explore it is a brave individual indeed—no matter what time of life.

Enough of that. I wanted to warn you guys that for the next couple of weeks I'm not going to hold myself to the same schedule as usual. I'm sure there will be entries, but as I am going to be busy with family stuff and the holidays (don't forget you have a week left of Christmas shopping), I'm not going to try to make near-daily entries again until probably after the new year. I won't be abandoning Breeder's Readers altogether, though, don't worry.

Let's get to some questions from formspring.me.

How many sexual partners have you had?

I would be unable to count, at this point.

However, when I go to a mainstream movie and a number (usually it's 30, for some reason) is thrown out to show that the romantic lead has been quite a hardcord Lothario, all I want to do is stroke the poor little Hollywood star's hair, make a pained face, and say in that pitying way that we Southerners have, "Oh, honey."

How many loads have you given or taken in one day?

The most I've taken in a single day was about 17, when I was in my teens. The most I've given was 8.

Do you (or did you at some point) know someone like Edina or Patsy on Absolutely Fabulous? Who is it and what sort of relationship/friendship do you have with them? What aspect of him/her do you relate to Eddy or Pats?

As much as I would like to be a Patsy, I'm afraid I'll always see myself as an Edina. I've known a few Patsys in my life--they didn't resemble her because of the style, or the boozing, or the drugs, but they did seem to be the essence of cool compared to how I perceive my relative oafishness.

Secretly, though, I dread I'm a sweater-wearing Saffie.

Your best fag hag girl says she has a friend who needs to be "broken in" as a bottom or top (the natural opposite of you) and suggests that you would be perfect. When you finally meet him, it turns out to be her 18-year-old nephew. Do you fuck?

Why wouldn't I?

Are you a member of the jihadists for peace movement?

No. Do they serve good refreshments at meetings? That's usually the criterion by which I decide to join groups.

Just to expand on a question posted today: Do you ever fear being outed to your wife? Sounds like friends and colleagues know.

Among the couple of assumptions here is one that I'm closeted. Though I don't intend either to confirm or deny it in this forum, I would say remind you that it is an assumption.

I don't fear being outed. I'm not ashamed of my sexuality.

What would you do if your kids found your blog?

No child is going to stumble over a blog like mine. Not by accident. He'd have to be looking for it.

Sexuality is nothing to be frightened of. Not at any age. I'm not ashamed of the fact that I have a sex life. Anyone who wants to picture me reforming my ways and vowing to sin no more, because of the wide-eyed reproach of a sinless child, has been reading too many fucking cheap Victorian novels--or hasn't moved past that sentimental level of thinking.

I would hope that any child of mine who read my blog would come away with the message that sex is fun, erotic, and meant to be enjoyed, even while it's strange, messy, and sometimes uncomfortable. Most of all, I'd want him to know that it's a part of life that can and should be examined and celebrated.

In other words, the same things I say without the blog.

It's about to hit the fan. Who's at your back? Keel, King, Gale, Smith, King(2), Purdey, or Gambit?

Oh my god. I don't get to take Mrs. Peel? Then it's got to be Purdey. She might be a clotheshorse, but she can karate chop like no one's business.

My Love

2011-12-16T08:20:00.000-05:00

His photos seem designed to make me drool. He’s a Puerto Rican guy in his mid-thirties, and in all his clothed shots he’s wearing baggy shorts that cut off in the middle of his thick calves, showing only a few inches of flesh before it’s taken over by black ankle socks and a fuckin’ huge pair of beat-up sneakers. He’s muscular in that natural way that manual laborers can be. In some of the pictures he’s got a beard, or a goatee. In others, it’s a sculpted soul patch, or a landing strip on his chin.

He’s hot, and he’s horny, and he’s available. He’s also less than a mile from where I live. That’s all I need to know. I tell him I’ll meet him in ten minutes.

There’s a buffer zone between my neighborhood and his—a grid of storage warehouses, landscaping companies (including my own landscaper’s company), and other light industrial facilities. My dick’s still hard from the conversation we had online as I dodge flatbeds carrying small bulldozers and pickup trucks loaded with leaf-blowing equipment. Once I cross under the freeway, I’m into the area where he lives, where wooden houses perch precariously on steep hills. It’s not a poor neighborhood by any means, but it’s by no means as ritzy and pretentious as the one that’s temporarily adopted me. In fact, I always think of it as the Taco Truck Neighborhood, since only two blocks to the north sits a noisy white truck that dispenses in equal enormous quantities both gas fumes and delicious cheap lunches on foam plates.

He meets me at the door of the apartment building, set back from the street. He’s as sexy as his photos, and wearing a floppy pair of sweatpants, a tank top. His bare feet slap on the linoleum as he leads me to the elevator. He’s staying with his sister and her two nieces, he explains as we ride up, but they’re out for the afternoon and he has the place to himself. “Damn, pa,” he says, when he looks me up and down after the elevator door closes. “You so tall.”

All the younger latin guys around here call me pa. I’ve learned to like it. His eyes devour me in the elevator, but we don’t touch. There’s a camera prominently displayed above head level. “Come on, pa,” he whispers, when the elevator doors open onto a hallways that’s pungent with the scent of cumin and sweet onions. “I got things I want to do to you.”

He’s sexy, this one. When he walks down the hall to his sister’s apartment, his butt cheeks twitch up and down with every step. His hair is tousled, as if he’s just gotten out of bed. He strides down the hall as if he’s unobserved, unaccompanied, even pausing to scratch his beautiful round butt as he unlocks the door. Once it’s shut, though, he’s all over me. He’s standing on tiptoes to thrust his mouth against mine. It tastes of coffee and mint candy. “Oh baby,” he moans. “I want you so bad.” His dick is tenting the fabric of his sweats.

I shuck myself out of my leather jacket. It falls to the floor with the thump. “I want you,” I murmur back. I’ve got his face between my hands. His beard rasps against my palms. It’s cropped close, and is mostly dark, but there are a few gray hairs already popping up on that sexy face.

He says something to me in rapid-fire Spanish that I don’t comprehend, but I get his meaning when he tugs at my hand and pulls me in the direction of the bedroom. The moment that door is shut and locked—against the possible intrusion of the sister and the nieces, I’m guessing—he’s stripping off his clothes.

Off come the sweats, and out pops his little dick. It’s tiny, and narrow; even erect, it can’t measure any longer than four and a half inches. It’s a hot little pinga, though, and a good inch of overhanging foreskin droops from the tip. His tank top flies in the air, and he’s down to skin that’s the color of caramel sauce. “You like what you see, baby?” he wants to know. His stubby fingers are plucking his nipples.

“God, you’re beautiful,” I tell him. I kick off my sneakers and shimmy out of my sweatshirt. “I love your muscles.”

The compliment makes him shy. “I don’t work out or nothing. It’s just from my job, baby.” He tells me the name of the local furniture store where he works as a mover in the warehouse. He’s running the flats of his palms over his biceps and forearms the entire time. I’ve got my pants off now, and he’s staring at my dick. “Now that’s what’s beautiful, pa,” he breathes.

He’s on his knees, mouth on my dick, pushing me back onto his mattress. The bed is covered with pillows and there’s a half-consumed Pop Tart on a paper plate at the far edge. It’s clean, though, and still carries a scent of laundry detergent and fabric softener. He’s actually using suction on my dick, inhaling as hard as possible as if he’s trying to nurse it. It feels good, though. I hold his head as he makes me feel better and better.

For a long time we alternate between his sucking and him mounting me. He rubs his little dick against mine as we make out. He grunts and groans as we connect and hump. He’s so frantic and desperate that he can’t decide what he wants—my dick down his mouth, his mouth on mine, or my cock up his ass. Sometimes he’ll straddle me and rub my shaft across his hairy crack. When I reach around behind him to grab those meaty cheeks, his eyes roll up and back into his head, and his neck drops back, as if I’ve slid out a toy spine.

I roll him over, and climb on top of him. Now it’s my turn to hump him. My dick’s prodding at his hole, bluntly stabbing at his butt as I make out with him. His own dick is dripping heavily with precum that glistens on my chest, where his foreskin paints it. “Oh, my love,” he says. The words startle me. They sound like dialogue from a telenovella, but he’s just responding to the heat of the moment. “I want you inside me, lover,” he says, in his accented English. “I want your big dick inside me, pa.”

I flip him over. When I spit on my hand, my middle and index fingers slide right in. I add more saliva to my dick, kneel on the mattress, and position myself behind him.

His hands clutch at the mattress and come up with fistfuls of sheet when I start pushing in. “Aieeee!” he moans, as if he’s in pain. “So big!” But then I’m not pushing at all. I’m just holding still while he impales himself with it. He doesn’t seem to care about the pain. He just wants it inside him, desperately. There’s a moment when he reaches the base of the shaft that he seems to think he’s taken too much at once; he tenses, and goes silent, his mouth open and his lips still pursed. Then he pants, and breathes deeply, and begins gyrating his hips.

He feels good. He feels great, in fact. He’s reaching over his head, blindly trying to grasp the back of my head to pull my lips down to his. I make out with him over his shoulder. He awkwardly tries to drive his tongue into my mouth as I begin pistoning in and out of his ass. “Ohhh,” he moans, over and over again. Then he bites his lower lip and shakes his head. He’s really getting into it now. Our rhythm locks. He’s thrusting back while I’m thrusting forward, and his hole is slipping around my meat like a tight-fitting glove.

When I pull him to his knees and begin fucking more vigorously, he starts swearing in Spanish again. His eyes open for the first time since I’ve entered him, and he stares at me over his shoulder with something in his eyes I can’t quite identify. There’s respect, certainly—respect for the meat that’s pummeling him from behind. There’s challenge, as if he wants me to push him further. But mostly I see animal lust.

Maybe he sees the same thing from me, because when our eyes lock, the temperature we’re generating seems to rise exponentially. I throw my dick all the way in, in one swift push that makes him wince. Then he’s looking straight at me again, nodding, telling me without words how much he fucking loves it.

His legs are spread wide. He’s pulling wide his ass cheeks, trying to admit as much of me as he can. He wants it all. Every millimeter. When he gets it, he still wants more. He slams down on it as if he’s trying to keep it for himself, as if he expects to walk away with it touching the deepest places inside him. Then I start to come. He’s listened to my breathing and knows when it’s arriving. “I want your babies,” he says.
His hand flies back and he twists around, trying to kiss me while I shoot. At the same time, he arches his back and sits back on my dick as it throbs and squirts into him. He’s shuddering himself. It takes me a while before the haze before my eyes clears, and I realize he’s shot his own load onto the mattress. His foreskin is dripping with sperm. There’s a trail of it across the bed, up to the pillow, where he’s shot.

And yet he hasn’t touched himself. He’s been on his hands and knees the entire time.

My dick slops out of him noisily when we untie from each other. “No, no, no,” he says. He’s been aggressive since the door shut, but now he’s soft and tender. With gentle hands he pushes me down onto the mattress, helping me avoid the spots he’s covered with his load. “I will be right back, my lover.”

The apartment’s overheated, I realize. I’m sweating up a storm. Through the open door I hear sounds of running water from the bathroom, and then he’s back with a washcloth. It’s discolored, but wet and warm, and he’s down between my legs, softly wiping off my dick. He runs the rough cloth under my balls, down my thighs, on the soles of my feet. Then he kisses the tip of my cock, still semi-hard, still dripping sperm.

“I love your cock, pa,” he says. “It makes me feel amazing. My love.”

When he calls me by that phrase again, I feel my dick stir.

He notices it. “My love,” he whispers, planting a kiss on my thigh. “My love,” he says, when I begin to harden again. Then, he’s covering my meat with kisses, whispering, “My love, my love. My love.”

And that that moment, right before we begin again, they’re the sweetest two words in the world.

Good Buddies

2011-12-13T08:20:00.000-05:00

He’s showing me a video on his iPhone. It’s tough to tell what’s going on. It’s as if he’s walking with the video recording. I catch glimpses of a carpet, of a frilly bed skirt, of a lamp on a bedside table. The sudden light causes the screen to flare and bleach, before it adjusts again. Then I can see a pair of feminine legs, lying on pretty floral sheets.

Then there’s a dick, red and engorged. It’s one of those fat, almost flat dicks, wider than it is thick. The head is enormous. As the camera focuses, I can see it flare. I wince, and pull my expression into one of disturbed disgust. “Why are you showing me cock?” I ask.

The Landscaper is watching my expression intently, I notice. We’re in the front seat of his van, parked in the usual lot of the local strip mall. From the Starbucks he’s brought two cardboard cups of coffee, one black and one what he calls ‘regular,’ which means with cream and sugar. (“I didn’t know what you liked, so I got one of each,” he told me, proffering both, like a shy boy with an apple for the teacher.) I’ve got the regular between my legs, warming my thighs. The roll of bills he’s given me makes a lump in my jeans pocket, to the right. My dick is bulging to the left.

“It’s mine,” he says, unnecessarily. I look away from the screen to his groin. His faded designer jeans are tight in the crotch. He’s managed to sidle over the gap in the seats and insinuate himself close to me. His shoulder’s only a hair away from my own, but we’re not touching.

I curl my lip. The Landscaper likes thinking I’m the straightest of straight men, the married guy he’s managed to talk into showing off his dick for cash when we meet. “So why are you showing me your cock?” I ask, like he’s some kind of sick bastard.

He gets off on my tone. “Just watch,” he says. “You’ll see something you like better.”

I can feel his breath on my cheek as he watches me watching. I get the impression he’s actually trying to smell me. I hold my attention on the jittering screen in front of me. Through the little speakers pressing against his palm I hear voices, his own and a woman’s. I’m assuming his wife’s. I can’t tell what they’re saying, though. The woman’s legs appear again. Then I see the Landscaper’s big, meaty hands lifting up the hem of some kind of oversized T-shirt or night shirt. Her hands swat him away for a minute, but then he’s thrusting two of his fingers in her slit, none too gently.

“You like her pussy?” he asks, over her mild and somewhat amused protests. “Sweet one, huh?”

I have to clear my throat. “Yeah,” I murmur. On the phone, he’s moving the camera back and forth between his own dick, which is throbbing and pulsing, to his wife’s pussy.

His shoulder touches mine. I can feel him freeze. He desperately wants to be there, touching me, and he’s hoping I don’t notice. It’s an intimacy I shouldn’t allow. A real straight guy would pull back from it. I pretend to be too absorbed in the video to care much. He’s using his left hand to pull apart her pussy lips, to show her off to me. She’s laughing and trying to swat him away, the entire time. “You like that, huh? I did it for you, buddy. I figured you’d want to see her.” I grunt, deeply, sexually. I’m turned on that he made this video with me in mind. “You should see her when she shaves,” he says. “Like a fucking teen. You want me to make her shave? I’ll tell her to do it. Make another video. For you, dude. I’ll do it for you.”

I’m not one of those guys who really gives a crap whether a few square inches of skin are shaved or not. But I’m turned on at the idea of him shaving his wife at my say-so. “Yeah,” I tell him. “I want her shaved.”

“Dude, I’ll do it!” he says, thrilled beyond measure that we’re conspiring together. “Fuck, I’ll do it tonight.” His dick appears again at the bottom of the screen. He’s having issues getting both it and his wife’s pussy in the camera at the same time. In a moment, the camera tilts, confusing the view. Then it shuts off. He pockets the camera. “You turned on?” he asks. I nod. “Maybe you should get in the back and let me take care of that for you,” he whispers.

“What do you mean, take care of it,” I ask, wary.

He licks his lips unconsciously. “I’ll suck it.” He’s aware instantly he’s asked too much. I’m opening my mouth to warn him I don’t do that fag shit, when he overrides me. “Let me stroke it off for you, buddy. Just two guys. Kids do it for each other. Nothing wrong with it.”

I puff my cheeks and blow out air. He’s overstepped the line, and he knows it. What he doesn’t know is how much I enjoy putting him through the wringer, every time he tries to inch his way a little further into full-on man sex. I get off on knowing he wants it so desperately, that he wants me. Obsesses about me. Makes videos for me. I could just feed him my dick and get it over with, but I like prolonging his agony. I’m a cruel bastard that way.

I’m really considering how far I’ll let him go this time, but he seems to think I might just step out of the truck. “Sorry, sorry man,” he says. “I know you’re not gay. I’m not either, honest. Just something about you, you know. Makes me get a little crazy.” In a husky voice, he asks, very politely, “Please let me taste it.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. I look toward the back of the van, where we’ve played before. I shake my head.
“Let me lick your nuts,” he pleads. “You’ve let me do that before. You liked that, right?” I shrug, like I’m trying not to remember it happening, or like I was just doing him a favor and it hadn’t really done a thing for me. “Get in the back,” he suggests. “Just get in the back and let me watch you. Okay buddy?”

There’s such a note of yearning in his voice that I’m aroused even more than before. It hurts, that need. I can tell by the catch in his tone, the raspy grating at the back of his throat. His breathing is heavy. He wants me badly. Without a word, I climb into the back of the van and take off my leather jacket. He’s ramped up the heat over the last few minutes. The floor is cold when I settle on it, though.

He follows and takes his place between my sneakers. He pulls down my jeans. We wrestle for a moment with exactly how far I’ll let them descend. He wants them above my knees; I want to keep them just below the nuts. I let him win. He’s a handsome man, this married daddy, this well-off professional, this boss of a dozens. He’s an eye-catcher, a prize. And he looks fucking ridiculous, prone on the floor of his work van, thrall to my erection. He rests the side of his head on my leg above the knee, gazing at my hard dick like he’s in love with it. I allow it.

“Let me suck it,” he pleads. I make a show of thinking about it, like I’m a straight guy who could use a mouth, any mouth, even a dude’s mouth, no matter how dirty I’d feel afterward. I give it a moment before I curl my lip and shake my head. “Let me lick those nuts then,” he begs. “Please. Please.”

I wait another moment while I stroke. I seem totally absorbed in my own meat. My fist grips it tightly, making the head red and shiny. Precum starts oozing out. After a while, I grudgingly nod.

Then he’s up there, right between my legs. His breath is hot on my sac for a moment, and then I feel the warmth of his tongue, the pressure of his chin. His eyes stare up at my meat, then into my eyes. They’re heavy-lidded, as if he’s half-asleep, or having the best dream in the world.

His hands hold my thighs as I jerk. They’re strong, and the grip is relentless. From time to him his mouth starts to travel up; his tongue licks out at the base of my shaft, as he tries to get a taste. I let my face wrinkle with disgust whenever he does, and then get him back on my nuts by adjusting the angle of my hips. I don’t touch his head. Touching is something he does, not me.

“You want her pussy, don’t you?” he asks after a while. “You want that shaved pussy?”

“You want to see me fuck her?” I grunt. My own eyes are shut now. I’m getting closer, and he can tell.

“I want to see you bang the shit out of that bitch!” He’s turned on at my excitement. It’s okay for a straight guy to shoot at the thought of fucking a buddy’s wife. Normal, even. “You wouldn’t tell her our arrangement, would you?”

I’m assuming he means the money, or maybe the nut-licking, or perhaps both. “Fuck no!” I spit, as if I’d never tell anyone about that perverted shit.

“Fuck her,” he says, urging me on. “Fuck that cunt! Would you watch a movie of me fucking her if I take it?”

I’m real close now. My fist pounds over my shaft rapidly. “Yeah,” I grunt.

I’m shooting. It’s a thick load that slides out of my slit like lava from a volcano, just as hot, burning a trail down the back of my knuckles. He’s mesmerized at the sight. My dick lets loose glob after glob as he watches. For a minute I think he wants to lick it off my hand, but he’s not got the courage to ask.

Instead, he pulls a canister of baby wipes from a bag lying against the van’s wall. Softly, almost tenderly, he swaps away the goo. In a couple of moments my hand is clean and smelling of shea butter. “You are so fucking hot,” he whispers with reverence. Then, with a note of longing, he asks, “Do you like my lips on there?”

It’s time to throw him a bone. The pup’s worked hard enough for it. “Yeah,” I say in my normal voice. “Yeah. It’s not too bad.”

The light that shines from his face is worth all the acting I’ve had to do. He’s so fucking happy at the back-handed praise. The pride is palpable. I can still feel it emanating from the van as I gather my jacket and get back into my own car.

I’m pulling into my own parking space at home when I get his text a few minutes later. i think we got a good thing going here, right buddy? It says.

Yeah, I text back. It’s cool to have a good buddy like you.

Lost Boys

2011-12-12T08:20:00.000-05:00

(This entry is a continuation of the Earl soap opera about my relationship with an older man in my teens, and of the complications caused by a peer named Topher. It's a direct sequel to Earl's Discovery, from a couple of weeks ago. I'm afraid there's little actual sex in this one, guys. Thanks for bearing with me.)

I’d done a lot for Earl, from the time I’d met him at fourteen through my senior year of high school. I’d worked his parties without question. I’d let him truss me up in his sling, restrained and blindfolded, as he introduced me to the world of sensory deprivation and overload. I’d perfected the art of lying to my parents for his sake. I’d endured the scratchings and pawings of any big-dicked beast he chose for me, had learned to fuck pussy, just so I could see the light of approval in his eyes. I’d been his lover and his confidante in ways that his boyfriend Jim no longer was.

For Earl, I was truly submissive, in the word’s purest sense. I did whatever he asked, for his pleasure. I came to his house when he told me to. I fabricated excuses to my family on those periodic occasions he wanted me to stay over. I didn’t balk at any of the outrageous situations he threw my way. He didn’t have to request compliance— everything he wanted, I did, with no questions asked. I didn’t need to ask questions, or know the whys and the wherefores. I trusted him to watch over me, and knew that the things he made me do were not only for his pleasure, but for my own education.

I was his partner. We worked together as a duo, satisfying each other and the whims of other men, no matter what they were. We were a sexual tag-team, expertly sliding our palms against the other’s and passing off control of the erotic arena to the other, until we’d knocked out the men with whom we were engaged. I loved every moment of it.

Until the afternoon Earl discovered he’d been robbed, that is. When he told me I would be going over to Topher’s house and finding out what was going on with him, I agreed out of instinct. But as I pedaled my bike to the Northside neighborhood where Earl’s other boy lived, I found myself growing more and more resentful. And for perhaps the first time ever, I started to wonder why I was involving myself in the middle of this mess. Worse, I started to wonder if Earl was worth hanging around any longer.

It was true that Earl couldn’t very well head over to Topher’s house, introduce himself to his parents as one of the kid’s fuck buddies, and ask if he could talk to Topher about his missing watches, cash, and other valuables. Admittedly, intergenerational sex wasn’t as stigmatized thirty years ago as it is now, believe it or not; even a few years later, in the mid-nineteen-eighties my college ex-boyfriend (aged twenty-five) dated a high school boy (aged fifteen) with the kid’s parents’ grudging consent. Today he’d be so demonized that they’d attempt to castrate him on sight.

Topher and I were both sixteen at this point, and thanks to skipping a year, I was starting my final year of high school. What would’ve given us some ‘splaining to do to our parents would’ve been the gay thing, not so much the fact that Earl was so much older than ourselves.

What I resented, though, was that this mess had nothing to do with me. Topher wasn’t my stray; he wasn’t my little fuckbuddy. I wasn’t the one who’d grown tired of him, but kept having him over to my house as a playmate for my loser of a lover. That honor belonged to Earl, who always made his contempt for Jim plain, but indulged him by giving him just enough cash to maintain a constant buzz and a stoned little fuck toy of his own. I was the good boy. The boy who didn’t cause a commotion. The boy who did as he was told. The boy who attracted attention in the bedroom, and deflected it everywhere else.

It didn’t really take Encyclopedia Brown to put together the pieces in front of me. I hadn’t told Earl about my previous encounter with Topher outside the skating rink. It was obvious that Topher had decided to do something, whether get out of town, or end his relationship with Earl in the most dramatic and trouble-causing way possible. And it was very obvious to me that Jim had helped him do it. He’d pointed out to Topher exactly the most valuable objects in the house to take. He’d clued him in to the location of the ready cash they kept. And just to twist the knife, he’d gotten Topher to ransack Earl’s watches, his most prized collection. Those watches would have been a real stab to the heart to lose.

It had been obvious to Earl, too. So I thought. Hadn’t he said, Funny how he knew where everything of value was? Surely he’d figured it out.

The whole thing weighed very heavily on me as I biked through the quiet streets of Richmond. Topher didn’t live very far from Earl, but I made the ride last as long as possible. Earl wanted me to convey the message that he wasn’t angry, but that he wanted his stuff back. I knew enough about being the bearer of bad tidings to know that no matter how I phrased it, Topher wasn’t going to like what I was planning to say. He’d blame not himself, or Jim for egging him on, or even Earl for sending me, but would level his guns against the messenger. I just knew it.

Confrontation has never been easy for me. I keep it calm, I keep it on point. But my stomach gets in knots now at the thought of it. Back then, it felt like I’d swallowed a colony of live snakes. I turned down the treeless little avenue on which Topher lived. The houses there were smaller. The exteriors weren’t brick and stone, like my neighborhood, or even wood and shingles like the little Bellevue homes where Earl lived. Here they were covered with cheap aluminum siding, already pitted with small holes and discolorations. The front lawns were a bit scrubby and infested with chickweed. The sidewalks were uneven and cracked. The neighborhood hadn’t yet slipped into the complete shabbiness and disrepair it reached a good decade later, but it was on that slow slide down, even back then.

Then I had one of the best strokes of luck in my then-short life. Outside of Topher’s home was parked a police car. I squeezed my brakes and shuddered to a stop. I had no intentions of going further.
I’d had an unfortunate encounter with the police two summers before that left me with an aversion to uniformed officers. I knew immediately that with that squad car parked outside, I wouldn’t be waltzing up to the front door and asking if Topher could come out to play. Astride my bike I sat at the corner, by the stop sign, wondering exactly what was going on, and what I should do.

I hadn’t been there for more than a minute when a woman came scurrying out of the corner house. She wore a floral housecoat and a pair of once-fuzzy slippers worn to a nub. Excitedly, she asked me if I was a friend of the missing kid. That told me everything I needed to know, basically, but I was wary enough of being drawn into the mess that I pretended I knew nothing about it. Some people enjoy playing the role of informant; this desperate housewife was one of them. She babbled on for a minute or two about how her neighbor’s kid had run away from home the day before, and how the family had been forced to wait twenty-four hours before being able to report it, and bunch of other stuff about Topher’s family and how the kids had all turned out to be disappointments, and now the youngest was gone, and wasn’t it a shame?

I don’t remember the half of it now, and didn’t really absorb much of it at the time, to be honest. I just knew that I’d had a close call, and had been spared the discomfort by a hair. That was enough for me. I abruptly got back onto my bike and sped back to Earl’s place. I’d felt disloyal to him on that slow drive over. Remembering it made me feel guilty. If I returned with this information, I reasoned, he’d forgive me without ever having to know that for a little while, I’d thought badly of him.

Earl’s back door was locked when I returned. I walked around to the front of his house and tried that door, but it was also locked. I returned to the kitchen and rang the doorbell there. From inside the house, I heard shouting. It continued for far longer than was really comfortable. Even with the windows shut I could hear the resonance of the two male voices raised in anger.

When Earl finally answered the door, he didn’t let me in. He stood there with his hand on the screen handle, keeping it closed. “What?” he asked, brusquely.

I told him what the woman had told me on Topher’s street, and told him about the cop car. If I’d been expecting to be thanked for doing his dirty work, I was to go unrewarded. “Figures,” is all he said. Then, “That’s all I needed to know. Go home.”

He didn’t want me there. He was pissed. I’d never been on the short side of Earl’s temper. I didn’t like being there now. Again, I was the good boy here, the messenger. His curtness was a slap in the face.
“That’s right,” I heard Jim say, from the recesses of the kitchen. “Send your boy home now, so he can’t see what you’ve done.”

Earl sounded deeply annoyed. “Jim,” he said, with warning.

But Jim was in a mood, and wouldn’t be denied. He came up behind Earl, who continued to block the door. Jim was smaller, and slighter, and though he tried to look around his partner, it was obvious Earl would rather he didn’t speak or be seen at all. “Show him what you did to me!” he shrilled. “Show him this!” He was pressing something to his left cheekbone—an ice pack, or compress or some sort. I couldn’t see what this he meant, but the intent of his words was pretty obvious. “This is what your boyfriend does when he’s tired of someone!”

“Shut the fuck up, Jim,” Earl growled. Then to me, he said, “Go home.”

“He’ll get tired of you too. Wait until you get too old for him. See how nice he treats you then.”

Earl closed the kitchen door to a crack. “Go home,” he said through it. He looked deep into my eyes. “And don’t come back for a few days. I’ll call you.”

Then he shut the door in my face. I heard the lock turn.

When he did that, deep inside me, some tiny door shut with it, for good.

Sunday Morning Questions: In and Out Edition

2011-12-11T08:31:00.001-05:00

Just a quickie this morning, my friends. I've got a busy week up ahead.

I wanted to mention that one of my buddies and frequent commenters, our very own Seph, has started his own Tumblr blog. If you're a fan of scruffy guys, bearded guys, or guys with tattoos, you'll probably enjoy the parade of men he assembles there. So check out Beardos, Indies, & Baddies, and give him a bit of support.

My only complaint about the blog is that it should've really been titled The Big Blog of Men The Breeder Wants to Fuck (And Maybe One He Already Has). That'd be more accurate.

Let's get to some questions from formspring.me, where you can discreetly and anonymously ask me questions about my life. Some of the questions I've gotten from you guys this week were great—keep them coming!

Have you ever had cum up your ass?

Oh yes.

If you were still working in academia, would you include face pics in any of your online profiles? Would the site make a difference? Would it make a difference if you worked a staff (e.g. administrative or support) or faculty type position?

If I were working at an institution like a Catholic university, I probably would not.

If I were still working at a public university or a liberal private institution, sure. Why not? I had my face pics up during my teaching and administrative days. Let me tell you, if having a profile on a sex site were today declared a crime in academia, there'd be a hell of a lot of students arriving to empty classrooms tomorrow morning.

Would you rather never use the internet again or never watch TV again?

Hey, I could give up my TV and still watch all my favorite shows off the internet. So I'd go that route.

Have you ever had an orgy of 4 or more guys?

The biggest organized orgy I've been in had about three dozen guys in a hotel room.

What was or is you favorite Crayon Color?

I was always fond of Olive Green and Copper.

Hated Mahogany and especially white. I never understood the white crayon,

when dating, at a bar, online, at the baths, or otherwise on the prowl - are you the hunter or the hunted?

I choose my prey, but I don't chase it. It comes to me.

If you receive a call by someone who isn't aware of calling you because he or she paced that call mistakenly: Do you discreetly hang up or do you continue to listen in?

If you mean do I hang up when someone has dialed me on his mobile phone with his butt cheek . . . I hang up after saying the guy's name a few times. Especially if I hear a car motor and him singing along to some random song on the radio.

Once in college I was summoned to the shared hall telephone in my dormitory by one of the other residents. I started talking to the person on the phone and had a difficult time identifying the speaker, but I didn't ask who it might be because I was waking up and confused and embarrassed to admit I didn't know. However, after about two minutes of casual chit-chat that suddenly turned to topics about which I knew nothing, I suddenly realized that the reason I couldn't place the person is because I didn't KNOW him. The person who'd summoned me to the phone must have misheard my name, or mistaken me for someone else.

Of course, by that point saying, "Hey, I'm sorry, I think you've got the wrong number" would've been really mortifying for us both, so I continued the conversation with vague responses and finally a plea that I needed to get to dinner.

That was the very last time I answered a phone without making very certain I knew who was on the other end.

I am in a curious mood today. As usual actually :) Do you ever ask others a question (on Formspring)? If yes, what was your most intrusive question (one you considered the most intrusive)? If no, why?

I used to ask quite a lot of questions of other people on Formspring, but I had a couple of people who would ask for questions and after I'd obliged, would ask for even more questions with a proviso such as, "Make sure they aren't stupid."

After a couple of times of that, you can imagine I was a little burned out by it.

The one question I used to ask that would get people into a tizzy would be, "What is the one question you hope that someone asks you here?" or, more tellingly, "What is the one question you hope that no one asks you here?"

And no, you don't get to ask it of me.

Open Forum Friday: Da Bears

2011-12-09T08:20:00.000-05:00

I’ve gotten to the point whenever I start working on one of my open forum pieces that I start off by saying that I don’t like massive generalizations . . . and then I apologize for making one. I’m not even going to go through that pretense this time. I’ll just come out and say what’s on my mind. I like the bears. The bears, however, don’t seem to like me.

We all know what I’m talking about when I talk about bears, right? In the gay world, it refers to men of a certain size (large) and hirsuteness (furry, especially on the face). I’m not ashamed to say that as a broad type, I like me some bear. I like big guys. I like the feeling of all that weight on top of me. I like them round and cuddly. I like them furry and bearded. I know there are a lot of prissy queens out there who see a bear with a size forty waist who will roll their eyes and shudder dramatically. Screw them. I look at men like that and my mind very well may wander in the direction of what I’d have to do to get their pants down around their ankles.

(As a point of clarification, my mind’s usually heading off in that direction sooner or later, anyway.)

Now, before some of my readers pout in pique, I’d like to point out that bears aren’t the only men I like. Far from it. I like the skinny twinks, too, and the little Latin boys who call me ‘pa,’ and the sexy older gentlemen who call me ‘son.’ I like the average guys, and the preppies, and every other type you can think of, chances are. But I’ve always had a special fondness for bears—and it’s long been unrequited.

My understanding, from every bear site and every bear I’ve ever known, is that the bears like to think of themselves as open-minded individuals who have rejected the typical standards of gay beauty. That is, they see the most typical object of gay desire as a smooth, shaved, gym-sculpted twenty-three-year-old with perfect hair, like some figure of fantasy from an early nineteen-nineties Falcon video. Therefore the bears tend to shun shaving and the gym (unless they’re striving to be classified in the sub-category of muscle bears), or diets, or clothes fancier than the regular old shirts and 501s hanging from a nail in their closets.

They’re just being who they are, they say. They’re bucking the conformist gay stereotype. Except—and this is admittedly where I get into trouble with most of the bears I know—that they’re all so determined to have the same close-cropped haircuts or shaved heads, the same beards, the same bellies, the same wardrobe of flannel, and the same externally gruff appearance, that they look even more clone-like than the gay archetype they’ve rejected. And in my experience, woe betide the interested guy who doesn’t look exactly like them.

I’m not a bear. I’m too long and way too lean. I’ve had a beard for years now, but it’s cropped short and my hair’s long. If there were a gay subgroup called 'Homeless Chic' or ‘Vagrants Nouveau’ or ‘Scooby’s buddy Shaggy Lookalikes,’ I’d totally be on the A-list of those, but when it comes to the bears, I’m practically invisible. At the bars, where groups of chubby guys with beards congregate in groups and talk to each other while they stab at their smartphones with their thumbs with machine-gun rapidity, I’ll introduce myself and try to engage in some light conversation with the bears and find myself gradually shut out of their circle quite literally as they close ranks and flannel-shirted shoulders and leave me standing on the outside. I’ve been to bear events where despite my best efforts to be friendly, I’ll find myself sitting alone and ignored, because I don’t fit the standard body and hair specification.

It’s not as if I walk into a group of bears with the attitude of Here I am, furry men! The skinniest among you, your manna from heaven! Fight for the scraps, boys! Not in the least. Nor am I the kind of guy who sits and waits on the sidelines, not approaching anyone, then getting miffy about how stuck-up everyone is after an evening of being unapproachable. I get in there and meet people. But you know, you’d think that if I can make friends in a public situation with everyone from muscle-boy porn stars, young students, and funny old men who just want someone to listen to them, that it wouldn’t be that difficult to have a conversation with the bears. Despite all their talk about their heightened tolerance for men outside the gay stereotype, though, my experience is often that if you aren’t of a certain rotundity and don’t have a minimum amount of fur on your face, you might as well be invisible.

Even online I run into difficulties. The biggest bear social website rejected my profile a few years back because I wasn't 'bear enough.' I was on another, but more or less dropped it because people kept asking me, Why are you here?

Here’s the part where I apologize: not all bears are exclusionist, of course. I’ve had sex and relationships with many bear-type men who have been happy to bounce around on top of me, and who appreciate the attention I pay them. I’ve had bear friends who’ve included me in their circles and never mentioned a word about how different I looked physically from the rest of them.

On the other hand, I’ve also had bear friends who have rubbed me on the stomach and told me I’d be a lot cuter if I gained fifty pounds (which is oddly reminiscent, and just as condescending, as the men who used to tell me when I was heavier that I’d be almost cute if I lost some weight). And I’ve been in group situations in which guys made plans to go to bear events with each other to which the only person not invited was me.

I’ve always suspected—and a couple of guys have told me—that sometimes some bears will stick together in packs and not look outside them because they’re so used to rejection from the non-bears. I can understand that. Makes total sense. Except when, that is, the chasers (I dislike the word, but it’s a means to an end) are being ignored and even a little bit ostracized from the bear groups.

When that happens, I also suspect that the same kind of peer pressure comes into play that a lot of men experience when they start to date or fuck outside their own demographic. Young guys who are into older men frequently tell me that upon confessing their attractions, or showing them in public, their peers will make icky-poo-poo faces, or chastise them for not having so-called standards. I can believe that in bear packs, the same kind of pressure keeps some of the men from showing any preference for, or attraction to, the non-bears.

I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.

I’m opening up the comments today to get some feedback from other readers with their experiences not only with bears, but with all kinds of sub-groups of gay men. I’d kind of prefer that we keep our comments away from simplistic I like bears too! or Bears, yuck!, since I don’t want to have to moderate a bunch of comments bashing a group with which I personally enjoy hanging.

However, I would like you guys to discuss this issue: do other subgroups of gay men—whether bears, or young hipsters, or leather men, or whatever packs in which you roam or have observed in the wild—close ranks against outsiders? What do you think causes the divisions? And where, if anyplace, have you seen those artificial distinctions between physical types break down and become irrelevant?

Will we ever move to a ‘post-bear’ kind of world, where the big and the skinny mingle? Or are the groups originally formed to expand stereotypes and expectations now as hidebound as the groups they rejected?
Have at it, friends. I’m interested in your responses. And bears, remember: I love you guys! (Call me!)

501

2011-12-08T08:35:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was my 500th post, here. I've decided what I'd like to do, in order to celebrate. It won't be a contest, or a video, or me flying to a reader's house for a special in-person appearance (though if you've got the dough and want to make that happen, I'm all ears!).

I've decided I want to record myself reading one of my entries and to post it here. You guys get to pick which one.

If you've got a favorite entry that you'd like to hear read aloud by the author, post its name or the general gist of it (Do that one where that guys shampooed you while you blew him! That was hot!) in the comments here—or, for the many of you who are comment-shy or comment-averse, send me a quick email and let me know which essay would be your choice.

I'm not going to base my selection on a random drawing, or on reader favoritism. I'll just pick the entry that seems to have the most potential. The reader who suggested the one I pick will get some special thanks.

Nothing fancy. Nothing elaborate. And then we'll all keep moving along.

I'll take suggestions until next Friday. Thanks, guys.

The Top's Lounge

2011-12-07T08:20:00.000-05:00

I’ve joked before about the Top’s Lounge, that mythical place bottoms seem to imagine top men retreat between those times they magically appear on demand in the bottom’s bedroom. It’s always seemed to me, in a joking kind of way, as if many men honestly believe that top guys have some kind of club in which we kick back with our boots on the coffee table, smoke cigars, and dish (in a manly way) about the local holes—comparing notes, making recommendations, telling each other from whom to stay away, and making play dates for sharing our favorites.

It’s not true. There aren’t any cigars.

As for the rest . . . well, there isn’t an actual place called the Top's Lounge. It’s not a physical space, or a room in someone’s home appointed in mid-century decor. But when guys network, the tops among them notice each other. Sometimes they make friendships. They swap tips. If a bottom is pretty exceptional, or if he satisfies some whim of another guy, we tell each other. If I have a buddy who’s into redheads, and I fuck a redhead like my boy Scruffy, I might very well point out to my buddy with the redhead fetish Scruffy’s profile on Manhunt and tell him he should get in touch. If a guy isn’t for me but I know someone whose type he’d surely be, I’ll connect the two.

Not every top guy does this. The decent ones do, from time to time, if they have a good network of buddies and a spirit of sharing.

When I lived in Michigan I had a few guys with whom I’d exchange names and information. One of them was a fellow I’ve referred to before as Daddy Tim. Tim and I got to know each other in 1999, when we started chatting online regularly. We met within a couple of months, played with each other, and then started sharing Top’s Lounge information with the other. I took Daddy Tim to the home gloryhole of a young gay couple on his side of town, where several times we’d meet in the parking lot outside their condo, then enter the front door and stick our dicks through the hole they’d carved at the back of their coat closet, into the kitchen wall. Both their unseen mouths would suck on our dicks while the two of us egged each other on to shoot our loads down their throats.

Daddy Tim, in turn, invited me to a party where I met one of his college boy fucks, a pothead acting student who didn’t understand a line of the Shakespeare he could memorize by the yard, but who sure like to blaze up out behind the garage, then come into the house and straddle and ride each of us in turn, for long hours. Then I introduced him to the black college student who’d do anything for a white guy over fifty (that would’ve been Tim—not me). He arranged for me to be at his place to fuck a married bodybuilder who wanted loads for his birthday; I gave him the phone number for the Mexican businessman I used to fuck in my university office and in every university restroom and local casino restroom available.

It was an amicable arrangement for many years, kept afloat by a couple of simple principles: our rate of exchange was pretty even, and we didn’t poach each other’s property. It’s probably the latter of the two things that’s most important. The guys to whom I introduced Tim were mine—the Mexican kid, the kid into race place, the gloryhole boys. The bodybuilder and the would-be actor and the others we shared over the years were his. If he felt especially protective of one, like the bodybuilder for example, I wouldn’t go after him in my spare time. I’d join Daddy Tim when he invited me, but I didn’t ask for the bodybuilder’s phone number or email, or sneak around behind Daddy Tim’s back to fuck the bodybuilder on the side. If I’d shared someone special with Daddy Tim, like Spencer or Scruffy, Tim wouldn’t have attempted to see either outside of our arranged three-way time.

There were, of course, whores like the Mexican businessman that I didn’t feel any particular ownership for, that either of us could bang when we felt like it. Public domain, those guys were. The special ones bore our copyright.

Like I said, it was an arrangement that worked well for over a decade. Then it all went very wrong. I guess it was the last year of my residence in Michigan that it started to go bad, and it was all because Daddy Tim started to piss me off, if not by violating the actual rules, but by also pissing on the spirit of them.

The last time I saw Daddy Tim in the flesh was for an event I wrote about in an entry called ‘Daddy Tim’s Gangbang.’ Tim had invited me and three other tops to fuck another in his obsessive series of muscle studs, a personal trainer who was built like a porn star. We had a good time that day. About two weeks later, though, Tim started calling and emailing me in a panic to tell me that the trainer had a high fever and chills, and headaches, and nausea. In not so many words, he accused me of passing an HIV infection on to the guy. Because, he told me, I was the skinniest.

I was a little offended by the accusation (and the butt-ignorant way he’d reached it) and pointed out that there’d been three other tops at that party, himself included, and it was kind of dickish of him to leap to the conclusion that I’d infected the guy . . . if indeed his serostatus had changed at all. His harassment went on for a week and a half until it turned out that the gangbang recipient was still HIV- and had a case of bacterial meningitis. What kind of pissed me off, however, was that Tim delivered all this information as a kind of afterthought, an Oh, by the way that didn’t really soothe the feathers he’d ruffled by constantly accusing me of doing something I hadn’t done. No apology, no I guess I shouldn’t have leapt to conclusions, nothing.

A month after the gangbang, I had a little bit of a group activity of my own in which I gave two boyfriends three loads in thirty-five minutes. In the Top’s Lounge I’d given Daddy Tim a brief outline of the events and showed him the photos I’d taken. He immediately wanted the phone number, email, and screen name of the one he thought was the hotter of the two. He nagged. And nagged. For days, he nagged. I wasn’t all that forthcoming with the information at first because I went back and looked at my record of sexual encounters that involved him, and discovered that the balance between us hadn’t really been all that equitable for quite some time.

Sure, he’d invited me to the trainer’s gangbang. But in the previous year, I’d sent him a grand total of about seven bottoms and had only been invited to one event of his. The fact that he was nagging me for this kid’s information grated, particularly so soon after he’d insulted me and not apologized. He hit me up online one afternoon for a final time and begged for the information again. Just to shut him up, I let him have it. But, I told him, the balance in our arrangement was pretty out of whack.

Maybe, he told me, maybe he would invite me to another gangbang with the trainer. The tentative way in which he responded irritated me, but I was trying to be nice, for some reason. I asked where this trainer was from, anyway. Well, Daddy Tim flipped. He chewed me out and told me I was trying to poach his bottom and that he wasn’t there to expose the guy to strangers so they could all hit on him whenever they pleased. Mind you, this was a mere minute and a half after he’d begged and pleaded for the phone number, email address, and online identities of the blindfolded kid he’d been after for a week. All I’d done was ask where his discovery lived. Not for a street address. Just a general vicinity. Sheesh.

I thought about it for a moment while he chewed me out, and then gave him a call. It’d been fun, I told him, but the arrangement between us obviously wasn’t working any more. I asked him to take my name off his email forwarding and not to invite me to any more parties. Then, very politely, I wished him good luck with his trainer and said a farewell.

We didn’t speak after that. Or rather, I didn’t speak to him. He realized his error within a few days, when he tried to reach the blindfolded kid and the kid told him to fuck off, pretty basically. And then when a few other top guys around the city stopped including him in their communications, he realized that I’d been serious about that farewell.

Because the Top’s Lounge works in all sorts of directions. We don’t share information in the Top’s Lounge just about the bottoms we meet. If one of the other tops in the area breaks the Top’s Lounge code of ethics, we talk about that too.

I don’t know whether Daddy Tim’s still being shunned from the lounge—I haven’t really cared enough to ask. I know from time to time he writes me emails that begin, I know you hate me but. . . . as he tries to worm his way back into my good graces by inviting me to some group thing at which he needs another top. He doesn’t really realize I don’t live in the state any more, it seems.

But here’s the lesson I think it’s important to take away. Obey the informal rules of the Top’s Lounge, which are to put in about as much as you take out, and to tread lightly on another top’s good will. We might not have cigars or put our boots on the coffee table—okay, we might not have the cigars—but do we ever dish.

Sexual Cylons

2011-12-05T08:20:00.000-05:00

This last weekend was pretty frustrating from a hooking-up standpoint. It was the kind of weekend in which I had a nice wide few hours of sexual availability open for most of Saturday, only to get the flakiest responses known to online mankind.

Case in point: I stepped away for the computer to pee, wash my hands, and grab a snack at one point and came back to find no less than six emails from one sole gentleman on Adam4Adam. At 4:12 he messaged to tell me I was hot. Then I got a message informing me he’d unlocked his private photos, at 4:13; at the same time he added me to his friends list. Then he sent an email asking what I was into. At 4:15 he sent me a guess I’m not your type message, and then at 4:16 he told me he was removing me from his friends list.

I got back, read it all, and noticed that he’d also relocked his photos. Wow, I wrote to him drily. From first interest to rejection in less than four minutes, without me being able to say a damned word. Thanks for that wide-open window of opportunity, there.

Fun!

I was cruising BBRT yesterday when a guy hit me up. I noticed his location first, which was within about a hundred and twenty miles of me—close enough to meet sometimes, but a little out of the question for a spur-of-the-moment impulse drive. Then I noticed his profile name, which was an unusual first name. In fact, it was the first name of a guy I’d fucked and fisted almost a decade ago.

It was unusual enough a name that I’ve remembered it and the guy ever since. I remember the whole party, actually. It was the first time I met my long-term buddy Chris, who introduced me to the whole online hooking-up thing. Chris used to live in one of Detroit’s skeezier suburbs—one of those neighborhoods in which I was always nervous (more so than in most parts of the city of Detroit itself) to leave my car parked and unattended. He’d converted his basement to a sexual playroom; a sling hung from the rafters, and there was an area to hose down, and several old sofas and chairs covered with blankets that guys could fuck on.

I got invited to a party at Chris’s house by a fellow known as Bowzer. Yes, like the guy from Sha Na Na. (I’m well aware I’m dating myself.) Bowzer was a man of definite sexual appeal. He had a shaved head, a muscular little body, and the look of a rough fuck. In photos he looks a little bit like a porn star. In person, however, he smelled a little bit like soiled diapers and cigarettes. His teeth were rotten. And the first (and only) time I went to his house to bang him, he stopped the proceedings mid-fuck when the bell rang to conduct a drug deal. Naked. Standing in the front door of his home.

I don’t know why I agreed to go with him to Chris’s party, but I was wary enough of Bowzer at least to contact Chris online and make sure I was both expected and welcome. As it turned out, it was the start of a very good relationship between us. I arrived at his place and met the guys who were there for his party that day. There was Chris himself, who was lean and furry and sweet and rather shy. There was Bowzer, who spent the entire party wandering around in a pot-induced haze, muttering to himself and swatting imaginary insects, like one of those homeless guys pushing a shopping cart in a forgotten part of any downtown area. There were a couple from downriver Detroit who were both heavily into leather.

And then there was Neo, the guy with the unusual name. He was from the east coast, visiting down especially for this party. Chris had been fucking and fisting him since his arrival the day before. He and Chris and the couple and Bowser were all present and dressed up in leather when I arrived. I didn’t own any leather, but the downriver couple were more than happen to dress me up, Barbie-style, in a pair of chaps, a harness, a leather vest, and a shiny black cap covered with studs. They even had a pair of size eleven knee-high boots for me to wear.

I looked fucking ridiculous. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Save for Bowzer, whom everyone hated (and whom I never saw again, when I later found out that he’d told them all I was his boyfriend), the rest of us had a great time. Chris was all top as well, and the two of us fucked and fisted the downriver couple in the sling, taking turns on their hot holes. The more aggressively piggy of the guy wanted to prove what a hole he was by greasing up my right foot with Crisco. He then sat right down on it and took it up to the ankle. It was the first and only time I’ve effectively footed a guy. Word of advice: the heel is tricky.

It was with Neo, though, that I really connected. He had eyes that would bore into me as I played with his hole. He kissed like a sloppy maniac, and sucked like his mouth was wider, wetter, and deeper than anything human. For a lot of the party, while Chris was fucking with the couple and Bowzer was wandering around like a lunatic, Neo and I spent having an intense session on the sofa. We’d squeeze and torture each other’s tits, and make out, and then I’d fuck and load him. I remember at one point the guy I’d footed was eating a couple of loads out of Neo’s hole while his boyfriend was rimming my ass and cleaning Neo off my dick with his mouth, while Neo and I made out and held each other. It was a good time.

The kind you think you’d remember, right?

But it wasn’t even memory that was an issue, yesterday. When I saw that this guy who looked like Neo, had the name of Neo, was a fisting bottom like Neo,and came from the same part of the country from which Neo had flown in from had dropped me a note saying that he thought I was hot and he wanted to fuck, I thought it would be okay to remind him that we’d actually connected before and had a good time. We met about ten years ago when you were visiting my buddy Chris in Detroit, I told him. Remember me?
No, he wrote back. I’ve never been to Detroit in my life.

And I was all, But . . . but . . . but . . . !

But no. He wouldn’t be shaken from his story. He’d never been to Detroit. He’d never been to Michigan. He didn’t know anyone named Chris. He didn’t attend a sling party a decade before with a druggie, a couple, a lean top, and a guy who looked comical in leather. None of it.

I mean, he was perfectly polite about it all, and not trying to be rude or anything. But I was a little weirded out.

So I went onto my computer drive and sure enough, quickly found the folder of photos from Valentine’s Day, 2002, the night of the party. Somehow someone had managed to capture Bowzer in action during the three minutes of the night he was actually having sex. There was I, looking pathetic in my costume. And there was Neo, sucking dick and getting fucked in several shots. Same guy. Same face, though ten years younger. Same facial hair. Same build. Same exact armband on his right bicep. Same fucking leather in the then and now photos.

I mean, it’s the same guy. Has to be. And for the life of me I can’t figure out why he’s saying we never fucked.

It’s not a mean thing—it’s not like he said, Ew, you’re nasty, of course we never hooked up. It’s not as if his interests have changed to the less vanilla, or that he’s undergone a religious conversion and it’s more convenient for him to pretend we never connected. Nor is it as if he’d said, You know, 2002 was a fucking long time ago and I can’t remember my tricks that far back. I could’ve understood a simple memory lapse. I can’t remember what day of the week it is, most times.

The whole Nope, I’ve never been to Detroit thing threw me, though. You remember when you’ve been to Detroit. Maybe you don’t want to admit you’ve been there. But you remember it.

The only other explanations with which I’m left are that he’s either a clone or a Cylon. A sexual Cylon who doesn’t yet know that he’s little more than a replication, programmed to seek human cock and fist, better to learn human weaknesses and vulnerability before the final plan that reduces us to a race of sexual slaves.

It sounds a little like a porn movie that ought to be made. Come to think, I wouldn’t mind that kind of planetary dominance at all.

Sunday Morning Questions: Another Milestone Edition

2011-12-04T09:20:00.001-05:00

I have another milestone coming up this week—at some point I'll be posting my 500th blog post here. I know! It kind of snuck up on me, too.

Usually for these events I like to have some kind of contest, or do something fun. However, short of another underwear giveaway, I'm fresh out of ideas. So in the comments today, if you've got a suggestion for how we can all celebrate the 500th post, I'd be more than happy to hear it.

In the meantime, I'll let you get back to your holiday preparations. (Don't forget to thank your favorite bloggers while you're doing your online holiday shopping. I've got a link to my Amazon wishlist in the sidebar, if you're feeling particularly generous!)

This week's set of questions is brought to you, as always, by formspring.me. Stop on by and ask me something personal.

Are you actually affected by crap left by anonymous posters?

I pity them, more. I have a couple whose synapses are firing at such dangerous levels that it must be like the storm in 'King Lear' in there, 24/7.

Whatever the reasons they have that have led them to such a empty life where all they can do is get jabs in anonymously, it's still all empty sound and fury, and sadly signifying nothing.

That said, when all it takes to get a couple of the regular ones frothing at the mouth is bring out a few trigger phrases and set them off deliberately, they’re dancing to my hurdy-gurdy and not the other way around, the cute little performing monkeys.

Do you have an image in your mind of when you will be retired?

I tell people I'm retired now. It sounds so much better than admitting I'm a ne'er-do-well.

You described yourself as a power bottom in your youth. Yet now you are an (almost?) exclusive top. When, why and how did this change occur? Was there an in between phase where you were versatile? Would you say is this a typical development for gay men?

While nothing is universal—and I say this because whenever we make generalizations about sex, dozens of people pop up to say they're the exception—there is a general tendency for young guys to bottom for older. Then the young guys grow up and there's a new crop waiting to bottom for them. Circle of life, and all that.

However. I've known many guys who started out primarily as tops and switched to bottoms. And I've known bottoms who turned top only because their cute little asses weren't quite as much in demand after they hit 30. I've known true versatiles. (Or at least, they both said they were true versatiles.) And I've known guys who never evinced interest in anal sex at all.

The answer is that everyone has his own path through life, and it's tough to say what's typical. I've gotten into trouble before when I joke (it's not a joke!) that most gay men are big ol' bottoms. (They are!) So I'm trying not to make those massive generalizations here. (Though they are!)

I wrote about an incident in my blog that opened my eyes to the possibilities of topping, and started turning me in that direction. It's at the address: http://mrsteed64.blogspot.com/2010/08/fulcrum.html .

I will say that my own experience with sexual assault kind of put the nails in the coffin of my versatility. For many years after that incident it was difficult for me to want to bottom, or even to express an urge to bottom; by the time I was recovered enough to admit to the desire, I was out of practice enough that bottoming didn't come easily for me. It hasn't since, so I avoid it.

Are you into younger guys?

Indeed, I can be. A lot of them are into me.

What advice do you have (if any) for a guy in his late teens who is finally wanting to explore his interest in other guys for the first time? Specifically, as a bottom who is extremely interested in getting bred.

First up, if you're thinking of fucking unprotected, educate yourself. Know the risks and the consequences--the real consequences--so that you can't say you didn't know what could happen. Go into that with your eyes wide open, kiddo.

Second, if you're still a virgin, make your first time with someone you like. Not someone who's super-hot and who you want badly. Not someone who's nothing more than available. Take control and choose someone you actually like and won't look back on with regret. He doesn't have to be the man you spend your life with. Just pick someone you'll remember fondly, and won't be calling a jerk thirty years from now.

Finally, make sure that person knows your inexperience and is willing to help you explore. Don't pick a horny pervert with a thing for virgins who'll count you as a notch on his bedroom post. Pick a guy who will be patient, and kind, and who'll help you enjoy your first time.

Sex is supposed to be fun. So have fun. Just be smart about it.

What's the best compliment you've ever gotten?

When someone takes the time to read what I've written—and when it comes to my sex blog I mean really read it, not just for the good stuff but for what I'm trying to say through it—I find that their investment of time, thought, and consideration is the highest compliment of all.

Would you want to be famous? For what?

I'll stick to being infamous. The side benefits are a lot more fun.

A Teaser

2011-12-02T08:20:00.000-05:00

I’m not sure if what we’re watching is rugby or soccer, to be honest. There’s a field, and there’s a ball, and there’s a bunch of guys running around in shorts. It’s a cold Saturday morning; whenever I breathe, tendrils of vapor curl from my nostrils. My toes are frozen inside my boots, and I’m chilly in my jeans and thick sweater and scarf.

The players don’t seem at all chilly, though. They run around like it’s a May afternoon, chasing after the ball and filling the borrowed high school field with their laughter and high-pitched shouts. Beyond them, the sun catches the shapes of cars as they speed by on the freeway. I’ve driven into Westchester to meet the guy on the bench beside me. He’s a hulking shape because of the puffy vest he’s wearing. Bright orange, the color of danger and hazards. A Yankees cap hangs low on his forehead, just above a thick black pair of eyebrows flecked with gray. He’s got his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his sweatpants. We've talked online before, a few times. Cammed once. But this is our first meeting in the flesh, to check each other out. “So,” he says. “You like what you see?”

He’s not talking about himself—though if he had been, my answer would’ve been in the affirmative. He’s got the stocky, masculine build that a lot of the Latin men in the area have. I’d definitely be interested in him. But it’s his younger boyfriend he means. One of the players on the field, a latte-skinned youth, lean, who stops from time to time to lift up his striped shirt to mop off his face and short, spiky hair. He’s got lanky legs with a light coat of fur, and a grin that rarely flags, even when he’s concentrating. He’s made for this game.

He’s hardly ever not been in motion, since I’ve arrived. Those legs fly in the air every time he sprints after the other players, and seem to flex to impossible angles whenever he suddenly changes direction. His hips are narrow, his stomach flat. He’s got dark eyebrows like his older boyfriend, though they point upward in the middle, giving him a look of perpetual astonishment. I haven’t spoken to him, haven’t seen him close up. Still, over the previous few silent minutes, I’ve seen enough of him to know that I found him attractive. “Yeah,” I say. “I like a lot.”

The man seems satisfied at that. “Practice’ll be over soon. Thought I’d go inside and piss,” he said. “Want to come? Check stuff out?”

“You know it.”

We walk across the bleachers together, just two guys taking a break from watching a long morning’s practice (soccer or rugby, I still didn’t know which). He descends to the ground with an ungainly hop; I follow, a little more gracefully. I don’t realize exactly how chilly it is outside until I’m indoors and my nose is running. He seems to know where we’re going, along the back corridor of the high school. There’s a boy’s room not too far from the door. No one’s inside.

We stand close to each other at the urinals. He doesn’t have to piss. He pulls down the elastic band of his sweatpants beneath a pair of heavy balls. His dick is fat and uncut, and rock hard. He’s been hard a while, it seems. Precum oozes from the tip in a glistening bead. Dried trails of its predecessor frost the top of his head and foreskin.

When I pull mine out, he instantly reaches for it. “Damn, it’s big,” he tells me. “As advertised, huh?” He’s making a joke, but I’m not laughing. I reach for his meat; it throbs when I get it in my hand. “You want to fuck him?”

He means his boyfriend. That’s why he wants to meet me. He’s been looking for his first three-way with the younger guy, and he’s thinking I might suit them both. “Yeah,” I said. My voice was husky and congested. “I really want to fuck him. You want to see me in him?”

He’s staring at my dick. “Fuck yeah. Fuck.” For a second he drops to a knee and takes me in his mouth. It’s unexpected. I hadn’t known he was going to attempt it. “Can barely get my own mouth around it,” he says, pulling off. Then he opens and belies his words by taking it almost to the root. He’s up on his feet again, and pulling up his sweatpants before anyone comes in. “That’ll look good in him.”

“He likes getting fucked?”

He looks me dead in the eye. “Oh yeah. Fuck yeah! Loves his hole played with. That thing though.” He shakes his head as I put it away. “That’ll do some damage.”

I don’t tell him the thought that image brought to mind. Namely, that I certainly hoped so.

At his invitation we go outside again. The practice is nearly over. A couple of the players are already straggling off the field. Men and women spectating from the bleachers join them one by one. “Wait here,” the man instructs, pointing vaguely at the area between field and parking lot. I take a seat on the bleachers as he heads toward his car. I stay there as the players jog off the field in pairs and singles, scratching their heads and collecting their bags from the ground. I sit there in the sun and the chill and watch the boyfriend say goodbye to his buddies and sally out into the lot, looking for his car.

Just about everyone’s gone when, near the gate, an older-model SUV pulls up and stops. The window rolls down. “Get in the back,” says the man, nodding me over.

I don’t wait for another invitation.

The boyfriend’s in the back, knees spread wide, his lean legs seeming to go on forever. He nods at me as I join him in the back seat. I start to pull on my seatbelt, but the man says, “You don’t need that, buddy.” He drives us to a spot at the back, close to the freeway, where no other cars are lurking. Then he shuts off the ignition.

There’s the briefest of introductions. First names only. “This is the man who’s gonna fuck you,” says the older of the two.

The boyfriend looks me up and down. He’s cute. Damned cute. His hair is wet from sweat and exercise, but other than that, he looks like he’s barely broken stride that morning. His legs scissor in and out. Then he cracks a grin, and those eyebrows go up. “Cool,” he says.

From the front seat, the man says, “Why don’t you show him what you’ve got, hon?”

The younger guy doesn’t need another invitation, either. He thrusts his hips in the air and shucks down his shorts. His legs spread as he shows me his dick. It’s and long, and narrow, and uncut, and grows from soft to rock hard before my eyes. He grabs it in his right hand and plays with it, a little self-consciously. He’s staring at me the entire time.

“Just a little taste,” says the man in the front seat. “A teaser. Just to show you what he’s got.”

“I can see what he’s got,” I say, drily.

“Make out with him a little,” says the man to his boyfriend.

The younger guy’s got gum in his mouth, but he considerately removes it before he slides forward on the back seat. My mouth covers his; he thrusts his mint-flavored tongue forward, and mumbles a little bit when I replace my hand on his dick with my own. He’s a hungry kisser, one of the kind who’s almost too eager for it to be good. There’s a lot of pressure from his upper teeth against my own, through our lips. When my fingers travel from his dick down between his legs, into the warm, moist area between them, the man in the front seat grunts out his approval. I let my thumb press against the younger guy’s butthole. He exhales heavily and sweetly, and obediently spread his legs farther apart.

I’ve got my thumb in there, with almost no more lube than a quick lick. He’s tight. Real tight. A little twist, and he’s moaning. A turn in the other direction, a crook of my thumb joint, and he’s acting like he’s getting close. His dick is like fire against my forearm.

“Just a teaser,” says the man again. “Not too much.”

I take the warning for what it is. We’re in a parking lot on a bright morning. Even with a lookout like the older guy, it’s a risky proposition to take to the next level. The younger guy looks at me with heavy, lidded eyes when I remove my digit from his hole. He doesn’t want it to stop. “Pack it away,” the man tells him. The younger guy takes a moment to collect his thoughts before slowly reaching down to the car floor to pull his shorts back onto his legs, and then up the length of them to cover that rock-hard dick and those narrow hips and thighs.

“I think this can work,” I tell the man.

“Might be difficult to connect before Christmas at this point,” he says. “We don’t do this real often, but I want to see you fuck him real good.”

The younger guy and I are staring at each other now. He’s grinning at me. He doesn’t have to say much. I can tell he wants it too. “I will,” I promise.

Then I’m out the door, and walking back across the lot to my own car, legs wobbly and my thumb smelling like the younger guy’s hole. He waves at me from the back seat as they drive from the school lot, and over the dust of their passing the two of us study each other for a last time before that day comes when I meet him naked, and prepped, and ready to be drilled.

An open letter to local online cruisers

2011-11-30T08:20:00.000-05:00

Dear gay and/or bisexual men of the tri-state area with online profiles,

I am a visually-oriented person.

Now, I know what you think that means. You’re assuming I’m telling you I need porn to get off. A hot movie playing on the TV, or a magazine with sticky pages sitting on the side of the bed. Maybe some good old-fashioned homemade nasty photos waiting to be flicked through on your iPhone. Yeah, that. Well, no. Not that at all.

What it really means is that my memory is shot. If you want me to keep track of who you are, I kind of need to know what you look like. That’s it.

I know you’ve got a really memorable profile name fashioned from letters and numbers that may seem random to me—like cbtg432—but make perfect sense to you. Or maybe you’ve chosen a name like nybottom123 to distinguish yourself from the hundred and twenty-two New York bottoms who boldly tread before. You’ve made a lot of effort to keep your profile cryptic, with all your Ask Mes and Not Answereds. I get it. You like that veil of mystery that lures the guys in. You really, really want them to ask you. It’s not just that you overlooked the questions. I understand.

But you know, there’s something about those profiles in which they all start really to run together, somehow. It’s not that after a while all the names start to look like a big ol’ steamin’ bowl of Campbell’s Pornographic Alphabet Soup. It’s not simply that all the Ask Mes begin to mesmerize me into a hypnotic trance. It’s the fact that you’ve left your photos blank—or that you have uploaded them, but locked them all and never offer to unlock them—that drives me around the bend.

I'm old. I'm really old. I'm practically senile. I need a little help here, and you're not giving it to me.

Case in point: the guy with the minimal profile who, by way of seductive technique, unlocks his photos for him in lieu of saying hello. It might be true that I viewed your photos and said, Hey, thanks for unlocking. You’re a handsome dude. And it might be true that I replied in the affirmative when you suggested we get together some time in the future. But when you immediately relock those photos and email me two weeks later to ask if we are ever going to get together, I’m sorry. I’m not going to remember you by your profile name of ctbottom001. I’m not going to clue in on what words we might’ve exchanged from your minimal profile. If you showed me your photos again—ah, yes. Then I would remember. If you left them displayed all the time, certainly I would. I am a visually-oriented person. I need that photo of your face to associate all your Ask Mes with a real person.

Hell, even that blurry photo of your hip that you flashed me might trigger some kind of recall. Because your sorry profile isn’t doing the trick.

Case number two: Mr. BBRT profile without an unlocked photo or description, thanks for informing me that you and I talked on Manhunt. Helpful! Except it’s not, because apparently your cryptic name on BBRT is different from whatever name you chose on Manhunt. If you’d told me the other site’s profile name, or unlocked your photo so I’d recognize it, or given me some kind of clue as to whom you might be, maybe I’d have more patience and actually reply to your emails after you didn’t seem to pick up on the hint I gave you when I responded, I have no idea what you look like. Why would I meet?

Of course, after I ignore you for a solid three weeks, when you finally unlock your photos and I discover you’re the asshole from Manhunt who stood me up not once, but twice, making me wait over an hour each time before I found out you were going to be a no-show, I can kind of understand why you were reluctant to identify yourself.

So gentlemen. Let’s recap. Want me to remember you? Have some kind of photo in your profile—something visible. Don’t make me ask you to unlock, every time. Even a picture of your fucking kneecap is going to be more memorable than a standard icon of a lock. I’m not going to meet you because of that kneecap alone, but at least instead of thinking Huh? Who dat? I’ll think, Well hey, it’s that weirdo who doesn’t show anything more than a kneecap. Howdy, stranger.

And also, if you stand me up twice, don’t be surprised I’m not all that anxious to give you a shot at doing it a third time.

But that’s ancillary to my point. Which is: I am a visually-oriented person.

Yours truly.

Earl's Discovery

2011-11-29T08:20:00.000-05:00

No alarm rings, the morning of an especially bad day. No easy portents signal its coming. No cracked mirrors, or ravens on the lawn, no black clouds on the horizon. No spooky organ music plays in the background, or moody atmospheric synths create sounds of unease.

This particular bad day, which happened shortly before my senior year of high school, when I was sixteen, I remember as sunny and warm. Richmond had a sultry and humid haze draped over it, like mosquito netting on a still afternoon. My summer school classes were over, and I had a short period before my final two semesters commenced. What had I done that day? I don’t remember much. I’d laid around the house, and played with the cats. I’d helped my mom in the garden in the morning, because I recall smelling the indelible scent of crushed tomato leaves on my fingertips when bad things started happening, later in the day. I’d steered my bike along back streets and quiet, dozy neighborhoods to Willey Drugs, where I’d purchased a grape Nehi from the vending machine purring outside its door. And then I’d ridden down Bellevue and turned a corner and let my Raleigh touring bike clatter down onto the sidewalk in Earl’s back yard.

We’d fucked, up in his bedroom. I can remember that fuck, even—how wet my hair was from the heat, relieved only by a tiny box fan perched at an angle in his back window. Earl had taken me silently and roughly on his bed, thrusting into me with quiet, urgent grunts. It was so hot that he seemed loath to let our skin touch in any more places than necessary. His cock filled my ass, and occasionally the tops of his thighs would meet the back of mine; the flat of his hands rested on the soles of my feet. His fingers curled around my toes. Otherwise, it was too hot and we were both too clammy to touch. Even when he came, he seemed in a hurry to disengage and let our mutual temperatures mingle. His sperm spilled from my hole, onto the sheets. I lay there with my legs sprawled to either side, my hands above my head.

He tumbled beside me. On a clock, my feet would have pointed at four, and his at seven. Our heads met in the middle, intimate and familiar, next to each other in the mattress’ center. His hands stroked my hair lightly. Then we dozed a while.

I don’t remember any particular signs of doom in that afternoon, no auguries, no ill tidings. Merely a hot bath of an afternoon in which we both soaked, while we listened to Q-94 softly playing on the clock radio by Earl’s bed.

I must have fallen asleep at some point. I nap badly; I wake up confused and crabby and dazed. I always have, and on this stifling afternoon it was no different. Only this time I had been startled by Earl slamming something down on the dresser. “God damn it,” he muttered. I tried to blink the nap from my eyes and come to, but it was like surfacing from dozens of feet beneath the ocean’s surface. It takes time, no matter how urgently one has to breathe. “God damn it,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” I mumbled.

“Did you see a clip with some money under the mirror?” he asked. On his dresser, Earl kept one of his mother’s old mirrors. The frame was antique, and white, and quite ugly to my eyes. He used it as a kind of catch-all for the contents of his pockets at day’s end, for his combs and change and the horehound drops he occasionally carried. I told him I hadn’t. “God damn it,” he said a third time. “Jim!”

The sheets beneath me seemed drenched with sweat and cum, but I didn’t want to move, because the area around me might have been worse. I also dreaded that moment when the fan would inevitably blow on my moist flesh and cause me to shiver. I watched as Earl stomped out of the room and across the upstairs hallway, over to the little stair that led to the attic room that Jim claimed as his own. His voice was angry as he barked his boyfriend’s name up the stair. “Did you take my god-damned money out from under the mirror on my dresser?”

I couldn’t hear Jim’s reply, but I could tell they were starting to argue. I’d heard their arguments before—they were loud and impossible to miss, really. “No, I’m sure I didn’t lose it,” Earl was snapping. “I’m the one who actually keeps track of his money, remember?” A pause. “About two hundred dollars. I don’t know. Maybe more.” Another pause, while Jim said something. “Thanks for being so helpful. Asshole,” he muttered, as he stomped back into the room.

I didn’t say anything as Jim began rooting around his dresser like a madman. Pennies clattered to the ground as he lifted up the mirror, checked the underside, and then laid it on the bed. He lifted up the lids on the old tea set sitting to one side, and let his fingers dig through his mother’s old Wedgewood box. Through the drawers he rooted, letting stuff fly and hit the floor. Not a word did he say to me. I was so uncomfortable that I began to brave the fan and rise so I could find my clothes and sneak out before the fight got out of hand.

Then. “Shit.” He stood stock-still for a moment. “Shit.” He called Jim’s name at the top of his voice. I heard his boyfriend yell back. Then, after a moment, I heard the thud of his heels on the floor above us, and the insolent shuffle as finally he headed toward the stairs.

I had on my shorts and shirt by the time Jim appeared in the room, naked except for a leather cock ring and a subsiding hard-on from his masturbation. He had a cigarette in hand. He looked at the room’s disarray. “What the fuck did you lose now?”

“Where’s my watch?” Earl snapped. When Jim started to point to a wristwatch on the dresser, Earl almost shouted, “Where is my father’s god-damned pocket watch?” I looked over at the dress, now. Earl usually kept his favorite pocket watch on the mirror he used as a tray. It wasn’t anywhere to be seen. The two of them stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. Then without warning, Earl broke free of the deadlock and bolted for the closet.

Jim started to say things. I don’t remember what they were. They were protestations of innocence, I’m certain, weak disclaimers of ignorance. All I remember is looking at him as his mouth moved and those little mewling noises came out and thinking to myself, This man is lying. I am watching a man lie to his lover.

And them Jim looked at me, and seemed to know what I was thinking. His expression relaxed as he realized I was staring at him with dislike, and contempt. For a microsecond, his shoulders sagged. If we’d been in a silent movie, there would’ve been a subtitle after his close-up: Aw, c’mon, kid. Give me a break. I never meant any of that crap I gave you. I was just kidding around.

Then another close-up on me, the self-righteous ice queen, frosty and unmoving: Fuck you.

Earl kept the rest of his precious pocket watch collection in another of his mother’s antiques, an old silverware case that he kept in the back of his closet. While Jim and I had been glaring at each other, he’d managed to pull it out from under the shoeboxes and detritus lying atop it. He opened the lid, then the drawers.

They were empty.

This is how bad things arrive—in a rush of words and fear, in a whirlwind of activity and with the prickle of adrenaline in every limb and up and down the spinal cord. My head started to pound in time with my speeding heart as Earl stood up, kicked the old wooden case so that it went spinning across the floor, and then grabbed one of his shoes. A shiny penny loafer, I remember. “What the fuck did you do?” he growled at Jim, as he brandished the shoe so that its wooden heel was a club.

“Nothing!” Jim squeaked. I could tell he was still lying. And if I could tell, Earl surely could.

“Get out. Go downstairs,” Earl barked at me.

I didn’t have to be told twice. I ran the hell out and down the stairs, and through the dining room and kitchen and out the back door, where I sat on their wooden porch and buried my face in my hands. That’s when I smelled that sharp, unmistakable scent of tomato on my fingers and remembered helping my mom in the garden that morning. I wished that I was still there, boring as the work was. Anywhere but here, listening to the raised voices inside, the sounds of books and valuables hitting the floor, of shouting and recriminations and the unending litany of ills, imagined and real both. The sounds of a bad thing arriving and parking itself squarely in my life, unannounced and unheralded, unwanted.

It seemed like forever before Earl came storming out of the back door. He had managed to put on a pair of shorts and wore a T-shirt with a UVA logo on it. “Well,” he said as he sat down beside me. “It seems like Jim’s little friend went through the house last night and took anything that’s portable and valuable. Topher,” he said, when he saw me opening my mouth to ask. “Funny how he knew exactly where everything of real value was.”

I think I apologized, and then caught myself halfway through. Earl disliked when I apologized for something that wasn’t my fault, and I was trying back then to correct myself of the bad habit. (I still do it.) “If you want to be helpful,” Earl said, “you could go over to Topher’s house and take him a message.”
I think Earl expected my immediate reply to be What? instead of what I said, which was, “Why me?”

He stared at me for a moment. He was still angry from the discovery of his missing stuff. His answer came out condescending and snide. “You don’t really think I could go over there, do you? Or god knows, Jim?”

I got it. I didn’t need more explanation. Not in that tone of voice. “You want me to go now?” I was supposed to be home for dinner soon.

He did. “You tell him. . . .” He paused while he thought about it. “You tell him that I’m not mad.” Which was plainly not true. “And tell him that if he brings back everything—everything—I’ll forget about it. Don’t tell him he won’t ever be bringing his sorry little ass back here after that, because he won’t. Just tell him to bring back my god-damned stuff.” Then he rose, and without a thank-you, stalked back into the house.

I had my orders. I collected my bike, and went to carry them out, like the dutiful soldier I was.

Caught

2011-11-28T08:20:00.000-05:00

One of the questions I repeatedly get asked is if I’ve ever gotten caught. There must be some kind of ‘getting caught’ fetish out there that taps into a strain of humiliation I’ve never properly appreciated—because for a good portion of my life, getting caught is the last thing I’ve wanted.

I didn’t want it as a kid when I was cruising the restrooms and parks. The one time it happened, it definitely wasn’t a kinky thrill—if anything it made me swear off having sex forever. Or more precisely, for about three or four days, which is an eternity to a pair of teen nuts. I didn’t want it in college, when I was trying very hard to fit in and stay in the closet, so that my Young Republicans governing-board-prominent college boyfriend could protect his reputation. Getting caught doesn’t thrill me in general, I’m afraid, so when I’m in a situation when it might possibly occur, I take precautions. I don’t screw guys by the front door. I leave an escape route, or the door closed, or better yet, closed and locked.

There have been a couple of times when I found myself intruded upon without expectation, though. The worst was during my full-time years at the university.

I was teaching at the time, and had a committee appointment that I absolutely hated. At the time, the university was doing some kind of showy initiative that was designed to make it look like it was busy examining every aspect of its operation from top to bottom, in order to transform it into a more efficient operation. What it really turned out to be was the university throwing a bundle of cash at a corporation to purchase the efficiency package, dick around with it in committees for about six years, and then to abandon it without mention when the next university president stepped in. At that point, though, I was in a committee that was busy designing and collecting pointless surveys that we all knew were going to be ignored when they reached a level higher than ours.

It was pretty thankless. Making the decision to leave that place was a good thing, though it certainly took me long enough to do it.

Anyway. My office was on the top floor of a newer building, directly across from the receptionist for the graduate school. All day I’d have a good view of the grad students and the new prospects going in and out of that office, armed with their applications and their forms for graduation and their course catalogs. A lot of them were quite cute. But I never hit on any of them until I was nearing the second year in that office.

I was walking to the men’s room very late one afternoon, a little bit after five o’clock. All the staff in that place poured out in the direction of the parking decks at 4:59, so I wasn’t surprised that the grad school office door was closed when I stepped into the hallway. A young guy was there, looking up at the door as if staring at it might cause it to open. “They’re gone for the day,” I told him.

He stared at me. He had an application for the grad school in his hand. He couldn’t have been more than 20 or 21 at most. His hair was shaggy and dark, and his eyebrows were like hairbrushes. He had dark slits of eyes that turned down at the ends, giving him the look of a sleepy dreamer. He wasn’t big or thin. Merely a round-shouldered kid in oversized clothes who was cute enough to make me look him up and down a few times before I turned to go. “They won’t be back tonight?”

“Not after five,” I told him, and then nodded before I went on my way.

I was in the restroom, not very far from my office, peeing at the urinal when I heard the door open. Someone stepped up next to me. It was the kid. My dick instantly started to harden, because I could tell from they way he pulled out his mouth into a half-smile and looked at me through those dreamy, droopy eyes that he’d followed me there deliberately. I’d honestly needed to pee, just seconds before, but when he stood there next to me with his fly open, pretending to look down at his own dick but really allowing his eyes to flit over to mine, my sphincter slammed shut. My hand trembled. I moved back a little, and held my hard dick in my hand, so he could see it.

This wasn’t a cruisy restroom. It wasn’t the library on campus, which I hit religiously for undergraduate tail. It wasn’t the basement of the art building, where I used to fuck with students when I wanted to do more than under-the-stall action. This was the restroom that the university president himself used, when he was trying to appear democratic and a man of the people, or if his secretary was using his personal and private toilet. Stuff like this didn’t happen in this particular john. The kid showed off his own dick, which was a respectable pickle of about five inches, blunt and fat and curved. Then he reached out for me.

I heard voices in the hallway. “Not here,” I told the kid. “Back in my office.” I zipped up and thrust my hands into my pockets so that hopefully my erection wouldn’t be plainly seen by any colleagues we happened to pass. He followed at a respectful distance, his backpack slung in front of the bulging part of his body. The halls were dead, though. Everyone had gone home.

In my office, with the doors closed, we went at each other. My mouth was on his, my hands were on his back, his butt, his groin. He was submissive in his kisses, sighing softly and tilting his head back as I ground my mouth against his. His pants hit the floor, and he stepped out of them.. He unbuckled my zipper and let loose the beast from my underwear. His mouth on my dick felt amazing. The kid clearly knew what to do.

I pulled him back to my chair and sat down. He knelt on the carpet with his naked backside poked beneath my steel desk, eyes closed, nursing on my dick. I spread my knees wide apart and settle back for a long and sloppy blow job.

And then I heard the sound of a key in the door.

The next few seconds seemed to take a thousand years to pass. I couldn’t think who the fuck would possibly have a key, other than the custodians—and they came through in the early mornings. My mind began making up a thousand possible explanations as to why I had my pants down and a naked boy on my floor. Then I panicked because the kid’s pants were on the other side of the room, right at the door. Oh, it was terrible.

At the very last moment I yanked my desk chair forward so that my naked lower half rolled beneath the desk. The kid, who had frozen at the sound of the key, folded himself into a ball and shivered there, in the shadows. The door opened, sweeping the pants behind it. And in walked the Vice President of the division. “Oh, hello,” he said, as if he’d almost expected me there. “I thought I’d leave this last batch of surveys on your desk.”

Now, mind you, I had a mail box in the main office, ten steps from this guy’s own door. I had a drop box outside my own office. And yet this guy had to use his master key to barge on in to drop some useless forms onto my desk personally? I just stared at him, ready to drop some useless comment about how I’d, um, been changing into my jeans when he stopped in. Instead, I just said, “Okay, thanks.”

He started to leave. Then, at the door, he paused, and opened his mouth. Oh fuck, I thought to myself. He knows. He’s going to fire me. “Did you see that article in the Chronicle this week about. . . ?”

I didn’t hear much after that. I nodded and stammered and sat stock still and just waited for him to get the fuck out of my office. When he eventually did, he was none the wiser, I’m pretty sure.

I rolled my chair out. The kid was still sitting on the floor, wearing only his shirt, trembling like a leaf.

I think we gave it the old college try after that, but the noise of footsteps in the hall made us both jumpy and nervous, and eventually we gave it up. The chemicals our bodies had been producing during those tense moments didn’t make us want to lunge at each other with abandon. They made us stink like we’d been lifting old tires all afternoon. It was decidedly unsexy. I collected his pants from the flat pancake they’d formed from being shoved between the wall and the door, we both dressed, and we parted.

I never saw that kid again. I kind of imagine he might’ve looked for some other graduate school.

A Fucking Rock Star

2011-11-22T08:20:00.000-05:00

“It’s your fucking fault!” The man’s face was inches from mine. When he spoke, spittle would fly from his mouth. “You sit there, dressed up all fancy.” I was wearing a pair of dark jeans and a Perry Ellis shirt that I’d picked up for less than ten dollars on a much-pawed-over Macy’s rack, as well as a pair of boots from the deep discount rack of DSW that weighed more in pounds than they cost in dollars. “Smelling so sweet.” I had used soap in the shower, that morning. “And looking so fucking fine.”

Well, I couldn’t argue that one.

The man continued in so strident a voice that everyone in the bar was turning around to look at him. Considering that the little Westchester bar was fairly full, and loud karaoke was going on in the background, he was making a pretty considerable racket “You do all that and it’s no fucking wonder that men like me drink too much. We drink too much because it takes all our fucking nerve to talk to you!” I laughed, because it’s the only thing I could do. “You know what?” he said, leaning in closer. His eyes half-closed, and he stabbed a stubby finger in my face. “You’re smug. You’re real . . . smug.”

It was at that moment I realized I had a problem on my hands. Because when a drunk starts telling you that you’re smug, the next thing he wants to do, always, is to wipe that smug smile right off your mouth.

I’d been at the bar for about an hour by the time this guy had come in. He was tall and had the kind of looks that probably had turned heads for just about all five of his decades. Immediately upon his arrival, he’d gone up and down the bar and lifted guys out of their seats and up into the air in a show of strength and, I guess, a supreme indifference to personal space. I’d watched him out of the corner of my eye while pretending to listen to the karaoke singers, thinking to myself, Man, why couldn’t that guy be hitting on me?

And of course, it turned out to be one of those prime examples in which I should’ve been careful for what I wished for.

When the guy began giving me flirty little glances a few minutes after he walked in, I felt a little bit tingly and vindicated. When he started making his way over, eyes locked with mine, I felt my dick stirring in my jeans. When he leaned forward and rasped at me, “Are you Scandinavian?” and his breath was so flammable that I wanted to move the open tealight candle on my table, I felt pretty certain that he was rip-roaring, stone-cold drunk.

“Uh, my ancestors were mostly from Scotland,” I said to him. Immediately my mood changed from aroused to amused.

“Like Craig Ferguson.” He had one of those accents I recognized as utterly New York. It wasn’t exaggerated, like an old-fashioned wise-cracking cabbie from a movie. It was distinct, though.

“Yes, exactly like Craig Ferguson,” I agreed.

“I have a big dick,” he announced next.

I’d arrived at the bar that evening with a friend of mine who was sitting across the little table from me. I looked in his direction with an appeal for help. He, however, started snickering to himself, pretending he was with the guys at the bar behind him, and recording the conversation for posterity on his Facebook wall. “Wow,” I said, when I realized I wasn’t going to get any assistance from that quarter. “Okay!”

“It’s real big,” he repeated. “It’s really going to hurt when I fuck you.” I was on a high stool; the guy used the outside of his thigh to part my knees and stand between them. When he swooped in to—well, I thought he was going to take a chomp out of my neck, but apparently he only wanted to lick it—I ducked.

“Wow,” I said once more. “You know, I think you really need to work on that sales pitch there.”

He was staring at me as if he’d been hypnotized. “Are you Scandinavian?”

“Scottish.”

“Like Craig Ferguson?”

“Like Craig Ferguson,” I said, pretty openly laughing at his face again.

“I have a big. . . .”

“You kind of covered that.” I gently and discreetly eased him back to a length at which my aged eyes could actually focus on him.

“You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna take you over to the dam, right up to the top. Then I’m going to throw you down to the bottom and fuck you!”

The Kensico Dam is less than a mile from this particular bar. “I’m going to be at the bottom and you’ll fuck me from the very top? Your dick is three hundred feet long?” He blinked slowly at me, not comprehending. “Okay. How big is it?” I didn’t really need an answer to that question, given that I could feel it pressing against my right knee, but I held my flattened palms three inches apart and very slowly drew them apart. “Tell me when to stop.”

It was a very long time before I stopped. “That’s it,” he finally told me.

“Not bad,” I nodded, impressed. “About sixteen inches.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“How old do I look?” I asked. I usually don’t play that game, but I wanted to know what his answer was going to be.

“Thirty-one?”

Across the table, my friend tittered. “YES,” I said with great affirmation. “You are COMPLETELY RIGHT. I am EXACTLY THIRTY-ONE YEARS OLD.”

“Are you Scandinavian?” he wanted to know again.

Across the table, my friend posted more status messages to Facebook. I silently damned him under my breath.

Over the next few minutes, when it became obvious that the guy was not going anywhere, I managed to find out that he drove a city bus up and down Fifth Avenue for a living, and that his soul was empty (his words) from the job. “You’ve never driven inna city before,” he said, sucking down another gin and tonic and somehow managing to unbutton the top three buttons on my shirt. “I can tell. You’re nice. Nice people don’t drive in the city.” Well, that one I could easily believe. “You’re hot. I want to fuck you. Are you gonna give me your number?”

“I will make sure you get my number before you go,” I assured him, knowing that if he couldn’t remember whether or not I was Scandinavian, I wasn’t likely to have to follow through. I buttoned myself back up and glared at my friend, who by this point was just sitting with his back reclined and his hands over his stomach as he enjoyed the show.

“There’s a place five minutes from here?” said the drunk. “It’s an underpass? And the high school kids hang out there during the day?”

“That’s nice,” I said, pulling his hands off my zipper.

“And someone’s painted something in spray paint there and it says, I’m a fucking rock star.” I nodded. “So what does it mean?”

“That someone’s a fucking rock star?”

“No!” He seemed firm on this point. “You say it.”

“I’m a fucking rock star.”

“Mean it.”

“I’m a fucking rock star,” I said, still laughing. “So are you, mister.”

“Damn straight. Two fucking rock stars.” He took another drink. “I’ve got money. I’ve got a 1992 Benz. I’ve got a big dick. And you’re going to get in my car and we’re going to drive there and I’m gonna fuck you in the back seat. But I’m big. So it’s going to hurt.”

“It’s tempting,” I said tactfully, “but it’s really too late and cold to go to some overpass to fuck.” Not to mention he was too drunk and weird.

That’s when he announced, with increasing frustration and anger, “It’s your fucking fault! You sit there, dressed up all fancy. Smelling so sweet. And looking so fucking fine. You do all that and it’s no fucking wonder that men like me drink too much. We drink too much because it takes all our fucking nerve to talk to you!” I probably shouldn’t have chuckled at that moment, but it was my way of trying not to take him too seriously. “You know what? You’re smug. You’re real . . . smug.”

When I realized he was on the borderline between merely inebriated and potentially violent, I immediately did some backpedaling. “Hey,” I told him, holding open my arms. “Give me a hug.” He leaned forward and fell heavily against me. “You’re a good guy,” I told him. “Very handsome. I thought so when you walked into the bar. But I think you’ve had a little too much to drink. Okay?” I held him at arm’s length and looked him in the eyes. I raised my eyebrows and bobbled my head a little. I felt like I was talking to my son, not a fifty-year-old man. “Okay?” I repeated.

At last he nodded. “I do kinda feel like I’ve gotta vomit,” he admitted.

Because, you know, after I have a big dick and it’s really going to hurt you, those are the exact words that will charm my thirty-one-year-old self into the back seat of a guy's 1992 Benz.

An Anniversary

2011-11-21T08:20:00.000-05:00

I wasn't necessarily planning to write about this particular topic, but it's been on my mind all weekend. Better to get it out.

Saturday was the anniversary of the night I met Spencer, last year, in my old home state. We'd spoken online a couple of times before that and I'd kind of written him off as a flaky whore. I didn't mind the whore part. Flaky, however, I only like in pie crusts. But I was horny, and he was available, so I issued the invitation.

I was charmed off my feet by him, that Friday. When he came back the next night, I knew I wanted him in my life. Night after night he came back until our emotions were as inextricably intertwined as the impossible sexual poses in which he'd grip me with his strong dancer's legs. I loved him, and told him so. He loved me, and would whisper the words as we'd drift off to sleep together, curled beneath layers of flannel sheets and blankets and his impossible fortresses of extra pillows, while snow fell to blanket the frozen ground outside.

For months we made love and spent all our free time together. I'd like to romanticize the relationship further and say that it was simple and uncomplicated, but it wasn't—we both knew the time was coming when my house would eventually sell and that we'd part ways. That knowledge is what made the relationship difficult for us both. It made him occasionally snippy and prone to verbal digs, as he tried to separate himself from me before we were too rooted together. It made me morose and prone to guilt and doubt. I worried too much that I was doing the wrong thing by allowing him to love me so deeply.

Despite the complications, we ended the relationship on a loving high note. When my house sold after a year and I finally made plans to reunite with my family, already living on the East coast, I worried that he'd pick some kind of fight on the pretext of it being easier to part from me angry than sad. But no, he was sweet and loving and supportive until the very night before I threw my overnight bags and the cats in the car and left Michigan for good. At a going-away party given me by friends that night, he was there, sitting next to me the entire time. He'd been everything to me, that last year. I had the spouse on my right side and Spencer on the left, and it seemed right.

Sad, but right.

I'd thought this month about the anniversary a couple of times in an idle fashion—it occurred to me that it had been in November of 2010 that we'd met, and that I should check on the date at some point. I didn't do anything about it, though, until last week when Spencer messaged me. We met this month a year ago!he said.

I checked my journal on my computer. November 19th. The best day of 2010 I had, I wrote back.
Saturday he messaged me again. You're one of my favorite people. I still treasure the time we had together . . . especially those long snowed-in days. Then he closed with his love.

Well. I couldn't have asked for anything nicer.

I read it and burst into tears that I had to hide and muffle in the bathroom.

And now that I had to look at the message again to copy it, I'm crying again, though I'm having to pretend I'm not, even as fat tears scald my cheeks.

But you know what? That's okay. I said above that the relationship Spencer and I had wasn't pure and uncomplicated, but I was a damned liar. It really was. No matter what the gap in our ages, no matter that we separated, never mind the stupid arguments we sometimes had or the words we both feared to say out of fear of hurting the other—none of that mattered in the end. For a time, a blissful and wine-sweet time, we were two boys in love. We took delight in each other's bodies, in each other's whims and palates. We saw parting on the horizon from the moment we met, and yet we both threw ourselves into the deep with abandon.

There's not much purer or more uncomplicated than that.

Sunday Morning Questions: Little Island Big City Edition

2011-11-20T08:20:00.000-05:00

New York City is a small town.

I know you think I'm crazy for saying so, but it seems as if every time I head into the city, I run into someone unexpectedly. I head to a bar for the evening where no one should know me, and a reader will recognize me. I'll spend an afternoon at a museum, and then find later that someone's hit me up on Manhunt with, Think you're hot, were you looking at Venetian paintings earlier this afternoon?

Or, as happened Friday, I ran into a reader without knowing it. I went into the city for a show and went into Uniqlo, a clothing store, before dinner. I was there for about an hour, maybe, and then went on my merry way. Saturday, one of my most long-term readers sent me a message saying he'd seen me at Uniqlo and didn't want to startle me by saying hello. All I could really do was respond in the most predictable manner possible for me: I asked how my hair had been looking.

When the answer came that it had been looking pretty sensational, I was free to chew out the guy for not saying hello.

Because really—if you recognize me out there in the big wide world, the time to say hi is not after I've been away from the Venetian paintings for a few hours. It's not the day after I've been trying on jackets. It's when you see me at the museum or while we're both at Uniqlo.

There's ways to say hello and ways to say hello, of course. I'm not going to appreciate it if a reader yells across the cashmere sweaters, HEY AREN'T YOU THAT SEX BLOGGER?! Walking up to me, shaking my hand, putting a palm on my shoulder and telling me quietly that you're a reader, though? That works.

As a general warning, I'll probably be taking off the latter half of the upcoming week, what with the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. Feel free to send me nude photos of you and your turkeys, if you dare.

(I'm kind of hoping that someone out there does dare.)

Let's get to some more questions from formspring.me, shall we? And please, feel free to ask your questions of me there—I've opened up the anonymous posting option once more.

Last time you bottomed for a man? How old was he?

The last time I bottomed to completion for a man was about 9 years ago. He was in his fifties.

Is there anything you find your partners are generally inhibited doing, that you wish they did more spontaneously / proactively?

All the damned time.

Oh, you wanted specifics? I think what irritates me most is when men are too inhibited to give me any kind of feedback during the act, whether verbal, physical, or even just a grunt here or there. If a guy's just going to lie there, I might as well bang a corpse or a sack of potatoes. And I'd prefer neither, thank you.

I also wish men were less inhibited about getting out from behind their computer screens and meeting in the flesh. The Internet might be great for porn, but it has created countless homebound prisoners, none of whom have been forced into electronic ankle bracelets.

A serious question from a Kinsey 6: Does the vagina really smell like fish?

No.

A vagina will acquire an odor when it's not washed. But you know, the ol' bait and tackle don't smell that great when not exposed to a shower, either.

My answer to this question will not stop me from yelling, when I feed my fat cat dried mackerel flakes, "It smells like a Korean brothel in here!"

what advice would you give to someone about to try bottoming for the first time?

I'd suggest playing with your hole--at first in a clean environment like the shower, and when you're accustomed to the feelings, perhaps with small toys and multiple fingers. Get used to the sensations, and be aware that a dick is going to stretch you even wider.

I'd suggest cleaning out beforehand, for your peace of mind, and for your partner's hygiene.

Above all, I'd suggest remembering that sex is supposed to be fun. You might not enjoy bottoming the first time--but it will rapidly grow more enjoyable. If it's embarrassing or painful, don't beat yourself up. Move on to another activity, and come back to anal another time.

Hypothetical situation: I have come to visit you and I offer to perform any one act you desire, what can I do for you?

Touch me and rub me all over with your hands, from head to foot, for as long as you can stand it.

It's probably the one thing I crave that I rarely get, and you'd be doing me a big favor.

This may be from an era gone by, but.... Have you ever been to a drive in movie? And if you have, what was the last movie you saw at a drive in? Is there one left in your area?

I distinctly remember seeing my one drive-in movie when I was four or five years old. It had Phyllis Diller in it, and she scared me silly.

There was a large drive-in in Dearborn, when I used to live in Michigan, but I never had the urge or opportunity to go.

What is your favorite flavor of Ice Cream?

I'm really fond of a red velvet cake-flavored frozen yogurt from a dairy store near me, but I found a recent contender for new favorite when I visited Pinkberry and discovered their peanut butter-flavored yogurt. It's nutty and, best of all, salty.

Generally I'm fond of coffee-flavored frozen desserts, too.

Reading your post about the guy whose mind had been overtaken by porn dialog, has porn and the proliferation of its availability been a net plus or minus for guys?

It's a mixed bag with a lot of plusses and minuses.

One plus would be that there's porn out there for everyone—every fetish, every kink, every body type, every combination of age and race and gender. It's also sanitary and means the only thing you have to clean up after is the messy discharge. You won't catch a disease from porn. And perhaps most importantly, it might expose a person to acts they've contemplated and not known how to go about, and it can act as an instruction manual of sorts, and even an encouragement to take action.

The minuses are just as plentiful. Porn often gives people unreasonable expectations not only about what their own bodies should look like, but what they 'deserve' in a partner—the number of men I've met in my lifetime who feel genuinely entitled to 'porn star quality' sex partners is astounding, particularly when they're not exactly porn star material themselves. Porn glosses over the messy and difficult parts of sex, so that when they happen naturally, the people participating can feel like failures unless they're fairly experienced. And the abundance of porn also has created a whole mass of people who stay at home and masturbate for hours on end, instead of meeting people and actually having sex.

As an enhancement to a sex life, I think porn is great. As a replacement for it, not so much.

What is your favourite accent? and why?

My favorite accent is the one I hear when my partner speaks with a pillow in his mouth.

Open Forum Friday: Cleaning Out

2011-11-18T08:20:00.000-05:00

I'm going to name-drop, here. Bear with me. It'll pass quickly, and then we'll get to the topic for our open forum.

Yesterday I was on the phone with my friend, porn actor Jayson Park. I've plugged his thoughtful and well-written blog before, and I'll encourage you all to go and vote for him as Best Porn Star in the Cybersocket Surfer's Choice Awards. (If I'm not getting nominated for Best Sex Blog, it'd be nice to have one of Breeder's Readers win something, right?) Anyway. He and I were chatting about various things, and we happened on the subject of cleanliness and anal sex.

"I don't like making big sweeping generalizations about groups of people," he said to me. "Especially tops. But it always seems to me like tops don't have to do as much to prepare for a fuck. Not compared to us bottoms."

"No," I assured him. "You're totally right. I figure if my teeth are brushed and my breath smells nice, the rest of me doesn't stink, all I need to do is rinse off my dick and I'm good to go."

Which is not to say, by the way, that tops aren't without responsibilities and pressures of our own. We have to keep our dicks rigid for the duration, for example—something a bottom doesn't have to worry about. We're expected to know how to handle a bottom guy, which can be off-putting for guys wanting to top but don't have much experience. From some bottoms, we're under pressure to say the right things, hit the right buttons, follow every cue. But cleanliness isn't generally near the top of anyone's list of the tough things about topping.

I expressed to Jayson something that really doesn't get said enough, not by me, not by many tops in general. I truly do recognize and appreciate all the extra effort a bottom goes through in order to prepare for a fuck. The effort the good and thoughtful ones take, anyway.

We've discussed in this blog and in my comments before how the spread of easily-available pornography may have prompted the current taste for squeaky-clean assholes during fucking. Enemas and comprehensive douching certainly weren't the norm when I started having sex in the nineteen-seventies, at least not in the backwater town where I was growing up. I was lucky to have one of those holes that wasn't particularly dirty under most circumstances; the most I had to do in order to prepare for marathon fucks was hop in the shower, soap up the outside of the hole, and maybe insert a wet finger a couple of inches in and wiggle it around a bit. Maybe.

And of course these days, men go to much greater lengths to clean out before a fuck. They buy enema bulbs and install nozzles onto their showers. They go through cleansing rituals that can last for an hour or more. I've been through them myself, from time to time. Oddly, though I never seem to mind the noises and the smells when they're coming from someone else, when I've had to do it, I've found it embarrassing. It's a mortification of the flesh, essentially, and while it's happening I'm usually shuddering and pulling faces and wishing that I was anywhere but in that shower, or on that john, or bent over with my belly full and aching and with water shooting out of my backside.

No, there aren't any pics. Pervs.

So bottoms of the world, trust me. When I say I appreciate what you go through to clean up for me, I mean it. It's the reason I show up when we've made a date in advance, because I know you've built the time to clean out into that day's schedule. It's why I understand and accommodate when you need me to come over in ninety minutes, rather than the fifteen it would actually take me to get there. It's why I understand your massive frustration when you've made a date with another top and he's stood you up—it's not just because you need the dick in your hole, but also because you've made a pretty significant investment of time, effort, and a measure of personal humiliation, even before you found out he wouldn't be coming.

It's why, when I'm presented with a fresh-smelling and soapy ass, I really like to show my appreciation. It's why I love to rim and bite and get in there and make the hole sing before I lube up and thrust my meat deep inside you. You guys flatter me when you take the time and effort to clean up for me like that. I don't take it for granted. I want you to realize that, every time we meet.

I'm curious about the attitudes of others, though. Bottom men—is cleaning embarrassing and unpleasant for you, or is it a no-big-deal kind of thing? Do you find that most tops take your efforts for granted, and if so, how do you feel about it? Or don't you clean out at all?

And tops, how about you guys? Do you think about how clean the bottoms are when you're in them, and the steps they've taken to get that way? Or is cleanliness not quite the issue for you as it is for them?

I'm willing to bet there's a lot about the other side that both perspectives take for granted. It never hurts to open our eyes and think about things, right?

Bound

2011-11-17T08:20:00.000-05:00

We've been going at each other for long minutes. Passionate minutes, in which nothing seems as necessary as being next to each other. Not breathing, not the constant pulses of our own hearts. None of it is as important as my lips on his, my hands on his nipples, my cock thrust against the fur of his stomach.

There's a mirror standing in the corner of his bedroom, one that stands as tall as I when I'm on my feet. It's angled in a way that I can't see myself, though. I can't look to see if my lips are as red and swollen as they feel, like cherries ripe to bursting. I can't tell if my face is flushed, if my chest is prickled with the red heat he arouses in me. My dick feels not only engorged, but enlarged, an enormous monster on the loose, needing to devour and be devoured in turn. This is the way it's been for nearly an hour by this point, and we're just coming down the gentle slope of need and urgency into a softer and more restful place. "Will you do something for me?" I feel emboldened to say.

"What do you want?" He's anxious to please. "Anything."

Franco's collection of leather goods is laid out on one side of his large bed. They're for my convenience, my whim. I feel the cold ring of his harness digging into my back, where I lay on my side. His dick is in my hand. "Would you. . . ." I take a deep breath, and will myself to say the words. They don't come. ". . . dress up in a French maid's uniform for me?"

His dick doubles in size in my hand. Then, confused, he asks, "What?"

"Wait a minute," I tell him, stopping the proceedings. "Why's your dick getting so much harder when I ask you to dress up in a French maid's uniform?"

He's a little mortified, and laughs. "I thought you were going to ask me to dress up in my leather. Why are you asking me to wear a French maid's uniform."

"Because I'm using cheap humor to deflect what I really want to ask," I explain. This time it's the truth. He waits patiently for me to continue. He's got beautiful eyes. I don't think he knows how attractive a feature they are. They study me in a way that I find a little embarrassing. I want to remain highly regarded, in that gaze. I take a deep breath and try again. "Would you. . . ?"

It's tough to make this request. He and I have talked about this fantasy before, when we've chatted back and forth online. He knows it's something I crave. He knows the issues I have with asking for it.

It's unfair to make him guess, though. I screw up my courage—and it takes a considerable amount—and say the words aloud. "Would you put your blindfold on me?" I ask. My words sound humbled and quiet, to my own ears. "And would you cuff me?"There's a slight smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Deep inside, those slightest of movements reignite the flames. "And then what?" he wants to know.

"And then make me feel good," I said, in a very small voice.

He fastens the hood around my face. The smell of leather fills my nostrils, sharp and familiar. When he fastens the velcro around the back of my head, it cuts out a portion of the sound I can hear. I feel him, though. The rub of his furry chest against my shoulder as he takes my hand, the reassuring pressure of his arm against mine as he raises my left wrist and wraps a cuff around it. I can't see when he lets it go; it drops like a stone as he reaches for the other hand. Once they're both wrapped, he lays me down gently against the pillows, and pushes up my arms so that they insert themselves through the slats of his head board. I feel a slight pressure, and the sound of a click.

I pull slightly at my restraints. I'm fixed there. I concentrate on breathing, on keeping my lungs inflating and deflating at a slow and regular rate. I'm trying quite hard not to think about the incident that's robbed me of this particular pleasure for the last twenty-five years. After my sexual assault, it's tough enough to admit that I crave this particular form of release. Tougher still to ask for it. Toughest of all to relax enough to enjoy it.

I trust Franco, though. I know he won't betray this exchange of trust. I know he'll use it, and use me.

I feel his hands traveling down the length of my legs. The hair on them riffles out from under his palms. There's warmth around my left ankle, then the scratchy enclosure of another cuff. My right foot trembles as he raises then caresses it, only to wrap it and set it down again. A cold chain traces a path across my thigh. When he tugs at it, it draws my ankles together.

He places the weight of a foot or a knee or some part of his leg on that chain, drawing my legs in as his mouth connects with my skin. He knows my knees are going to attempt to draw apart only to stop short, thanks to the cuffs, that I'm going to gasp with the surprise of it. His hands are on me, but his foot pushes at the chain connecting my ankles again. He's dragging it down toward the bottom of the bed, off the end, forcing my legs to be as close together and immobile as my arms.

I'm a long exclamation point of pleasure, quivering and trembling beneath his touch. I can't tell where his mouth will land next—my nipple, the underside of my rib cage, the softest part of my belly. His fingers rake against my skin. He pinches my nipple, hard, remorseless. He kisses me, making my back arch, my breath rasp.

My eyes are closed beneath the blindfold. I don't even try to cheat, to see beneath where the mask doesn't quite mold to my cheeks. My world is the darkness, the sensations, the touch of his hands, the bite of his teeth, the warmth of his breath and his tongue against my skin. His mouth engulfs my dick. I gasp, loudly and with abandon. I feel this hands on my balls, the nudge of his knuckles against my ass. My body wants to respond—to twist, to turn, to seize his head and point it in the directions I want it to go. When my hands instinctively move to do so, the short bond between them tugs against the headboard. I can't even bring my elbows below my ears.

He keeps his foot on the chain, too, restraining my legs from moving much. He feels me struggling against him, and increases the pressure. He lets me know he's in charge in a hundred ways. The pulls, the tugs, the little laughs to himself as he enjoys me wrestling futilely against him. I can't do anything more than remain hard and hope that he'll keep up that sloppy wet attention on my shaft, that he'll give me what I need.

I wanted this. He's giving it to me.

I can't control my breathing any longer. I'm gasping for air. My legs are shaking uncontrollably. There's a near-pain in my chest from the sharp intakes of air I'm having to take. And still I can't stop the burning where the corners of his pretty mouth meet the root of my cock. I can't control the wrack of the pleasure—almost too much of it—as it overtakes my body. I wanted this, but I didn't take into account how torturous it could be. How painful the pleasure could feel. It's the sweetest pain in the world, though. I want that kind of hurt.

But I realize I'm in trouble. I can't breathe any longer. The mask has slipped to an odd position beneath my nose. I'm recirculating too much air. It's making me dizzy, almost to the point of passing out. "I can't," I manage to wheeze out."Do you need me to stop?" he asks, all concern. I feel his face near mine.

I need him to stop, yes. I don't want him to.

Still. I let him undo the mask. My face is wet as a newborn chick's, freed from the leather mask. I blink at the shock of the light and the rush of air over my face. My lungs expand and breathe in the fresh, cool oxygen. The dizzy sensation passes in a moment.

"Okay?" he asks, to check.

I look at him, at that handsome face, fuzzy and sweet and concerned. I stretch, my arms still over my head, and look at him lazily from the pillows where he's laid me.

"I'm okay," I tell him.

I am. I really am.

Then he smiles, and continues his attentions.

Reader Assets: #22

2011-11-16T08:20:00.000-05:00

Oh, my trusty readers. How I love you guys. I put out a call for more dirty photos for the Reader Assets feature and what do I get? A whole bunch more photos for the Reader Assets feature.

It's like Christmas in my email box, every day. So long as we all realize that the only the wrapped and under the tree is . . . well, it's all pretty much unwrapped in these photos.

I know you guys like this feature a lot and I'd love to keep it going. If you're interested in participating, all you need to do is send an email to the address in the blog sidebar with a subject of 'MY ASSETS.' All I ask is that your photos are of you, and not some random porn actor—unless you're a random porn actor, of course. I ask that you be of an age to release such photos, and that you realize that by letting me publish your photos here, there's the vaguest chance that they might be seen by your pastor, your significant other, your boss, and that cute barista you've been flirting with every Tuesday and Friday.

I ask you to take a moment to think about the last point (the visibility issue . . . not the barista) because lately I've had a spate of guys sending me photographs and asking to be a part of the feature—then turning around a couple of days later and asking me not to include them, after all. A couple of times it's happened after I've already posted the photos, and that's a little bit annoying. Not just for me, but for the readers who notice they've been pulled.

I think it's highly, highly unlikely that your sister is going to notice your nude ass on my blog. I doubt your boss is going to associate the birthmark on the inside of your pelvis with your weekly progress report. Your wife is probably not cruising the gay sex blogs (though to my married female readers, and I know there's a significant population of you: hi!). So far I haven't broken up any relationships or gotten anyone fired. But if you could think about that little issue before you hit the send button, I'd appreciate it.

Let's go! I have some hot ones this week.

Nick

Nick is one of my oldest readers. We've corresponded pretty basically since I started the blog. And he's a fine, fine man too, isn't he?

His ass is one of those perfect specimens: round, muscular, and of a shape that fills out a pair of jeans really well. What's sweet about Nick is that I don't even think he realized how hot an ass he has; you might not be able to tell from these photos, but he's pretty shy about showing off his goods. Why he's shy, I don't know. That last photo alone is enough to make my laptop start smoking from overheating.

Nick sent me a buttload (excuse the expression) of photos. It was hard to whittle them down to my favorites. I'll have to include more of him in a future round of photos.

Darwin

Our friend Darwin is a top man—so no ass shots in this set. You guys are getting a good look at his fucktool, though.

Darwin wanted me to point out that his legs are one of his best assets. The man jogs 30 or more miles a week. So you know he's got stamina.

It's nice to see one of my hot top readers showing off. We need more of you guys!

Ed

This is Ed. Ed is from the U.K.

It's my opinion that Ed should be in porn. Dirty porn. Nasty porn. The most rough-and-tumble kind of porn there is. And I should be in it with him, as his top.

Ed makes me want to do depraved things to him. Things involving my hard dick, those boots, that jock, and that beefy, furry ass.

Ed is pretty much my wet dream come true.

Readers, thank Ed for the photos and ask him for more. Ask him to star in that porn flick, while you're at it.

That's it for this installment. Remember to thank the contributors and let them know they're appreciated and lusted after!

Getting It All Online

2011-11-14T08:20:00.000-05:00

The following piece amuses me. I wrote it in my journal in 2003, about men4sexnow.com, a site I haven't used since about 2007. Here we are almost a decade later, and the emails still haven't stopped. (Knock wood.) What's interesting about this old essay is that although the popular sites have shifted, the same old patterns of behavior never change.

I’ve had profiles on chat sites before. I've hooked up with men I've met on bulletin boards and AOL (a decade ago); I've made friends from gay.com that I've fucked around with.

These new sites designed for hookups, though—those I haven’t taken too seriously. For a long time, however, my friend Chris has been trying to get me to join a particular online sex site he frequents. At his house one evening last year, I watched as he logged on and checked out who else was prowling the cyber-alleys. Within a few minutes of talking and looking at other people’s profiles, his email collection chime sounded. In his box were three messages from people who’d seen his profile, looked at his photos, and wanted hot monkey sex, right then and right there. They wanted it now, dammit!

That was fine for him, I thought at the time. But I had my sexual trickle-down list fairly clear:

- Friends of mine with whom I enjoyed both physical and emotional intimacy. Which is a polite synonym for other lovers.
- Acquaintances of mine whom I occasionally see when both of us felt the urge. Which is a polite way of saying fuckbuddies.
- Last and least, perfect strangers.

It’s a system that’s worked fairly well for me—an inverted food pyramid, in which proportionately higher helpings of the first two, coupled with moderate intake of the last, would keep me happy and would burn off a little of what often seems like my sometimes unmanageable supply of sexual energy.

In the year that’s passed since that evening with Chris, I started having crank out finished product for my deadlines. For two or three months at a time I’d be more or less totally celibate (and whiny about it), then between works I’d hanker to embark on a course of slutterific carnage, leaving cum-soaked clothing and satisfied, broken men in my wake. Sometimes I’d find someone to help out. A lot of the time, though . . . not so much.

Another problem is that lately several of my regular friends have either taken boyfriends or moved out of town. My time in the evenings is pretty limited; I don’t intend to troll chat rooms or hang out in bars looking for casual sex partners. I was talking over the problem with another friend last month. It would make more sense, I said, for me to make time even during deadlines to burn off accumulated sexual energy.

He agreed, since a laid Rob is an easier-to-get-along-with Rob. “You should register with this web site,” he said, tilting his laptop around. “I checked it out a few days ago and it’s really easy to use.”

Of course it was the exact same place Chris had showed me a year ago.

So three weeks ago I whipped up a profile and composed a little essay about how anyone with hang-ups about race or age or body types and size could just keep on looking, because I wasn’t going to be interesting to them. I tossed on a couple of x-rated photos of myself and threw in a g-rated photo as well, mostly in self-defense. Guys who are looking for a particular type of man, whether it be a jock or a bear or a muscle stud or a daddy or a twink, have a tendency to get excited when they see the cock shots of me and then to deflate at the latter when they see I’m not extraordinarily handsome and that I don't fall into any particular classification of gay subculture.

I began to get responses within the hour. By the following day, they were pouring in, and although the initial flood has stemmed slightly, they really haven’t yet stopped.

In that time I haven’t really initiated any communications. I’ve been letting them come to me, and I've been responding to the ones I receive. And I’ve noticed a few things about guys who spend a lot of time looking for online hookups.

1) There are more guys brimming with reasons not to meet, than who actually want to get together and screw. For some the urge is there, but out of fear or intimidation or whatever reason, they lack the follow-through—they’re simply content looking at photos of other men, sending them emails, and then disappearing to whack off thinking of what might have been. Others have posted the equivalent of You must be this high to board this ride signs in their profiles, or whip them out when they begin corresponding. You have to pass the number of inches test, followed by the weight test, followed by the good-looking test, followed by the hairstyle test, followed by the musculature test. . . . But you know, I gave up tests when I quit grad school. When a guy emails me (and this is an actual solicitation I received), I like your profile a lot and you’re right, too many guys are hung up on superficial shit. btw what is your waist size?, I have absolutely no qualms about writing him back and telling him that no hard feelings, but I can already tell it’s not going to work.

2) Cock size trumps tact, judging by the sheer number of men who have written me message like the following: WOWOWOW! U r not my usual type but I’ll make an exception because you have an AWESOME cock one of the biggest I’ve seen on here! Looking for now? (The only real response to that, by the way, is, “Gee, but no thanks.”

3) When pretty boys who have spent more time acquiring tans than I have spent on groceries this month, or when pretty men my age who have invested a house down-payment’s worth of money into looking like the pretty tan boys twenty-five years younger than themselves, write in their profile “Above all, I am looking for someone with a great personality!”, it is ungracious to suspect them of fibbing. They absolutely are being truthful and sincere. That is, if you understand that by personality they mean pecs.

4) As in the bars, there’s a period on these things in which one is ‘new meat,’ and thus more desirable than the rancid old stuff everyone’s seen before.

I was talking about the last point with Chris this week, when I saw him on one of my instant messengers and told him that I’d finally given in to my sleazier impulses (big surprise) and joined his service. “Yeah,” he said. “I noticed. Hope you're having fun. When I joined up, I remember getting fifty responses in the first month. You’re probably getting a lot more in general because you’re listing yourself as a top, right?”

I thought for a minute. “How many did you say you got your first month? Fifty? The site was probably less popular then, right?”

“Yes, fifty,” he wrote back. Then he named a mutual friend of ours. “He joined two months ago and since then he’s gotten a hundred emails. Why, how many have you gotten?”

“Enough that I had to create a separate email box for them,” I said. “Hold on.”

I counted the number of letters in the box and blanched. Then I took a couple of minutes to compress the emails by header, so that only the individual senders appeared. “I’ve gotten 1,424 emails. . . .” I told him.

“Holy fuck!” he tapped back. “But that’s like, multiple emails from a lot of guys, right? And in how many weeks?”

“. . . . in two and a half weeks, from 653 different men,” I finished.

I could practically hear the thud of wood when he fainted to the floor. Which brings me to:

5) Apparently tops are in great demand.

Sunday Morning Questions: The Earl Thing Edition

2011-11-13T08:20:00.000-05:00

One of my readers this week chastised me about the way I've been going about writing about the years I spent with Earl.

I have to make clear that I'm using the word 'chastise' in the mildest possible sense. He wasn't crabbing at me about it. In fact, he took exquisite pains to make clear that he loved the stories from my teen years, loved hearing about my relationship with Earl, and got excited every time a new installment came down the road. His main concern, however, was that as a long-time and regular reader, he finds that often so much time passes between one Earl entry and the next that sometimes he loses track of the story and its various characters. He finds it tough to have to dig back through my entries and figure out what's happened in the story thus far. Plus there's the fact that he just wants to find out what happens next, while he's still anxious and excited from a cliffhanger ending.

I get that. I totally do.

The Earl story is very personal so me. When I call it 'the Earl story,' I'm vaguely aware that I make it sound like some kind of fictionalized serial. So perhaps I should reiterate that like my other entries here, it's not a novelette populated with fictional characters, but a messy chapter from my life. Earl wasn't my first man by any means, but the relationship we had was intense and, despite the depravity it involved, pure in a way. That is, he knew exactly what he expected of me, and I provided it without question and mostly with the satisfaction of knowing I was filling a need.

The emotional components of our bond were simple. We both knew well what we needed from the other, and we gave it without hesitation. If he wanted me to travel to dark places for his sexual satisfaction, I did it, knowing on some fundamental level that he'd keep me safe no matter how low I went. I adored the guy. I would've done anything he asked, and did. I wasn't in love with him in a traditional sense, but he wasn't with me, either. And that was fine with us.

The near-purity of that relationship (and again, I know the ironies involved in using the word purity to describe it) is tangled up with Topher and Jim, though, and with missed opportunities and words not spoken, and with guilt and shame and fear and a whole mess of other things that to this day I'm still trying to sort through. I left a lot of this story unexamined for years and years, almost as if I hoped that it would simply vanish if I didn't revisit it.

Even when finally I convinced myself that it was a tale worth telling, it's been difficult to pick out the relevant threads that make a clear-cut story. There've been times the path seemed clear after I scythed my way through, only to find it more impenetrable than before.

Of course, the biggest obstacle is that the whole thing is a little bit to me like picking at a scab. You know you shouldn't. You want to. When you do, it doesn't feel good.

So those are my excuses, and here's my apology: I'm sorry if I've prolonged the telling. It's possible to revisit earlier chapters in the Earl story by clicking on his keyword phrase link in my sidebar—the same for the chapters of the story specifically involving Topher. And as I draw closer to the story's inexorable end, I'll try to speed it up a little. I appreciate your collective patience.

Let's get to some questions I've collected from formspring.me, shall we?

What brands of underwear do you have?

Gap, Banana Republic, and a boatload of Calvin Klein.

Is there anything you do solely because you think others expect it of you?

Twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a freakin' year. Of course things are expected of me. I'm over the age of ten.

If you mean sexually, the answers pretty much the same.

Pepsi or Coke?

I would like to pretend I'm all hoity-toity and sniff and say that I don't drink fizzy beverages, but in reality I love Diet Pepsi.

Ever worn high-heels before? What was it like? What was the occasion?

I have not. I don't believe I've ever worn a single garment of women's clothing in my life, though it's not out of any overreaction that to do so would affect my masculinity. I simply have never had the desire to in a recreational manner, nor have I done it for Halloween at any point.

I did, however, carry around one of my mother's old purses. When I was five. I used it to hold my toy soldiers, dinosaurs, and Matchbox cars.

What's your favourite sex position?

Inserted.

Do you use poppers when having sex?

I do not, and one of the great secret shames of my life is that never have I even attempted to try them.

Do you think overweight people have only themselves to blame?

I'm not really entirely comfortable with the way this question is asked—as if being overweight is automatically worthy of blame and criticism and disdain.

Some people are heavier than others. Some of them carry it well. Some of them don't. Some are perfectly healthy; others aren't. Lumping them together in a group and implying they're worthy of being blamed dehumanizes, to an extent, a varied group of individuals. And I get very uncomfortable when people do that, because it's so very easy for others to do it to me.

If an overweight individual wants to lose weight and does nothing about it, then sure. He has himself to blame. But I'd say the same thing for an unhappy skinny person who wants a better life but does nothing to achieve it, or the sexiest person around who wishes for love yet never gets out and meets anyone.

Ultimately not only do we all need to recognize what we're lacking in our own lives and what needs to change, but also we need to start taking the steps to make those changes. No one else is going to do them for us.

What's the most you've paid for a haircut?

Probably far less than my hair stylist friends charge. With my last stylist, whom I saw for a good ten years, I had a barter system in place. Sexual barter, to be frank.

How much do you charge for a haircut?

Have you published commercially (as memoirs & erotica) any of your nonfiction? I've Googled without success.

I've never had nonfiction published, no.

I met a guy for sex, but we clicked and are spending more time together. When I thought it was just a hookup, I lied about my age (subtracted 3 yrs, & he's 10yrs younger than I am), but since it's become something more, I need to speak up. Any ideas how?

I think it's important to be honest about one's age in relationships. If it lasts, he's going to find out and feel anything from annoyed to betrayed that he was lied to. If it doesn't last . . . well, it's almost as if you were betting on that from the start, and that never bodes well for anything lasting.

I said 'in relationships' above, but hell. Why not always be open about your age? If a younger guy is going to get into a snit over three years, chances are that down the road he's going to be even more inflexible over something more important.

Could you survive a year cut off from all technology?

Survive? Yes. Would I enjoy it? Probably not.

Who was your first celebrity crush?

The Professor. Yes, the one from Gilligan's Island. I was seven. Shut up.

Open Forum Friday: That Face

2011-11-11T08:20:00.000-05:00

I got a lecture not long ago from a guy on Manhunt. Yes, a freakin' lecture, like I was all of fourteen years old.

I'd logged into the site and promptly done what I ordinarily do when I cruise Manhunt—which is not to cruise it at all, but put it in a background tab and go about my business. Every half-hour or so I'll check back to see if anyone's tried to hit me up. If they have, as long as they haven't done anything egregious like asking Do you and your buddies want to fuck me?, or haven't flown off the handle because of some imagined slight, I'll respond politely. If something happens, fine. If it doesn't, I don't feel I've wasted a lot of time.

So I came back a few minutes later—I'd been in the kitchen, cleaning up from the day, actually—sat down, sorted through the email, and looked through what had accumulated. One of them was from a gentleman whose profile I examined before I read the letter. He was one of those slightly stocky but not unattractive guys in his fifties, a clean-cut type with a fringe of hair shaved short around his head. In his photos he wore striped button-down shirts and slacks. The shirts were of slightly different colors, and the pants of fewer shades still. Although the photos looked a little like action poses from the Sears & Roebuck Khaki Line for the Older But Still Active Young Granddad, the guy had a nice smile and a good face.

In a positive mood, I went back to his letter, which started, I'm sure you hear how nice your dick is all the time. Promising (and true) enough. You're not going to hear it from me, it continued. I frowned a little. In fact, you're not going to hear how nice your profile is from me because I think it's shameful you feel it necessary to have a photograph of your penis next to one of your face.

And I was like, what? My penis next to my face? Am I self-fellating in some shot and I didn't know? Then I realized what he meant.

There are two attitudes about posting photographs in profiles for sex sites. There's the one extreme in which the guy shows absolutely nothing. No photos whatsoever. Or else they'll all be locked, and when you ask the guy to unlock them for you, he'll reply, I'm very very discreet and refuse. And then there's the opposite extreme, which me. I post it all and unless the sex site has specific rules about what has to be locked (like penetration shots or photographs of cum), it stays unlocked.

Now, this older guy went on to chastise me for five very long paragraphs (on Manhunt!) about how terrible an example it was for someone of my advanced age to show both naked shots of my hard dick and smiling photographs of my ugly mug, out in the open, where anyone could see them. I was without class, he wanted to let me know. I was exposing myself to risk at my place of work, if my supervisor were to happen across them. And not just that, but I was giving the youth of America the mistaken impression that my genitals were nothing of which to be ashamed.

Think of the children!, the note could have ended and I wouldn't have been surprised.

I wrote back a chillingly polite letter in which I included my stock answer that I use whenever anyone attempts to tell me what I must and must not include in my profiles. I thanked him for his concern and told him when he started paying my Manhunt subscription fee—no when he started paying for my cable modem subscription and my computer both—I'd start listening to his damn advice. But probably not even then.

He wrote back something huffy like, I'm just trying to save you grief down the road! No skin off my back!

I don't lock my photographs on Manhunt for a couple of reasons. The lesser of the two is that I get annoyed by the one-word emails I used to get when I had some locked photos, which simply demanded, "UNLOCK." (Though I still get them from the idiots who don't seem to realize that they can see thumbnails of eight or nine photos without pictograms of locks on them.)

The bigger reason is that I just don't really give a damn. I'm not ashamed of my face; I'm not ashamed of what's between my legs. I'm not particularly offended at the notion that someone might think I'm a sexual being. I am. I don't have a supervisor who is going to "stumble across" my profile. I'm not running for public office, ever. And I'm not trying to pretend that Manhunt is a genteel dating site instead of a place where horny guys meet when they want to fuck.

I understand that not everyone is in my position, or feels the same way about their looks or body or sexuality. Some people do have sensitive careers they shouldn't jeopardize by flashing their dicks on Manhunt so that their elderly female audiences won't die of heart attacks, Clay Aiken. Want to lock up all your photos? It's your dime. Go right ahead. I don't really care. I'll never meet you if you don't unlock them at some point, but I won't be dictating what you can and can't do with your profile.

Which is why I was surprised, I guess, that this fellow was so vehement about ragging on mine. Did my free expression of sexuality truly offend him so deeply that he felt moved to write a five-paragraph essay about it? Was my dick so raunchy that he wanted to write a letter to the editor? Especially, if you think about it, that my dick shot was what got him to open up the profile in the first place?

For this week's open forum, I'm curious. What's your take on online sites and profile photos? Do you show all yours, or keep some concealed? If you're half-and-half on it—which seems to be the prevailing style in this part of the country at least—do you show your pearly whites and keep your bait and tackle under lock, or vice-versa? What's your reasoning for not showing everything? Or, if you're one of the types who'd never have a profile at all, or one with photos, what's your reason for not showing?

I'm fascinated about your experiences and thoughts on the matter.

Thank-You Thursday

2011-11-10T08:20:00.000-05:00

A couple of people have been really nice to me by purchasing gifts for me from my Amazon gift list, this last week, and I wanted to thank them.

First off is a gift from someone who very thoughtfully purchased a book by the comics artist Patrick McDonnell, whose Mutts daily strip is the only one I follow.

I love Mutts, and reading through the strips the week after I lost my oldest pet really resonated for me. So thank you, reader. You know who you are. I very much appreciate the kind thought after a big loss.

The second gift was more for my genitals.

Someone anonymous—I truly don't know who, because Amazon doesn't tell me and I didn't get a gift note—purchased for me a pair of Calvin Klein underwear. On their first outing, I met up with fuckboy Franco and stuffed them in his mouth after I'd been wearing them all day, in preparation for mounting him.

He models them well, no?

Thanks to both you guys. I'm a grateful man.

The Last Time I Saw Topher

2011-11-08T08:20:00.000-05:00

(This entry is a continuation of the Earl series about my relationship with an older man in my teens, and of the complications caused by a peer named Topher. It's a direct sequel to yesterday's Brass Watch. Despite references to orgies and despite some very adult situations, I'm afraid it lacks any explicit smut, again. Sorry.)

In the neighborhood where I grew up flourished two seminaries. From one, the more august of the two, the one that's still intact and and was known as the more academic, my childhood church (which was just a block away) drew slave labor for its programs in the form of seminarians anxious to teach Sunday school or draw up an extensive year-long Christian education curriculum for no more recompense than a smile and the experience.

The lesser institution dissolved some years ago and gave up its campus to the Southern Baptists. In its heyday in the nineteen-seventies, though, it was the more touchy-feely of the two campuses. More youth-oriented. The infamous clog dancing troupe to which I belonged in high school was an evening program there. The drama group in which I made my Richmond stage debut and had first met Topher was one of its programs. The school was responsible for dozens and dozens of graduates who marched out from its grassy campus into the world, armed with the ability to play all the hit songs from Godspell on the guitar using usually no more than three or four chords, a broad range of Sunday school crafts in their holster, and only the vaguest (but a truly well-meaning) grasp of what actually was in the Bible.

But they had a skating rink, and that more than made up for anything lacking in their academic system.

I'm vaguely aware that roller rinks still exist across this country, but they don't have nearly the glamor and cultural sway that they did in the seventies and early eighties. We're talking about the era that is responsible for Xanadu, after all. I started in fourth grade skating at the seminary rink, which occupied the basement of one of their larger buildings. I had my own pair of skates for a time, even, until my feet began shooting up through the adult sizes to an eventual size eleven and it wasn't worthwhile to try to keep up.

Everyone in the neighborhood of a certain age skated. Families came together on certain nights, bought pizza from the refreshment stand, and skated to disco music under the mirrorball. Every kid I knew was familiar with the names not only of the girls behind the skate rental counter, but the guy who ran the lights and music and even the fellow who sat in the back and cleaned and tuned the skates as they were turned in. We all knew not only how to skate in endless circles around the rink, but how to stop on a dime, skate backwards, turn a figure-eight, and dance along with Blondie and Donna Summer. I shudder to admit it, but once our clogging troupe even donned skates for one of our performances and boogied on stage to "Use It Up, Wear It Out."

Some memories one can never shake, no matter how hard one tries.

Anyway. The first place I ever saw Topher was on that seminary's campus, when we were alternating the lead in a musical there. And the last place I ever saw Topher was at the seminary's skating rink, one summer night.

For me it was the summer between the end of tenth grade and the start of my senior year. My parents had landed on the plan that had me skip eleventh grade, and I had to spend that summer taking an English credit to do it. The amount of travel and work I had to do over the course of a couple of months really cut into my usually leisurely summer schedule. Something had to give. I wasn't going to relinquish my nights of whoring at the park, or my weekends of fucking at Earl's place. My daytimes were usually spent shuffling between classes, dealing with my first stalker, and doing homework.

What I jettisoned turned out to be what little socialization I did with other kids. I didn't go to the pool much that summer. I didn't hang out with what few friends I had. And I rarely went skating.

But one night toward the end of summer I did. I have a vague memory of being guilted into it by my parents, who were convinced I was overworking because that's precisely what I wanted them to think. For whatever reasons, though, I went skating that night. I caught up with a few friends. I endured their snide remarks about skipping a grade and leaving them behind until I wasn't enjoying it any more, and then I figured I'd cut out a little early, stop by the park and whore until it closed, and then arrive home late at night and go straight to bed like any surly teenager with too much on his plate, thanks to his folks.

That was the plan, anyway. I slipped my skates back at the rental desk while my friends were out on the floor, and during one of the popular slow numbers in which all the popular guys would grab the popular girls for a mobile make-out session in the semi-darkness, slipped out the door and into the basement stairwell that led back up to the sidewalk.

And there was Topher, at the far end of the stairwell, smoking a cigarette. We didn't smoke in those days. Never mind that I'd seen him fucked by men more than twice his age for a couple of years by that point. I was absolutely shocked to the point of speechlessness at the sight of him guiltily stubbing out a butt on the concrete and pushing the ashes into a drain with his sneaker. "Hey," he said, when he saw who I was.

"Hey," I said back. I stopped. I wasn't exactly sure what social courtesies we owed the other. I was Earl's boy. Topher at that point was more Jim's, though Earl had found him and trained him in much the same way he'd trained me. Because he spent more time in Jim's room, the pair of them smoking weed and giggling at Looney Tunes reruns and broadcasts of The New Zoo Revue, I didn't really see him as a direct rival for Earl's attention. The two of them fucked, but not when I was around. How he viewed me, though, I knew might be a sticky point of contention.

He had ample reason to resent me. I was the favorite son, the priggish do-gooder when I wasn't on my back with my legs in the air. I didn't smoke, I didn't drink, I didn't do pot or hang out with a bad crowd. I was Abel to his Cain, and I was acutely fearful that when he looked at me, he saw a halo hanging over my head.

Then there was the fact that the two of us had never been alone together. There were dozens and dozens of kids and adults on the other side of the wall. We could both hear the thumping disco music through the shaded windows and the door. But that stairwell closed the two of us off from the rest of the world in a way neither of us had encountered before—not even when the two of us had been in our own awkward, private world when forced to fuck each other for the amusement of a crowd.I moved. I'd made the decision to leave.

"I bet you're looking forward to school," he said finally, shuffling his feet.

I stopped. It sounded like a dig to me, but I didn't acknowledge it for what it was. "Maybe," I shrugged. "Aren't you?"

I didn't know which high school Topher attended, though I knew it wasn't mine. "I don't know," he said. "Don't know if I'm going back."

If I'd been shocked by the cigarette, this admission really nailed my feet to the ground. I wasn't going anywhere. By and large, we were all good kids, in that community. Some had more of a reputation for making trouble than others. There were a few I avoided, because they were dicks to me. One of us had thrown a drunken party when his parents were away for the weekend. But even he turned out in later life to be a responsible lawyer. The point was that we just didn't have any high school dropouts. Not in that community. Not even in my high school. They were a mythical breed, exotic and much-rumored, but never witnessed. I said something like, "What?"

Now he shrugged. "I hate that shit." He peered at me through narrow and slitted eyes. Topher's teens had not been kind to him. He had acne on his face—big blotches, not the minor kind of scream-inducing pimples I occasionally got. His hair was stringy and unwashed. Whether it was the weed or the cigarette smoke or just the way he preferred to shut out everything around him, he perpetually looked at the world through heavy lids that were so shuttered they almost closed. "School. Everybody telling you what to do and when to do it. You like that?" He thrust his hands in his pockets. "You probably do."

Another jibe. I ignored it for the moment. "What're you going to do? Get a job?"

"Nah." He was attempting to be nonchalant, adult in a way that a school-loving kid like me obviously was not. "I'd blow this town. Go somewhere exciting. Maybe Baltimore." It's a measure of what a sleepy little city we lived in that Baltimore seemed like a wild epicenter of excitement.

"Oh," I said. I didn't really have anything else to add.

He was warming to the topic, though. He'd obviously thought it through. "Jim said he could help me get a little money. No one else gives a shit if I go."There wasn't any way I could really counter that. He wouldn't have believed me if I said that I didn't want him gone. I didn't—but we didn't have enough of a relationship for it to matter. "Earl. . . ."

He snorted. "Anyway. See ya, I guess."

It was a dismissal, and I didn't have anything more to say. Nor did I really want to stick around, any more. Topher made me uncomfortable. Being around him reminded me of a path my life could've taken. He was almost a nightmare version of myself—a dark half that hadn't taken good care, that had done all the wrong things, that had made all the wrong decisions. We'd started from the same point, playing the same role in a play, same bright future ahead of us. We'd both been Earl's boys. Despite all that, despite even our proximity in that stairwell, we seemed so far apart that no bridge could ever span the gap.

I turned, and put a foot on the first stair. "Hey," he said. I looked over my shoulder. "See you around. Or not. I'll figure it out." His voice wasn't cruel, or laden with blame or resentment. If anything, I remember it as a recognition of sorts. The recognition shared by equals, or at least by soldiers who'd witnessed the same atrocities, deep in the trenches.

My last view of Topher was from the top of the staircase, over the iron railing. He was nothing more than a freshly-lit cigarette's red tip, hiding in the shadows.

Brass Watch

2011-11-07T08:20:00.000-05:00

(This entry in the Earl series is more or less a sequel to the entry entitled Topher, from earlier in the year, and though he doesn't appear in this chapter directly, is a continuation of my recollections of what happened to him. I'm afraid there's no explicit sex in this installment, but it's part of the whole story.)

The very first man who attempted a serious seduction of me did so by borrowing my watch and wearing it during the day, so that he could wrap his big hands around my wrist and fasten it back on at the afternoon's end. So it seems almost fitting that a handful of years later, the beginning of my end with Earl had to do with his collection of watches.

Anyone visiting Earl's house, whether for one of his all-weekend parties or for more innocent readings, could have told that it was a bachelor's home. The furniture was clean and relatively new, but the upholstery was in shades of dark browns and forest greens that blended both into each other and into the knotty pine paneling on the walls. The windows had blinds, but mostly no curtains. The kitchen was practical, but not much more than that. Not much hung on the walls save some old family photos. There weren't many knickknacks. Anything that could be pocketed and stolen away was impractical to keep around, when so many strange men were coming in and out of the house, once or twice a month for the orgies.

It was a man's house, with few frills or fripperies. It was the kind of house in which whatever appeared on top of furniture—magazines on the coffee table, a collection of coffee mugs on the kitchen counter—was there because it had been tossed there after use, not because it was on display. Earl allowed himself to get a little more personal and decorative in his own bedroom, though. His nightstand was covered with old portraits of his parents and grandparents in old frames. They were fussy, filigreed things that had been handed down to him, so out of character from the Brawny paper towel lumberjack theme he had going on elsewhere. His dresser was an heirloom from his mother, and had a faintly feminine air to the flowery carvings on its corners and legs. A few of his mother's treasures sat atop it: a Wedgewood round box with a fitted lid, an antique tea set in which he would toss his spare change, a number of ancient silhouettes of predecessors in cameo brooches.

None of these were worth anything save in sentimental value, but like all the family treasures, before the start of one of his parties he'd sweep everything into the same bureau drawers where he kept my savings account bank book. Save for the tea set, that is. He'd simply clap the lid on the pot of that so that no one would be tempted to steal his change.

His watches, though. Those mattered to him.

Earl collected watches not indiscriminately, but with a true collector's eye. I remember once he drove to Atlanta to purchase a specific antique pocket watch from a dealer there—a thin, open-faced watch that looked surprisingly delicate, but weighed down the hand because of the solid gold case. Many of the others were equally valuable for watches; he kept them all in an old silverware case that he'd repurposed for his collection. Most of the time that case sat on his closet floor, behind his shoes, anonymous and overlooked in a back corner. But from time to time he'd pull them out, sit cross-legged on the bed naked with me, and show them to me as he cleaned them.

I know that one of the watches had been passed down from father to son through at least four generations of his family. It was the oldest of the dozen or more in his collection, and the only one that he kept out on his dresser, most of the time. When I close my eyes, I can still picture it: a brass pocket watch in beautiful condition, still gleaming almost as new as the day it had first been minted. Its numbers had been painted on, rather than printed. They were elegant and scrolled and thoroughly old-fashioned, and slightly distorted beneath the glass dome protecting them. I remember the case as being etched with a complex geometric design. When one fastened the lid, it connected with a delicate click. It felt good in the hand, that watch.

I remember that watch so well because one Saturday when I was at his house he was going through a regular ritual of winding and cleaning his treasure. His family's watch was the only one he kept running. Most of the others sat suspended, their hands forever frozen at five minutes to three or twenty past five. His father and grandfather's and great-grandfather's watch he kept oiled and polished and wound, though he never carried it anywhere. "Do you know how many seconds this clock has seen?" he asked me, that Saturday.

I shook my head and told him I didn't. I enjoyed the sex with Earl, god knows, but I liked these moments of quiet camaraderie as well, these times in which our dicks were flaccid and hanging between our legs, and the only use we had for our mouths was conversation. He named a number that sounded impossibly high. The night before he'd used an electronic calculator—they were new, then and novel, and had to be plugged into the wall and powered up before use—to figure out how many years had passed since the watch had been crafted, and how many days and hours and minutes that was. "All that time, it's been ticking," he told me as he burnished the metal with a soft cloth. "Passed on and on. A father would give it to a son, who'd grow up and give it to his son. My father gave it to me when I turned twenty-one. What's sad is that I don't have a son to give it to, myself."

The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself. "Give it to me."

I was joking. But only half. Part of me spoke up because I realized how badly I wanted a keepsake of Earl. At this point I'd been seeing him for, what? The better part of two years? I was Earl's boy, more than anyone. More than Jim, his lover, at that point. Much more that Topher, who had only been Earl's indulgence and by that point was more Jim's fuck-and-pot buddy, anyway. At least, that's what I wanted to think. Whether I was as important to Earl as he was to me in those days, only he can say. But as I said—I said the words in humorous and joking manner. But I wasn't wholly unserious.

I was surprised, though, when I looked up and saw that Earl was staring at me. He was actually considering it, I realized at that moment. He was thinking about giving me that watch.

He never said so outright, at first. But a few weeks later, Jim started to make snide comments whenever I was around. Earl would say something innocuous to his boyfriend about getting me a glass of water, and Jim would snap right back, "Why don't you just leave me to him in your will too, so he can treat me like a servant just like you do?" Or once, in the middle of one of their squabbles, Jim hurled his keyring at me and shrieked, "You might as well take these now! He'll be leaving you the house! Apparently I'll have to get used to the idea of sleeping on the street!" It didn't take the Hardy Boys to conclude that Earl had mentioned something about giving me a small token at some point in the future.

I can't say I looked forward to that day, exactly. I intuited that when the time came that he passed on that watch, the very tenor of our relationship would have changed; when that day arrived, I wouldn't be his boy any longer, not in the same way I'd been before. I didn't want that to change. Not yet. I liked being Earl's boy too much. I didn't want things to change.

But change they would, and change they did, not too very long after that.

And I never got that watch, either.

Sunday Morning Questions: Diving Right In Edition

2011-11-06T08:20:00.000-05:00

I've had an enormously busy weekend—out all Saturday, busy most of today—so I've barely any time for much of an essay today. Let's get right to recapping some questions from formspring.me.

If you've got questions for me, feel free to use to service to indulge your curiosity. The only questions I don't answer are those I've seen a zillion times before ("How big is your dick?"), those about my home life, and those that aren't so much questions as barely-veiled hostility. Anything else goes, guys!

Do you usually wear a cock ring when playing with another guy?

Usually? No. Often? Yes.

Thinking about trying out a cockring for the first time: go with leather, metal?

It's tough to avoid the feeling of claustrophobia that a cock ring can elicit the first few times you wear it, particularly in those moments after your orgasm when your dick is still hard and you're wondering why it won't come OFF now that you're done with it.

For that reason, I suggest avoiding metal for your first time. Go with either a leather snap model (just be careful about catching your pubes in the snaps), or a flexible rubber ring, or even one of the soft jellies.

Have you ever been double penetrated?

Nope, never, though I've been on the top end of double penetration, many times. For the record, it's not totally unpleasurable, but it's not my favorite activity by a long shot.

In line with some of the other questions here, can you tell us more about how to cruise toilets and public parks? What are the "signs," so to speak? I've always been curious how it works.

If there's sufficient interest in the comments, I'll write up another couple of the Cruising 101 series that covers the topic.

At what age did you figure out that your parents had sex?

Pretty early. My parents, hippies that they were, weren't shy about their sexuality, or the fact that they enjoyed sex together. Once I was old enough to understand how babies were made, my folks were pretty up front about the fact that they did that kind of thing all the time.

So, you show up at a hook-up's place. They are super hot and clean themselves. But, their place is a pig sty. Dishes in the sink piled up. Underwear and dirty laundry all over the bedroom floor. Do you bolt, or do you just focus on the task at hand?

I've had this situation more times than I can count. The dirty laundry on the floor doesn't bother me. I don't usually see their sink. But what will kill the mood for me is a house in which everything is piled high with hardly any room to move, like a nightmare out of "Hoarders," especially if there's a smell involved. Then I feel as if I have to fuck without touching anything, and that's no fun.

I've also had situations in which my stomach turned when I went into the guy's bathroom and discovered it was a cesspit, with a nasty toilet and a tub that resembled a petrie dish. I actually made my excuses and vanished from one of those, once.

Will Ben & Jerry's new Schweddy Balls flavor be the Official Ice Cream of The Breeder?

I saw the announcement about Schweddy Balls posted several times on Facebook and I laughed. I loved that skit.

However, I'm not really a fan of rum-flavored ice cream. The malted milk balls, yes. So many I'll just feed my fans my Schweddy Balls.

How does your theory that most guys are bottoms at some level fit with evolutionary theory's suggestion that they should be about equal?

For one thing, my theory is hardly scientific. Any sampling I make of the population at large is going to be made of guys predisposed to bottom, right? Of course it's going to seem like all the men out there are bottoms, to me.

But they pretty much are.

Why would evolutionary theory have any bearing on the proportions to tops and bottoms in the gay and bi population? The two have nothing to do with each other. The statement seems as dubious, to my ears, like the argument social conservatives make that gays imperil the human race because they can't reproduce--which is silly, because any man who hasn't had damage to his reproductive organs or been rendered sterile has the potential to fuck seed into a pussy, gay or straight.

Likewise, any gay guy has the potential to top if he wants. It's just that most of them don't want.

Ever planning to be in So. California?

I get to L.A. periodically.

Have you decided to keep our hair the same length, as it appears? You seriously did consider going a lot shorter, to much comment.

I kept it uncut from May until August. When I had it cut again, I left it long. I get a lot of nice compliments about it these days.

I'm really vain, if you haven't noticed.

Are you ticklish? If so, most ticklish spot.

My sides can be very ticklish. I disliked being tickled, though.

You mentioned celebrities in your blog. What about politicians of the right wing kind? Or what about just regular right wingers? You must have had your fair share of bible bashers?

I've slept with a state senator, and a state representative (no, I'm not saying which state), but to be perfectly honest, I don't remember their political affiliations.

I have slept with a lot of conservatives and Bible thumpers, particularly when I was younger. My boyfriend in college was ultra-conservative.

I don't have a lot of patience for political discussions during sex now, generally. If a guy pontificates on political issues that are repellant to me before I fuck him, generally I'm not going to meet him anyway.

Is it inherently more pleasurable to bottom than top?

I certainly don't think so, but I'm a top because I like the way it feels. Many of the bottoms I fuck certainly derive a great deal of pleasure from the act, and they'd probably disagree with me.

Let me put it this way: if taking dick wasn't pleasurable, there wouldn't be such a surplus of bottoms out there. And if there weren't men like me who got a lot of enjoyment from topping, they'd all be pretty horny fuckers.

Hey there! Paul from Buffalo. My question: If they were bi at least would you consider either Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, or Aaron Schock?

Mmmm, Aaron Schock. The question is, Paul from Buffalo, would any of them consider me?

ESL

2011-11-04T08:20:00.000-04:00

In his photos, he looks like a bulldog. His brow is low and wrinkled, his jaw square, jutted, and firm. A Puerto Rican bulldog. His neck is thrust out at an angle away from broad, muscular shoulders. His arms are thick and strong, his hands naturally curled into fists. He's always got a layer of scruff on his face in the shots I've seen. A mustache that's more silky than thick sits on his upper lip, as if some stray dandelion seeds have come to rest there.

He's hot. I want him.

The thing is, English is not his first language. Every time we talk online, it ends with me near tears of frustration, because I can't understand a damned thing he says.woo like to, was the first thing he ever wrote me. I took it as a positive thing. Like, Woo! I'd sure like to do you! Or even, I would like to, with you! Who's going to object to either one of those?

Hi, I'd write back. You're sexy. Would you like to get together sometime?

suy pa to drivet mi in stamford like to, he wrote back.

Now, there's only one little bit of that sentence—is it a sentence? My late word-loving mother would have gotten out her pencil to diagram it and ended up stabbing herself in the eye, I fear—that I really understand. That is, I was assuming he was in Stamford. And maybe he was calling me pa? I was a little older than he, but only if I'd fathered him in my teens.

tenkio to men like 47.63 8 cut lovet, he'd write a few minutes later. I'd stare at it for several minutes until I realized that the numbers referred to me: I'm 47, six foot three, eight inches cut, and it sounded like he loved it. But tenkio to men? I couldn't even figure out what that might be phonetically.

It used to be that I'd get a couple of message from him and I'd give up for the day, but he's been persistent. caman cenga naoo, he'll greet me. camin tudey stamford for sex my to! Some of the sounds are close enough to things I might want to hear—come on today to stamford for sex with my . . . toe?—but whenever I try to communicate back, it doesn't get any better.

I spoke Spanish fairly fluently in my high school years, but thirty years of disuse have laid that particular skill to rest. I relied on Google translator to help me with my rusty vocabulary. Quiero poner mi pene en su interior, I'd write him, which probably is probably the least erotic way possible en español to say I wanted to put my dick inside him. It's so stiff and formal that it sounded like something the Queen of England might declaim, while in full array.

to drivet, was his quick reply. My stomach sank.

¿Puedo venir a disfrutar del sexo con usted? I asked, hoping (after I inspected all the verbs and nouns) that it would imply a question of whether I could come over and have sex with him.

woo no gut, he wrote back. Wow, no good? I wondered. Then he shot another email. tu vives solito papi. He was asking if I lived alone. Finally, a message I understood.

No vivo solo, I replied. ¿Alguna vez solo en casa? Are you ever home alone?

like sex hot hot tenkio woo camin stamford drivet mi to, was his reply.

And it was there that I gave up again.

I'm honestly not sure what to make of the guy. I think he wants sex, but no matter how carefully and formally I structure my sentence so that I'm pretty sure they're clear, he's always writing back to me about camins and tudeys and drivets.

I need an English-to-bulldog translator, stat.

Franco: Part 2

2011-11-03T08:31:00.002-04:00

Writing about the readers I meet is a difficult thing. I've had to do it several times, now, and I'm finding it never gets easier.

I recognize that for many people it takes an act of courage to reach out and write an email to a stranger, much less offer him sex. I respect that act of bravery. I don't generally question the motives of the people who read me and decide they want to appear in an entry. There have been some I've thought were simply starfuckers—albeit of a very low-achieving type, considering I'm really nothing to brag about to one's friends. There've been a few who seem to think I'll fix what's broken in them, and it's usually very apparent that something is very, very broken.

The vast majority who reach out, however, do so because it seems that they feel they can connect with me on a fundamental level. They seem to indicate that I've struck a chord with them that resonates through many of my entries. They feel they know me. And yes, they very well might know one facet of my personality very well. The intimacy they feel after reading me is enough to make them feel they want me, that they can offer me something I need and would appreciate it.I suppose it's the power of the written word.

That kind of power was one of the reasons why I paused, that moment I stepped into Franco's bedroom and saw all the hand-printed signs on the furniture. Those written words, those expressions of an intimacy desired—the ultimate intimacy, in a lot of ways—simply took my breath away. I knew right then I wanted to make the afternoon special for him.

These entries, too, I wanted to be special. I always want that, after I've met a reader. I want him to know what the time we spent was like from my perspective. I have to be honest. They can call me on bullshit easily, if I were inclined to fabricate. So I write these things down and try to make them as representative of reality as I can.

Each time it seems almost futile. What's beautiful blossoms fully only when it's planted in the moment. Trying to sketch it in words is like plucking the flower and being forced to watch it wither, second by second. When I'm done writing, I might be left with petals dried to a certain hue, and a faint scent on my fingertips. But it's not what was in the moment, and I despair.

There's so much I want to capture about the afternoon and evening I spent with Franco, and so little I'm likely to do well. But if I were to attempt it, I'd do it as a series of sensations. Because with that mask on his head, with its thick leather strap blocking off most of his hearing as well, sensations were what I gave him, one after the other.

Not talk. Not poetry. Just the raw sensations of touch, and smell, and taste. Sex reduced to the most primal basics. The most declarative of sentences.The slap of my hands on his muscular, round ass, and the way the sound reverberated over the music of the living room. The echoes of his surprised, helpless moans, at every impact.

The taste of his hole, his sweet, pink flesh so clean and soapy, as I dove deep in and rimmed him.

His wordless cries, as he squirmed and tried to twist away from my relentless attention on his hole with my chin and lips and tongue, yet also made it easier to continue my assault.

His surprised gasps at the columns of cool air I would blow on the parts of him I'd made slick with spit.

The gentleness of his mouth, as he nuzzled at my cock with his lips and struggled to take it all in his throat, to maximize my pleasure.

The determined manner in which he would dig his chin deeper and harder into the place where my leg joined my hips, as if rooting like dog.

The way that, when words weren't available to him, he spoke to me through kisses. Soft and lingering, or hard and rough and angry.

The speed with which he divested himself of his jock, when I tugged at the hem, and the silly, little-boy-like way his feet became tangled in the elastic and he blindly attempted to kick them off until I calmed him and removed the jock from around his heels.

That silent hush, when he realized that he was face-down and that my knees were between his thighs, and that I was reaching for where the bottle of lube lay at the head of the bed.

An even more profound silence that followed, so quiet that it sounded as if someone had turned off the volume controlling the entire city, when I pressed the head of my dick against his hole.

I want to remember the feel of his ass around my cock, the way he would open fully, then clench and push back, panicked, as he realized how thick I am, how long, how quickly he was taking me in without me even thrusting.

The words he said when I hit bottom, and held him around his chest, nodding my head side-by-side with his to let him know how well he was doing: You're in me. You've actually got your cock inside me.

The grinding of his hips and the strength with which he clutched at me, trying to pull me in more deeply.

How he turned his head to kiss me for the first time after penetration, as he suddenly remembered I was more than my dick, and that the rest of me was still there with him, as close as the two of us could possibly be.

How over and over he repeated the words he'd traced onto those sheets of paper, urging me to let loose of the load that had been accumulating for ten long days.The sweet and touching way he expressed his disappointment when I pulled out, to turn him onto his back—and the warmth and need with which he received me when I entered him with his legs over my shoulders.

The savage oath he whispered as he tried hard to work my dick with his hole and to give me even more pleasure than I was taking for myself: I want you to regret any ass after mine.

The way he urged me on as I grew close to coming, thrusting back as hard as he could when I was close, and opening deep to receive the load when it came.How when my head cleared I looked down to discover he'd shot all over himself—buckets, gallons, it seemed, that covered his chest, his arm, even the leather of his mask, with milky-white sperm.

And then, after, when we both were laughing, how he mildly complained about the fact that I'd been too involved in my own orgasm to witness how violent and drenching his own had been.

I want not only to remember all of these things, and the hours of togetherness and talking and more fucking that followed, but I need to wrap them up in a pretty little package and present them back to him. To let him know that I wasn't just there, but that I was present, and relishing every moment of our time together. To give back to him what he gave so sweetly to me. That's all I want to do for any reader who meets me, and gives to me.

I do so knowing that there's no way I can capture fully an afternoon's sweet scent, or the vibrant scarlets and hot pinks of its blossoming.

But I do my humble best, and hope it's well received

Franco: Part 1

2011-11-02T08:20:00.000-04:00

It was close to the end of our first fuck that my hips began moving on their own. In that moment I had no more control over my thrusts than I have control of the planchette of a Ouija board—they took off on their own, speeding up, slowing down, and all I could do was sit back, marvel and wait for the inevitable. When that started happening, I knew Franco was different from typical bottoms. The realization only made me fuck him harder.

In my early teens, sex was everything. It was what I thought about when I went to bed, what'd I'd dreamt about throughout the night, what I yearned for when I woke up mornings, my juvenile hard-on pressed so hard into the mattress that the sheets had left a woven imprint on my dick. It was my food, my drink, my air. My dick grew hard at the sight of a masculine voice, a jaw line, the slightest innuendo. I could look up dirty words in the dictionary and become aroused. Slight mentions of homosexuality in the Bible, even when everyone involved got stoned or shunned or transformed into pillars of salt, were enough to do it for me. Everything about it was novel and endlessly fascinating in the days when it took so very little to make my pulse quicken and my blood race liquid-hot through my veins.

Novelty eventually wears off, though. I spent much of my twenties attempting to recapture those feelings that made my teen years speed by, trailing testosterone-fueled fumes in their wake. What used to burn so hot it was nearly unbearable felt like a late autumn sun, so weak on my it barely reminds me to squint. It wasn't until a decade later, after I'd done it all, seen it all, and been back a few times for more, that I realized it wasn't the acts themselves that provided sensation for me—not the sex itself—but the people I met.

The sheer variety of them. The sweetness of some, unstinting and freely given. The tart and bracing sourness of others. Some months it seems as if the universe thrusts a Whitman's Sampler beneath my nose, daring me to choose. The very breadth of the choices makes me want to keep selecting and tasting, hoping that the next is as good as the one I've just had.

Sometimes, though, I still wish for a faint whiff of that giddy, heady, freshly-unwrapped smell that sex had when I was younger and less jaded.

And sometimes I get it.

Franco opened the door of his walk-up flat so that the first thing I'd see when I walked in was a sign taped to the wall opposite: I want Rob to breed me, it read. It was the sign he'd made for me months before, when he started sending me photos of himself wearing nothing but leather gear, bent over, ass presented to the camera, ready to be mounted. It was the sign with which he'd taunted me all summer.

The door closed; his furry face grinned at me. We might have said some words in greeting; I don't remember. Attractive as he'd been in his photos, in person Franco was really, really cute. His eyes were sparking and fixed on my face; his chin was covered in scruff. All I wanted to do was kiss him. My hands were blocks of ice from the cold, rigid and difficult to move, but they began to thaw as I moved them over his hips, up the sides of his ribs, to the thick hair at the back of his head. His mouth tasted sweet, like peppermints. And he kissed so well, with his eyes closed, sighing softly to himself whenever our lips parted.

It was long minutes before I could really form a coherent sentence. "You are really handsome," I said, as my lips nuzzled my ear.

"So are you!" he replied. "So much more than your photos!"

It was a statement distracting enough to draw me out of the moment, but I made a conscious decision to let it float away. There was too much to enjoy at the moment. The shape of his ass, round and firm beneath my defrosting palms. The way he pressed his body against mine, the way he collapsed into my arms surrounding him, as if being there was something he'd craved. I could overanalyze later.

We moved to the sofa, where I sat down. He straddled me, barely tearing his mouth away from mine for long enough to adjust our positions. I was wearing tight jeans made even more oppressive by the straining of my cock against the denim. It stretched up and to the left, pointing at my rib cage. His thigh rubbed against it, back and forth as we ground together our hips. For long moments we kissed. "Take off my shoes," I at last said, pushing him down.

He fumbled with the laces, then discovered the zippers down the sides. I pulled him back up to me once he'd done. "Now take off your pants," I ordered. He obeyed, shucking them smoothly and kicking them aside. I was three-quarters of the way on my back. Only my shoulders and head were propped up on the pillow behind. Without a word, I twirled my finger in the air. He obeyed the gesture and turned around. The boy had worn a jockstrap beneath his jeans. His cock, thick and erect, shyly poked from the side. His ass was beautiful. Framed by the straps of his jock, the cheeks were round and meaty and perfect.

I sat up and pushed at the small of his spine. He bent over obediently, then used his hands to pull apart his cheeks and expose his hole. One of the the things I liked knowing about Franco is that he wasn't a dedicated bottom; he's pretty versatile, which means that he gets asked to top more often than not. I also knew he hadn't been fucked in a couple of months. It explained his reaction when I leaned forward and let my tongue flick out onto his hole. He gasped. His head jerked back. His legs quivered like plucked harp strings.

Then I lay back again. "Take off your shirt," I commanded.

He obeyed. Beneath the shirt he'd worn a leather halter, hooked around his arms and cutting across his pecs. His chest was hairy. He grinned at me shyly, trying to discern if I liked what I saw.

I nodded. "You are beautiful."

"So are you," he said.

I grabbed the center ring of his halter and pulled him down to me. We kissed again, long and lustily. Finally I whispered in his ear, "This is the last time you're going to see me for a while. I want you to get your hood."

Franco keeps a rack of toys and leather gear by his front door, hanging from pegs, the way someone else would keep a woolen hat and keys. In his bare feet and jock he shuffled over, retrieved what I'd told him to, and brought it back. He handed it to me and knelt between my legs. He bowed his head.

I fastened the blindfold portion over his eyes and nose. A strap held it down over the crown of his head. Another strap, thicker, fastened with velcro around the back of his neck. Blind and blindfolded, he had only his remaining senses to guide him. And my hand, which pushed his mouth against the tented portion of my jeans. Between my lips and my dick, which strained against its denim prison, his mouth traveled at my desire. I pushed him back, then guided his hands to my feet. Without saying a word, I let him know I expected him to remove my socks. His hands moved over my feet, then under the cuffs of my jeans.

I couldn't stand my pants any longer. I moved his hands to the waist. His fingers scrabbled for the button, then the zipper that let them down. I lifted the lower half of my body so that he could pull them off, then felt both the warmth of his lips and chin and the cool, slick surface of the leather blindfold pressed on the inside of my thighs. He made me groan when he licked and chewed at the place where my legs joined my hips. Greedily he pressed his nose against my balls, snuffling through my underwear like a hungry dog. His mouth closed around my cotton-sheathed dick, licking up and down the shaft, pausing to consume the head. My hand directed his head where I wanted it to go, making it pay more attention here, glossing over other parts to get to a pleasure spot more quickly.

My pre-cum was flowing freely through my trunks. My body heat quickly dried it when it reached the surface. It looked like the sticky tracks of a snail. While he licked and rubbed with his mouth, I tweaked his nipples. Soft they were, and pierced. The harder I pinched, the more desperate to please he became.

I couldn't take it any longer. I grabbed the ring of his halter and pulled him to a standing position. Again, I didn't say a word. I led him down the hallway I assumed would take us to his bedroom. I tried leading him by the ring, and then by his hand, but I was afraid he'd bang into the wall or the doorway to his kitchen. So after a few steps I drew him close, and put his arms around my waist, and let him cling to me as I moved us forward.

We stepped into his bedroom. The frame and mattress were at an angle. I vaguely took in the sight of three windows, shaded to the strong afternoon sun, and of a wardrobe, and a dresser, and chest. I sort of noticed candles flickering romantically in strategic spots around the room. But mostly I noticed the signs. There was one on a mirror standing in the corner, and one on the chest, and another taped to the headboard. They were all written in bold, clean, black marker. And they all read, I want Rob to breed me.

I inhaled with surprise. And it was in that moment, surrounded by the boy's arms and by the signs that proclaimed his desire for me, that I caught a whiff of something familiar. It was intoxicating. Staggering. Dizzying, even. It was a glimpse of that old rush of sensation and novelty I used to have as a teen when faced with the prospect of sex, wild and giddy and unhampered by the everyday. It was that rush of blood in my ears, down my spine, and to my throbbing, expanding cock.

And it took me aback, so that for a moment, all I could do was stand, like a pillar of salt, and listen to the sudden, deafening thudding of my heart.

Return of the Attention Seeker

2011-10-31T08:20:00.000-04:00

As a lot of you already know, I spent yesterday afternoon nuts-deep in one of my readers. Since I spent all afternoon and a good chunk of the evening with him, I didn't get much of a chance to write an entry for today. I'm hoping you'll all forgive me, though, when I share a few photos of the encounter with you.

For the record, the lucky recipient of my 10-day load was Franco, whom we'd all seen before in the entry entitled Attention Seeker. He definitely will be getting more of my attention in the future. I was pushing these photos out onto Twitter as I was taking them. I never knew that uploading a photo while rimming could be so complicated. That's multitasking for you. And a sign of true devotion to my (piggy) readers, of course.

Sunday Morning Questions: 10-Day Load Edition

2011-10-30T09:42:00.000-04:00

Yep. As you might have grasped from the title of this week's outing, it's been ten days since I shot a load.

Ten. Whole. Days. Which in Breeder Time is something like seven years.

It's not as if originally I intended to go for so long without ejaculating. It's true that since my teens I've never been the kind of guy who felt compelled to masturbate several times a day, or even daily. I prefer my orgasms to come not from my hand, but from interaction with other people. So while at times in my sexual history that means I've been fucking and shooting at least once a day, if not more even more, there have been other periods in which the action's been a little slower. Like, the entire period in which I've lived in my new state.

So the last time I shot a load was with the Latin boy from In the Leaves. A day or three passed. I made arrangements to get together with someone with whom I've been acquainted for about five years, at this point. His place in the city was going to be free, and he wanted me to come visit and giving him a fucking he'd remember. We agreed to meet Thursday. Well, I thought to myself. Maybe he'd get a kick out having a seven-day load in that hole of his. That'd be an appropriate way to show him how much I've anticipated finally meeting him, wouldn't it?

I could do seven days, I figured. I've done seven days before. It wasn't easy. But I buckled down, got busy, and kept away from temptation until Wednesday night. That's when my friend called and asked if he could get a rain check on our date. I was disappointed, naturally, but the guy was a real class act about it, so I couldn't have any hard feelings.

What I could've done is whacked one out right then, just to get rid of all the tension. It does get tense down there, when I'm not getting regularly laid, or even masturbating. When I sleep at night, my dick is hard the entire time—and not just hard, but red and raging and so aching that I spend all night thrusting it into the mattress and dampening the sheets with pre-cum. When I wake up, it's sore. (And no, before you ask, I've never had a nocturnal emission in my life.)

What I did do, however, was immediately make another date with someone I've been meaning to meet for a few months, now. You guys have seen him in here before, and you'll get the details after we fuck. But I thought to myself as I made that date, Yeah, it's even more appropriate that this one, when we meet on Sunday, could get a ten-day load as his first seed from me. I can do three more days, right?

Well. Let me tell you. The extra three days have been the hardest of my life. Pun intended.

It seems like once I made that decision and promise to get to ten days—which very well may be a record in my adult life, I don't know—the forces of the universe conspired to get me to break that vow. Dry as Connecticut has been sexually since last June, suddenly it became sodden with sexual offers. Guys I'd never seen before were crawling out of the woodwork. All of them had places to host. All of them were available at the times that best suited my vagrant's schedule.

Worse still, all of them wanted to do every perverse act in my repertoire. There wasn't a single deviant sexual deed proscribed by the Catholic Church or the National Legion for Decency that wasn't tossed at my feet. And the only thing I could do was walk away. And whimper. I did a lot of whimpering.

So, mister. You know who you are. If you're reading this, and i'm pretty sure you will, know what a very, very, very long ten days this has been—and do me a favor, after you milk out my seed. Don't make me do it again.

Let's get to some questions from formspring.me (and if you're a newer reader, feel free to use the service, anonymously or not, to ask me your questions).

Felching. Yes or No

Oh yes. If the guy's hole is clean and attractive, very much yes.

Do you think you could have any kids you're not aware of?

It is entirely possible.

If you use a Krispy Kreme donut (for those who don't know what this is, it is a small peice of heaven, light dough with a sweet glazing) as the bun for your double cheeseburger, do you call it breakfast or lunch?

I call it delicious, because it really is a good combo.

Do you believe 3 or more people can have a serious, committed exclusive mental, physical and intimate relationship?

I've known people in triads who've had very stable long-term relationships. I don't think I could be in one of those arrangements, but I know many people wouldn't want to be in mine, either.

Do you still think about your exlover(s) from time to time?

I always try to honor the people who meant something important in my life—particularly those who gave themselves to me in body and in spirit.

Would this be your moto? "If you breed, make sure you seed"

It's a good motto, to be sure.

Do you go to bars/clubs? If so do you dance and drink or are you there for the chance of meeting someone/ hooking up?

I go to bars. I've rarely been to a bar solely for the reason of picking someone up, though—there are easier, faster, and less frustrating ways to do that. Typically when I go to a bar it's for the purpose of socializing, or getting out of the house, or just hanging out with friends and meeting new people.

What subject would you NEVER discuss on a first date with a cutey?

Politics and religion. If I were making suggestions of what to avoid, I'd recommend that guys not talk about how lonely they are and how much they've longed for a soulmate, and how most guys are fakes and phonies. It's a little bit of a needy turn-off when I've had those things brought up too early in an aquaintanceship.

Since you're in a committed relationship, why choose to have an open relationship? What purpose does it serve, other than getting your rocks off, and do you believe it is strengthening the relationship, overall?

When you ask your question in this way, you betray a bias. What's wrong with getting one's rocks off? Why is enjoying sex a bad thing? If you're so quick to dismiss and trivialize a fundamental enjoyment of life and one of its most fulfilling aspects, you're going to be even quicker to dismiss any arguments I make in its favor.

How would you ask the question "Since you're in a committed relationship, why choose to have an open relationship? What purpose does it serve, other than getting your rocks off, and do you believe it is strengthening the relationship, overall?" and answer it?

That's actually a good question. Thanks for trying again.

I would ask the question without the parts that give away bias and that are judgmental, because the only purpose they serve is to put the recipient of your question on the defense. Even a choice of phrases like 'getting your rocks off' indicates (to my ears, anyway) that you tend to think of sex as something crude and toss-away, perhaps even something to be joked about. When you ask what 'purpose' sex serves, it tells me you compartmentalize your sexual nature and don't see it as an integrated part of your everyday life, and that you try to keep it out of your everyday affairs.

These things may or may not apply to you, but that's what I hear when you ask the question in such a way. Even if they are true, you need to accept that others are not of the same mindset. i see sex as something to be celebrated and enjoyed, though it can be difficult and tricky—and yes, even funny. It's very much a part of my life, with a purpose of enriching it.

Every relationship has its own story. Many couples in open relationships simply don't expect, for a variety of reasons, the other person to have to meet all their sexual needs. They might enjoy the recreational aspect of sex, and have a relationship strong enough in which jealousy does not play a major role. They might not physically be able to fulfill certain needs for each other. Or they might even regard sex in the light most people regard friendship—we don't ask our mates to give up all other friends when we form a couple, so why should we ask them to give up all physical contact?

For couples who are wide-eyed and honest about their desires and how they configure their relationship, it's always going to be stronger overall. Open or closed.

The point is that every relationship is different. You might not understand every single one, but it's not your relationship. You don't have to. If you want fidelity in a relationship, find someone to whom you'll be faithful. If you want a partner who'll never cheat on you, search for one.

But you need to remember that what you want is not always what other couples want. Your way is not the right way, and you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the priorities and arrangements of others in a dismissive manner.