On a street of crowded bungalows, his stands out. Every other address on this street is enumerated with the same cheap brass numbers from the local hardware store. The numbers by his front door are of hammered black metal in an arts and crafts style, special-ordered to match a sleek black door lamp of the same material. His deep front porch is covered with Adirondack chairs and period lanterns, his front windows illuminated by stained glass, instead of the blue-white glow of a flat-screen TV.
I park in the front, remove my coat before I lock up the car, and jog up the driveway. The entrance to his back yard lies behind a trellis in a vaguely Chinese style. I pull open the latch, slip in, and take the stairs up to his deck, and then the door that leads into his kitchen. I wipe my feet on the mat of cut pebbles within the door.
The basement stairs are to my right. I follow them down, into the depths of the cellar where the only light is coming from a window in the laundry room. My destination is across from the bottom of the stairs, however. Two ovals are cut into the door of an old fruit cellar there, both slightly below waist-high. I see a hand beckoning me forward. I step up to the larger of the two holes, unzip, pull down my shorts and push down my jeans to my knees before I ease my semi-hard meat into the darkness beyond.
He takes over from there.
I’d told him in our messaging that I find it difficult to come from a blow job. It’s sad, but it’s true. In a public sex situation like a bookstore or restroom I generally have no problem. One on one, even in a private gloryhole situation like this guy’s got, I find myself over-thinking the experience. I like it. I like the sensation of his wet mouth on my meat, of his lips pursing forward as far as they can to take it to the root. I love the light sensation of his teeth sliding across the shaft as he slurps, making me grow rigid in the dark recesses of his throat. I can’t get enough of that.
But this is where I run into problems: most cocksuckers expect me to deliver, and to deliver quickly. They want the load as fast as they can get it, and I’m not exactly wired like that. My dick responds to ass, yes. It swells and pulses inside the tightness of a wet hole in a way it never can inside a mouth, no matter how delicious the feelings. With an ass, I usually have the option of varying the angle or the position if it’s not working for me. I get to speed up if I need, and to repeat the sensations that make me tingle.
With a mouth, I’m at the cocksucker’s mercy. If he’s good, I’ll enjoy myself. If he’s not, I’ll start to feel self-conscious. I’ll worry about the guy’s jaw, and wonder how he’s holding out. I’ll fret about him thinking me a jerk for holding out on him. If he gets really impatient and starts whacking at my dick as if it’s a pound of insensate meat, that’s usually my cue to say something polite and leave.
I’ve told all this to the guy, this unseen face on the other side of the gloryhole. The reason he convinced me to come over? Because he wrote, in all sincerity, If you cum, that’s cool. If you don’t, that’s cool too. I just want to suck that hot dick.
And suck it he does, all the way down. He plays with my balls roughly, grabbing them in his hands and tugging at them as he slurps his way up and down my shaft. My hands reach down and encircle my balls as he sucks. With my fingers I can feel a fine stubble on his jaw; he has a goatee of some sort, and a narrow, pronounced chin. I can feel his fist around my inches, but he’s not bruising it, or yanking the skin off. He’s just squeezing it to nurse out the squirts of pre-cum I produce so liberally. I can hear him hungrily enjoying every drop.
At the top of the wooden wall he’s screwed in two antique door handles. I grab onto them and thrust my hips hard against the wood. I’m not going to shoot, I realize. He’s going to be disappointed, no matter how polite he was about it. But still, his mouth feels good, so I’ll let him suck for a few more minutes.
Then he reaches out through the hole. His fingers tickle the area behind my balls, then snake their way to my hole. I can feel the underside of his forearm providing a shelf of support for my balls, my taint. His finger only tickles lightly outside my asshole, but it’s a new sensation that makes me groan aloud.
I grab onto the handles at the top of the wall for dear life. I’m not going to shoot, my mind repeats, over and over. My body’s responding differently, however. It’s shaking hard, up and down, fast as a jackhammer, while the stranger’s hand still toys with my hole. Even as my brain denies it, my orgasm arrives. It’s relentless, and hard, and feels less like a flush of pleasure than a cauldron of molten lead coursing from my veins.
My body can’t stop shaking. Even after I’ve released all the sperm I’m going to produce, and he’s withdrawn to leave my dick full and hanging just outside the hole, I’m still shuddering and twitching and trying to collect myself. I fasten my jeans, and twist my baseball cap back around so the brim’s in the front.
It’s not until I’m outside, and refreshed by the cold blast of winter air that my hands stop shaking enough to allow me to zip up my sweatshirt.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
The Good Neighbors
A couple of years ago I got a message on Manhunt from a guy who (surprise!) wanted me to fuck him. I remember it was one of those nights on which I’d been searching online for some time, and only when I was about to call it a night and hit the sheets did I get the guy’s email asking if I was looking. I was, I told the guy, but I think I’d better get to be bed at this point.
You’re in my zip code, he told me. We can’t be far. My boyfriend’s away for the night. Come bang me hard.
I asked the guy his closest major cross-streets, and was a little surprised when they turned out to be mine. Through mail on the site we danced back and forth a little, until we at last determined that the guy couldn’t really live any closer—on the street behind mine, in fact. My heart did a little palpitation there for a moment when I learned that fact, since I hoped and hoped it was the back-yard neighbor on whom I had the crush, before he moved. But no, this guy wasn’t quite that close. He lived on the other side of the street to my north.
It was at about a quarter to midnight that I found myself pulling on some shoes and a jacket and jogging out into the cold past the four houses it takes to get to the cross-street, over a short block, and then up another three houses to the address the guy had given me. His front door was unlocked. I slipped inside the bungalow and found him upstairs, as he’d promised, sprawled on his bed in a pair of white Calvin Klein briefs. He hadn’t had anything beyond a murky chest photo in his Manhunt profile, but I’d overlooked that because of his proximity. He was a stocky guy, built well but definitely on the husky side, with a nice, full round butt.
The house was expensively furnished. I remember being more preoccupied by the details of his bedroom—the framed photography, the recessed lighting illuminating the glazed pottery, the neat rows of expensive designer shoes on a rack in his California Closet. The fuck itself was fairly good. Not spectacular. Not so memorable that I found myself begging for more. But decent. I left him dripping with a load, pulled my meat back into my pants, and jogged back home.
It was about three weeks later that I got another message on Manhunt. Hey neighbor, it began. I recognized neither the screen name nor the again-murky chest photograph. Want to come over? My boyfriend’s in Chicago.
Oh, I realized, after some confusion. It was the guy from the next street over. With a different screen name and profile. Well, okay. The previous fuck had been nothing sensational, but I was horny and he was close. I told the guy I’d be over in a couple of minutes. He told me that great, he’d be upstairs in bed waiting.
Once more I grabbed a coat and some shoes and slipped into a cock ring and ran out into the cold night to the guy’s house. I slipped inside, padded up their carpeted stairs, and took off my coat and pants when I reached the bedroom. This time, there was a figure between the sheets, his head resting on a pillow, as if he were asleep. I pulled off my T-shirt and slid in beneath the blankets next to the warm body, where I pressed my hard dick against. . . .
. . . someone completely different from whom I expected. Though the man in the bed was of roughly the same build as the first neighbor I’d fucked, he was a little narrower and younger. Plus his hair was a light brown instead of black. The guy must’ve seen the confusion on my face. “You fucked my boyfriend a couple of weeks back,” he said. “Now I want some.”
“Well, you might have told me,” was my entirely legitimate response.
“C’mon,” he wheedled. He planted a kiss on my neck, which is my weak spot. “I’m better than he is.”
I couldn’t really pinpoint the source of my mild outrage. The whole setup seemed like some kind of fishy bait-and-switch, though I couldn’t say that the boyfriend was a dud, by any means. He was downright cute, in fact—and more attentive, as he went down on me. “Well, all right,” I graciously conceded, as I lay back and started to enjoy the head he gave me. “Just this once.”
The sex, I am happy to report, was good.
It was about a month after that I heard from the first guy, the one I’d originally met. Again, it was late at night. My bf told me you gave him a good pounding, he wrote. Let me remind you what I can do.
I didn’t say no.
I kind of took a perverse pleasure in fucking both men for the rest of the winter and spring. The only time they’d contact me was late at night if I happened to be on and the other of them happened to be away on a business trip, or tending to the cottage they kept across the state. The weird and unexpected thing that happened over the course of time was that both of them got increasingly sluttier. The first guy, who’d been relatively restrained when I’d met him, loosened up and got more and more verbal every time I fucked him; the second one wanted me to teach him how to be pissed on, and took some preliminary fisting work.
At the end of any session with either of them, though, they’d ask the same question: “Which one of us is a better fuck?”
“You are, baby,” I’d say, regardless of who asked it. Because any answer that started with “Well . . . “ and ended with lots of pauses and consideration was not going to be well-received. I just knew.
I stopped seeing the guys after about six or eight months. They sold their cottage because of the recession, and their respective places of work cut down on the travel time. It never seemed to occur to them to invite me over while they were both there; they only wanted me for themselves.
Sunday afternoon, Spencer came over to spend the evening. I’d planned to make him a dinner of roast chicken over hummus and almond rice, but since the hummus (and most of a bag of blue corn chips) mysteriously disappeared while I was taking a shower, we had to make a quick trip to Trader Joe’s down the street. It’s only a few blocks, and the extra daylight was night, so we walked.
And surely enough, although I’d not seen either of them in over a year and a half, who should be walking down their street and across the road that divided us, but my slutty neighbors. I saw them coming and knew we couldn’t avoid meeting. One of us would have had to turn around in our tracks and wheel back in the direction we’d come, for that to happen. They were walking a prissy little dog. I was walking . . . well, a six-foot-one long-legged dancer.
I decided to bite the bullet, when they crossed the street and paused a dozen feet in front of us while their dog investigated a fence post. “Hey guys,” I called out.
They turned and stared at me blankly. Only then did I realize that I could’ve gotten away with saying nothing. Neither one of them had recognized me outside of the context of their bedroom. What’s more, they seemed very surprised to see me with another man. “Hey,” they said. I watched as they silently put the puzzle pieces together, remembered who I was, and why I seemed so familiar. They looked at each other, and then at Spencer, who was also investigating the fence post. Unlike the dog, he wasn’t peeing on it. Just using it to stretch out his leg.
“I haven’t seen you guys in a while,” I said, trying to sound friendly, but not to give away too much. “Hope all’s well.”
We made a little bit of small talk about the neighborhood and the weather, but all their attention was focused on Spencer, who preoccupied himself in the polite way people do when their friends are talking to people they know. They both kept staring at him as if they were imagining me doing to him what I’d once done to them.
At last we parted. Spencer and I walked on to Trader Joe’s—him blissfully unaware, me feeling slightly dirty. When I looked over my shoulder, I could see the pair of them watching us, and then pretending to each other they weren’t.
“Friends of yours?” Spencer wanted to know.
“It’s a long story,” I replied. Then, because I knew I’d get to hear him laugh, I shared it with him.
You’re in my zip code, he told me. We can’t be far. My boyfriend’s away for the night. Come bang me hard.
I asked the guy his closest major cross-streets, and was a little surprised when they turned out to be mine. Through mail on the site we danced back and forth a little, until we at last determined that the guy couldn’t really live any closer—on the street behind mine, in fact. My heart did a little palpitation there for a moment when I learned that fact, since I hoped and hoped it was the back-yard neighbor on whom I had the crush, before he moved. But no, this guy wasn’t quite that close. He lived on the other side of the street to my north.
It was at about a quarter to midnight that I found myself pulling on some shoes and a jacket and jogging out into the cold past the four houses it takes to get to the cross-street, over a short block, and then up another three houses to the address the guy had given me. His front door was unlocked. I slipped inside the bungalow and found him upstairs, as he’d promised, sprawled on his bed in a pair of white Calvin Klein briefs. He hadn’t had anything beyond a murky chest photo in his Manhunt profile, but I’d overlooked that because of his proximity. He was a stocky guy, built well but definitely on the husky side, with a nice, full round butt.
The house was expensively furnished. I remember being more preoccupied by the details of his bedroom—the framed photography, the recessed lighting illuminating the glazed pottery, the neat rows of expensive designer shoes on a rack in his California Closet. The fuck itself was fairly good. Not spectacular. Not so memorable that I found myself begging for more. But decent. I left him dripping with a load, pulled my meat back into my pants, and jogged back home.
It was about three weeks later that I got another message on Manhunt. Hey neighbor, it began. I recognized neither the screen name nor the again-murky chest photograph. Want to come over? My boyfriend’s in Chicago.
Oh, I realized, after some confusion. It was the guy from the next street over. With a different screen name and profile. Well, okay. The previous fuck had been nothing sensational, but I was horny and he was close. I told the guy I’d be over in a couple of minutes. He told me that great, he’d be upstairs in bed waiting.
Once more I grabbed a coat and some shoes and slipped into a cock ring and ran out into the cold night to the guy’s house. I slipped inside, padded up their carpeted stairs, and took off my coat and pants when I reached the bedroom. This time, there was a figure between the sheets, his head resting on a pillow, as if he were asleep. I pulled off my T-shirt and slid in beneath the blankets next to the warm body, where I pressed my hard dick against. . . .
. . . someone completely different from whom I expected. Though the man in the bed was of roughly the same build as the first neighbor I’d fucked, he was a little narrower and younger. Plus his hair was a light brown instead of black. The guy must’ve seen the confusion on my face. “You fucked my boyfriend a couple of weeks back,” he said. “Now I want some.”
“Well, you might have told me,” was my entirely legitimate response.
“C’mon,” he wheedled. He planted a kiss on my neck, which is my weak spot. “I’m better than he is.”
I couldn’t really pinpoint the source of my mild outrage. The whole setup seemed like some kind of fishy bait-and-switch, though I couldn’t say that the boyfriend was a dud, by any means. He was downright cute, in fact—and more attentive, as he went down on me. “Well, all right,” I graciously conceded, as I lay back and started to enjoy the head he gave me. “Just this once.”
The sex, I am happy to report, was good.
It was about a month after that I heard from the first guy, the one I’d originally met. Again, it was late at night. My bf told me you gave him a good pounding, he wrote. Let me remind you what I can do.
I didn’t say no.
I kind of took a perverse pleasure in fucking both men for the rest of the winter and spring. The only time they’d contact me was late at night if I happened to be on and the other of them happened to be away on a business trip, or tending to the cottage they kept across the state. The weird and unexpected thing that happened over the course of time was that both of them got increasingly sluttier. The first guy, who’d been relatively restrained when I’d met him, loosened up and got more and more verbal every time I fucked him; the second one wanted me to teach him how to be pissed on, and took some preliminary fisting work.
At the end of any session with either of them, though, they’d ask the same question: “Which one of us is a better fuck?”
“You are, baby,” I’d say, regardless of who asked it. Because any answer that started with “Well . . . “ and ended with lots of pauses and consideration was not going to be well-received. I just knew.
I stopped seeing the guys after about six or eight months. They sold their cottage because of the recession, and their respective places of work cut down on the travel time. It never seemed to occur to them to invite me over while they were both there; they only wanted me for themselves.
Sunday afternoon, Spencer came over to spend the evening. I’d planned to make him a dinner of roast chicken over hummus and almond rice, but since the hummus (and most of a bag of blue corn chips) mysteriously disappeared while I was taking a shower, we had to make a quick trip to Trader Joe’s down the street. It’s only a few blocks, and the extra daylight was night, so we walked.
And surely enough, although I’d not seen either of them in over a year and a half, who should be walking down their street and across the road that divided us, but my slutty neighbors. I saw them coming and knew we couldn’t avoid meeting. One of us would have had to turn around in our tracks and wheel back in the direction we’d come, for that to happen. They were walking a prissy little dog. I was walking . . . well, a six-foot-one long-legged dancer.
I decided to bite the bullet, when they crossed the street and paused a dozen feet in front of us while their dog investigated a fence post. “Hey guys,” I called out.
They turned and stared at me blankly. Only then did I realize that I could’ve gotten away with saying nothing. Neither one of them had recognized me outside of the context of their bedroom. What’s more, they seemed very surprised to see me with another man. “Hey,” they said. I watched as they silently put the puzzle pieces together, remembered who I was, and why I seemed so familiar. They looked at each other, and then at Spencer, who was also investigating the fence post. Unlike the dog, he wasn’t peeing on it. Just using it to stretch out his leg.
“I haven’t seen you guys in a while,” I said, trying to sound friendly, but not to give away too much. “Hope all’s well.”
We made a little bit of small talk about the neighborhood and the weather, but all their attention was focused on Spencer, who preoccupied himself in the polite way people do when their friends are talking to people they know. They both kept staring at him as if they were imagining me doing to him what I’d once done to them.
At last we parted. Spencer and I walked on to Trader Joe’s—him blissfully unaware, me feeling slightly dirty. When I looked over my shoulder, I could see the pair of them watching us, and then pretending to each other they weren’t.
“Friends of yours?” Spencer wanted to know.
“It’s a long story,” I replied. Then, because I knew I’d get to hear him laugh, I shared it with him.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Sunday Morning Questions: Daylight Savings Edition
When I was a kid and Daylight Savings Time was only a small portion of the year—not the majority of it—I always enjoyed the night we'd set forward the clocks. Sure, it meant that the next day I'd arrive at church half-asleep, and that I'd spend roughly a week waking up for school in the dark and feeling like something one of our multiple cats had dragged in, but more importantly, it meant that I could stay outdoors in the sunlight an extra hour.
And I loved the sweet, hot Virginia evenings in the summers, when the cicadas would provide a steady huzz, and the dry leaves on the trees would rustle in the breezes beneath a blue-purple sky. And when I could stay out late, ankled pinned to my ears, as guy after guy would pop his load into me where I lay on the local park picnic table.
Sigh. Good times.
Sadly, last night I was so out of that I didn't realize the time change was today until someone mentioned it, in the bar where I was socializing with friends. I can be so out of touch. I foresee a future for myself in which I am that one crabby old man on the street who hasn't heard a damned thing about the zombie apocalypse that has reduced civilization to rubble, and is standing on his front porch wondering why no one has delivered his paper in two weeks.
I'm going to continue our Sunday tradition of rounding up questions I've answered on formspring.me, the service where my readers and friends ask anonymous (or not-so-anonymous) questions for me to answer. I always welcome thoughtful questions, and answer them in depth when they intrigue me—so knock yourselves out, guys.
Ever had your dick rated, e.g. on sites like showyourdick.org...? If so, what was the outcome...? If not, would you...? the Dr.
A very long time ago I took a dick photo specifically for one of those rating sites, just for the amusement factor. Within two days I had people I knew emailing me to ask, "Hey, are you in Seattle?" or "Hey, are you in Dallas?" because guys had taken my the photo I'd posted on that one site and used it in their personal ads on Craigslist or whatever was popular at the time. Then I had to spend a lot of effort trying to get some other guys to stop claiming it was them, on gay.com.
I've had people steal my photos from other sites and use it as their own, but none were as rampant or blatant as that one site. Since then I've not ever felt the need to try it somewhere else.
I'm fairly happy with how my dick looks; I know a lot of other guys like it as well. I'd rather be happy knowing that, than letting myself get down by a few haters who enjoy down-ranking photos.
Have you ever had a desire to play with a family member?
I've never really kep secret that my first sexual relationship was with a family member. Obviously the desire was there fairly early on.
If I went poking around in your pantry, would I find anything that you would be embarassed to have me tweet to our friends that you have? Do you dare admit your secret and tell me what it is? please do, I'm dying to know!!!
I don't have anything really embarrassing in my pantry. People are often mystified at why I have so many packages of bonito flakes in my cupboard, though. It's because the cats like them.
Have you ever had sex with a little person?
No, though I've wanted to with a few.
I am a new reader and really enjoy you. A comment was made about your cock size at age 14. What size is it now?
Hey, thanks. I'm glad you're enjoying the blog. I'm around eight inches long by about five and a half around. Larger than most, but not monster-proportioned. Just right, in fact.
Oh hey man Your blog gets me off. My question is whether you would consider yourself to be living a "double life". I don't need details but I would appreciate whatever you have to say on the subject as somebody who is compartmentalizing at the moment.
Actually, I consider myself to lead a very integrated life for the most part. My sexuality informs who I am; who I am shapes my sexuality.
Where things get compartmentalized for me is in my blog. Although I keep a personal journal that chronicles a lot of different aspects of my life—my career, my home life, my sex life, and the inane things that pass through my head—what hits the blog is primarily the sex entries alone. It gives the blog a focus, but also leaves people with the impression that there's little to me beyond the sex I have.
I assure you, that's far from the case.
Just saw that you're in Michigan :/
Yes, I make that same emoticon when I think about living here, too.
commando, jockstraps, thongs, bikinis, tangas, briefs, trunks, boxer-briefs, boxers, or long-johns?
Of those, I tend to choose trunks and commando.
Nair, Nads, pluck, razor shave, electric clipper, scissor & comb trim, machete, or jungle boogie bushman?
Are we talking about pubes here? Because plucking sounds painful. I use an electric clipper to keep the bush trimmed low and the nuts smooth.
So, we know you're amazing at telling the stories of your life, but I'm curious if there are any works of fiction authored by or fair blogger? Short stories? Maybe a Novel? TV Pilot?
I'm a creative guy—through writing and other media. I'm very fortunate to have the ability to indulge my creative impulses on a professional level with a moderate degree of success. It's something that very few artists ever get to do.
Do you like to eat breakfast food for dinner?
If it's pancakes!
And I loved the sweet, hot Virginia evenings in the summers, when the cicadas would provide a steady huzz, and the dry leaves on the trees would rustle in the breezes beneath a blue-purple sky. And when I could stay out late, ankled pinned to my ears, as guy after guy would pop his load into me where I lay on the local park picnic table.
Sigh. Good times.
Sadly, last night I was so out of that I didn't realize the time change was today until someone mentioned it, in the bar where I was socializing with friends. I can be so out of touch. I foresee a future for myself in which I am that one crabby old man on the street who hasn't heard a damned thing about the zombie apocalypse that has reduced civilization to rubble, and is standing on his front porch wondering why no one has delivered his paper in two weeks.
I'm going to continue our Sunday tradition of rounding up questions I've answered on formspring.me, the service where my readers and friends ask anonymous (or not-so-anonymous) questions for me to answer. I always welcome thoughtful questions, and answer them in depth when they intrigue me—so knock yourselves out, guys.
Ever had your dick rated, e.g. on sites like showyourdick.org...? If so, what was the outcome...? If not, would you...? the Dr.
A very long time ago I took a dick photo specifically for one of those rating sites, just for the amusement factor. Within two days I had people I knew emailing me to ask, "Hey, are you in Seattle?" or "Hey, are you in Dallas?" because guys had taken my the photo I'd posted on that one site and used it in their personal ads on Craigslist or whatever was popular at the time. Then I had to spend a lot of effort trying to get some other guys to stop claiming it was them, on gay.com.
I've had people steal my photos from other sites and use it as their own, but none were as rampant or blatant as that one site. Since then I've not ever felt the need to try it somewhere else.
I'm fairly happy with how my dick looks; I know a lot of other guys like it as well. I'd rather be happy knowing that, than letting myself get down by a few haters who enjoy down-ranking photos.
Have you ever had a desire to play with a family member?
I've never really kep secret that my first sexual relationship was with a family member. Obviously the desire was there fairly early on.
If I went poking around in your pantry, would I find anything that you would be embarassed to have me tweet to our friends that you have? Do you dare admit your secret and tell me what it is? please do, I'm dying to know!!!
I don't have anything really embarrassing in my pantry. People are often mystified at why I have so many packages of bonito flakes in my cupboard, though. It's because the cats like them.
Have you ever had sex with a little person?
No, though I've wanted to with a few.
I am a new reader and really enjoy you. A comment was made about your cock size at age 14. What size is it now?
Hey, thanks. I'm glad you're enjoying the blog. I'm around eight inches long by about five and a half around. Larger than most, but not monster-proportioned. Just right, in fact.
Oh hey man Your blog gets me off. My question is whether you would consider yourself to be living a "double life". I don't need details but I would appreciate whatever you have to say on the subject as somebody who is compartmentalizing at the moment.
Actually, I consider myself to lead a very integrated life for the most part. My sexuality informs who I am; who I am shapes my sexuality.
Where things get compartmentalized for me is in my blog. Although I keep a personal journal that chronicles a lot of different aspects of my life—my career, my home life, my sex life, and the inane things that pass through my head—what hits the blog is primarily the sex entries alone. It gives the blog a focus, but also leaves people with the impression that there's little to me beyond the sex I have.
I assure you, that's far from the case.
Just saw that you're in Michigan :/
Yes, I make that same emoticon when I think about living here, too.
commando, jockstraps, thongs, bikinis, tangas, briefs, trunks, boxer-briefs, boxers, or long-johns?
Of those, I tend to choose trunks and commando.
Nair, Nads, pluck, razor shave, electric clipper, scissor & comb trim, machete, or jungle boogie bushman?
Are we talking about pubes here? Because plucking sounds painful. I use an electric clipper to keep the bush trimmed low and the nuts smooth.
So, we know you're amazing at telling the stories of your life, but I'm curious if there are any works of fiction authored by or fair blogger? Short stories? Maybe a Novel? TV Pilot?
I'm a creative guy—through writing and other media. I'm very fortunate to have the ability to indulge my creative impulses on a professional level with a moderate degree of success. It's something that very few artists ever get to do.
Do you like to eat breakfast food for dinner?
If it's pancakes!
Friday, March 11, 2011
Open Forum Friday: Good Gay, Bad Gay
Earlier this week I participated in an interview with a graduate student in the UK. He's writing his dissertation on bareback culture, and bareback bloggers specifically. When he asked if I'd be willing to answer some of his questions, I was both intrigued and anxious to see where the dialogue might lead.
Much of the conversation focused around the idea of community. Did I feel there was a genuine bareback community, he wanted to know? If so, what ideals did its members hold in common? I personally think any group that self-identifies as such is nominally a community, though I think even those communities organized around mutual interest (whether of barebackers, or lesbians, or housewives, or vacuum cleaner salesmen) are as diverse, supportive, argumentative, or fractious as the actual communities in which we all live.
We did touch on a couple of topics that had me thinking well past the interview's end, however. While talking about the notion of bug chasing and gift giving, the much-publicized behaviors in which HIV-negative bottoms pursue HIV-positive tops, or vice versa, I brought up the opinion that while the taboo aspects of the forbidden act might make it a powerful fantasy for many, I didn't think in reality it was more than a niche phenomenon—but that more importantly, it was one of those flash points of culture that the gay community seized upon in order to divide itself.
As a community—and I'm including bisexual men and women, as well as the gays and lesbians and the transgendered—we have a distinct tendency to divide ourselves up into Good Gays and Bad Gays. The dividing line and the criterion that draw it are different for everyone, but the end result is always that the speaker is inevitably one of the Good Gays, the people who are upright and moral and on the side of the righteous. Some unfortunate collection of individuals other than the speaker, on the other hand, is going straight to hell.
For many in the so-called bareback community, for example, it may be that those who religiously practice sero-sorting when choosing their sex partners are on the side of the pure and true, while anyone who crosses the pos and neg streams is a fucking embarrassment. What these gentlemen might not remember, however, is that within the gay community itself, safe sex advocates think themselves the moral crusaders, while anyone who barebacks is regressing the entire gay movement a hundred years.
There are other schisms. Every time Pride rolls around, I hear men and women bemoaning the necessity of Pride fairs and parades. Their refrain is always the same: Pride doesn’t accomplish anything but allow the local news to broadcast images of men in leather and shrieking queens prancing around in next to nothing. It's an embarrassment, they mourn. Such behavior only makes the straight population think we're all like that. And it’s not! It’s just the freaks! These men believe that what we should be doing, as a community, is blending in. Playing nice. Obscuring our difference, rather than celebrate it.
We have the guys who worship the cult of masculinity—who cringe with embarrassment in the presence of whisper-thin twinks wearing dyed hair and jumping to Lady Gaga. Those fucking queers who drop purses from their mouths whenever they open them should be rounded up and dumped off the edge of a cliff, they'll say. Fucking mortifying, they are. Or drag queens—what's up with those freaks? Why should they have a place at the table, when there are so many other less scandalous souls waiting to be recognized for their worth?
It's said, I think, when we automatically label ourselves as the normal, good people, and brand anyone not like us—or who revels in being something we most fear might be true about ourselves—as deviants. We all have our preferences, sure. I might not be attracted to men who eat poop, but as icky as I might find the act, I recognize that some enjoy it, and know that some of the things I enjoy might disturb them. I'm not personally attracted in a sexual way to cross-dressers of any sort, but I love my drag queen and cross-dressing sisters for pushing the envelope and always being on the forefront of the gay rights movement. You go, girls! Yes, I actually said that.
I tend to be very careful about slapping a derogatory label on broad classes of people. The only Bad Gays in my eyes are the assholes, and those who go out of their way to act like dicks. I’m uneasy about calling other people shameful, or sociopaths, or abominations, because I know in so many ways I’m a freak myself.
I think that when we're conscious about the ways in which we divide ourselves into the Good Gays and Bad Gays, and when we’re aware of how easily we can be seen to fall on the wrong side, we tend to be less likely to indulge in that kind of crap ourselves. So for this Friday's open forum, I'm throwing out the question—what schisms do you find in the gay community in your own life? You may have been on the receiving end of someone else branding you a Bad Gayl. Who lumped you into that category, and what were they overlooking about themselves that might have made the whole thing ironic?
Or more bravely, where do you draw the line yourselves, when you designate your own categories of Bad Gays?
These open forums are really fun for me, because I get to hear your opinions in topics rather than beat you over the head with my own. I'm anxious to discover your thoughts on the topic.
Much of the conversation focused around the idea of community. Did I feel there was a genuine bareback community, he wanted to know? If so, what ideals did its members hold in common? I personally think any group that self-identifies as such is nominally a community, though I think even those communities organized around mutual interest (whether of barebackers, or lesbians, or housewives, or vacuum cleaner salesmen) are as diverse, supportive, argumentative, or fractious as the actual communities in which we all live.
We did touch on a couple of topics that had me thinking well past the interview's end, however. While talking about the notion of bug chasing and gift giving, the much-publicized behaviors in which HIV-negative bottoms pursue HIV-positive tops, or vice versa, I brought up the opinion that while the taboo aspects of the forbidden act might make it a powerful fantasy for many, I didn't think in reality it was more than a niche phenomenon—but that more importantly, it was one of those flash points of culture that the gay community seized upon in order to divide itself.
As a community—and I'm including bisexual men and women, as well as the gays and lesbians and the transgendered—we have a distinct tendency to divide ourselves up into Good Gays and Bad Gays. The dividing line and the criterion that draw it are different for everyone, but the end result is always that the speaker is inevitably one of the Good Gays, the people who are upright and moral and on the side of the righteous. Some unfortunate collection of individuals other than the speaker, on the other hand, is going straight to hell.
For many in the so-called bareback community, for example, it may be that those who religiously practice sero-sorting when choosing their sex partners are on the side of the pure and true, while anyone who crosses the pos and neg streams is a fucking embarrassment. What these gentlemen might not remember, however, is that within the gay community itself, safe sex advocates think themselves the moral crusaders, while anyone who barebacks is regressing the entire gay movement a hundred years.
There are other schisms. Every time Pride rolls around, I hear men and women bemoaning the necessity of Pride fairs and parades. Their refrain is always the same: Pride doesn’t accomplish anything but allow the local news to broadcast images of men in leather and shrieking queens prancing around in next to nothing. It's an embarrassment, they mourn. Such behavior only makes the straight population think we're all like that. And it’s not! It’s just the freaks! These men believe that what we should be doing, as a community, is blending in. Playing nice. Obscuring our difference, rather than celebrate it.
We have the guys who worship the cult of masculinity—who cringe with embarrassment in the presence of whisper-thin twinks wearing dyed hair and jumping to Lady Gaga. Those fucking queers who drop purses from their mouths whenever they open them should be rounded up and dumped off the edge of a cliff, they'll say. Fucking mortifying, they are. Or drag queens—what's up with those freaks? Why should they have a place at the table, when there are so many other less scandalous souls waiting to be recognized for their worth?
It's said, I think, when we automatically label ourselves as the normal, good people, and brand anyone not like us—or who revels in being something we most fear might be true about ourselves—as deviants. We all have our preferences, sure. I might not be attracted to men who eat poop, but as icky as I might find the act, I recognize that some enjoy it, and know that some of the things I enjoy might disturb them. I'm not personally attracted in a sexual way to cross-dressers of any sort, but I love my drag queen and cross-dressing sisters for pushing the envelope and always being on the forefront of the gay rights movement. You go, girls! Yes, I actually said that.
I tend to be very careful about slapping a derogatory label on broad classes of people. The only Bad Gays in my eyes are the assholes, and those who go out of their way to act like dicks. I’m uneasy about calling other people shameful, or sociopaths, or abominations, because I know in so many ways I’m a freak myself.
I think that when we're conscious about the ways in which we divide ourselves into the Good Gays and Bad Gays, and when we’re aware of how easily we can be seen to fall on the wrong side, we tend to be less likely to indulge in that kind of crap ourselves. So for this Friday's open forum, I'm throwing out the question—what schisms do you find in the gay community in your own life? You may have been on the receiving end of someone else branding you a Bad Gayl. Who lumped you into that category, and what were they overlooking about themselves that might have made the whole thing ironic?
Or more bravely, where do you draw the line yourselves, when you designate your own categories of Bad Gays?
These open forums are really fun for me, because I get to hear your opinions in topics rather than beat you over the head with my own. I'm anxious to discover your thoughts on the topic.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Lost Boys
Spencer lets himself into my house at about eight at night, while I’m pulling plates from the dishwasher and storing them in their cupboards. He’s carrying a bag with his late dinner in one hand, and a small bag of laundry from the gym and studio in the other. He’s too burdened to offer me more than a quick kiss in passing as he steers himself in the direction of the dining room table. Once he’s free, he shimmies out of his coat and takes a look in the den.
When he looks at the bundle of leopard-spotted fleece balled up in a corner of the sofa, he stops and instantly assesses the situation. His head tilts. He lets out a soft sigh, suspended somewhere between amusement and sympathy. “Your Snuggie is out,” he says. “Oh dear. It’s been that kind of day, has it?”
It’s no secret that I’ve spent the last five months feeling lost. Like a small craft with a cut line, there are days I feel adrift with no course, no one at the tiller. Some days I approach my temporary bachelorhood with a sense of adventure and excitement. Others—well. All I want to do is hide beneath the comforting folds of my leopard-print Snuggie and wish the world would go away. (Shut up. I love my Snuggie.)
“It might have been,” I admit.
His shoulder slump as he looks at me. He wears the kind of expression that could make a man melt. What am I going to do with you? it reads. At the same time, it’s nothing but unalloyed affection, and the desire to make things better. He doesn’t have to ask me to explain myself. He doesn’t have to hear the words. He knows how I’m feeling, just at the sight of that hideous long-armed blanket monstrosity. When he steps forward in my direction, arms outstretched, I know it’s to give me comfort.
He wraps me in hug so strong that I can’t breathe. I feel my spine stretch, and then my feet leave the floor. Spencer lifts all six feet and three inches of me into the air as easily as if I’m one of the tiny dancers with whom he shares the stage. I laugh and protest wildly, afraid I’ll break his back. When finally he sets me down, it’s gently, so that my feet don’t so much strike the ground as approach it, caress it, and lovingly press into it, as gravity once more gives me weight.
“Turn around,” he says. He pushes me down over the kitchen counter. His hips connect with my ass. At the same time, his fingers surround my neck. Their tips dig into the muscle there, squeezing and releasing. They travel from neck to shoulders, to the round pads where my arms join. They dig beneath my shoulder blades and down my spine, teasing out and for the moment banishing the aches.
“Oh, god,” I say, giving in to his hands. I love to be touched. I love it more than fucking, sometimes. “You don’t have to—”
But he shushes me, and continues. Beneath his breath I hear the faintest of hums as he strokes and squeezes my back, soothing me with his talented, strong hands.
It’s a rare treat that continues later in the evening. When he joins me in bed, moist and warm from the shower, he spoons behind me. His pubic hairs tickle against my ass as gently he forces me to hug my pillow, and his fingers roam over my bare skin. In the darkness he silently performs his skillful ministrations, kneading at me, relaxing me in a way that few men ever try. It lasts for long, blissful moments as the both of us drowsily fall toward our slumbers, with the slow and lazy arc of a last autumn leaf descending from an empty branch.
The last thing I see before I close my eyes is the night sky through my open window. I don't notice the limbs of the tree overhanging the house, or the power lines, or the other rooftops on my quiet street. Only points of light in an indigo sky. Stars upon stars, a panorama assembled, over time unimaginable, just for the two of us. For this moment. I wish his touch, this fading kitten’s-paw sensation of his hands at the base of my spine, could be as infinite as the stars' numbers.
Spencer's breath deepens and he sleeps at last.
When we’re in the darkness together, Spencer and I, I feel like we’re two lost boys in the wood, with leaves as our blanket and only our two bodies for warmth. On the nights he spends here, we fall asleep clinging to each other. Tonight, he comforts me. He gives me an anchor when I’m adrift in the darkness, a place to moor myself, for a time.
What comfort do I give him? Some nights, it’s tough to imagine. It's not enough. But he’s here. For his hand on my waist, the rise and fall of his chest, the soft breath on my neck, this lost boy is grateful.
When he looks at the bundle of leopard-spotted fleece balled up in a corner of the sofa, he stops and instantly assesses the situation. His head tilts. He lets out a soft sigh, suspended somewhere between amusement and sympathy. “Your Snuggie is out,” he says. “Oh dear. It’s been that kind of day, has it?”
It’s no secret that I’ve spent the last five months feeling lost. Like a small craft with a cut line, there are days I feel adrift with no course, no one at the tiller. Some days I approach my temporary bachelorhood with a sense of adventure and excitement. Others—well. All I want to do is hide beneath the comforting folds of my leopard-print Snuggie and wish the world would go away. (Shut up. I love my Snuggie.)
“It might have been,” I admit.
His shoulder slump as he looks at me. He wears the kind of expression that could make a man melt. What am I going to do with you? it reads. At the same time, it’s nothing but unalloyed affection, and the desire to make things better. He doesn’t have to ask me to explain myself. He doesn’t have to hear the words. He knows how I’m feeling, just at the sight of that hideous long-armed blanket monstrosity. When he steps forward in my direction, arms outstretched, I know it’s to give me comfort.
He wraps me in hug so strong that I can’t breathe. I feel my spine stretch, and then my feet leave the floor. Spencer lifts all six feet and three inches of me into the air as easily as if I’m one of the tiny dancers with whom he shares the stage. I laugh and protest wildly, afraid I’ll break his back. When finally he sets me down, it’s gently, so that my feet don’t so much strike the ground as approach it, caress it, and lovingly press into it, as gravity once more gives me weight.
“Turn around,” he says. He pushes me down over the kitchen counter. His hips connect with my ass. At the same time, his fingers surround my neck. Their tips dig into the muscle there, squeezing and releasing. They travel from neck to shoulders, to the round pads where my arms join. They dig beneath my shoulder blades and down my spine, teasing out and for the moment banishing the aches.
“Oh, god,” I say, giving in to his hands. I love to be touched. I love it more than fucking, sometimes. “You don’t have to—”
But he shushes me, and continues. Beneath his breath I hear the faintest of hums as he strokes and squeezes my back, soothing me with his talented, strong hands.
It’s a rare treat that continues later in the evening. When he joins me in bed, moist and warm from the shower, he spoons behind me. His pubic hairs tickle against my ass as gently he forces me to hug my pillow, and his fingers roam over my bare skin. In the darkness he silently performs his skillful ministrations, kneading at me, relaxing me in a way that few men ever try. It lasts for long, blissful moments as the both of us drowsily fall toward our slumbers, with the slow and lazy arc of a last autumn leaf descending from an empty branch.
The last thing I see before I close my eyes is the night sky through my open window. I don't notice the limbs of the tree overhanging the house, or the power lines, or the other rooftops on my quiet street. Only points of light in an indigo sky. Stars upon stars, a panorama assembled, over time unimaginable, just for the two of us. For this moment. I wish his touch, this fading kitten’s-paw sensation of his hands at the base of my spine, could be as infinite as the stars' numbers.
Spencer's breath deepens and he sleeps at last.
When we’re in the darkness together, Spencer and I, I feel like we’re two lost boys in the wood, with leaves as our blanket and only our two bodies for warmth. On the nights he spends here, we fall asleep clinging to each other. Tonight, he comforts me. He gives me an anchor when I’m adrift in the darkness, a place to moor myself, for a time.
What comfort do I give him? Some nights, it’s tough to imagine. It's not enough. But he’s here. For his hand on my waist, the rise and fall of his chest, the soft breath on my neck, this lost boy is grateful.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Reader Asses: #5
I am up to my elbows in ass.
Okay, sometimes I mean that literally. Tonight, however, I'm talking metaphorically. Thanks to my original call for photographs of your backsides, I've received so many of my readers' asses in my mailbox that it's almost overflowing with juicy, round, full, rimmable, fuckable ass.
By all means, don't stop sending in those photos. I'll keep posting them as long as long as I keep receiving them!
Let's see what we've got to display, this week. Be sure to thank this week's participants in the comments!
Boiboi21
There's something about the basic, all-American jeans drop, isn't there? It's reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA album cover, crossed with the back half of Michelangelo's David. And Boiboi21 here has the perfect specimen, don't we agree?
Playpigtop
August members of this week's ass safari, I must ask you to lower your voices as we round this next corner. We have a rare sighting of a top man bending over and showing what lies between his cheeks. Shush, for the slightest noise may send him scampering back into the forests from whence he came.
Aw, who'm I kidding? I see tops showing off their asses in photos all the time. Of course, by the time they send me those photos, they're usually not looking to be tops any more. Playpigtop, thanks for sharing your hole with us all!
SirLancealot
In days of yore, knights of olde would . . . hrm, no.
Get a load of HIS round table . . . no, let's not do that one.
How'd you like to plunge your sword between them sto . . . eh.
Just stare at SirLancealot's beautiful ass so I can skip the cheesy Arthurian puns, would ya?
Ian
Ian is 29 and hails from Northern Ireland. He was very specific about the fact that as an unschooled American, I am misspelling the very British arse as ass.
It sounds much dirtier as arse, doesn't it?
However it's spelt, Ian sports a nice one. I love that ridge of fur running down its length. Thanks for the arse, Ian!
Sleazy Jake
I know, with a name like 'Sleazy Jake,' how can the ass be anything other than spectacular? Jake lives up to all expectation, too. He wanted me to share with the world how sleazy he is, and how much he craves sperm deep in his guts.
Um, I'm packing my cock rings and my bag, Jake. See you in a few hours.
If you'd like to see more of Jake's photos, they're available online. I know I've spent many a pleasant moment looking at them already.
Thanks to all this week's participants!
Okay, sometimes I mean that literally. Tonight, however, I'm talking metaphorically. Thanks to my original call for photographs of your backsides, I've received so many of my readers' asses in my mailbox that it's almost overflowing with juicy, round, full, rimmable, fuckable ass.
By all means, don't stop sending in those photos. I'll keep posting them as long as long as I keep receiving them!
Let's see what we've got to display, this week. Be sure to thank this week's participants in the comments!
Boiboi21
There's something about the basic, all-American jeans drop, isn't there? It's reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA album cover, crossed with the back half of Michelangelo's David. And Boiboi21 here has the perfect specimen, don't we agree?
Playpigtop
August members of this week's ass safari, I must ask you to lower your voices as we round this next corner. We have a rare sighting of a top man bending over and showing what lies between his cheeks. Shush, for the slightest noise may send him scampering back into the forests from whence he came.
Aw, who'm I kidding? I see tops showing off their asses in photos all the time. Of course, by the time they send me those photos, they're usually not looking to be tops any more. Playpigtop, thanks for sharing your hole with us all!
SirLancealot
In days of yore, knights of olde would . . . hrm, no.
Get a load of HIS round table . . . no, let's not do that one.
How'd you like to plunge your sword between them sto . . . eh.
Just stare at SirLancealot's beautiful ass so I can skip the cheesy Arthurian puns, would ya?
Ian
Ian is 29 and hails from Northern Ireland. He was very specific about the fact that as an unschooled American, I am misspelling the very British arse as ass.
It sounds much dirtier as arse, doesn't it?
However it's spelt, Ian sports a nice one. I love that ridge of fur running down its length. Thanks for the arse, Ian!
Sleazy Jake
I know, with a name like 'Sleazy Jake,' how can the ass be anything other than spectacular? Jake lives up to all expectation, too. He wanted me to share with the world how sleazy he is, and how much he craves sperm deep in his guts.
Um, I'm packing my cock rings and my bag, Jake. See you in a few hours.
If you'd like to see more of Jake's photos, they're available online. I know I've spent many a pleasant moment looking at them already.
Thanks to all this week's participants!
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
James
Over the weekend an old student of mine invited me to attend an event of his in Ann Arbor, that city of university students and the aging hippies who are still trying to hang onto their student days.
The student—let’s call him James—had been in a college workshop of mine four or five years ago. He’d been in his late teens at the time. I remember him mostly as an impossibly skinny kid who was basically a bundle of sticks wearing the same denim button-down shirt week after week, with a belt barely holding his gray pants. I remember the denim shirt well, because he usually wore it unbuttoned about halfway down. When in the classes he’d lean over to read, or screw himself sideways in his seat to think as he chewed on his pen, I’d catch glimpses of his tiny, hair-fringed nipples, clinging to the perfectly smooth skin stretched taut over his ribcage.
James had a white-boy Afro of curly blond hair that probably weighed more than all the rest of him. It seemed his one point of vanity. He didn’t mind wearing the same clothes week after week (they were always clean, to his credit), but he seemed enormously proud of his hair. He kept a pick in his back pocket; at random points throughout the class, usually when someone else was presenting a project and talking about it, he would absently rummage for the plastic device, run it through his hair, and then give his head a pat-down. I don’t even think he knew what he was doing.
Every time I teach, I have certain students—male and female—who become fascinated with me. I think most teachers at and above a certain level would report the same. The young women have a tendency to hang around after workshops as I try to abandon the classroom and detain me with high-minded talk about theory and asking me for reading recommendations. The boldest of them will on occasion will tell me there’s an exhibit at the Institute of the Arts she’s been itching to see, and hint furiously that if I had any interest in going, well. . . .
The boys are much more direct. James was one of those. While visiting me during office hours, he’d lounge in the doorway clutching an armful of books in a way that didn’t inhibit his shirt from falling open to the nipples, and shoot out rapid-fire questions. Did I have a long commute home? Oh really? How long? Where did I live? Oh really? He went there all the time. He’d just had dinner with his friends at a Mexican restaurant in the downtown area of my little town, and then went to a bar afterward.
I wasn’t much surprised when the bar he named was the area’s most popular gay bar. These boys think they’re being so slick and casual, but if they knew how many of their peers through the years have used the exact same approach . . . well, there truly is nothing new under the sun.
“I’ve heard that’s a nice place,” I told him, neither rolling my eyes nor letting it register that I realized the significance of what he was trying to tell me. The poor kid left that day with his imagination raging and his boner unsatisfied.
I’m such a bastard.
In class he was just as relentless. All my participants in that workshop were constantly presenting their work to the rest of the students. When James’ turn came, I knew right from the first sentence he spoke what was coming. I was right, too—his first piece was of such rich obscenity that I could see the hairs curling all around the classroom. It was not only profoundly sexual and explicit in detail, but managed to throw in references to bondage and leather, as well as gay imagery that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Tom of Finland retrospective.
Now. It wasn’t particularly good. A lot of it was sex for the sake of shock; a lot of students, particularly in college, think that writing frankly about sex is a shortcut from the kiddie to the adult table. An awful lot of it, though, is the artistic equivalent of a third-grader on a dare running into a roomful of adults and yelling, at the top of his voice, “FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCK!” It might be designed to shock, but art it’s not.
So at the end of this homoerotic piece—which was most subtly about a student being raped, bound, and left gasping and covered in various bodily fluids by an older male professor—I put on my blank artist’s face, managed not to smirk, and gave him a frank and impassive critique. Oh, I did a good job of pretending to be Captain Oblivious. It felt a little cruel to give a vigorous assessment of what was essentially a Valentine to me, but I did what I had to do. At the end of the workshop, a girl who was James’s friend at the time managed to sum up how I saw the situation pretty well when I overheard her saying to him, as they walked out together, “Good Jesus Christ, why don’t you two just get a room?”
Poor James. He had some talent, but it really only showed up after that day, when I gently made him stuff his dick back into his pants. When he invited me to his event via Facebook last week, though, I was curious enough to drive out to Ann Arbor to see how he’d progressed. The event took place in a gallery near the city’s downtown, a well-lit white box trying to give off a Chelsea bouquet on a Two-Buck Chuck budget.
I slipped in very late, right before the proceedings began. I’d been hoping to remain incognito. Those hopes were dashed, though, when a young guy waved furiously at me from the second row while the first artist was presenting her work. It was James, of course. I almost didn’t recognize him. Gone was the outrageous head of hair—completely shaved, that mane was. He’d left nothing but a very thin layer of stubble on his head that was a golden gleam in the late-afternoon winter sunlight from outside. Throughout the afternoon, I watched as he ran the palms of his hands over it.
Friends still make fun of me because of an incident years ago, after a concert in which one of my buddies was involved. It had been a terrible, excruciating concert during which the audience disappeared during intermission to fortify ourselves with shots from the bar next door—no lie. After the last deafness-inducing song had faded, my friend came bouncing up to a bunch of us, eagerly wanting to know what we’d thought. The people I’d come with all lied prettily. Then it was my turn. My friend looked at me with expectation. “You know what?” I asked, a big smile on my face. Then I told him, quite truthfully, “That is one nice shirt you’ve got on!”
Nice shirt! has been something of a catchphrase in my circle, ever since. And while most of the artists would get a nice shirt! from me, James’s work wasn’t half-bad. He’s not fully baked yet, as an artist. He’s still working on figuring out who he is. If he keeps at it, though, he’ll get there. When James bounced up after the last applause had faded, all golden energy and still as skinny as a couple of chopsticks in Gap clothing, I gave him a hug and immediately told him his strong points, then congratulated him on how far he’d come. So much for making a quick getaway.
He practically lapped me up with his puppy-dog eyes, then bounced up and down and told me how glad he was that I’d come. Then he plucked someone out of the nearby crowd by the shoulders and pushed his companion squarely in front of me. “This is my boyfriend!” he gushed. “And this is my old teacher,” he told the boyfriend, while I tried to pretend that he meant an instructor from my not-too-distant past, not my doddering and aged professor.
“Nice to meet you,” I said pleasantly to the boyfriend, who was a young Latin man of twenty-four or twenty-five, dark-haired, wearing a tasseled scarf indoors, and midwestern enough to think a fauxhawk is still the shit.
The boyfriend narrowed his eyes at me, allowed me to shake his dead-fish hand, and icily intoned, “Oh, this is him?” He then gave me the once-over, taking in my jeans, my sneakers, my T-shirt, and my sweater. He seemed to find me wanting. “I’ve heard about you.”
“All good stuff,” James hastened to say. Then, almost like a rebuff, to his boyfriend he added, “It was all good stuff.”
“Oh yes,” declared the boyfriend. He crossed his arms, then jutted out his hips to the side. They were as sharp as a switchblade. “Of course it was good.”
There was certainly something in the boyfriend’s tone that left me unsettled. He said the words almost as if I were some rival for his affections. Or as if James forced him to roleplay Reluctant Student Raped By Professor Breeder, when their apartment door was shut. “You must be proud of James,” I said.
“Hmmfph.” The boyfriend narrowed his eyes at me a little more, then gave James a long and ostentatious kiss that involved more tongue than really necessary. Then, with a glance of triumph my way, he flounced off in the direction of the wine being handed out in plastic cups.
I managed to disappear quickly only because James was waylaid by some other admirers, but I left Ann Arbor feeling both amused and curious. Amused, because clearly the boyfriend thought I was some kind of opponent I really wasn’t. Curious, because I wanted to know how he’d gotten that way. Did James begin too many sentences with, “I really hope my old teacher comes!”? Was I the topic of a late-night conversation? I used to have this old teacher I really had the hots for, but it never went anywhere.
There’s a whole story there that I’ll never be told. But sometimes life is a little richer from the wondering.
The student—let’s call him James—had been in a college workshop of mine four or five years ago. He’d been in his late teens at the time. I remember him mostly as an impossibly skinny kid who was basically a bundle of sticks wearing the same denim button-down shirt week after week, with a belt barely holding his gray pants. I remember the denim shirt well, because he usually wore it unbuttoned about halfway down. When in the classes he’d lean over to read, or screw himself sideways in his seat to think as he chewed on his pen, I’d catch glimpses of his tiny, hair-fringed nipples, clinging to the perfectly smooth skin stretched taut over his ribcage.
James had a white-boy Afro of curly blond hair that probably weighed more than all the rest of him. It seemed his one point of vanity. He didn’t mind wearing the same clothes week after week (they were always clean, to his credit), but he seemed enormously proud of his hair. He kept a pick in his back pocket; at random points throughout the class, usually when someone else was presenting a project and talking about it, he would absently rummage for the plastic device, run it through his hair, and then give his head a pat-down. I don’t even think he knew what he was doing.
Every time I teach, I have certain students—male and female—who become fascinated with me. I think most teachers at and above a certain level would report the same. The young women have a tendency to hang around after workshops as I try to abandon the classroom and detain me with high-minded talk about theory and asking me for reading recommendations. The boldest of them will on occasion will tell me there’s an exhibit at the Institute of the Arts she’s been itching to see, and hint furiously that if I had any interest in going, well. . . .
The boys are much more direct. James was one of those. While visiting me during office hours, he’d lounge in the doorway clutching an armful of books in a way that didn’t inhibit his shirt from falling open to the nipples, and shoot out rapid-fire questions. Did I have a long commute home? Oh really? How long? Where did I live? Oh really? He went there all the time. He’d just had dinner with his friends at a Mexican restaurant in the downtown area of my little town, and then went to a bar afterward.
I wasn’t much surprised when the bar he named was the area’s most popular gay bar. These boys think they’re being so slick and casual, but if they knew how many of their peers through the years have used the exact same approach . . . well, there truly is nothing new under the sun.
“I’ve heard that’s a nice place,” I told him, neither rolling my eyes nor letting it register that I realized the significance of what he was trying to tell me. The poor kid left that day with his imagination raging and his boner unsatisfied.
I’m such a bastard.
In class he was just as relentless. All my participants in that workshop were constantly presenting their work to the rest of the students. When James’ turn came, I knew right from the first sentence he spoke what was coming. I was right, too—his first piece was of such rich obscenity that I could see the hairs curling all around the classroom. It was not only profoundly sexual and explicit in detail, but managed to throw in references to bondage and leather, as well as gay imagery that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Tom of Finland retrospective.
Now. It wasn’t particularly good. A lot of it was sex for the sake of shock; a lot of students, particularly in college, think that writing frankly about sex is a shortcut from the kiddie to the adult table. An awful lot of it, though, is the artistic equivalent of a third-grader on a dare running into a roomful of adults and yelling, at the top of his voice, “FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCK!” It might be designed to shock, but art it’s not.
So at the end of this homoerotic piece—which was most subtly about a student being raped, bound, and left gasping and covered in various bodily fluids by an older male professor—I put on my blank artist’s face, managed not to smirk, and gave him a frank and impassive critique. Oh, I did a good job of pretending to be Captain Oblivious. It felt a little cruel to give a vigorous assessment of what was essentially a Valentine to me, but I did what I had to do. At the end of the workshop, a girl who was James’s friend at the time managed to sum up how I saw the situation pretty well when I overheard her saying to him, as they walked out together, “Good Jesus Christ, why don’t you two just get a room?”
Poor James. He had some talent, but it really only showed up after that day, when I gently made him stuff his dick back into his pants. When he invited me to his event via Facebook last week, though, I was curious enough to drive out to Ann Arbor to see how he’d progressed. The event took place in a gallery near the city’s downtown, a well-lit white box trying to give off a Chelsea bouquet on a Two-Buck Chuck budget.
I slipped in very late, right before the proceedings began. I’d been hoping to remain incognito. Those hopes were dashed, though, when a young guy waved furiously at me from the second row while the first artist was presenting her work. It was James, of course. I almost didn’t recognize him. Gone was the outrageous head of hair—completely shaved, that mane was. He’d left nothing but a very thin layer of stubble on his head that was a golden gleam in the late-afternoon winter sunlight from outside. Throughout the afternoon, I watched as he ran the palms of his hands over it.
Friends still make fun of me because of an incident years ago, after a concert in which one of my buddies was involved. It had been a terrible, excruciating concert during which the audience disappeared during intermission to fortify ourselves with shots from the bar next door—no lie. After the last deafness-inducing song had faded, my friend came bouncing up to a bunch of us, eagerly wanting to know what we’d thought. The people I’d come with all lied prettily. Then it was my turn. My friend looked at me with expectation. “You know what?” I asked, a big smile on my face. Then I told him, quite truthfully, “That is one nice shirt you’ve got on!”
Nice shirt! has been something of a catchphrase in my circle, ever since. And while most of the artists would get a nice shirt! from me, James’s work wasn’t half-bad. He’s not fully baked yet, as an artist. He’s still working on figuring out who he is. If he keeps at it, though, he’ll get there. When James bounced up after the last applause had faded, all golden energy and still as skinny as a couple of chopsticks in Gap clothing, I gave him a hug and immediately told him his strong points, then congratulated him on how far he’d come. So much for making a quick getaway.
He practically lapped me up with his puppy-dog eyes, then bounced up and down and told me how glad he was that I’d come. Then he plucked someone out of the nearby crowd by the shoulders and pushed his companion squarely in front of me. “This is my boyfriend!” he gushed. “And this is my old teacher,” he told the boyfriend, while I tried to pretend that he meant an instructor from my not-too-distant past, not my doddering and aged professor.
“Nice to meet you,” I said pleasantly to the boyfriend, who was a young Latin man of twenty-four or twenty-five, dark-haired, wearing a tasseled scarf indoors, and midwestern enough to think a fauxhawk is still the shit.
The boyfriend narrowed his eyes at me, allowed me to shake his dead-fish hand, and icily intoned, “Oh, this is him?” He then gave me the once-over, taking in my jeans, my sneakers, my T-shirt, and my sweater. He seemed to find me wanting. “I’ve heard about you.”
“All good stuff,” James hastened to say. Then, almost like a rebuff, to his boyfriend he added, “It was all good stuff.”
“Oh yes,” declared the boyfriend. He crossed his arms, then jutted out his hips to the side. They were as sharp as a switchblade. “Of course it was good.”
There was certainly something in the boyfriend’s tone that left me unsettled. He said the words almost as if I were some rival for his affections. Or as if James forced him to roleplay Reluctant Student Raped By Professor Breeder, when their apartment door was shut. “You must be proud of James,” I said.
“Hmmfph.” The boyfriend narrowed his eyes at me a little more, then gave James a long and ostentatious kiss that involved more tongue than really necessary. Then, with a glance of triumph my way, he flounced off in the direction of the wine being handed out in plastic cups.
I managed to disappear quickly only because James was waylaid by some other admirers, but I left Ann Arbor feeling both amused and curious. Amused, because clearly the boyfriend thought I was some kind of opponent I really wasn’t. Curious, because I wanted to know how he’d gotten that way. Did James begin too many sentences with, “I really hope my old teacher comes!”? Was I the topic of a late-night conversation? I used to have this old teacher I really had the hots for, but it never went anywhere.
There’s a whole story there that I’ll never be told. But sometimes life is a little richer from the wondering.
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