The Handsomeness Experiment

All last month I kept thinking, Hey, my second blogiversary is coming up. I need to remember to write something about it. Then the week before it happened, I several times thought, Next week’s the second anniversary of my blog! Don’t forget to say something to your readers!


Of course, the day actually rolled around and I was more or less oblivious. Typical.

I’ve thought about several different things I could say about keeping a public sex blog for two years running. I could write up a list of all the readers I’ve had the privilege to meet, and those I’ve had the privilege to get inside. After the mid-year debacle in which a certain other prolific former blogger hate-bombed my email box when I gently suggested in an entry that it’s probably not a good idea for bloggers to chew out their readers en masse on a regular basis, I could’ve written a rather length screed about the unpleasantness of being on the receiving end of the manifestation of someone’s mental illness. I could be writing a grateful and humbled thank-you note to my readers, blessing them for the abundance of fun, fellowship, and kindness they’ve shown me over the last twenty-four months.

This entry that follows is more in the vein of the latter. Because I truly am grateful for everything my readers give me, and because I’d like to have a sense that I’m giving back a little, I have an anecdote to relate.

I made love to someone recently—it was in these pages, but who it was doesn’t matter. While we were fucking, I kept telling him how beautiful he was, and how handsome. I didn’t say the words simply to get into his pants. Those pants had hit the bedroom floor a couple of hours before. I was telling him how deeply attractive I found him because I really felt what I was saying, right at that moment. I wanted him to know how much I wanted him and how good he made me feel. I could’ve gone all day without touching the guy, if he’d granted me the favor of letting me lie there and look at his sweet face, his handsome features, his deep and kind eyes.

There was a moment when we were slowly gyrating against each other, enjoying the slow and deliberate pleasure of it, when he looked up at me in wonder. “I never think of myself this way,” he said. “You make me feel like a completely different person.”

I stared at him for a moment. “So why don’t you allow yourself to be?” I finally asked, before kissing him.

It was one of those moments that could have easily been forgotten. We both could’ve returned to our homes that night sated and stinking of each other, content to let the evening remain a memory. He took it a little further than I expected, though, when I heard from him last week with this email.

You don’t know this, but I fell asleep that night replaying that short conversation in my head. I probably acted like a lovesick fifteen-year-old. You wouldn’t let me go. “Why don’t you allow yourself to be?”, I kept hearing in my head, again and again. 

Did I feel like a completely different person, through your eyes? I did. Did I feel beautiful, and handsome, and desirable, and all the things I always feared I’d never be? I most certainly did. 

The next morning I woke up and I thought, "What if I really am all those things?” 

And I thought, "Why not assume that you are? Why not get up and get through the day assuming you’re all things he said you are?" Handsome. Beautiful. Sexy. Remarkable. Sweet. Hot. 

It felt like I’d woken up in someone else’s bed. I was giddy as I thought to myself, "It won't hurt anyone. It won't break laws. Why not try it? What if you did it as an experiment? Say, a week? One week of thinking of yourself as handsome?” 

It was strange. I really wanted to try it, to listen to this unexpected voice—your voice—urging me on. But then my own voice intruded. “It’d be ridiculous because you’re not handsome at all,” it said. “You’re as far away from handsome as it’s possible to get. That’s why.” 

Your voice spoke up. "Do you think I was just kidding with you? Pitying you? Being kind, in a moment of passion?” 

I wanted to listen to your voice in my head that morning. Not my own. I stepped into the bathroom. Looked in the mirror. I had sex hair. My face looked slept-upon. But I was handsome. I didn’t have to believe it. I didn’t believe it, yet. I just had to say it to myself.
I am handsome. 

I was walking down the street during rush hour on the way to work. "Lift your head up," I told myself. Have you ever noticed you always look down as you walk, to hide your face? Stop looking down. You're handsome." 

I do it. I am handsome. 

In the coffee shop. The server is amazingly cute. He could have anyone he wants. “Don't tilt your head down when he speaks to you. Look him in the eye. You're handsome." 

I look him in the eye. I smile. I wink as I wish him a good day. 

He gives me a free cookie. 

Well, now. 

I decide to let myself be handsome all that day. Then all that week. And I swear to god, it’s working. I haven’t changed physically, but the world is changing around me. People react to me differently—men and women both, and not just in a sexual way. It's not my imagination. The more I say it, the more I believe it. The more my confidence grows, the more inclined the world is to get out of my way–or, better, to help me step aside and admire me as I pass. 

It’s novel, and it’s sweet, and I love myself in a way I haven’t for over thirty years. I am handsome. 

You were the start of this. You did in a few hours what a succession of expensive therapists had never been able to do. You changed the world for me. 

You and your words. 

Thank you.

Now. I have some disagreements with the basic moral my lover has drawn here. It wasn’t me or my words that changed his world. He did that all by himself, by being open to the truth, open to the universe, and showing a willingness to believe in the best parts of himself rather than to run away from them. And if I can get pseudo-mystical for a moment: you can do that, too.

I get so much email from readers who wish their lives were like mine. Or if not exactly like mine, richer and more free, in a direction they perceive mine as being. If there’s anything I wish to have accomplished after two years of blogging about my sex life, it’s to impart a very specific message: your life is not entirely on rails. You are in control of many of the aspects of your existence that make you unhappy. If you’re dismayed with the way things are going, seize the wheel and steer in a direction that’s better for you. Good things can happen to you. You deserve every single one of them.

You are handsome. You are beautiful. You are a wonderful person with an abundance of good qualities. (Well, a couple of you are real shits, but chances are that if you were one of them, you wouldn’t have read this far. You’d already have written your snarky little comment about how I should get a real job, and gone on your merry way.) Good people in your lives have told you these things before; I'm repeating them to you now.

I have encountered so many men in the last two years alone who long to subscribe to these truths about themselves, but are so frightened to believe anything good they hear—or are so used to ignoring the compliments—that they shy away. They cringe, and deflect, and discount.

Anything not to hear what they so desperately wish was reality.

Yet these things are truths. You are beautiful, inside and out. You are handsome. You have a good, sweet soul. Why not believe it for a day? It won’t hurt anyone if you do.

Why not believe it for a week? You won’t break any laws.

Why not act as if it’s true, for good, and watch how the world changes around you? Because it can, and will, if you so much as allow it.

That’s what I wish for each and every one of you. What gift could be sweeter?

51 Photos

After two encounters in a row, within a couple of days of each other, that ended up as a poopy mess, I have to confess that I was a little gun-shy about hooking up again. With anyone. But when my local Puerto Rican fuckbuddy, the sexy, muscular furniture mover, messaged me last Thursday night, I couldn’t help but feel the stirrings of longing down in my pants.


sup lover?, he asked.

I was sitting in a Taco Bell at the time, having a solitary early dinner. I had the evening to myself, and didn’t have either the inclination to cook or to spend that much time or money on my meal. I’d planned to head home and work on a couple of projects I have cooking. But this sounded better. How are you, sexy man? I wrote back.


let me have your big dick my love, he texted. i got my own room now we can meet.

That was right. I hadn’t seen my little Rican lover in a few weeks because he’d been in transition. He’d been living with his sister—along with her husband and her husband’s mother and her two daughters—in a cramped two-bedroom apartment when I’d first met him. Since the new year, he’d found a place of his own, which would make getting together easier.


Let’s do it, I texted, after a moment’s hesitation. Those projects at home could wait. My dick was hard, and needed a place to unload.

I picked him up in front of his sister’s high-rise a very few minutes later. He’d been having dinner there. He hopped into my car and, to my surprise, gave me a big kiss on the lips right then and there. His hand went straight to my thigh, and squeezed. The street was dark and its sole lamp was at the far end, but I could tell my mover looked good. He wore a pair of sweatpants that fit tight around his round rear, and hung slack over his muscular legs and thighs. His pecs were barely contained in a wife-beater scooped low enough that I could see the religious tattoos inked on his chest. “Papi,” he breathed, as he put his hand on the back of my head and pulled my face down to him.

I had hastily to put my car into park so that I wouldn’t lose control of it during our kiss.

His new place was only two blocks away. (“Remember the ice cream store and that is my street. Now when you think of ice cream you will always think of me!” he said with delight, on the drive over.) I followed his directions and parked the car in front of an auto shop that was closed for the night. We walked up the street, and paused in front of a large bungalow that had definitely seen better days. He stopped right when we’d stepped through the uneven swinging front gate that needed a coat of paint. “Stay here, papi, while I check to see if it is clear,” he told me.

I was a little taken aback when finally he came back and snuck me through the front door and down the stairs into the basement, past a vibrating washing machine and through a door at the cellar’s far end. When he meant he’d gotten a room, he meant a room. It was a square box of a room with no bathroom, no sink, no kitchen. Just a small window set high near the ceiling, a mattress on the floor, a TV propped on a plastic milk crate, and a closet full of his overalls and casual clothes. On the mattress was spread a fleece bedspread printed with a giant picture of Jesus, holding up a pair of fingers either to bless someone, or perhaps test which way the wind was blowing.

My mover smiled at me with delight. “Now we can be alone when we like, my love,” he said, pushing me down onto the floor and the mattress. “And I get your beautiful cock all to myself.”

When he put it that way, there wasn’t much to which I could object. Right?

Personal confession time. One of the things I rarely write about is how bad my eyesight really is. I usually wear contact lenses, but a couple of times a week I’ll switch things up with my glasses, which are spectacularly nerdy and (I think) rather cool, but without which I’m pretty damned helpless. I was wearing my glasses that night. But I have to admit—once my mover had gently removed them from my nose and ears and folded them up in a safe place on the floor, I wasn’t paying attention to the shabbiness of that room anymore. Nor to the fact that he was removing my clothes while someone from upstairs was sorting their laundry not four feet on the other side of the locked door, or that he was holding down my hands over my head and licking out my pits right there on Christ’s face.

“This is my dick,” he kept saying, after it was loose and free. He put it into his mouth and sucked it all the way down before coming back up for air. “This dick belongs to me, right, pa? All for me?”

“All for you,” I murmured dreamily. Not being able to see him put me into something of a dream state. I just allowed myself to enjoy the sensations, to ride the crest of the wave of pleasure.

“All for me,” he agreed. He had a small bottle of lube on the deep window sill high above the bed. He spread some on his hole and then a little more on my dick, surrounding it with his fist. Then he straddled my hips with his knees and slowly lowered himself down onto my. My eyes opened when I felt the tight ring of his hole surround my flared head. They opened further when he settled right down onto me and slid to the base.

His hips wriggled as he reached bottom. He leaned forward, forced my arms above my head and held them there once more, and kissed me.

We fucked like that for a long time. I would thrust up, and he would grind down. It was slow, and unhurried, and languorous, like a summer afternoon’s fuck. When we came, it was together—him slightly ahead of me, as he jerked his uncut dick until it spewed droplets of clear fluid all over my chest, me only a little behind, with his ass still contracting around my meat. Then we remained connected together as if the orgasms hadn’t happened, for a very long time, still grinding, still moving our hips in their circular orbits around each other’s suns.

When he finally rested on his knees and lifted himself up, he went for the windowsill again. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but after a moment I felt something cold and wet and soft on my dick. He had a packet of baby wipes that he was using on my dick and balls, and he cleaned me off so sweetly and thoroughly that all I could do was sigh and dream and enjoy the sensations against my dick, my pelvis, my balls, my taint. Even if he had been dirty (and I don’t think he was) that was the way to take care of it after.

“I want a photo of you inside my ass, love,” he whispered, when he was done.

I was game. I shrugged and told him sure.

He ran to his closet and a moment later emerged with a battered digital SLR camera. I was a little surprised at how expertly he fiddled with the lens, but I should have remembered he’d told me he’d gone to an art school, in Puerto Rico. “Can I?” he asked, pointing between my legs.

I relaxed. “Okay,” I said. Then with pleasure, I watched as his blurry outline knelt down on the floor, pointed the camera at my three-quarters-hard dick, and snapped a shot.

“Let me take pictures of you, love,” he whispered. “So I can remember.”

Normally I’m wary about letting guys snap photos of my body and face after sex, because I’m not that convinced I’m porn material above the waist. There have been also a couple of times in the past when I’ve seen photos of myself that men have snapped that make me seem as if I’m nothing but a big dick and a couple of huge cavernous nostrils, or who manage to make me look as if I have the worst outbreak of acne possible, even on days my complexion is clear. But my mover was so sweet, and what I could see of him naked and crouched before me was so sexy, that I just held my dick in my hand until it was hard again, pointed it up for the camera, and posed.

The shutter clicked, over and over again. He eased me back against Jesus and shot photos of me smiling at him, my hair wild and crazy. He lifted my legs until my knees pointed at the ceiling, and took shots of me masturbating for him. He cuddled down next to me and made out with me while he held the camera at arm’s length and captured the moment. He took photos of me sucking his dick, of him sucking mine. And he had me take the camera and point it at his hole while I slid into him. Then he would grab the device and look at the photos while we fucked again.

I didn’t see any of the photos. He showed them to me, to his credit. But I simply couldn’t see them. My mover would hold out the viewfinder at arm’s length, and flip through the shots. “That is a good one, my love,” he’d say. Or he’d hiss with pleasure and murmur, “Oh, yessssss. I like that. So beautiful.”

But I couldn’t see them, because my eyesight is simply that bad without my glasses. I would have had to pull the camera down and peer at it through one eye, two inches away, to see anything sharply. My vanity couldn’t stand that indignity.

Or maybe, just maybe, I didn’t really care what the photos looked like. If he was happy, I was happy. I like to think that’s the reason I just lay there, and listened to his grunts and watched his smiles from up close, as he reviewed our moments together.

“How many photos did you take?” I asked, two and a half hours later, when I was pulling on my socks.
I was sitting on the corner of his mattress, legs spread, naked, disheveled. He was standing. He looked at his camera. “Forty-nine,” he said.

“Make it an even fifty,” I told him.

He grinned wide, and pointed the camera at me, so he could take another photo of me in that unglamorous pose—hair hanging down in front of my face, knees spread, cock hanging so low that the tip almost scraped the floor. Then he said, “One more.” And he reached down, and smoothed away my hair, and lifted my chin high in the air. “Like that,” he breathed, backing away. I heard the shutter click a final time.

Fifty-one photos. None of which I actually saw. And you know what? For now I’m good with that.

Hot Chocolate

His online profile claimed he was 39. Framed by my front door, he looked 53. His Manhunt and Adam4Adam profile photos had shown a handsome, lean man with dark hair, a married man, a man with a twinkle in his eye and a big dick between his legs. In person, he was an okay guy, a guy with gray and grizzled hair, a schmo whose eyes kept darting back and forth shiftily, as if he were casing the joint.

He said he liked to kiss, but apparently his idea of making out was pursing his lips into a tight point, and pressing them hard against mine in as chaste an exchange as I used to get from a great-aunt as a child. He wouldn’t allow my tongue to cross that impenetrable fortress. It would’ve been easier to get into Fort Knox’s main gold vault.

I probably should’ve stopped at that point, cut my losses, and called it a day, but I confess I let my horniness get the better of my common sense. I had a day off, and an opportunity to host. My last encounter with the banker who’d pooped all over the floor hadn’t gone so well, and I hadn’t gotten off in the interim. So what if the guy shaved a few years off his age in his online profiles? So what if he didn’t exactly match his older photos? He wasn’t hideous, and I had a dick that needed to get off. So I led him into my bedroom.

He went down on his knees the moment my belt buckle crashed against the floor. His mouth wasn’t the best on my dick—too much teeth—but it was a mouth, and I needed some relief. “You like that?” I asked. “You like that dick?” His eyes were closed as he bobbed up and down on the shaft. Thinking he was too far lost in some kind of sexual daze, I repeated my question. “You like sucking on that big ol’ dick?”
He opened his eyes then, gave me a look of annoyance, and went back to his substandard blow job.


All right, I thought to myself. So he doesn’t like chatter during sex. I’m good with that. I pulled him up on the bed and, while he continued abrading my dick with his incisors, removed my long-sleeved T-shirt. He took a moment to shuck himself out of his jeans and sweatshirt. Even his dick didn’t look as big as it had in his photos, I noted.

None of that seemed to matter at the moment. Because I was getting laid. At least he was showered—and clean enough that I felt comfortable eating out his hole a little bit. He bucked and groaned at the attention. “Shove it in,” he begged me, but instead I kept tonguing his hole. It was the first thing I’d done that got much of a reaction, frankly.

He slipped off the bed; his hands were braced against the floor as I kept my mouth against his hole. Then his torso slid down the side of the mattress, until his butt and legs were the only parts of his body still at my level. The side of his head rested against the wood floor. His eyes were closed. He sighed with contentment. He was ready.

I had some lube at hand, but all I really needed was a little spit. “You cleaned out, right?” I asked, will gun shy after the previous encounter.

“I’m totally clean,” he promised.

I slid in without a problem. His hole was tight and slick, and when he clamped down on it, I felt right about inviting him into my home. The crappy pics hadn’t mattered. They were just window dressing. This is what we both wanted. This fucking like dogs, this rutting like a pair of animals in heat. His head was back, his eyes closed, his mouth was open. He made the smallest sounds of pleasure and exquisite pain with every thrust.

“Let me sit on it,” he begged, after a few minutes.

I had no issues with that.

I pulled out of him very slowly and carefully. Then I clambered onto the bed and threw myself against the pillows. My dick pointed straight in the air. My ceilings are very, very high in this place; he was able to stand up on my bed without having to bend his head, as he positioned himself above me. “I want you to eat me out some more,” he said, as inch by inch he started to bend his knees and lower himself down. “Eat my hole, man.”

And that’s when it started. As his cheeks began to part, stuff started to drip out of his ass. Let’s use an apt phrase that’s been floating around U.S. current events in the last couple of months and call it a frothy santorum. It was the consistency and color of hot chocolate. Not the kind made by any Swiss Miss, however.

And it was sloshing down onto my chest.

My first thought: Jesus christ, not again!

My second thought: How the fuck do I get out of here?

It’s surprising, the way our brains work. I recall very analytically, very quickly, running through a number of calculations. It’d be faster to escape by scooting down toward the bed’s foot—but I’d run the risk of getting the stuff on my face, or in my hair. Pulling my body up toward the head would take a lot longer, but I’d have a lot less chance of getting that shit in my mouth or eye. In the end, and after only a split-second of decision-making, I seized his ankle, yanked it up, and did a roll-and-crouch like an action hero off the side of the bed and onto the floor.

The guy managed to keep his balance. More of the hot chocolate squirted out of his ass onto the bed blanket. Enema juice, it basically was—probably less disgusting than the banker had been, but this time I was gagging and having to clench down on the contents of my stomach. “Are you crazy?” I screeched at him, my face screwed tight with (I think) entirely justified indignation. “That is no way totally clean!”

It actually took the guy a moment to figure out what was going on. He looked at me blankly, then turned to one side to see the brown trail of splotches on my formerly white blanket, then turned to the other side—presumably so he could lawn-sprinkler the entire bed, rather than just the portion of it he’d soiled before. Finally he looked at me. “If you let me use your toilet for a couple of minutes, we could finish up after,” he said.

It was an offer I turned down, mysteriously enough. I had him in his clothes and out the door less than a minute later, and within three minutes, all the bedclothes were in the washer and I was in the shower, both set on hot.

So I’ve got to put it out there. Men of the tri-state area: what the fuck? Is bowel control not a thing here? Am I being super-picky for asking you guys to make sure your asses are cleaned out before we meet? Do I need actually to put the words Please don’t shit on me in my online profiles?

What the god-damned fuck is going on with you guys? This former mid-westerner really wants to know.

Sunday Morning Questions: Humility Edition

I had recent two stories to related in which the end result of a couple of unfortunate sexual encounters was me being both grossed out and humbled. The "Fudge" entry of Friday was the first; the other will be my next blog installment.

But since I had another recent incident in which I was left with poop on my face (metaphorical, this time), I thought I'd round it out to a trio.

I'm always trying new recipes at home. Usually it falls to me to make dinners, because I'm the only good cook in the house, and because I keep the meals well-balanced and somewhat light. There's a baked spaghetti recipe I've been liking lately, for example—and I'm one of those people who associates that particular dish with midweek church potlucks, and always think of it as greasy and heavy and disgusting. The version I've tried, however, is mostly vegetables, and whole-wheat pasta, and just a touch of cheese. Delicious.

And then there's the dish I served the other night. It's a brown butter gnocchi dish that's heavy on the garlic. I like it because it calls for a lot of wilted fresh spinach, and because it's one of those meals I can throw together in 20 minutes after being out all day. I dashed home on Friday evening to whip it up, there was a made whirlwind through the kitchen of people eating before they went off to their Friday night activities, and then I was left on my own. So I stuffed my iPad in my bag and headed up to the local Starbucks.

It's one of those Starbucks with a drive-through, located immediately off a busy highway exit. There's more traffic through the drive-through than there is in the building itself, which is why I like it. I'm always guaranteed one of the comfy chairs, and reasonable quiet to catch up on my reading.

And of course, there's the barista there on whom I totally crush out.

He's about twenty. He has very long, curly blond hair that he attempts to keep tamped down with a baseball cap. He's got very dark eyebrows, and a clear complexion, and a skinny frame. And whenever I come in, I get a little bit of a vibe that if he's not exactly itching for me to jump his bones, he doesn't mind talking to me as he prepares my skinny mochas, and he certainly doesn't mind the tip.

"Big plans for the night?" I asked him, as I leaned on the counter and watched him play with the various espresso machines.

"Probably heading home and reading some new comics I picked up today," he told me.

I tried to ignore the fact that I was hitting on a boy who still reads comics, and gave him a suave smile. "Sounds like a wild Friday."

"Uh-huh," he said. I'd actually thought he was going to say something else, but he was staring at me.

Well, well, I thought. Maybe he's looking for another kind of wild Friday. "You can't think of anything more interesting to do than that tonight?", I asked, letting the open-ended question dangle. It wasn't overly suggestive, after all. Just vague.

And for a moment I thought he might be buying into it. He kept staring at me with a certain intensity that seemed almost . . . sexual. Like he was lost in some kind of erotic reverie. Then finally his little pink lips parted to speak. I waited to hear what he was going to say. "Dude," he asked, fascinated. "Did someone knock out one of your teeth?"

Of course, it proved that one of those leaves of nutritious fresh wilted spinach had completely wrapped itself around one of my incisors, resisting even the swish of mouthwash I'd taken after dinner. I had to scrape it off with a fingernail in the men's room.

Mortifying.

Let's get to some questions from my readers, courtesy of formspring.me.

Do you actively seek out other women-besides the wifey-to sleep with?

I have enjoyed recreational sex with women in the past outside my relationship, and I probably will again.

My preference in recent years has been to meet with couples (whether married, or in a relationship, or something similar) rather than meet single women. There are a number of reasons for that, but the foremost is kind of big-headed; I've had a few occasions on which single women became possessive to the point of being stalkerish, and I'd prefer not to have to replay the scenario of Fatal Attraction, thanks.

Women in a relationship are usually just looking to have fun, or to bring to their relationship something it's not getting on its own. That speed suits me much better.

Do you own an Amazon kindle? Is there any chance you would be willing to publish your blog on the kindle? 

I have, and I use, the Kindle reader on my iPad. I'd be curious about hearing why anyone would think a blog transcribed to a Kindle book file would have any advantage over just reading the site at its web page (aside from portability, for Kindles without fancy web access).

I recently got a job that involves me dealing with the public a lot more than I've ever been used to. I have the ability to write things down for some folks who need a receipt. Would it be unwise to slip my phone number on a receipt? 

You mean, like you're a waiter or a barista? Heck, I say go for it. I've always gotten a thrill (and often a follow-up fuck) when I've gotten a phone number on a receipt.

One thing, though. You might want to make clear that you're flirtatious and interested when you're dealing with the customer—there've been a couple of times I've found a phone number from someone who barely looked at me, and I wasn't certain exactly if they expected me to call and come on to them, or whether they'd scrawled it down accidentally.

Give the guy a nice smile and your number, and he'll give you a call.

What's your favorite reality tv show?

The Amazing Race. I would love to go on it with someone who A) could drive stick shift, and B) would be willing to take on all the solo detours that involve anything cold and/or icy. I, on the other hand, have no issues with bungee jumps, high-wire balancing acts, snakes, or gross food.

Any takers?

Have you ever gotten a woman pregnant? And how many kids do you think you've fathered?

Yes. Three.

What is your favourite porn movie and actor?

I really, really like Jesse O'Toole of several Treasure Island movies. He's got more ink than a newspaper and about a mile of dick—more importantly, he knows how to kiss and take his time. If I could suddenly morph into a porn star, he'd be the one I picked.

Because of him, Breeding Mike O'Neill would probably be my one desert island porn DVD.

What did you get for Christmas?

My blog readers bought me NastyPig underwear, restraints, chaps, CDs, and a DVD. The best present I got from a blog reader, however, was a pair of Bose headphones that I refuse to take from my head.

What music do you like playing while you're having sex?

I'm not fond of music playing during sex. I find it really distracting.

I also don't like trying to set a mood through music when I'm enjoying sex with someone. I like making a mood through the style of lovemaking, and if Japanese techno is thudding out while I'm trying to create something intimate and sweet and memorable, it's just working against me.

Can one tell the difference between bad sex and sex with a virgin if one had no obvious knowledge? 

Absolutely. Most people who give bad sex manage to bluster and talk a good game, as if they're trying to distract their partner from the obvious badness of it. Virgins who are trying to conceal their lack of experience either tend to clam up during the actual act, or apologize a lot.

I don't want to give the impression that sex with virgins is always bad sex. It's not. Sometimes it can be tender and quite passionate and very fulfilling for both parties.

Fudge

So I’m at this guy’s weekend house. Weekend house, mind you—one of those Victorian two-story New England-type deals originally built in 1860, with a cupola and a grand front porch and a plaque next to the front door stating that it’s part of this hamlet’s historic district. He’s a Manhattan banker who already owns an apartment in the east seventies. (“Don’t hate me,” he begged, when he confessed his profession.) A weekend house that’s been renovated to the gills inside and decorated with tasteful white pine furniture and inoffensive works of art.

I’m a little surprised, after I arrive and beg to take a quick pee in the bathroom, to see one of those signs on the sink that asks guests to help conserve water by hanging up towels if they plan to reuse them, and to leave them on the floor if they wish the maids to provide replacements. Later I figure out that during the summers, he probably clears out his personal belongings and uses a service to rent the place out.

It’s in that kind of waterfront neighborhood. Across the street from the docks, you know. If one had a sailboat, it’d be heaven.

But he’s here now, and I’m here, and we’re undressing each other next to the suitcase he’s got spilled out all over the floor. I’m pleased because he looks like his photo, which is a refreshing change in this area. He’s pleased because I’ve got the big dick he wants. He’s on his knees, leaning across the suitcase to get at it. Then he’s tackling me, arms around my waist, so that I fall back onto the bed with its hundred decorative accent pillows. There are so many pillows, in fact, that there’s a bit of a pillow explosion when my long frame hits the mattress. He has to take a moment to select which of the fussy cushions gets to stay, and which he’s tossing over the suitcase to the other side of the room.

Then we’re making out like demons. He’s a good kisser. Very good. He’s one of those silver foxes, an older guy with a head of gray hair and a gym-worked body, a handsome urban professional who’s probably made a good name for himself along with the wads of cash it would take to buy a weekend house like this one. He’s all about my dick, too. He goes down on it like he’s hungry and it’s the first good meal he’s seen in weeks. I’m groaning and moaning and my eyes are rolling toward the back of my head, as I arrange one of the remaining pillows behind my neck.

He smells good, too. Like soap, or as if he’s stepped right out of the shower. I notice it when I pull him up to kiss me again, and then suck on his nipples. I flip him onto his belly and kiss his shoulders, his back. I scrape my beard down his spine, and let my chin part his ass cheeks. I lick at his hole, and he shivers. Then I bite at it, and it growls and pushes back against my face. He’s getting into the rim job. His hips buck and quiver, his hole opens. I shove in a couple of fingers, and he lets out a low growl from deep within his core. He wants it. He’s ready.

Some lube. Some shoving. It doesn’t take much, and then I’m in. He’s got a sweet hole, and damn, does he ever look good there perched at the edge of the mattress, his ass in the air, his knees spread wide. He looks like a porn actor. He’s loving the fuck as much as he loved going down on me, as much as he loved my mouth against his. He’s no buttoned-down banker, now. He’s a fucking whore, pussying up for a real man’s dick, and he’s letting his pleasure be known. He’s howling and panting and begging me to go deeper. I’m matching him obscenity for obscenity, thrust back with stroke forward, matching every roughness with a pound at his hole.

“Let me get on my back,” he says. “I wanna watch you fuck me. Let me get on my back.”

I pause, and nod. This is when the unspeakable happens.

He pulls off my dick so quickly that it makes a sound like a cork coming out of a wine bottle. Only when it does, a geyser follows. A brown geyser. It’s the consistency of canned beef stew and just as chunky, and not only am I aghast as it splatters out and hits me right between my pelvic bones, but I have to watch as another squirt of it dribbles down his backside and drips onto the floor.

Somehow, he hasn’t even noticed. “Come on, man,” he’s begging. “Stick it back in.”

“You’re dirty,” I tell him.

“Oh shit,” he says, looking up and noticing that his guest has been splattered in the stuff.

Pun not intended, I’m pretty sure.

I’m not gagging. I’m not even grossed out, except in an abstract, mental way. I just don’t say a word and I walk into the bathroom, turn on the shower, and step in. I let the hot water clean away the worst of it, and only then do I reach for the soap and begin to lather up.

When I leave the bathroom, I drop the towel on the floor.

He’s managed to clean up a little while I’ve been in there. “You want to keep going?” he says from the bed. He’s on his back, legs up, playing with himself. Still hopeful.

“No.”

“Let me jack off then,” he says.

I’m too polite to say no, so carefully watching where I step, I walk over to the bed and sit there beside him while he wanks. It doesn’t take long, thank god. My own dick is limp. The mood’s gone. He might be a handsome banker to everyone else, but now, to me, he’s forevermore that guy who had a chocolate fountain coming out of his ass, and somehow that’s not all that erotic an image.

“Next time I’ll make sure to clean out all the way,” he promises, as he leads me down the stairs and through the kitchen to let me out. Which makes me wonder—how far did he clean, exactly, if that was a partial job? And what would’ve it been like if he hadn’t cleaned at all. “Can I get you anything? Do you want some fudge?”

I turn around, thinking he’s making a badly-timed joke. But no, he’s got a cookie tin open. It’s full of squares of dark chocolate.

I decline. I’ve had enough fudge for the day.

Dad of the Handsomest Man in Detroit

(This post, the second of two, I originally wrote in my journal about a decade ago. I went searching for it over the weekend when I was thinking about its subject. One of my readers in particular will know exactly who I'm talking about here—you know who you are.)


“Tell me you can come over.” Angelo's voice rasped low over the phone, early this morning. “I need you today.”

Right. I would turn him down. As if. “I need to hop in the shower,” I told him. “Can you give me a half hour?”

“I need to get in the shower too, bud,” When Angelo talks in that way gay men imagine straight guys speak when they’re being casual with each other, it’s totally convincing. I never smirk at his buds, bros, or dogs. “Clean up and make myself reeeeeeal pretty for you.”

No words could have been more calculated to make me hop in the shower more quickly.

Angelo, The Handsomest Man In Detroit, has an arrangement with me. Every two or three weeks, he’ll call on the days I’m most likely available to play with him, and he’ll invite me over. He’s not a planner; we can’t set a date for three days later and meet then. He wants me when he wants me. Thirty minutes after his call, I’ll pull into the driveway of his tiny house in the east suburbs, walk in through his open back door, and find him either in the shower, singing to himself in an off-tune voice, or sprawled on the bed in musky gym clothes. Just hanging, as he likes to say. Hey, bro. I was just hanging, waiting for you.

Then we fuck.

It’s our standard practice, though there’s nothing routine about the sex—that’s outstanding enough to keep me going back. I love the broad planes of his chest, his porn-star good looks, the deep blue of his eyes, the little cleft in his chin; I can’t help but admire the perfect roundness of his ass, or the way he responds when my hand drops to his buttocks and squeezes. He’s a loud lover, a man who likes his pleasures heated and his appetites addressed instantly. I might say no on occasion when other regular sexual partners of mine call, but not to Angelo. Not to The Handsomest Man In Detroit. Him I make time for.

I expected our usual agenda when I pulled into his driveway today and turned off the ignition, but before I could open the door, Angelo padded around the corner in workout gear, his hands making a circular motion, telling me to roll down my window. “Hey,” I said.

He wore a three-day growth of stubble, dark blond and gray. Instantly, when his full lips pulled into a grimace, I knew something was wrong. “My dad is here,” he whispered.

“Oh.” That put a damper on my anticipation.

“He stopped by just a couple of minutes ago.”

“Hey, that’s okay,” I said. “We can do this another time. Really.”

“No.” His hand shot out to clutch my forearm. “I don’t want you to go. I just . . . I don’t know what to introduce you as.”

His hand on my arm was a subtle reminder of why I enjoy being with him—his grasp was firm. He was close enough that I could smell the Dial he’d used in the shower. At the same time, all I could think was, We’ve been fucking for two years and he doesn’t know my name? “Rob,” I said at last.

He gave me the look of patience that people reserve for the slow and the hard of hearing. “I know your name, dumb-ass,” he said. “I meant, I didn’t know how to say why you were here. Maybe I’ll tell him you came over to take me to breakfast? Yeah, that could work. Only, he might invite himself to eat with us. Did you eat?”

I could only stare. Angelo was breaking our routine on so many levels. He was actually appearing outside his house, he was introducing me to family and talking about them going to a meal with us . . . where the hell was this going? At the same time, I was amused and intrigued enough by the situation to say, “Sure, that’s fine.”

I’d barely let the words out of my mouth than Angelo was back around the corner of the house saying, “Hey, Dad! This is Rob! He was kind of going to take me out to breakfast.” I found myself getting out of the car and wandering around the back, where I shook the hand of an old Polish man with an enormous waxed mustache, who greeted me and promptly went back to examining the transformer for some low-voltage outdoor lights. Angelo put his hands on his hips, sucked in his upper lip, and listened to the electrical advice his dad gave him.

It was wrong. All wrong. I don’t know where Dad Of Handsomest Man In Detroit might have learned about electricity, but I do know for a fact that you don’t measure electrical load by multiplying 120 volts by 12 volts, dividing by 15, and asserting that you can get “Ninety-six, probably a hunnert little lamps on this line.”

“I don’t think that’s the way it works,” I said, but when I saw Angelo strutting around and kicking at stray pebbles, his head nodding, I knew that he was simply tolerating his dad’s advice the way I put up with my own father, when he’s on a verbal tear about things I already know, like how storm windows save money. I kept my mouth shut, and let the old guy rant on about where the zinnias should be planted, and how the water hawthorn’s leaves looked limp, and how amazing it was that goldfish could live all through the winter in that frozen pond and still be around come spring.

From time to time, Angelo would look at me with apology, but his attention was on his father; he was full of uh-huhs and yes sirs and of courses as we slowly walked around the garden, looking at the new pond Angelo had dug to expand his water garden. “Let me show you the lighting system I’m installing,” Angelo said. He turned and jogged back to the house, his moccasins scuffing the stony path. “I got it at Home Depot yesterday,” he called.

Once the back screen door had slammed shut, Angelo’s dad poked at the hole in the ground with the stick he’d been carrying around to illustrate his points. “So,” he finally said. “Are you dating my son, or what?”

“Oh gosh.” I was genuinely caught off-guard by the question. Every response that sprang to mind was of the off-color variety. No, I’m just bitch-fucking him. “I’m just . . . taking him out to breakfast,” I said at last, trying to look at anywhere but the man’s face. Then I realized how evasive that seemed, and met his frank gaze square on. “We’re just friends, you know.”

“Breakfast sounds like a date to me. Doesn’t that sound like a date to you?”

“It’s just breakfast.”

“Angelo’s a good boy,” he said, pointing the stick in my direction. “He deserves a good man in his life.” I felt on the defensive. Was he saying I wasn’t a good enough man for his son? Or was he implying that, you know, I should be taking Angelo to expensive dinners instead of cheap-ass breakfast at the local diner? “He deserves a real good man.” I nodded sagely into the back of my fist, and pretended I appreciated the gravity of the moment. Though really, all I wanted to do was press the rewind button on the remote control of my life, and insert a new movie starting at the moment Angelo had called, an hour earlier. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m kind of busy this morning. Maybe next time?

The back door slammed, and Angelo came out, his short legs sprinting over the driveway. “I’d better let you boys have your breakfast,” his dad said.

“Are you hungry?” Angelo asked. “Did you eat?” Again, his eyes were full of apology as he glanced at me. I really liked him at that moment, inviting his dad out to the imaginary breakfast. He’d probably expected his father to decline—as he did—but it was still sweet of him to ask. And to assume I’d play along with it.

“No, no, I’d better get going and let you boys have your fun.” He stuck out his hand to shake mine. “Nice meeting you, Bob.”

“It was great,” I said, not correcting him.

“I’ll walk you to the car,” Angelo said. I’d been prepared to follow, but he grabbed my shoulder as they strolled by, and murmured in my ear, “Go in the bedroom and get comfortable.”

I kicked off my sandals once inside, and rested on the bed. My heels dug into the metal railing of the frame while I waited; I heard them exchanging goodbyes outside the bedroom window, and then a few moments later, the sound of the dad’s truck slowly pulling past. The back screen crashed shut, followed by the slow, soft catch of the inner door. I heard one, then a second moccasin hit the utility room floor. And then there came the sound of Angelo’s bare feet padding across the wood floor as he came to me.

“I am really sorry about that,” he said. “It was really unexpected. I was over at their house yesterday and I said, come by anytime, you don’t have to phone, and I really didn’t expect for him to take me up on it so soon.”

“It’s no problem,” I told him. “Your dad’s a nice guy.”

He stretched and yawned. As his arms flew up, so did his shirt. He tugged it over his head in a smooth motion, and shook out his hair. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“No, really,” I said, from the bed. “It’s no problem.”

“No,” he said, standing in front of me. His thumbs hooked inside the waistband of his jeans; his fingers fumbled for the metal button. As the denim slid down over his thighs and calves, they made the slightest of sounds. He pulled first one leg, then the other out, and tossed the jeans aside. He stood totally naked, an arm's-length away. “I mean, I’ll make it up to you, buddy.” Then he shoved me back onto the bed, one of his knees between my legs as his full weight landed on top of me. His soft lips met mine, and his tongue slid into and out of my mouth. “For being so nice,” he murmured.

His hands slid under my t-shirt until his thumbs and forefingers found my nipples. “Okay,” I said, trying to catch my breath.

So I let him.

The Handsomest Man in Detroit

(This post, the first of two, I originally wrote in my journal about a decade ago. I went searching for it today when I was thinking about its subject. It's interesting how my attitudes about certain things discussed here, such as my feelings about my own attractiveness, have changed in the interim.)



He’s way out of my league. Men I already consider out of my league, would think him way out of theirs. His name is Angelo, but I call him The Handsomest Man in Detroit.

The Handsomest Man in Detroit lives up to his title. He’s fortunate to possess the blond, affable movie star good looks of Robert Redford in his younger days. When he smiles, his eyes sparkle and his lips frame perfect, even, white teeth. His cropped dark blond hair always looks as if he’s just run a hand through it. He’s much shorter than I, no more than five foot six or seven, but his compactness suits him; he’s concentrated sex appeal—bite-sized eye candy. And he likes me.

Beautiful people either intimidate or scare the shit out of me, quite honestly; my lifelong experience has been that like attracts like. In congregations where pretty people gravitate to each other’s shining lights, I’m shunted to the sidelines like the bastard love child of Shrek and Buddy Hackett, feeling fit only to spend the remainder of my days high in the towers of Notre Dame, filing away the hunchback’s corns.

Yet the Handsomest Man in Detroit manages never to make me feel as if I’m his community service project, nor does he contrast the muscular flawlessness of his body to the pale imperfections of my own. Nor do I spend much time emailing him or phoning him to tell him how hot he is; I’ve sensed that other men have turned him off with their groveling. I bide my time and ignore him. Then every two or three weeks he’ll simply call me and in his low, growling voice, ask, “Are you free tonight?”

I was free Monday. “I’m going to leave the back door unlocked for you,” he said. “I’m heading home from the gym now, and might still be showering up when you get there. Just come on in and get comfortable.”

When I arrived a half hour later, I parked my truck in his driveway. Audible through one of the house’s back windows was the percussion of splashing water against a tub floor, accompanied the sounds of humming; through the screen came the scents of steam and soap. The back door was cracked open, as promised. I stepped through and into his laundry room, where on the floor lay a pair of gym shoes, battered, worn, and still warm, as if kicked off when he’d entered the house. Dark blue sweat shorts with a legend of University of Michigan lay draped over the short flight of stairs up to his living room; a few feet further away, a discarded gray jockstrap, its edges worn and frayed, decorated the carpet.

Angelo still sang to himself when I rapped at the bathroom door. I could see the hazy outline of his body behind the transparent shower curtain, and his hands as they reached behind to clean himself out. “Hey buddy!” he said. I felt warmed by the happiness in his voice. “Why don’t you go to the bedroom and get comfortable? Wait,” he added. The curtain slid back with a hiss of the metallic curtain rings. “Whatcha wearing?” He took in my oversized camouflage shorts, my gray t-shirt. “Keep it on . . . let me undress you when I get there.”

The curtain slid shut again. I kicked off my sandals and lay down on his bed in the next room, my hands cupped beneath the back of my head. It was only a matter of a few seconds before I heard the water slow to a trickle, then stop, followed by the clatter of the curtain rings and the sounds of Angelo stepping onto his bathmat and drying himself off with a towel. I kept my eyes closed while I listened to him padding down the hallway in my direction.

“Hey,” I heard him say. And then he was on top of me, straddling me at the waist, his mouth on mine. Warm moisture still rose from every square inch of his skin. He smelled clean, almost sweet, as if he’d just stepped out of an ad for grooming products. “So hungry for you,” he murmured, his back arching as his squared-off jaw traveled down my chest.

His fingers fumbled at the tie of my shorts, losing momentum when it became obvious they’d formed a knot. “Sorry,” I murmured, embarrassed and trying to help.

He pushed away my hands. “Sssssh.” As his own fingers continued to work at the puzzle, his mouth pressed against my stomach, his lips pulling at the hairs there, tickling and teasing my skin until all I could do was sigh. Finally I felt my zipper’s release. Unfettered by underwear, my cock sprang forward. He caught it expertly in his mouth, and began to slicken it with his tongue and lips. “I’ve wanted this bad, lover,” he said, detaching himself from me and diving for my balls.

Soon my legs lifted into the air as he wrestled my shorts from them, and then he was on top of me again, cock against cock, his taut, narrow hips grinding against me. We crushed our pelvises against each other, our gyrations meshing in rhythm and increasing in pressure; our lips met again, eyes closed.

When finally I unearthed myself from beneath him and flipped him onto his front, my cock left a shimmering snail’s trail where I slid across the black bedspread. He knelt down, perfect butt high in the air, still gyrating his hips. “Please,” he whispered. “I need it bad.”

“What do you need?” I asked him. He doesn’t answer until I slapped his ass, and then he responded only with a gasp. “What do you need?” I repeated.

“Your cock,” he said. “Inside me. Now. Please.”

Within a minute I was inside him. Then finally I said, “You’re beautiful,” I whispered. It’s the only moment I ever allow myself to make the compliment. The two words instantly made him relax and groan, then step up the intensity of our act. I didn’t have to thrust—he did that for me, backing himself onto and off of my meat like an animal in the throes of heat, his hole contracting and squeezing more strongly than almost anyone I’ve been inside. “Oh god, thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you, thank you.”

I raised up his torso so that he was still kneeling on the bed. I stood behind him, feet on the floor, still deep inside as I craned his neck around to kiss him. Then I pushed him down again, thrusting with more vigor. Both his hands clawed the bedspread; I felt a splash of wetness on my foot. He had shot, spattering the bedspread and the floor. But he kept grinding and groaning, urging me to my climax.

When I came, it was with violence, my teeth clenched, my butt cheeks taut. We both stood there for a moment, breathing heavily. Then he spoke. “Let’s get in the shower.”

This was the part I almost liked best . . . him with a washcloth, bent down in the tub with the spray stinging his back, tenderly washing my penis and my balls, occasionally leaning forward to kiss or lick my only half-flaccidness. His finger lingered in my navel; he gently bent me over to drag the washcloth’s rough surface between my butt cheeks. And then he helped me dry, and brought to my shorts and my t-shirt, and assisted me back into them.

“You really know how to help a guy clear his mind,” he said.

I wanted to tell him that he really was The Handsomest Man in Detroit, but I slipped back on my sandals and said merely, “Thanks.” That’s the way he likes it played, I’ve learned. Casually. As if I’d condescended to do him a favor, rather than the other way around. “Later?”

“Fuck yeah.” He leaned over to give me one more long, grateful kiss. Post-orgasm, I again felt almost unworthy of attention from such a beautiful person.

On my solo return trip out the door, I paused by the discarded jock strap The Handsomest Man in Detroit had been wearing only an hour and a half before during his workout at the gym, and considered whether or not to pick it up and stuff it in my pocket, as a souvenir.