From the Archives: Faculty Party

I sat down this evening to write about an incident from my youth that had been on my mind for the last couple of days. I got a couple of paragraphs in, and then thought to myself, "Hey, maybe you'd better check to see if you've written about this guy before." Surely enough, I had, two years ago. Sigh.

Apparently the story wants to be repeated again, though. So here it is once more.

To my readers in the U.S., I wish you guys a happy Thanksgiving. And to everyone else, I wish you many things for which to be thankful.

When I was a kid during the nineteen-seventies, would occasionally throw end-of-semester Christmas parties in our home right before the holidays started.

Days before the party they'd start making a go of cleaning the living room, though for neither of them was tidiness ever a strong point. They weren't drinkers, but the colleagues and students they'd invite to these yearly shindigs would show up laden with spirits, and there'd be leftovers. Our basement bathroom—a mildewy, forbidding place that seemed so much like the movie set of a serial killing that I'm still reluctant to enter it when I visit my dad's home—was filled with liquor bottles that we'd begin hauling up the night before, until the dining room table was crowded with liquids of different colors (and of dubious age). My mother's ash trays got a thorough cleaning and the good ones were strewn around strategic places; my dad would pull out a bunch of LPs and eight-track tapes and have them stacked by the stereo.

My mom would spend an afternoon in the kitchen with cans and an opener and a jar of mayonnaise and emerge with space-aged canapés. The cats were banished outdoors. After a cold dinner, and before the doorbell would ring, I'd be sent to my room for the evening. Faculty parties were not for the young.

They were exotic, especially when I was fairly young. From my room, with a book in my lap, I'd listen to the swinging strains of psychedelia on the stereo, often improbably mixed with Nat King Cole singing Christmas carols, or Peter, Paul, and Mary. I'd listen to the laughter and smell the cigarette smoke and the clink of the liquor bottles and the increasingly loud and inebriated conversation and think to myself, This is what being grown up is all about.

My parents' guests were usually two-thirds other faculty from the university, and the rest were upper-level undergrads or graduate students. One of the things I used to do as a ritual, after the party had started, would be to go through their coats. They all lay there on my parents' beds, taken upstairs and tossed on the mattresses upon entering. When it was quiet upstairs, I'd tiptoe out and into my parents' room and just examine what their colleagues and students were carrying in their pockets. Mostly it was boring stuff like keys, or small change, or cellophane-wrapped Kraft caramels. Once in a while I'd stumble upon cigarettes, or more frequently, tiny little unsmoked joints tucked away in breast pockets, acrid-smelling and spilling weed from their twisted ends.

I had to time my stealthy investigations right. More often than not I'd be interrupted, either by hapless students looking for the bathroom, or couples (not always married, not always of the same generation) looking for a private tryst among the coats. I wouldn't say that my parents' parties were orgies, exactly, but they had their share of fucking. In the bedroom, among the wraps. In the spare bedroom, on the rusty twin bed that had been my father's as a boy. Outside in the back yard, behind the massive brick nineteen-fifties barbecue. In the basement, or down the outside cellar steps.

And once, in my room.

I was pretty young the night that Dr. Jones came into my bedroom. It was late—late enough that I'd given up watching the little portable TV from the kitchen that my parents had lugged up to my room for me to watch that evening, and had gotten into bed, but not so late that I was asleep. I had a book in my lap, and my knees propped up, and had stripped down to a T-shirt and briefs. Then my door opened. "Anyone home?" asked a tall black man. He slipped in quietly, raised a finger to his mouth to indicate I not say anything, and then made a pantomime of tiptoeing to my bed.

I knew Dr. Jones from my dad's office. They were in the same department; I'd seen him a couple of times a year since I'd been five or six—enough to recognize the face and associate a name, but not enough that we'd ever actually spoken. I raised my eyebrows. I think I told him that the bathroom was on the other side of the upstairs hall.

"Oh, I'm not here for the bathroom," he said. The man sat down on the edge of my bed. He was in his forties or fifties, and had a grizzled beard limned with white; it looked like his halo had slipped over his head and around his neck. An oversized mole decorated his dark, dark skin on his forehead; he had a large, nineteen-seventies Afro shot with gray perched like a helmet on his head. "Just needed to get away from the party."

He reeked of alcohol. His eyes, though unwavering as he stared at me, had that liquid sheen of the thoroughly inebriated. I nodded, and waited for him to say something.

"So," he started, putting his hand on my knee. Then, finding that awkward, he removed it. "You're just . . . sitting up here, real quiet?" I told him I was. "Must be real nice to be up here, where it's . . . quiet."

Again, his hand landed on my leg. This time, it made its way up to my thigh. Dr. Jones might have been an expert in African history, but subtle he was not. "What you doing there, boy?" he asked, when he reached my hip.

"Nothing," I told him. Despite myself, my boner was raging beneath the covers.

"You must be doing something, if you're making me do this." He pulled down the sheets. "I didn't come up here thinking I was going to do this. Must be you making me do it."

Maybe that kind of talk worked on other young guys, but I saw through it. His big hands pulled apart my legs, right below the knee. I didn't resist "You are a real pretty boy," he told me. "Real, real pretty. You got that creamy skin I like so much. Don't be scared, now." He talked like Barry White on a quiet storm radio station after midnight, and I have to confess that I was more aroused than frightened. "You got those pretty blue eyes, looking at me like that. You're making me do this," he said. "It ain't me, baby."

His lips were on my calf, my knee, my groin, and then he was pulling up my T-shirt and yanking on my briefs. I heard the crackling of their elastic as he yanked them down, hard. My barely-teen cock flopped out of the cotton and slapped audibly against my belly. "See what you gone and did?" he asked, breathing heavily on my twitching, hard flesh. "You made me do this."

Dr. Jones roughly grabbed my balls, almost making me yelp out in pain. Then his mouth engulfed my dick. I'd had sex by that point, a few times. Even in my limited experience I could tell he wasn't the best of my encounters. He used too much teeth; he created too much suction rather than let his mouth and lips travel up and down the shaft. He was simply too drunk to do much good.

But a blow job was a blow job, and I'd spent the evening waiting for the party to end so I could turn out my lights and masturbate and get to sleep. A stranger's mouth on me was even better than that. It didn't take very long before my young nuts were retracting and my dick started to pulse out a tiny load of semen. Dr. Jones swallowed it all. "Fuck," he said. "See what you did?"

He mumbled another sentence or two into my balls, as he nuzzled there. Then he was very, very still.

He was asleep, in fact.

Apparently no one from the party noticed he was missing for over an hour. Not until people were starting to drift off into the December night did my father come into my room. "Have you seen—?" he asked, and then saw himself what he was looking for. Dr. Jones, sprawled on his back, head lolling over the mattress edge, arms at his side, snoring loudly at the very bottom of the bed where I'd rolled him. "Gawrsh," said my dad. He rolled his eyes.

I shrugged, trying to make it seem as if I were used to adults passing out on my bed every night of the week.

"Was he a pain?" My dad dipped down and grabbed his colleague beneath the arms, trying to stand him to his feet. I told him that he wasn't, not really. "Come on, Lamont," he said, shaking the older man. "Time to go home."

Dr. Jones hadn't stirred up the entire time he'd slumbered, after that hasty blow job he'd given me. He opened his eyes in confusion, saw my dad, saw me, and then became very suddenly and drunkenly awake.

"It's okay," said my dad, gently escorting him from the room. "Come on. We'll get you some coffee."

And that was my one and only encounter with Dr. Jones. I got the impression he was never really sure of exactly what we'd done, if anything; his memory was probably hazy of those confused few minutes before he passed out. Whenever I'd pass him with one of my parents in the department offices, he'd blink at me and work his lips as if he wanted to say something, but couldn't quite decide what. I, in the meantime, would only smile in the same way I smiled at any of my parents' colleagues, without betraying what happened between us.

If he thought it was a fantasy—well, at least he had a hell of a good fantasy.

A Flipped Switch

During my lengthy and delirious illness last month, at least I managed to bring a little comedy into the household. There was the time, for example, that I decided it would be nice for everyone in the immediate vicinity if I took a shower. I got up, blundered into the bathroom, turned on the faucets, and then went back to bed to wait for the water to warm up . . . then I promptly fell asleep for ninety minutes. On the minus side of that, all the walls of my flat were moist for the rest of the evening. On the plus side, no one complained about dry skin for a few days.

I also discovered that an extended illness makes me even more absent-minded than usual—and here we’re already talking about a pretty high baseline in which I’m doddering around mumbling, What was I about to do next? or Where are my pants? or What month is it? I got up one morning determined to be helpful, emptied a can of food onto a plate for the cats, and then left it for some reason on top of a bedroom dresser. (The cats found it, eventually.) I put a DVD box set in the refrigerator, and left a half-full container of ice cream in a cupboard. (The cats found that eventually, too.)

But I think the oddest mistake I made during those long weeks was when I accidentally switched from top to bottom for a couple of weeks. That was interesting.

I think I did it on one of my more feverish days. I logged into a site and saw that for some reason, the little ‘About me’ box still had some travel plans listed in it from, well, 2012. I went to change it. Somehow I managed to do so. But along the way, the same way I ended up putting ice cream next to the spaghetti in a cupboard, I managed to change a menu item from top to bottom.

And I didn’t notice, or even think about it, for a few days. I was feeling decidedly unsexy during my illness. I think it was the first time in my life I’ve gone a month without even so much as an erection. I wasn’t online much. If I was, it was to look at the pretty pictures, not because I was actively cruising. But a couple of days after I think I made my little error, I started to get emails from guys I’d never seen before.

Nice dick, but what’s your ass like? one guy wanted to know.

Damn boy I want to shove this dick up that tiny pink hole, said another.

U pretty. how hard u like 2 b fucked son? read the third. By that time, I was kind of noticing a pattern here. (Actually, I was busy blushing and modestly muttering, “Pretty? Son? Oh, go on,” at the last guy’s mail.) At first I ascribed it to something in the air—some random alignment of the stars that was making all the guys in the area feel more toppish than usual. It took me a full week to figure out I’d been a dumbass who’d accidentally flipped the switch on my profile.

By the time I’d actually clued in to what I’d done, though, I’d come to a couple of conclusions. The first was a gratifying realization that if I ever did decide to pack up my erection and take dick for a living, I at least wouldn’t be coming up totally dry. The second was that my bottomy profile seemed to attract a definite type—namely, uncut men of color.

I mean, some of the dicks on these guys who were messaging me about my little pink fuckhole were massive, meaty slabs of thick dark meat that made me look like a wee little tadpole in comparison. The men themselves were hot and handsome guys for the most part. Muscular. Built. Some in their twenties, some in their fifties, and lots from in between. Most of them were outspokenly aggressive. No white guys. Most were black, but there were a good number of Latin men in there as well.

And I kept looking at those profiles and thinking to myself, Damn, that is really tempting.
I’m not really sure what the attraction was on their part, unless it was the notion that they weren’t going to find a better contrast to their own skin than my lard-white complexion. I was flattered enough not to question it.

Don’t worry, full-time bottoms. I know you’ve got enough competition amongst yourselves without a fever-addled amateur mucking things up. I’m not flipping. If I were, though, at least I’d be consoled by the thought that I’d still be popular in some beds.

A Note on my Absence

Many of you—well, some of you at least—have been wondering where I’ve been for the past month. Was I dead? Did the stalkers get me? Did I at last come to my senses and make a devout vow to keep my dick in my pants and my hands off other men’s junk and never again to kneel on a floor except in godly prayer?

Nah. I was just sick.

It started off as one of those things in which I felt fragile and slightly delicate. Like some heroine in a regency romance, I wanted to fan myself, clutch the arm of a fainting couch, and declare that I’d been overcome with the vapors. Then the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back for roughly four weeks, staring at the ceiling and groggily wishing that someone could just put me into an induced coma and wake me up when it was all over. I had the chills, I had fevers, I had nightmares. Fun stuff.

Early in the month I managed to drag myself to the doctor. He looked me over, said I was dehydrated, and then sent me to the phlebotomist for blood work. The phlebotomist was a big German woman with her hair in a bun. “Sit!” she ordered, pointing me to her chair. I sat. “Roll up ze sleeves!” I rolled ‘em. Because she really did talk like that, and I was frightened to disobey. She reminded me of Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein.

I watched as she poked and prodded the insides of my arms. “Vhy do you have no weins?” she wanted to know. “Make ze fist! Clench ze fist! Relax ze fist!” Her expert fingers felt like they were leaving bruises as she searched for the missing weins—I mean, veins. “You are dehydrated!” she announced at last, as if I’d done it on purpose just to spite her.

“Yes, the doctor said that,” I agreed.

“This is no good! No good!” she yelled at last. In the distance, horses whinnied and lightning flashed. She untied the length of elastic from around my right arm and tourniquetted it onto my left, then scowled as if she intended to scare the veins into appearing. They didn’t. Finally she prodded around some more. “Most men, they have big strong manly weins!” she told me. “You, though! You have leetle beety baby weins! For you I use leetle beety baby needle for your leetle beety baby weins!”

I felt obscurely defensive on behalf of my little bitty baby veins. “I’m big where it counts,” I protested.

Frau Blücher stared at me. Then she let out a hearty laugh that rocked the fillings right out of my teeth. “Beeg where it counts! Hah-hah-hah!”

So at least I made a new friend there.

The doctor didn’t do much for me other than refer me to a specialist, whom I couldn’t get in to see for a good two weeks. The specialist, however, gave me some much-coveted drugs that have been, knock wood, getting me back on track. That is, at least I’m spending most of my days upright rather than imprinting the fabric texture of my sofa onto my face while I drool and blankly watch The Chew.

When I’m sick, though, I really don’t feel like writing. There were times in my youth when I imagined to myself that should I ever be struck down by some fatal, lingering illness, that I’d use my remaining time to pen some touching, insightful, and beautifully-written memoir about my malady. Nope! I now know that if that time ever comes (knock wood again) I apparently will be the first to say, “Fuck that mess.” Then I’ll lie in my hospital bed scarfing down junk food. (Sadly, my appetite was the only thing unaffected last month.)

But when it’s difficult for me to string together anything more coherent than “More aspirin, please”, it’s tough to write blog entries. There were a couple of times I hauled out my laptop and contemplated posting something brief just to allay the fears of my readers, but then I’d think about the effort I’d have to put into pushing all those little keys and it would seem like way too much work for what I could manage.

Thanks to those of you who emailed or left comments while I was out of commission. As I said, I’m feeling somewhat better, and anticipate getting back to my normal energy levels soon. Bear with me while I get back to speed, would you?

Nasty Little Faggot

“What do you want?” I ask him. He’s kneeling on the floor, naked, knees spread wide. His wrists are crossed as if they’re bound, though nothing is holding them together. His little peter curves up to point at the ceiling.

He’s mesmerized by cock. My cock, which is dangling in front of his face. It’s bait to a hungry fish; his lips work in and out as unconsciously they strain for it. His eyes are the size of saucers, as he stares at the heavy, blood-filled meat exuding heat a few inches above his face.

“What do you want?” I ask again.

He delivers his answer with a rattle in his throat. “I want that cock.”

“Why do you want my cock?” I demand.

He thinks about it a moment, trying to suss out the response I expect to hear. “Because it’s big. Because it’s beautiful. Because it’s yours.”

All true enough, but it’s not the answer I want. “It’s because you’re a greedy little cocksucking whore,” I inform him. “And big dick is what you were made for.”

For the first time in a while he removes his gaze from my dick, and looks me in the eye. “Yes.” His agreement arrives on a sigh.

“It’s because you’re a nasty little faggot,” I tell him. His eyes are locked onto mine. They’re full of adoration. I’ve penetrated right to the secret core of him. I’ve spoken the words that unlock his deepest secret, and in the speaking, unburdened him of it. “Because you’re nothing more than a fucking little skank hole.”

“Yes,” he repeats. “I’m a nasty little faggot boy.”

“Anyone’s cum dump.”

His eyes are beginning to glaze. His cock jerks once, twice, three times. He wraps his hands around it. “Nothing but a cum dump.”

I grab my own dick, thwack it into my palm with a heavy slap. “Well fuck, son. What’re you waiting for?” When he lunges at my erect cock, I halt him with my hand on his forehead. “You don’t get it yet. Fuck. Work your way up, kid.” I shove him back so he’s on his haunches again. “From the feet,” I explain, like he’s simple. “Like a nasty little faggot does.”

The look he gives me is of sheer worship. And that pleases my dick.

No one around this tony community in which I live would recognize this guy as he is now, sprawled on the floor, sucking at my toes, squirming around like a worm in the dirt. He’s one of those fastidious types in public. Neatly dressed in trendy fashions from Zara, little Harry Potter spectacles on his face. I’ve seen him and his boyfriend out and about at the local bars and gay gatherings for a couple of years. When we meet, he and the boyfriend recognize my face well enough to smile and nod, and occasionally exchange pleasantries. We’re not social friends, by any stretch of the imagination.

“That boyfriend of yours know you’re here?” I ask.

“No,” he says. He’s tonguing out the space between two of my toes. He looks up at me in sudden panic. “Please don’t tell him.”

“That really depends on how good a job you do, doesn’t it?”

“Yes sir.” It’s a rhetorical question, but it spurs him on. He’s slurping his tongue all over my feet now, obediently licking the soles when I lift them up, one by one. His ass is pointed in the air; his back arch. In his head, he’s already getting fucked.

“You want me to tell him how you’ve been putting that pussy up in the air for me for months? How you begged me to break that bareback cherry?”

“Please don’t,” he begs.

“Why, are you ashamed of what a little cumdump whore you are? You don’t want him to find out how you’ve been slutting around behind his back with some guy at the bar you barely know? You worried he’d dump that ass when he finds out how many strange dicks have been up it since mine?”

“Please.” He huffs out the word. His face is red. He’s aroused. “Please don’t tell.”

“Suck it, faggot,” I tell him. I grab him by the hair and lower his mouth onto my dick. “No teeth, or I’ll slap the shit out of you.”

This is the root of him, the inner core deep inside that fuels his every waking dream. Daily, in public, he cultivates an air of fastidious perfection. Impeccably-dressed, nicely-coiffed, soft-spoken, a little effeminate. Genteel. Arm candy for his older boyfriend. In private, he wants to be a dirty little whore. The kid wants it all: Men’s Vogue days, Treasure Island nights.

Which side of him is closer to his real nature? I think I know. The artificial tends to fall away from a guy when I drop my pants in front of him.

My cock is slick with his spit. He’s choking on it by the time I withdraw and shove him roughly onto the bed. He howls with pain as I drive into the hole. I can tell by the way he clamps down on my meat that he’s in distress, but this is how whores get fucked. No mercy. Relentless. By the time his mind and body catch up to the heat that’s already pulsing through his still-hard cock, I’m halfway there.

“That boyfriend of yours would kick you out on your ass if he knew what you were doing right now,” I say as I pound his quivering butt.

“Please don’t tell . . . !”

“I don’t know. I think it might be fun to see the expression on his face when he finds out what a cum-hungry little bitch you really are,” I muse. “I bet he’s all polite in bed and shit. Probably thinks a wild time is turning on a fuck flick and jacking off together. Am I right?”

“Only if I’m lucky,” he moans. The words are heavy with rue.

“Who gives you what you really want?”

“You do,” he whispers. “You do.”

“Who gives your faggot holes the sperm they really need?”

“Fuck . . . you know it’s you. It’s totally you.”

I’m close. “Then fucking take it, you little whore.”

My cock pulses. I drive in to the root, and let the seed blast out deep inside him. His back arches more, his butt rises to meet me. He wants every fucking seed I’ve got, and I’m hostage to his need. Finally, after a long time in which his hungry holes milks my meat for every drop, he slides off me.

“Clean it off,” I tell him.

He’s already on it, sucking any traces of sperm from my jizz-slick dick. I hold his head on my dick as I maneuver myself onto the bed, and then I cradle it as he continues to suck and suck.

“Good boy,” I tell him.

“I’m your little faggot,” he murmurs, before losing himself in the scent and sensation of my semi-rigid shaft again. “Just a little faggot.”

Yeah. I won’t be telling the boyfriend. This time.

Lessons from Pasta

Things I’ve Learned About Gay Guys After Being Subjected to Twenty Berjillion Facebook Posts About Pasta Last Week

1. Immediately after someone posts a notice resolving to boycott a brand of pasta, the first three comments are going to be along the lines of That brand sux! __________ is soooooo much better!

Well, welcome to the conversation, Miss Fancy-Pants. I’m really glad that the latest cause célèbre involving outrages against gays and lesbians has given you the perfect opportunity to leap in and show everyone what superior taste you have. I am so compelled by your exquisite discernment that I am hoping, when I prowl back in time to 2011, I’ll find a sensitive comment from you about the devastating Thailand floods that affected over thirteen million people and killed hundreds that reads, Phuket is sooooo overrated anyway! Go to Aruba if you want a real vay-cay!

That brand of pasta was one I used for over a decade and a half because it was recommended to me by a close female friend’s father, who owned a popular and highly-rated Italian restaurant for years and years. If it was good enough for him and his family—who were all born in Italy—it was good enough for me. I can’t begin to count the number of meals I’ve served to my family over the years made from that pasta. Thank you, but I can do without you seeing my anger and upset at the unkind words of the company’s leader merely as an opportunity to show off what’s in your pretentious little home pantry.

2. The fourth comment is going to be some queen saying So what??? Gays shouldn’t be eating carbs anyway!!!

Hey, thanks. Like we didn’t have enough self-image dysmorphia as a population without some little body Nazi shrilling at us what we can and cannot eat, and what we should and shouldn't look like.

Now sit down and shut up. I’ve got some donuts to eat without guilt while you watch.

3. The fifth and subsequent comments are going to be, I don’t know why you buy your own pasta. Making your own is soooo easy and soooo much more delicious! All you need is flour and eggs!

Oooooo, gurrl. You have picked the wrong stay-at-home husband for this hair-pulling catfight, Martha Fucking Stewart.

I am a man who kneads his own bread. I am a man who boils and bakes his own bagels. I am a man who keeps track of what month it is by what fruits he’s currently making into jams and preserves.

Bitches, I am a man who makes his own yogurt. (And even I think that’s a little excessive on the home self-reliance front.)

I know that making pasta only requires flour and eggs. I’ve made pasta. And you know what? The next time I want to spend two hours making a mini-volcano out of flour and pouring some carefully-whisked eggs into it, and then trying to roll out and slice fresh pasta on the two square feet of kitchen counter that I currently have, before actually making dinner itself, instead of simply taking a box out of the cupboard and boiling the dried noodles inside for eight minutes, I will give you a ring-a-ling on the cell so that you can coach me through the process.

I wouldn’t advise holding my breath until it happens, though.

4. One of the comments that follows will be a passive-aggressive statement to the effect that OMG the Chick-Fil-A boycott was a failure! Why are we buying into the media frenzy? It just makes us look mean and vindictive instead of like nice people!

I’m just going to toss out a quote from Nietzsche, here:

When the oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one another with the vengeful cunning of impotence: "let us be different from the evil, namely good! And he is good who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, humble, and just" -- this, listened to calmly and without previous bias, really amounts to no more than: "we weak ones are, after all, weak; it would be good if we did nothing for which we are not strong enough."

We make a fuss because we are strong and growing stronger. We make a fuss because things matter. We cause a ruckus because we realize we’re no longer weak and without power, and because we understand people are listening.

Boycotts don’t work instantly. Progress comes slowly. Over time, though, and with education tactics like boycotts work; companies and institutions will change and have changed under constant pressure. To assume that every battle will be won instantly, and without setback, is naive.

The show-offs, the diet fascists, and the guys who spend too much time with the Food Network are nothing. They’re comic relief. The apologists who would have us and our allies do nothing, however, so that we don’t ruffle feathers? They’re obstructive. They’re dangerous, because they’d have everyone believe they’re the nice gays, the gays who aren’t controversial, the gays who behave at the table and never make a fuss because it isn’t decorous.

They’re also the gays who accept slaps and pretend they’re kisses, who would rather see us all kicked and beaten rather than run a risk of not seeming nice. In the long view of history, they’re the most dangerous of all.

Sunday Morning Questions: Mix Tape Edition

Anyone remember mix tapes?

When I first started buying popular music, back in my late teens and early twenties, it became important for me not only to listen to the music I collected, but to share it with the people I cared about. My first real stereo was a system I bought straight out of college, from Sears—I know, real top of the line audiophile stuff. It was affordable, though, and I bought it because it was perfect for my needs. Not only did it have a turntable for my burgeoning collection of LPs, but it had a dual cassette tape deck. With high-speed dubbing, no less. Double tape decks were rare in those days. The high-speed dubbing was almost unheard of.

I loved that system. During grad school I would spend entire nights in my apartment in my parents’ basement, sitting on the cold tile floor cross-legged while I made mix tapes for my friends. I’d choose songs that not only they’d like, but that I was pretty sure they’d never heard before—songs for which I had a lot of enthusiasm. On my electric typewriter I’d type up the names of the songs and the artists, and then I’d make some custom art. Usually it was a chunk of a New Yorker cover, which when snipped down to fit in the cassette case would be colorful but abstract. Then I’d lovingly send them off to my best friends and hope they loved the mixes as much as I.

Over the years the typed inserts became computer-printed; a couple of years later, I burned my first mix CD. Even the concept of ‘burning’ a CD was exotic at first. The phrase brought to mind images of a blacksmith’s forge, and using a pair of white-hot tongs to pull a shiny CD from the flames so I could hear the sizzle when I plunged it into a horse bucket of cool water. The last mix tape I made was for Spencer, shortly before we parted ways. It was a thumb drive with a dozen mp3s on it.

But the thing is, people remember those mix tapes. I have friends who mention long-forgotten songs I sent them decades ago, and who’ve talked about all the love I put into those gifts of music, from the thoughtfulness of the song choice to the New Yorker artwork in which they were wrapped. One of my oldest friends recently went through all the tapes I’d given him over the years, and bought digital copies of all the songs from either Amazon or iTunes, so he could keep them as playlists on his computer. Those little gifts mean something, years and years later. That makes me smile.

Spencer used to go to sleep to a set playlist of songs on his iPod. He’d chosen them to lull him gently into his dreams. During the year when I was living on my own, trying to sell my house in the midwest, he was spending most of his nights in my bed. After he’d taken his bedtime shower and slipped into bed, steaming and warm and wet, we’d make love and drift into slumber in each other’s arms. The last memory of would have, most of those nights before I nodded off, would be of his strong, muscular arm reaching over me to my clock radio, so he could turn on his iPod and start that playlist.

It lasted for nearly an hour and a half. I know the first four songs well. I wouldn’t recognize the latter hour if you played it for me. I’ve always been deeply asleep by the time it played. The last night before I left Michigan for good, at a going-away party thrown in my honor, Spencer sat next to me as my guest of honor. We held hands beneath the table. Before the night’s end, he slipped back to me the thumb drive I’d given him a few weeks before. It held his Sleepytime mix.

You know, I still listen to it. There are nights when I can’t sleep. I keep a pair of earbuds by the bed. I keep the Sleepytime mix on my phone. I’ll plug in, turn on, and listen to the songs Spencer cultivated, the songs to which we fell asleep month after month, night after night, holding each other.

And little by little, I drift off, comforted. I still haven’t heard the back end of that mix during my waking hours. I’m not sure I care to. But I do know it’s the mix tape that means the most to me. It always will.


Let’s get to some questions from readers before I start bawling. If you’d like to ask something, come on over to formspring.me and ask what you’d like. If you’d prefer to email me, just put ‘Sunday Morning Questions’ in the subject line of your email. My address is in the sidebar. I’ll answer anything, trivial or not, so long as it’s not too invasive of my privacy.


Do you ever fantasize about being forced to "service" a dominant stranger?

I do. My twist on it, though, which I’ve shared several times, is the fantasy of being forced to service a dominant bottom, as a top.

I'm not convinced the bottom for that task exists in real life, though.


thanks for your blog, i'd never have the courage to be out there,too much catholic guilt, your blog is my guilty pleasure, thank you sir

If you are so burdened that even reading about someone else having sex makes you feel guilty, my friend, I think it's time to do something about it.

I never look at my sex writings as prescriptive. I don't set words to paper as a recommendation of how anyone else should live his life. My acts are my own, and that's how they should remain. No one should push themselves past their own natural levels of comfort with any sexual exploration.

However, sex is a blessing. If you're religious, I don't know how you can justify to yourself that God made such an abundantly beautiful world with so many wonderful things . . . and yet believe that sex is supposed to be an awful act, a torture, a torment, or something that only a man and a woman approved by a representative of the church may do solely for procreational purposes. That's just not the way this world works. Religion might try to regulate sex in order to keep its adherents in line, but sex was given to us for pleasure, and for us to make connections with each other. It's a true gift. Not a source of guilt.

So if reading a sex blog brings you pleasure . . . enjoy it without guilt. Start with that leniency, and move on to others. You'll be a happier person in the end.


What's the last fun thing you bought for yourself?

A rice cooker. Does that count? If not, I buy myself video games on a fairly regular basis. The last one I purchased was Game & Wario, I think. Oh, and I bought some nice dress boots for myself last week. They’re classy.


Some of your fans (me included) lust after you, do you lust after anyone in the world?

Hmm. I think all my readers know I’ve had some pretty serious (and by serious, I mean goofy) crushes on various pretty bartenders. Long-term readers might remember I had a serious case of hotpants for my backyard neighbor, back in Michigan. (No, that’s not a euphemism. I wish it were.) I manage to work out my lusts on available asses on a pretty regular basis, so instead of burning with lust for various people, I just get schoolgirl crushes on random guys who delight my eyes.


What's the dumbest thing you’ve ever done to impress somebody and what's the dumbest thing anyone's ever done to impress you?

I once bought a rose a day for someone I wanted to woo, when I was in college. I thought it was beautiful and romantic as a gesture, but after about three days I realized it was coming across as creepy and stalkerish.

Most of the stupid things people have done to impress me have also leaked over into stalker territory—guys who follow me around the city, or who bombard me with hand-written notes—or who send me frantic instant messages the minute I get online, or who keep calling many times repeatedly over the course of a day—say they're doing it to show their devotion, but it's the kind of behavior these days that makes me wish I had a restraining order.

Sink or Swim?

I’ve mentioned before I occasionally see a friend of mine I’ve known at this point for nearly a quarter-century. He’s a glum personality; I’m afraid that in a couple of past entries in which he made appearances, I assigned him the unfortunate soubriquet of “Eeyore.”

But it’s fitting. He’s a sweet guy. I genuinely believe he’d give to me the shirt off his back if I complained I was chilly. In all the time I’ve known him, though, he’s always been a bit of a downer. Not a whirlwind of drama, mind you. More like a powerful but silent magnetic force that can walk into a room full of the most upbeat and high-spirited folk around—a real Baz Luhrmann Great Gatsby of a party with hot jazz and hotcha flappers sipping bathtub gin and doing the hot new sensation called the Charleston—and without really meaning to, can suck up all the fun until there’s nothing left in the room but some limp crepe paper streamers and a sad, tattered print hanging on the wall of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” Within minutes he can have every single person in a five-room radius moping, contemplating the futility of his existence, and reaching for the extra Ambien.

Come to think, I’m pretty sure I saw that exact situation on an episode of Fringe.

I went out on the town with Eeyore and another friend of mine not so long ago. As a trio we bar-hopped our way across Manhattan, pretty basically. We had drinks at a few establishments along Christopher Street. We stopped off for happy-hour $3 Long Island iced teas and drag queen fun before dinner. (I drank bottles of water.) We decided to have dinner before heading off to the Eagle, which involved me, the sober one, guiding them up Seventh Avenue and restraining them at intersections by planting my hands on their chests, so my two extremely inebriated friends wouldn’t blunder out into oncoming traffic. For all of those three hours we were together before dinner, the entire time Eeyore kept talking about the guy he’d taken home the night before.

I hadn’t paid much mind to the story, because all the guys Eeyore takes home are strippers. Dancers, I mean. (When I fuck dancers, they’re ballet dancers or former contestants on So You Think You Can Dance. When Eeyore gets with a dancer, it’s a stripper.) You know those newly-engaged women who, when you’re trying to relate your father’s medical issues and your own recent work woes, lean forward and flash the rock on their fingers and manage to turn every conversation into OMG your diamond is so BIG! ? Well, it was like that with Eeyore and the stripp . . . er, dancer.

I was trying to recap the plot of Blue Jasmine for someone and it would trigger Eeyore into saying, “That reminds me of something my dancer said last night after I took him home. . . .” Or I’d ask Eeyore how was his vacation in Chicago, and he’d reply, “Oh, it was fine. I found out the dancer I took home last night was from Bushwick. That’s not very far. Do you think it’s too far?”

It wasn’t really until we were sitting down at dinner and Eeyore picked up the menu and said, “I think the dancer I took home last night would really like this place. They have hamburgers,” that I turned to him in surprise. Here I’d been kind of politely ignoring his dancer stories in the same way I might have overlooked a big old booger hanging from his nostril. I’d been thinking, Oh my god, how many times can he bring up the fact AGAIN that he had sex last night? And when a sex blogger who’s constantly parading his tricks in front of an international audience of thousands is getting annoyed with with someone exhibitionistically talking about fucking, you know it’s got to be excessive.

But over the hamburger menu I realized that for the first time in I didn’t know how long, Eeyore actually seemed kind of happy. I commented on it. “Well yeah,” he said. “Of course. I mean, I almost got laid for the first time last night in twenty years.”

And I shouted, “WHAT?!”

He repeated it for me. “I said, last night was the first time in twenty years that I was close to getting laid.”

“Twenty years,” I said.

He nodded.

“Two decades.”

He nodded again.

“Since 1993.”

By now he was looking at me like I was a blithering idiot. “Well, yeah.”

I stared at him for a moment and then, with outrage, demanded to know, “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

I have a tendency to think of myself as unfairly deprived if I have to go for five days without sex. Twenty years, to me, sounded like the stuff of science fiction. I’d known that Eeyore’s track record wasn’t stellar. All of his stories tend to end with the dancer (stripper) stealing his wallet, or leading him on, over the course of weeks or months, for lap dance money and then leaving him high and dry. Or else they involve the mercenary cleaning out his bank account and moving on to the next john.

But jeez. I assumed that from time to time in there, there’d been some actual nookie.

“There are just things in play that prevent me. . . .” he started to say.

I wanted to know what.

“My job. . . .”

“. . . . doesn’t involve a vow of celibacy and allows you plenty of hook-up time,” I countered.

“It’s a crazy city. . . .”

“. . . . where I manage to have sex several times a week.”

“I just wasn’t raised that way. My parents. . . .”

And here’s where I lost my patience.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve had people—friends, lovers, readers of my blog who’ll write in to me or engage me in social media—tell me that they want to experience sexual joy, but that they can’t because of outside factors. I’ve had men tell me that they want to let go and play with whom they choose, but they can’t do it because they were raised in a religious household. I’ve had dozens and dozens of guys tell me they want to play with men, but they can’t because they’re married. They’ll tell me they were raised in the South and their upbringing prevents them from seeking sex with men. Or any number of other factors—all external, all allegedly beyond their control.

When a guy tells me that he wants to be more sexually adventurous (or, you know, to have sex more than nearly once every twenty years), but then rattles off a number of outside forces preventing him from achieving his goal, I know it’s not any of those externals that truly restrain him. Religion can be overcome. There are pigs worldwide from every ethnicity, nationality, and regional background. Not every relationship comes with a lock and key. No, what I hear is a man telling me that his inaction is a result of a mysterious societal conspiracy. Other people, vague and undefined, are making his choices for him. What I hear is a man telling me that he’s too frightened to make his own choices.

Look. I grew up in a family with no less than four ordained and practicing ministers, all Southern Baptist. It doesn’t get much more religious than that. I’m married. I was raised in the very same South. I know I’m not everyone’s touchstone, but none of those things keeps me from being a total whore. I don't allow any of those factors to keep me from pursuing sexual adventure any more than they I would allow them to keep me from reading what I want, watching the television shows that interest me, or listening to that demon rock and roll. I don’t allow external, invisible forces, up to and including God himself, to dictate my day-to-day happiness.

If Eeyore had, in answer to my question of why he’d been celibate for two decades, replied, Well, I’ve decided that it’s important to me to wait for a special someone, I would’ve thought about it, probably privately decided that his response wouldn’t be mine, and then given him a pat on the back and some words of support. That would’ve been a choice he’d made, based on a philosophy he believed in. If a married reader tells me that he wishes he could fuck around, but that he’s made a choice to stay true to his marriage vows because it makes him a more honest and committed person—fuck yes, more power to him. I admire anyone who makes a choice and owns that choice and isn’t afraid to stick to it.

For me it all boils down to whether a person is an active protagonist in his own life, or whether he’s passive and adrift and allowing invisible forces to carry him downstream. An invisible god shouldn’t be making choices for you. Kowtowing to the a disapproving, inchoate society or the thought of frowning and unhappy parents (who, in Eeyore’s case, have both been deceased for years) means you’ve taken the passive route. Thinking about your choices, and making the ones that are right for you—even if you’ve been told that they’ll make Baby Jesus cry—make you a warrior in your own life.

It really doesn’t take a lot to move from passive floater to an active leader of your own life. Mindfulness helps. Reflection. Learning to recognize when you’re allowing fear and commonplace external forces to dictate your direction. I truly believe it’s important to take as much control of our own lives as possible, because every one of us one day will find ourselves facing external obstacles that will throw the triviality of everything else into sharp relief. I’m talking about illness, and accidents, and irreplaceable losses of love and family. It’s when those roll around—and they always do—that we realize that we had happiness within reach all the time.

Whether or not you grasp it, or at least chase it, is up to you.

All of us are living on borrowed time. Every single one of us. One day it all comes due. Trust me, I know from experience that it’s possible to drift for long periods of time on tides that seem beyond our control. But some day we wake up and realize that a year has passed—five years, twenty years—and we’ll never again have that time or the opportunities it presented. I know that I’d rather face that moment knowing I threw myself into those waters and relished the sport and challenge of them. I’d rather splash and make noise and make a goddamned mess than drift quietly and apologetically through life. I’d rather regret the choices I made for myself, crazy as they may be, while I can make them, rather than regret fearing everything, making no choices at all, and blaming it all on forces beyond my control.

Again: I know my choices are my own. I don't expect anyone to follow in my exact footsteps. I just want people—I want you—to be the person at the helm of your own life. I want you to conquer those fears holding you back, whatever they may be.

For Eeyore, breaking a twenty-year dry spell is a first step. Learning that it’s not too late to quench his thirst is up to him.